Mendicino Musings And 5 Ideas For Carney

On Staff And Strategies

The first domino has fallen, with Mark Carney appointing Marco Mendicino as his Chief of Staff, according to the CBC. There’s a lot of opinions about this, and I must confess to not being a Mendocino guy in the slightest, but it is the case that this decision is worthy of columnizing (and, in limited ways, praise).

This decision is a bold one, but it’s sensible for it to be Marco. Mendicino is a former Cabinet Minister who will be able to get up to speed quickly and effectively, who has ambitions for 2026 that mean he’s highly interested in a high profile but transparently temporary job like this, and he will serve as an olive branch to a community that just swung right in the Ontario election and is pissed at the Liberals. He’s also been fired by Justin Trudeau, which makes a decent contrast to the arguments Carney is just Trudeau redux. It’s not a bad pitch.

The case against it is Mendicino was fired for being pretty bad at his job - he screwed up the comms on the Bernardo transfer and doesn’t have the greatest reputation, and there are some on the party’s pro-Palestinian side that have reason to be displeased today. But at the end of the day, we want the talent that just got Mark Carney 86% in the leadership race running the campaign and not stuck in Ottawa handling Trump.

If you wanted to make a case for someone else who could give you Ministerial gravitas and an ability to manage the store while the campaign is on, there’s not nearly as many names on it as you’d think. David Lametti has taken a new job since leaving Parliament, and while I could say a Lawrence MacAuley or whoever makes sense they don’t help with the Liberals’ sliding support with Jewish-Canadians. This is a reasonable appointment.

If the Conservatives want to yell and scream about Marco, let them - it’ll make them seem even more out of touch with the things Canadians actually care about right now. Also, if you want to get into a game of Chief of Staff mudslinging, the Conservatives’ Chief of Staff’s firm lobbies for Loblaws, so let’s not pretend elevating staff choices is a winner for the CPC.

Now, onto some ideas for Mark Carney, which is what this column was going to be about this whole time.

Less Time In Ontario

There are very few direct symbols you can send in an election campaign, but where the leader spends his time is one of them. Carney, if he wants to be seen as a Different Kind Of Liberal, has one very direct way of showing that - spend less time in Ontario.

We tend to get inured to the idea that election campaigns are central Canadian affairs where the only time you go outside of that is to announce energy policy (in Alberta), climate policy (in BC) or fisheries policy (out east), but there’s no reason why every big announcement about tax policy or gun crime or whatever else has to be done in the Laurentians.

Whatever there is to get out of Ontario is going to be gotten out of the millions and millions in TV ads we’re going to be running on every Leafs, Sens, Raps, and Jays game. The policy mix will be aimed squarely at winning Ontario voters. So just fucking announce more of it in Fredericton or Winnipeg and not Mississauga or Ajax.

We need to show Carney is a leader who cares for all of Canada. The virtue of the Team Canada branding is it allows us to box Poilievre out of the narrative of the election, and positions those not on the team as disloyal. The counterpoint to that is we have an obligation to make it truly Team Canada, not Team The Parts Of Canada With Lots Of Liberal Seats. The clearest way to show that is to spend less time in Ontario.

Do Vassy And Cochrane Soon

Look, as a Canadian I think it should be actual law that CTV and CBC basically get to summon politicians to their studios at will as if with subpoena power. As a matter of basic democratic accountability it’s a good thing to do and I think Carney should do them soon.

That said, it’s also a strategic misstep not to. Media goodwill is a valuable thing, and being open and available to the media has the potential to be valuable in how stories are framed, even if unconsciously. To be clear, I’m not saying that doing Vassy or Cochrane’s shows will suddenly make them dyed in the wool Liberals, but it is pretty undeniable that Trump is getting more sympathetic coverage in some ways than Biden did in part because he answers a lot of questions and makes himself available to the press. We know that the Times basically had a vendetta against the Biden Admin because he wouldn’t sit for an interview.

It’s also a talking point that we can easily get rid of. Neither Vassy or Cochrane are easy interviews, but they’re not exactly Paxman at his peak of wanting to make himself the story of every interview. They’re smart people who will ask a good follow up question, but Carney’s been grilled by how many MPs in his time, in two countries. If he can’t handle Vassy and Cochrane he’s not worthy of being leader, come on.

Also, this is obvious enough it doesn’t require a separate point, but get Carney on Tout Le Monde En Parle 3 Sundays before the election. Enough time for the hype to build if it goes well, enough time to recover if the French is halting, and enough time to get it back up to the level it needs to be at before the interview.

Treat Jagmeet Singh As An Irrelevance

Singh will need to try and bait the Liberals into engaging with him to raise his profile, and the answer has to be silence. He will call Carney a corporatist stooge who will pray at the altar of markets. He will call the Liberals the same as the Conservatives. He will get increasingly desperate for a reaction. And we cannot engage.

This isn’t even a political point, but a basic bit of human nature - it is far more hurtful and disrespectful to ignore someone than to loudly proclaim their irrelevance. This is the basic premise of one of the best scenes in recent TV history, the Mad Men elevator scene.

No matter what the NDP say or do, any response is worth its weight in gold to them and does us nothing. They are going to be begging us to take the bait, which is how we know we shouldn’t. I’m not saying we don’t announce left wing policies in spots, but we run our campaign and ignore the NDP totally and completely.

Embrace The Depth Of Talents

Nate Erskine-Smith has been doing direct to camera videos for the last while, Anita Anand was a commanding presence during the COVID year, and Dominic LeBlanc is getting good marks as Finance Minister during all of this Trump bullshit. Use them more actively during the campaign.

There should be a digital ad at minimum with Nate talking direct to camera about the government’s housing progress and how Pierre Poilievre will cut funding that will mean less homes are built, and if it plays well, run it on TV. Have Anand voice over an ad talking about Carney’s experience and service to Canada and the world, full of B-roll of Carney meeting with Harper, Flaherty, Cameron, and Osborne. Have LeBlanc do one talking about “working together with the provinces” that features a photo of Ford and LeBlanc together as they say it. Hell, I’ll write the 30 second spots if you want!

The dirty little secret is that the Conservative bench is not particularly impressive. Showcasing the Liberal talent and making this less like a Cult of Carney is a way you can show you’re different and also effectively message key dividing lines with the Conservatives.

Lean Into Carney’s Faith

Probably the only thing I didn’t know about Carney he said in his acceptance speech was that he was a church goer. It’s been a while since a Canadian politician’s faith has been mentioned in a situation like this, and I don’t think that’s necessarily good. There was a minor dust-up on Trudeau’s abortion view due to his Catholicism, but nobody cared.

I don’t want Carney to start governing according to Leviticus, but I must confess I’m not particularly worried about that. But one of the things that has alienated Liberals from much of the country is the idea that we sneer at religion and faith. There are tons of good people who believe in whatever faith they believe in and who do not hold homophobic or bigoted views. There’s no contradiction between faith and liberalism, and anybody who has ever understood what their religious text is conveying understands this.

If the Liberals are to win the next election, we need to win seats where voters have been trending right over concerns that the left has gone too far. A leader who is willing to talk about going to church is a decent start at making the Liberal brand stronger in key Atlantic and Northern Ontario.