GOLDSTEIN: Mark Carney is campaigning as Pierre Poilievre-lite

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Assuming Liberal leadership frontrunner Mark Carney wins his party’s crown and becomes our next prime minister on March 9, voters in the next federal election will have a choice between a red-meat conservative — Pierre Poilievre — and a vegetarian version  — Carney.

Between a caffeinated conservative and a decaf one.

Between beer and near-beer.

What’s happened over the course of the Liberal leadership race since Carney officially entered on Jan.18 in Edmonton and unofficially on Jan. 14 on The Daily Show with an enthusiastic Jon Stewart, is that  Carney keeps nudging to the right, at least rhetorically, the Liberal party that lame duck Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spent almost a decade dragging to the left, straight into its current dumpster fire of unpopularity.

Consider:

Poilievre has vowed to scrap the federal carbon tax  (aka the consumer fuel charge portion of it) if he becomes prime minister as he has ever since Trudeau and the Liberals introduced the concept seven years ago.

Carney, by contrast, a leading global and corporate promoter of carbon taxes, until a couple of weeks ago, now says he’ll scrap the consumer fuel tax and replace it it with something better, blaming Poilievre for misleading Canadians about what it would do.

Meanwhile, Poilievre, who has opposed Liberal  plans to increase the capital gains tax since the Liberals introduced it in June, vows to scrap them if he becomes PM.

Carney now says he too, will scrap the proposed increases even though they were  introduced and advocated  for by his own political party.

(The Trudeau government has since announced it is deferring its capital gains tax legislation until 2026, after the federal election is over.)

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Poilievre says the Liberals over their decade in power lost control of immigration, the federal budget, deficits and debt, overspent and overtaxed the middle class. He now promises a tax cut to help families  cope with tough times.

Carney says the Liberals over their decade in power lost control of immigration, the federal budget, deficits and debt, overspent and overtaxed the middle class. He  also  promises a tax cut to help families cope with tough times.

Poilievre says the federal civil service has grown too large under the Liberals and he will reduce its size and budget by attrition,  thus helping to pay for government services without going further into debt.

Carney says the federal civil service has grown by more than 30% under the Liberals “and I think we can over time be in a position to increase  productivity” to help pay for government programs such as dental care and pharmacare, rather than scrap them which he says he will not do.

The danger for Carney and the Liberals is that attacking political positions their own party and they themselves recently supported, makes them come across as double-talkers and hypocrites.

But they really have no choice because praising those policies reminds voters of why they became so disillusioned and frustrated with the Trudeau Liberals in the first place.

That happened because while Canadians were concerned about the high cost of putting food on the table and paying the rent, issues that Poilievre  and the Conservatives were raising every day, Liberals were talking about climate change and their own political survival in the face of crashing poll numbers.

Finally, the wild card in the coming federal election is,  of course, U.S. President Donald Trump, who inexplicably seems to have it in for Canada these days.