Carney is in his post G7 honeymoon after passing his biggest test in office so far, but cracks are starting to show

Hamilton Spectator

8 hours ago

OTTAWA — When the G7 was all over, Prime Minister Mark Carney sat down at the Kananaskis lodge, had burgers and beers with a small team after three intensive days of international meetings, and watched his beloved Edmonton Oilers lose.
Victory on all fronts was not within his grasp.
Carney had just closed off the summit with a news conference, feeling chuffed but baffled by questions about a divide in the G7 over Ukraine. He insisted there was a consensus, and flatly denied a government official's earlier account that the U.S. refused 'strong language' for a joint declaration on Ukraine.
The prime minister insisted there was never any joint declaration about Ukraine in the works, only his G7 chair's summary.
Sure they'd had 'frank' debates, disagreements at times. But the G7 was united, and 'at a time when multilateralism is under great strain,' Carney declared the summit a success.
Then the prime minister — a tough taskmaster impatient with mistakes among his staff — strode off the stage. Out in the hallway, as the media was held back, dozens of government advisers and officials broke into a wave of applause.
For Carney, one of the biggest tests of his early tenure in office was met.
U.S. President Donald Trump had left 24 hours earlier and not (yet) renounced the summit.
The other 16 world leaders boarded choppers back to Calgary, effusive in their praise that Carney had pulled off what many wondered would ever be possible. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy left Canada, cancelling his own news conference.
French President Emmanuel Macron told Canadian reporters they 'should be proud' of their prime minister for his deft steering of a joint G7 declaration on the Iran-Israel hostilities and agreement to increase pressure on Russia to end the Ukraine war.
'We shouldn't ask the Canadian presidency to resolve every issue on earth today. That would be unfair,' said Macron. 'But he held the group together. He did it with his characteristic elegance and determination.'
The bromance with Macron. The ease with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The mutually flattering exchanges with Trump. And the unreserved welcome for India's Narendra Modi.
Carney looked in his element on a global stage.
Confident he can pull off big nation-building projects at home and lead internationally where he judges the U.S. is abandoning the field, Carney is still basking in a honeymoon period.
Nevertheless there are early cracks showing in his pace and style of governing that could turn into big fault lines into which his big ambitions may slide.
Carney keeps an extremely tight grip on who knows what in his government and, more importantly, who is allowed to talk about it.
It is that tight hold on information that partly led the PMO to retract its earlier account of Trump's disagreement on Ukraine, hours after it made headlines.
Government officials apologized to reporters for the confusion, insisted there was no intention to mislead, and are still trying to determine the who-said-what-to-whom chain of events.
But that kind of broken telephone, if that's what it was, is unacceptable in the big leagues of a G7 summit, where mischaracterization of G7 agreement, disagreement or a failure to convey the difference between formal G7 documents carries geopolitical and reputational risk.
It is no time for amateur hour, or to fail to have enough trust in others to deliver your message, when other international leaders and delegations are talking, providing context, preventing misunderstandings and amplifying their own priorities and roles.
What Carney may dismiss as communications issues can quickly mushroom into a bigger problem for Canada-U.S. relations at a critical time, or into a major obstacle to his domestic ambitions to lift barriers to trade, galvanize big new projects or pass new laws.
BQ leader Yves-Francois Blanchet said early on that Carney sees himself as the CEO of Canada and warned that won't work in Parliament. The result is evident in the brewing battle over Carney's sprawling bill to accelerate nation-building projects, C-5.
The downside of Carney's corporate leadership style is evident in how he handles staff and caucus members.
He has brusquely demanded better performance of political aides and senior public servants including deputy ministers, insiders say. One was scolded for not having an immediate answer to a question Carney had and told to learn the file. Another was scolded for not having read in advance a document he handed to the prime minister without knowing its full content and import.
Carney flatters Donald Trump and Narendra Modi, and tries to anticipate and meet their needs in the name of comity. He gets along well with most of the premiers.
But Carney sees little need to do the same with his own caucus. In one of his first caucus meetings after winning the Liberal leadership, Carney didn't stay long, or stick around to take pre-election pictures with his MPs, said one Liberal MP who spoke on condition they not be identified.
Other sources tell the Star Carney has broken promises to MPs who expected to be named or renamed to cabinet.
Caucus had early hopes, with some MPs telling Carney 'you're our CEO and we're your board of directors,' but the same MP who described Carney's hasty departure from his first meeting said, 'You can't run government like a business.'
The MP quipped, 'If that were the case we'd probably have to shut down all the Canada Post offices in rural Ontario.' There are political constituencies and costs to manage that go along with any decision.
Then there's the bro-thing. Carney was questioned during the campaign by reporters about all the men around him in the top office. He downplayed the observation.
But inasmuch as he was at ease among the alpha male ranks of the G7 (there were only three women among the 19 leaders who attended: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen, and Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum), Carney hasn't yet invited many women into his top inner governing circle.
He's hand-picked three top advisers: Marc-Andre Blanchard as chief of staff, Michael Sabia as Privy Council clerk, and David Lametti as principal secretary. They have a range of backgrounds in corporate, public service, and academic sectors. Women occupy some roles, but it's not clear how many of them have Carney's ear or his trust yet. Does it matter? Time will tell.
And Carney doesn't have much of it.
His is a government in a hurry.
Coming into the G7 summit, Carney hosted his first formal bilateral with Britain. Coming out of it, there is a United Arab Emirates delegation in town, then the Canada-EU summit in Brussels, followed by the NATO leaders' summit, plus a new 30-day deadline for Canada-U.S. negotiations to nail a deal to lift the sectoral and 'border emergency' tariffs Trump has imposed. There are also the simultaneous negotiations in a minority Parliament to swiftly pass bills to live up to the new government's promises to get big things done by July 1.
Carney insists Canada is at a transformational moment in the global economy. But perhaps it takes more than one person to realize his ambition to lead it to a better moment.