LILLEY: If Carney can't be trusted with the truth, how can he be trusted with the country?
Spin is far from an outright lie, which is what the Liberal leader keeps getting caught in
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It seems that lying for Mark Carney comes so casually, he doesn’t even realize it. On Monday, the Liberal leader tried to fib to the Canadian public about both a call with Donald Trump and about his desire to take part in a French language debate.
Neither statement would last the day before being proven to be false.
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LILLEY: If Carney can't be trusted with the truth, how can he be trusted with the country? Back to video
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“Why not? Yes, yes,” Carney said when he was asked about taking part in the French language debate by TV station TVA.
Later, his campaign would clarify that Carney would not take part, therefore cancelling the debate even though every other party leader said they would participate in the debate on Quebec’s most-watched TV network.
On the issue of having a call with the American president, Carney has said several times that he will only speak with Trump once he’s willing to show Canada some respect. That sounds good, but the Wall Street Journal, the Toronto Star and CBC all reported that an attempt had been made by the Canadian side to set up a call with Trump, but he wasn’t responding to the outreach by Carney’s team.
So, which is it? Elbows up or he won’t return your call?
As I’ve been saying for a while, Carney simply isn’t familiar with the truth and that’s a problem.
It’s part of an ongoing pattern with Carney, lying about small things he doesn’t need to lie about, things that can easily be checked. Some people claim that all politicians lie, that if their lips are moving a politician is lying, but as someone who has covered politics for close to 25 years, that’s not true.
Sure, every politician will try to put facts and figures in the best light for their own purposes. That’s called spin and it’s far from an outright lie, which is what Carney keeps getting caught in.
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He claimed to have had nothing to do with moving the HQ of Brookfield Asset Management, the company he was formerly the chair of, from Toronto to New York. Except, Carney chaired the meeting where the board of directors voted unanimously to move to N.Y.C. and later signed a letter encouraging all shareholders to back the board’s vote.
Carney later had to clarify what he really meant to say.
He also had to backtrack on his claim that he helped Paul Martin balance Canada’s budget. Martin was Canada’s finance minister from 1993 until 2002 and he balanced the budget by 1998, but Carney didn’t join the Finance Department in Ottawa until 2004 which is six years after the budget had been balanced.
So on Monday, Carney stood at the podium in Gander and told casual lie after casual lie. This is a man who made a point of going to Mass before visiting the Governor General to call the election — seems like he should spend more time going to confession.
Even on the issue of his personal faith, Carney can’t tell the truth.
On Sunday, he was asked about his Catholic faith and his position on abortion and while he correctly said that he supports abortion despite being Catholic, he also told a lie.
“I don’t speak about these matters,” Carney said regarding his personal faith.
That would be fine for anyone except that in accepting the Liberal leadership earlier this month, Carney spoke about going to church and what a fellow parishioner told him about politics.
Even when speaking about Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s middle-class tax cut, which is larger than the tax cut Carney has promised, he outright lies about Poilievre’s stance on several issues.
“If you take what Mr. Poilievre has said, no more childcare, no more pharmacare, no more dental care,” Carney said.
Poilievre has never said, or even hinted, that he will get rid of these programs but Carney states as fact that Poilievre will. Carney likes to say that he’s not a politician, but this man lies like far too many people believe every politician lies.
If he can’t be trusted with little things, then he can’t be trusted with big things.
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