Carney’s Bridge To Nowhere
On The Government’s Latest Misfire
I have very few concrete opinions about the deal we made to open the Gordie Howe Bridge. That doesn’t mean I don’t have opinions - I obviously do! - but they’re messy, complicated, and half baked. The deal is shit; a closed bridge isn’t worth anything; everyone conflating revenues and profits is a moron. Should we have done the deal? I don’t know - probably, at least in the absence of an alternative argument to how this bridge gets opened under Trump.
But I do have one strong opinion, and one that’s calcified the longer I’ve thought about it - there’s every chance the Bridge debacle will be a bigger political problem for the government than anything that’s happened so far, because Canadians deserve better than a government unable and unwilling to defend its actions. Donald Trump has leverage, and he has power, but he does not require the Canadian government to smile and nod and pretend to Canadians that the chicken shit we are being fed is chicken salad.
And if the government doesn’t stop giving Canadians the short shrift in a vain and ultimately useless attempt to not rock the boat, they will allow their entire agenda to go under.
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The problem for Carney is not that the deal is an indefensible disgrace. It is, in fact, the only actual solution to getting the bridge open. Hoping that at some point that Gretchen Whitmer or Elissa Slotkin or frankly any Democrat would grow a pair and defend us vocally and consistently - and then hoping Trump would give a fuck even if they did - is about as fantastical as thinking Jordan Spieth is going to win the Open this time next week. (I want to believe, and yet …)
The problem for Carney is that the lack of alternative solution is not inherently an affirmative defence for this decision. It can be one, if someone would like to, I don’t know, affirmatively make it, but when various Twitter friends are making a better case for Carney’s plan than anyone with any actual job, it’s a failure. I get that Trump is zero sum and that the nature of the beast is difficult, but the government needs to do more.
Do we think Donald Trump is really paying attention to what is being said by anonymous government officials off the record to the CBC? No, of course not. Have someone go off the record and make the case that the alternative was the bridge not opening. Or, hell, have Carney say so - Trump will hear that as “Carney admits I won the negotiation”, while Canadians will hear it as “Trump took this hostage and we didn’t have a better choice.” And frankly, even if it pisses Trump off, there are many ways of solving that problem - invite him to play Cabot Links or Shaughnessy next time he visits Canada and present him with a bespoke putter or some shit.
The idea that the potential risk of pissing off Trump has to (pardon the pun) trump the very real prospect of undermining our entire agenda is nonsensical. Even more so, nobody is making the case to Canadians that there is any there there on any of this - we’re not buying an entire fleet of F35s and we can announce that (via unnamed Government sources to the CBC) but we can’t dare say that we did the Bridge deal because otherwise it wouldn’t open and that would be worse? I don’t accept that.
Carney’s whole entire thing is that he is a different kind of politician, because he’s not even a politician. His whole thing is that he is above the normal idiocy of politics, and that has meant being able to say things that people captured by normal political rules can’t say. Carney’s bluntness and occasional dickishness to reporters has been a boon for the PM, because it has shown he is a real person and not merely a robotic politician. And now, he’s going to refuse to do that now? Fuck off.
The thing that Carney knows from the business world is that what is said is as important as what isn’t, but that’s because people in the business world know what to look for. You can say things with plausible deniability in a corporate environment in a way you can’t in politics. It is frustrating I’m sure to have to spell out what is obvious to you, but you have to fucking do it. And the fact that I’m sure it drives Carney crazy doesn’t change that fact.
What Carney needs to consistently do is show an understanding of the reality of the position he is now in and start to fucking fix it. He needs to be slightly more open with Canadians, and give what you might call a Domestic Davos - a speech that allows Canadians to fill in the gaps, that allows us to understand his mind when there are things unsaid and unsayable. Because right now we’re having to assume that he’s swallowing this deal because we need to give Trump something while we diverge on other, more important points. But we don’t know that, we think that, or more accurately we hope that. Hope doesn’t make it true.
At this point Carney’s government pisses me off so much more than Trudeau’s did, because Carney’s government is actually close to being an effective project both politically and on governance. Trudeau’s government was, at the best of times, shambolic but somewhat effective, but Carney’s is better for the moment we are in. But Carney’s government is so full of bad execution in key moments I have no choice but to question my faith in them. It needs to be fucking better, and it needs to be better fast, or this country will start to wonder why it elected Carney at all. And when that happens, we’re all fucked.
I normally enjoy your writing but I think on this one you are way off - in normal circumstances caving in the bridge deal would be seen as a huge political misstep, but we are not in normal circumstances. The Gordie Howe Bridge is not the “hill to die on”, but rather could be viewed as a chess parable in giving up a decent piece in order to gain a more significant advantage later on. The thing to keep in mind is that in economic and geopolitical terms Carney is playing chess while Trump, in his purely transactional way, is playing checkers. It wouldn’t be prudent, in my view, to give Trump the reason for him to upend the table at this point in the game.
And lastly, please don’t ever compare the Carney government to any of the J Trudeau governments - Carney is attending university while Justin was merely in kindergarten.
Let me provide the domestic Davos speech. It is really not that hard to understand.
The Trump administration is a mobster organization. No agreement is worth anything and can get changed at any time. There are no guardrails or judicial checks to keep things constrained, the only check left is the stock market. And even this one is manipulated and exploited through various predictions with insider information.
So, it is the same with the bridge. It was an opportunity for extortion. What leverage does Canadian government have? None. Go to court? What court? Who is going to go enforce whatever judicial decision? It used to be that countries would be bound by their word, because that would be the only trust there is. That is gone. And it is not coming back.