Memo To Mark Carney: Focus On The Fix

Three Ideas To Help Fix An Ailing Country

One of the problems that a lot of Canadian Liberals have is that in defending the government they’ve had to defend the idea that Canada isn’t broken. It’s a deeply uncomfortable position for them, because it’s where the public are in terms of sentiment and it’s where a lot of Liberals are when it comes to their home province. Bonnie Crombie might not be using the verbiage explicitly, but her message is that Ontario is broken and she’ll fix it.

The advantage, therefore, of a Mark Carney leadership is he won’t be bound by the past in the way that others have to be. If the Liberals elect Chrystia Freeland as leader, she will wear the baggage of the decisions that, to many Canadians, broke Canada. Electing the Deputy Wrecker In Chief to do the repair job doesn’t make much sense. But someone who was literally outside any formal government apparatus during the last years is much more able to admit where the mistakes were made and the problems lie.

The truth is Canada might not be broken, but it’s certainly not working properly. At best we’re an outdated piece of tech whose life we have strung out years beyond its normal time frame out of necessity. It’s not inherently bad to acknowledge this, and it’s not inherent to believing that Canada is broken that the answer is Pierre Poilievre. But denying the plain reality that we are in a bad place is not the answer.

With that said, it’s incumbent on Mark Carney to show he understands that the status quo is unacceptable, and to show a path forward for Canada. His campaign has been light on policy so far, which is an understandable instinct given he is winning this race handily and there is a massive question mark in the form of tariffs none of us know the details of coming. But, as a former private sector business guy at Goldman and as someone who has been in the business of public service for the last 20 years, Carney should understand that even if you don’t have the individual solutions right away - or know how workable any of them are given the likely tariffs - it is time for him to put some meat on the bone. It is time to tell us what the solutions are, at least in broad strokes. It’s time for the adult in the room to treat us like adults, and let us know what is on route to us.

We saw the first element of this strategy this morning, as Carney announced an end to the consumer carbon tax, but it’s not enough. We need a plan to fix Canada, not just ranting about how it’s broken. There are serious and credible problems to solve, but there’s also an appetite for solutions.

Climate is a good example of what this approach can look like - instead of focusing on reducing emissions by punishing people, you can create significant emission reductions through incentive schemes and more consumer friendly methods. Yes, I understand the economics of that, but the economics of an American style emissions reduction plan are still better than the climate costs of doing fuck all, which is what a 250 seat Conservative majority will do.

There are other issues where the ground is fertile for people to hear a message of fixing problems and not just identifying them.

Commit To A Root And Branch Review Of The Immigration System

We have had somewhere between 2 and 4 very significant reforms to the immigration system under this Liberal government - the increase in permanent immigration in the majority years, the TFW boom of 2022, the student visa cap, and then the significant tightening of recent months. It’s been extremely haphazard and disjointed, with decisions being made more in the guise of whack a mole than from any sense of real understanding of what an immigration system should look like.

We need to take a look at our immigration policy - the current, hacked to pieces immigration system that we currently have - in a new and holistic way. It is absolutely vital to acknowledge that there is no way our current immigration policy would be the end point of any coherent plan. So, we need to recommit to a better system - one that can balance regional needs and not just have our Immigration Minister casually making and then undoing huge decisions every 18 months.

We need to entirely reconsider the balance of Permanent Residents and temporary residents, we need to understand what post secondary will look like, we need to understand that a policy for New Brunswick won’t be one for New Westminster BC, and we need to understand how our immigration policy intersects with our Housing policy. An expert-led review would be hugely useful to setting our priorities for the next decade, and in ensuring the issue isn’t a policy minefield. It would also punt the issue into the long grass of politics, especially if you lead with an acknowledgement that the government has been inconsistent and often wrong on the issue.

Axe The Tax … But Keep The Rebate

This idea has been one I’ve been fiddling with for years, but when Australia passed their carbon tax, it was an income tax cut that was paired with it. In 2013, when Tony Abbott won, he won by promising to increase spending on green programs, keep the income tax cuts, and get rid of the carbon tax, and it worked. Carney has promised the last, and is implicitly promising the first, but with the elimination of the tax would be the elimination of the rebate. What if it’s not?

Karina Gould offered an incredibly stupid 1 year, 1% GST cut yesterday that would cost ~$10-11B. The Federal Carbon Tax rebates about $10B in costs back to Canadians. If we’re gonna spend $10B to help people in this bad year, why not just extend the rebates another year?

Instead of a GST cut whose benefits would flow up the income scale - because let’s be real, people making $100k+ and buying new TVs or flights or big purchases are going to gain a hell of a lot more from the 1% cut than someone making $22k and barely scraping by - you keep a policy that is redistributive, that helps the bottom deciles way more than the top, and it doesn’t require businesses to eat administrative costs or the creation of a new government bureaucracy or system. Is it really a rebate if the tax is axed? No, but who cares. Four more cheques to help people as needed would be significant at a time like this and would help people believe they’ve been made whole from the carbon tax (even though they already are).

Make An Offer On Healthcare Transfers

We need some provincial unity right now and the healthcare system is falling apart in most places. The best way for the Feds to engender a little Canadian unity right now would be to offer to increase health transfers, conditional upon some fucking national unity. It would be a way of putting those bad health outcomes on the provinces, but also be the kind of carrot that the provinces need as the tariffs start to bite.

It’s clear that the Feds are seen to be responsible for bad outcomes in healthcare even if they’re not, so start acknowledging it. The whole thing about Liberal governments in this country is their successes are in getting the provinces to do things that they don’t really have the legal authority to force them into. Trampling provincial authority for the national good is how we have almost everything worth fighting for in this country. It’s time to accept that the public’s willingness to blame the Feds for failures in provincial jurisdiction is at least somewhat because we keep celebrating our successes in these areas.

Spend some money, buy some unity, and help Canadians not be utterly fucked the moment we need care.

None of these solutions are game changers in and of themselves but that’s not the point. There's no silver bullet. These ideas represent a framework to show Canadians that we can fix what ails this country. We need to focus less on diagnosing our problems and more on solutions. Mark Carney can put us on a path to solutions, while all Poilievre wants to do is complain that things suck.

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