GOLDSTEIN: Flip-flopping Carney wrong choice to lead fight against Trump

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The idea that Liberal Leader Mark Carney and the current Liberal government are best equipped to fight a trade war with U.S. President Donald Trump is absurd. 

In fact, the Liberals over their decade in power weakened our ability to fight that war by undermining our economy. 

Carney, an economic adviser to former prime minister Justin Trudeau, made that point during the English-language Liberal leadership debate on Feb. 25, although he’s now flip-flopped, as I’ll explain in this column. 

On Feb. 25, Carney was crystal clear in asserting that the policies of the Trudeau government left Canada ill-equipped to fight a trade war with Trump. 

He said its decision to massively hike immigration, plus years of government overspending — because both occurred at much faster rates than the growth of our economy — weakened Canada economically, long before Trump launched his trade war. 

As Carney put it on Feb. 25: “I want to be clear about the ‘strength’ of our economy. Our economy over the last five years has been driven by a big increase in the labour force, which was largely because of a surge in immigration that is now trying to be controlled, and by government spending that grew over 9% year after year after year — twice the rate of growth of our economy. 

“So our economy was weak before we got to the point of these threats from president Trump.” 

But now that he’s prime minister, campaigning to win the election, Carney’s reversed that position. 

During a press conference last week in response to media questioning, Carney said: 

“In the situation that we’re in as a country … we are in an economic crisis that’s brought on by the tariffs that have been put on Canada, actual and perspective,” absolving the Liberals of responsibility. 

When the reporter interjected that the economic crisis was brought on by Trudeau government policies — Carney’s position on Feb. 25 — Carney responded, “Nobody in Canada created that problem.” 

Whatever Carney believes, his plan to fight Trump’s tariffs was to steal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s platform on everything from runaway immigration to government overspending, a tacit admission that Conservatives were right and Liberals were wrong on these issues. 

Indeed, the Trudeau Liberals have the worst record of economic growth in Canada since R.B. Bennett during the Great Depression. 

Real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita — a widely accepted measure of a nation’s prosperity — decreased by 1.4% in 2024, following a decline of 1.3% in 2023, according to Statistics Canada. 

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University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe estimated that in 2024, the total gap in real GDP per capita between Canada and the U.S. was about $22,000 to $66,300 in the U.S. compared to $44,400 in Canada, in 2015 dollars. 

“Put another way,” Tombe wrote in The Hub, “real GDP per capita in the U.S. was 43% higher than in Canada in 2023. And in 2024, I estimate this gap will widen to nearly 50%. 

“Let that sink in for a moment. The U.S. is on track to produce nearly 50% more per person than Canada will. This stunning divergence is unprecedented in modern history.” 

Even the Trudeau government acknowledged the problem in its 2022 budget, warning that “the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development projects that Canada will have the lowest per-capita GDP growth rate among its member countries” from 2020 to 2060. 

So why would anyone believe the Liberals — as opposed to the Conservatives — are best equipped to fight a trade war with Trump, which involves far more than doing election ads with Mike Myers?