GUNTER: Riding anti-Trump bounce, expect a Mark Carney Liberal leadership victory

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Mark Carney will be selected as the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada on Sunday. Oh, I know, there are three other candidates in the race, including former Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland. But Carney should win resoundingly.

Ever since the former Bank of Canada governor declared his candidacy back in January, the Liberal hierarchy and much of the central Canadian media establishment have treated the race more like a coronation.

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Almost no other candidate has been mentioned in the news during that time, except to point out they aren’t Mark Carney (swoon).

That means sometime in the coming week, when Justin Trudeau finally relinquishes power, Carney will become Canada’s unelected prime minister. Unelected not just as prime minister, but unelected, ever, to any public office. He will become prime minister without holding a seat in the House of Commons.

There is no requirement in our Constitution that the PM be an MP, but a bow to decency and democratic transparency should compel Carney either to seek a by-election or call a general election ASAP.

My guess is Carney will ask for the writs to be issued before the Commons is set to reconvene on March 24, so he doesn’t have to face the Official Opposition (although he wouldn’t really “face” them directly, anyway).

With federal elections set between 36 and 50 days, an election call in mid-March would yield a vote in late April or early May.

There’s no advantage for the Liberals to wait. Carney is currently enjoying an anti-Trump bounce. And as Carney’s record of fibs and flubs during the leadership campaign has shown, the longer he waits, the more likely he will implode.

Given all that, here’s a question for Canadians who are once again thinking of voting Liberal after rejecting the party under Trudeau: With most of Trudeau’s cabinet backing Carney and many of Trudeau’s closest staffers directing Carney’s campaign, just how different do you imagine the former bank governor will be than the detested man he is replacing?

The list of Carney’s just-like-Trudeau policies and positions is long.

Carney barely mentions oil in his speeches on Canada’s economic future, although oil is by far our No. 1 export. That’s just like Trudeau.

And Carney is in favour of a carbon tax and has been for years. Just like Trudeau.

Carney’s carbon tax is only different because it will be charged on corporations, not at the pump, so it won’t be as obvious (even though it will cost Canadian consumers the same or more).

And Carney told a Kelowna, B.C. audience he was so committed to building a cross-country pipeline he would consider using the federal government’s emergency powers to push one through. Then, just days later, in French in Quebec, he pledged never to force a pipeline on Quebec.

How very Trudeau-esque: Duplicity in both official languages.

Carney made up a “fact” that Canada is the source of most of the semiconductors imported to the States. He has proposed splitting Ottawa’s books into operating and capital spending to make it easier to hide capital spending. He “misspoke” about helping Paul Martin balance the federal budget in 1995, even though at the time he was studying in England. And he claimed he was not still chairman of the wealthy asset management firm, Brookfield, when he very clearly was, and the subject was whether he approved of the move of Brookfield’s head offices to the U.S. from Canada.

Sounds like Trudeau with his WE Charity and SNC-Lavalin scandals (and others).

But despite all that, expect the Laurentian media to rally around the Liberals. They’ll claim it’s about protecting Canada from Donald Trump and insist Carney gives us the best chance at preserving our country. But it will truly be about protecting the Liberals’ and the Laurentian elite’s hold on power from Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives.

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