WARMINGTON: Mr. Wonderful offers report card on Prime Minister Carney's first months in power

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The guy’s only been on the job a few months but already Prime Minister Mark Carney is on a secret vacation.

But just when you think the new boss is the same as the old boss comes news that one of the Liberal government’s biggest critics offers praise for Canada’s 24th prime minister.

And some advice.

When asked to rate Carney’s performance since taking office March 14 and being elected April 28, you may be surprised what Mr. Wonderful Kevin O’Leary had to say.

Remember how he felt about Carney’s predecessor Justin Trudeau.

“Everything he touched over that 10-year period turned into (excrement),” O’Leary said on Fox News in January before Trudeau announced he would finally step away after being stabbed in the back by then-finance minister and deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland. “He will go down in history as the idiot king.”

O’Leary was pushing hard for that Trudeau resignation.

“Every Canadian should be working on that,” he told me that same frigid day. “It can’t happen fast enough.”

He got his wish.

The Dragons’ Den star said “Unfortunately for Trudeau, you have to respect the longevity. He did it without any executional skills. It’s very hard to do but he did it.”

So, how’s his assessment of Carney in his first few months in office?

I braced myself for his answer. But he didn’t say what I expected him to say. I thought for sure, like he does so often on the Den or Shark Tank, saying “I’m out.”

He didn’t.

“Carney has done a great job so far,” said O’Leary. “He’s in a bad situation because of so many bad policies he inherited like the (No More Pipelines Act and Don’t Build Anything Anywhere Act) Bill C-69.”

And bad cabinet ministers.

“I think Carney is doing an 8.79 out of 10 right now,” said O’Leary.

That’s almost a nine out of 10. That would count as him giving the prime minister an A.

But this assessment comes with some caveats. As long as he has Chrystia Freeland as his internal trade minister, Mr. Wonderful says, good luck with that.

“She is radioactive waste in Washington,” said O’Leary of Freeland. “It would help Carney a lot to not have her in cabinet.”

She’s not the only one.

“He still has baggage in the cabinet that he should have dumped because of lack of executional skills.”

But Freeland, he said, is his biggest liability in terms of getting an agreement on trade and tariffs with President Donald Trump and the Republican run house and senate.

“Freeland did damage to the Canadian brand in China, U.S., India and Egypt,” said O’Leary. “Why keep dead wood?”

This is a bigger issue for American business than Carney’s people not saying where in the National Capital Region that the prime minister is going to take the next week off for summer vacation.

When he is off, O’Leary said he’s hoping he thinks of someone else to handle the trade and transportation portfolio other than Freeland since he believes as long as she’s there, there will be no deal with the Americans.

If Carney does listen on that recommendation and gets some new faces with a little more in common with the American leadership, O’Leary believes his government will be successful in saving the economy. Any way you cut it, O’Leary says, making things right with the Americans is the more realistic way to go than to be moving closer to Europe.

“Canada still does more than 70% of its business with the United States,” he said.

Fixing that trade arrangement is the key to the future and vital for Carney to still get a passing grade as prime minister.

But he must move fast.

“He has about 18 more months to show he can attract capital back to Canada,” said O’Leary.

The first step, he said, is to get rid of Freeland from cabinet.

“She’s like rotting meat.”