Freeland And The End Times

On Ottawa Gossip

There has been a very low level conversation that a lot of people in Ottawa and Toronto have been having the last six months, especially in the aftermath of the Toronto-St. Paul’s byelection. There was a well-sourced, credible rumour that Mark Carney was going to become the Finance Minister this summer in a wide ranging shuffle. The details were slightly different every time I heard of it - some versions had Freeland “choosing to resign” and Carney running in a Rosedale byelection, some had the party asking incumbents who had already already announced their intention to retire at the election to leave early (John McKay’s Scarborough seat was brought up to me as a potential idea), and some merely said they’d figure it out. And then, it never happened, and Carney ended up becoming an advisor to the Liberal Party in some nebulous way. All of that is true, and the Globe reported at the time that Carney was being tipped for Cabinet, but it ended up fading out.

I’ve never had any of this officially confirmed, and at some level I’m flying blind. I don’t know, for example, whether there was an official offer made, but my understanding is that if Mark Carney wanted to be Finance Minister he would be the one delivering this Fiscal Update on Monday. Again, I’m not saying there was a formal ask and a formal denial, but between what I heard at the time, the Globe report that there was significant interest in Carney in a cabinet role, and this week’s renewed reporting about Carney in the same publication.

Chrystia Freeland today was asked by the Globe about their reporting, and in her minute long answer said nothing particularly newsworthy, except she gave her most honest answer in years. She said she was “proud and grateful” to serve in Cabinet, that she doesn’t pay attention to “Ottawa gossip”, and that being Finance Minister and serving Canadians is a privilege she doesn’t take for granted. You’ll note in there the utter lack of any denial of the question’s premise - no statement she knows she will remain in the post, no confidence that the rumours are false, or anything other than a wistfulness about having gotten this opportunity to serve - and to be at an announcement where some of the entrepreneurs with her were former classmates of her daughter.

I’m no fan of Freeland, but her answer was essentially a guarantee that Monday’s Fiscal Update would be her last major act in the job. I’ve said that Freeland should be fired for the last 14 months, so this is bittersweet for me - I think she’s done an okay job at a hard job, but unemployment racing to 7% when the government lauded all the efforts it made to get employment back to the pre-pandemic level and after suffering the high inflation that was caused in part by all of the (in my view justified) pandemic spending. It’s a messy record that you can hold in the right light and come out fond of but looks pretty bad - and one that would be savaged if Jim Flaherty had produced. (It’s especially bad if you look at the GDP-per-capita stats, which for all of their potential problems is directionally correct that population growth has done some heavy lifting to save us from negative growth.)

It’s also been clear to me for over a year that Freeland was the wrong messenger for this job - the person who thought mentioning cancelling Disney+ in the context of inflation fighting measures would go over well is clearly not suited to selling a message. Her vibecession remark - stealing a US term to describe an economy that is significantly weaker than the American one - is similarly tone deaf and a reminder that she is comfortable with academics, business leaders, and foreign heads of state, and less comfortable on the other side of a mic or a tape recorder. It’s also worth reminding everybody that this PMO is highly influential in decision making, so it’s entirely possible a lot of the bad ideas have been the PMO’s and not Freeland’s. (This GST Holiday being top of the list of things that don’t seem to be up her alley.)

Why would Carney suddenly take the Finance gig now? I don’t know, and I don’t know that he will. But I think there’s a pretty clear reason why this is being litigated again, and why Freeland might be out soon. It’s Trudeau’s last move. The October caucus meeting held their nerve on Justin because they believed he still had a path forward, as the US election and the increased focus on Foreign Interference could work well for them. If you squinted, you could see some move back to the LPC after that meeting and before the US election, and I even wrote a column saying as much. And then Trump won, the polls got worse for the Liberals pretty much across the board, and the map keeps worsening.

If Trudeau is genuinely going to go to the election, then his only move to placate both caucus rebels and attempt to show the public he’s listening is firing Freeland. It’s not likely to work - only about 3-in-10 Canadians know who the big Cabinet Ministers are from their photo, per a David Coletto stat on this week’s Scrimshaw Show, and Carney isn’t exactly a household name either - but it’s something. It’s his last card, outside of his resignation. Others can opine on the Feminist PM who called Harris’ loss a setback for women refusing to step aside for a female PM but you know, I’m sure in the minds of the Trudeau cultists it makes sense.

Is Carney going to say yes to this now? Is caucus going to actually allow Trudeau to offer Freeland up as a sacrificial lamb to protect himself, and not force him out? Honestly, I have no idea. It’s not even out of the realm of possibility that other Cabinet Ministers with future ambitions who might be offered Finance if Carney says no also take a pass on the job, in light of the disaster budget they’ll need to put together for the spring, and Freeland stays. It’s certainly the case that if I were advising any of the big Leadership contenders post-Trudeau, I’d certainly tell them to take a pass on the “promotion” to Finance.

If I were to claim I knew what would happen from here I’d be lying. I don’t. What I do know is pretty clear, but if the rules of the game and the wellbeing of the Liberal Party was the guiding principle Trudeau would have resigned in June. He didn’t, and now we’re here. Let the end times roll.