The News Rundown
- It's official, what we all knew was going to happen, did end up happening, and Mark Carney overwhelmingly won the Liberal leadership race, as announced last Sunday. Carney won the Liberal leadership by a landslide, garnering 86 per cent of the ballots on the first round of votes, and takes the stage as prime minister at a time when the country finds itself embroiled in a trade war with its closest ally and neighbour.
- Former finance minister Chrystia Freeland ended in second place with 8 per cent of the votes, while former House leader Karina Gould finished in third place with 3.2 per cent of the votes, only slightly ahead former Liberal MP Frank Baylis who got 3 per cent.
- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last week that the transition to the new leader “should happen reasonably quickly.” Carney was sworn in on Friday, and appointed a smaller and leaner cabinet. Carney's cabinet will consist of 24 members, down from the 39 members who made up Trudeau's final cabinet.
- Carney's cabinet was meant to show that they were ready to get down to business, and that there was going to be a marked change from the previous Trudeau administration.
- He said in the press conference on Friday: "We have new ministers with new ideas, ready to respond to new threats and seize new opportunities. Our leaner cabinet will focus on two priorities in particular. First, protecting Canadian workers and their families in the face of unjustified foreign trade actions. And second, growing this great country by putting more money in Canadians' pockets by ensuring the government spends less so Canada can invest more."
- That said, 20 of the 23 cabinet members that were not Carney, were in Trudeau's cabinet, with the front bench of Trudeau virtually unchanged, just in different positions. It's the tug of war between having change and wanting experienced politicians on his side, especially since he has not run for political office before.
- Carney said he was ready to take on the fight against U.S. President Donald Trump, who is threatening to impose several rounds of tariffs, including on steel and aluminum later this week, in an apparent attempt to weaken Canada’s economy and sovereignty. Carney called this the “most important crisis in our generation” but that Canadians “didn’t ask for this fight” but “are always ready when someone else drops the gloves. The Americans should make no mistake: in trade, as in hockey, Canada will win,” he added, referencing Canada’s win at the 4 Nations Face-Off last month.
- The new Liberal leader also pledged to reverse some of Trudeau’s key policies: “I am a pragmatist above all, so when I see that something’s not working, I will change it. My government will immediately eliminate the consumer carbon tax on families, on farmers, and small and medium-sized businesses,” he said.
- After being sworn in, he signed a document that pledged to end the consumer carbon tax, but we'll get into that more later.
- Carney will now have to decide whether to call an early election before Parliament is set to come back on March 24. All political parties have been preparing for a snap election that could be called as early as this week or the next, but doesn't actually have to happen until October.
- All in all, nothing has happened this week that is truly out of the ordinary or unpredicted by us. We'll see if that remains as we move through Carney's first week as Prime Minister.
- Supplementals:
- Over the past weeks much has been said about the need for Canada to find new export markets. In the chaos of the week Alberta has taken steps to doing just that.
- In Houston this week the Government of Alberta signed a memorandum of understanding with the Japan Organization for Metals and Energy Security. The agreement furthers a goal to develop new oil, natural gas, hydrogen, and ammonia resources.
- Most importantly though the agreement also seeks to create investment opportunities around LNG or liquified natural gas. The exact form of energy that the federal government has told numerous countries, including Japan, that there was no business case for.
- In 2024 bilateral trade between Alberta and Japan totalled more than $3b with Japan being Alberta’s third largest export market.
- JOGMEC CEO Ichiro Takahara praised the province’s resource potential as well as the developed legal framework on carbon capture, carbon pricing, and government support programs as reasons why Japan looks to continue to invest in Alberta.
- JOGMEC is a Japanese government independent administrative institution which is basically a legal corporation formulated by the Government of Japan. They pay taxes and public dues and contain agencies like the Japanese Mint, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and the Japanese National Tourist Organization.
- Put simply this is an agreement with a foreign company that has substantial backing from its government.
- There is a desire and a goal from both jurisdictions, Alberta and Japan, to do business here. It would be wise if the new federal cabinet would allow this business to go forward.
- Media coverage on the memorandum of understanding was non-existent except for coverage at Western Standard and RD News Now.
- With the recent focus and need for a Canada First strategy across the country we’re forced to ask if the follow through is there.
- Follow through from the federal government and other provinces.
- Follow through from the national media in ensuring a discussion gets carried forward. The media was absent this week on Alberta’s endeavours.
- Alberta Minister of Energy and Minerals Brian Jean emphasized Alberta’s role in ethical energy production saying, “we have an opportunity to supply Japan with the most ethically produced oil and gas on the planet to aid in their economy and shift to low-carbon electricity production while we continue to grow our international energy exports.”
- It is important to underscore that while this is a memorandum of understanding, there still needs to be a willingness from partners in Alberta to actually make things happen.
- We know Alberta and Japan are at the table, the question just becomes whether or not this effort will be backed by the federal government.
- For that to happen more Canadians need to be made aware of it and the benefit it can directly and indirectly provide to the country as a whole.
- Supplementals:
- A lot has happened in BC since we last spoke on Western Context. In the span of a few weeks, BC Premier David Eby has been battling Ontario Premier Doug Ford for the title of most antagonistic premier to the US, and has been making inroads to give himself more power to do so.
- Eby's NDP government is proposing giving cabinet broad-reaching emergency powers to respond to what Premier David Eby calls the “human-caused disaster” coming in like a freight train from the United States.
- A bill, tabled in the legislature Thursday, gives cabinet the power to implement charges on vehicles using B.C. infrastructure, such as highways and ferries, while allowing the politicians to make directives about public-sector procurement. It would eliminate provincial trade barriers in the province, allowing goods produced, manufactured or grown elsewhere in Canada to be sold or used in B.C.
- Along with those specific changes, it would also give cabinet the power to make regulations “addressing challenges, or anticipated challenges” from the actions of a foreign jurisdiction or for a purpose “supporting the economy of British Columbia and Canada.” The key thing here is that those regulations do not require debate in the legislature, and therefore can be passed without any scrutiny.
- Eby said the new law would allow the government to be “nimble” in its response to the escalating trade war with the United States that is constantly changing: “When there’s an emergency, like a natural disaster, we have these authorities. This is a human-caused disaster. We can see it coming. We don’t know what it is, and we need to be able to respond quickly,” he said.
- Some might say that a government giving itself more undemocratic power is, well, undemocratic. But fear not, Attorney General Niki Sharma said there are “guardrails” in place including a sunset clause that would repeal every action by May 2027, and that details on government actions would come to the legislature through reports. Sharma also said the tools would not be used “unless the U.S. forces our hand” , and we're just meant to believe them that that would be the case.
- Opposition B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad said in a post on social media that if residents thought government overreach during the pandemic was bad, wait until they hear about what the NDP is trying with the latest bill. The bill includes provisions that allow the government to introduce road pricing and collect their personal information, Rustad said.
- Rustad said: “Bill 7 gives B.C.’s already authoritarian, top-down NDP government sweeping, almost unlimited powers with zero oversight”
- Eby said he was prepared to defend the bill to British Columbians: “The government is governing with a very slim majority. At any time members of the legislative assembly could decide that this was overreach, collapse the government, we’d be into an election.”
- That all sounds well and good, but party members are usually whipped (metaphorically) into all voting with their party on certain matters. Currently the BC Conservatives are dealing with the fallout of a few MLAs leaving the party to becoming independents upon the conclusion of a free vote a few weeks ago that saw some Conservative MLAs voting against their own party.
- Eby also shows a faulty grasp of the contents of his own legislation. He insisted that any cabinet orders passed under Bill 7 would be subject to approval by the legislature, saying it three times in the space of the news conference following introduction of the bill.
- When asked about the specific clause in Bill 7 that backs up Eby’s claim that cabinet orders, issued under the bill, must be ratified by the legislature, the premier's office was unable to do so … because there is no such ratification clause in the legislation.
- On the contrary, the bill simply says that cabinet orders signed under Bill 7 must be presented to the legislature after the fact and they will remain in force until May 28, 2027. The premier is usually well briefed on his government’s legislation. His ignorance of such a critical aspect of Bill 7 suggests that the legislation was cobbled together in haste for political grandstanding.
- Nova Scotia’s Conservative government introduced a briefer bill focused on interprovincial trade last month, the Free Trade and Mobility Within Canada Act.
- A few days later, B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad introduced similar legislation for B.C. That bill said: “The purpose of this Act is to remove all barriers to trade in goods, services and investment between the provinces and territories of Canada. If a provision of this Act is inconsistent or in conflict with a provision of another enactment, the provision of this Act prevails.”
- The Conservative willingness to support override legislation suggests that they could also have supported a common approach to reduce interprovincial trade barriers, but Eby's proposed legislation clearly goes too far.
- It harkens back to the dark days of the pandemic, when Justin Trudeau's federal government wanted to introduce sweeping powers to uncheck spending and limit all debate on government actions. Thankfully Trudeau's legislation failed because he only had a minority parliament, but Eby has a majority, and his legislation has already begun making its way through the Legislature. If this is the sign of things to come, then David Eby's NDP will be using this legislation sooner rather than "just in case".
Firing Line
- Upon being sworn in as Prime Minister, one of the first acts of Mark Carney’s government was setting the carbon tax price to $0.
- Parliament is presently prorogued and not sitting which means that the law governing the carbon tax is still on the books.
- The price was lowered through the mechanism that has raised it every April - through ministerial order.
- The media was invited into the cabinet room on Friday to watch Mark Carney sign a document that set the price of the consumer carbon tax to $0.
- The interesting bit about this is that Canada doesn’t have an exact copy of executive orders like the United States.
- Some have called what Carney signed an order-in-council but orders in council, our equivalent of executive orders are issued by the Governor General.
- The document shown in the media is clearly not that as it uses the language “I hereby instruct the fuel charge by removed as of April 1, 2025 and that the April 2025 Canada Carbon Rebate be issued” with the author Prime Minister Mark Carney.
- This could indeed very well be a ministerial order to Finance or Environment but let’s not call it an order-in-council for the sake of theatrics.
- Let’s also realize that many in the Canadian media have raked Donald Trump over the coals for his signing of executive orders. Somehow that spectacle is fine in Canada now.
- Regardless the consumer portion of the carbon tax has been set to $0 through ministerial order or regulation.
- The media was also quick to frame this as a “blow to the Opposition Conservative leader.” The idea being that the Conservatives need to pivot away from the idea of a carbon tax election.
- The reality based on recent advertisements airing, YouTube content, and messaging aside from yesterday is that the Conservatives have decidedly pivoted to a Canada First platform as we detailed a number of weeks ago.
- The media is cherry picking the messaging put forward by Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives.
- If there is one thing to nitpick about it’s about how quiet the Conservatives are being over this move and their framing.
- The Conservatives have successfully with the help of their provincial counterparts killed the carbon tax, Justin Trudeau, and forced the Liberals to copy many of their policies.
- On the copying of policies, this is again something that has made its way into recent conservative messaging that has been deliberately avoided by the media.
- If anything should change, the Conservatives should be taking a victory lap.
- Pierre Poilievre issued messaging stating that the carbon tax is only now paused until after the election and that Mark Carney is “flip-flopping on his beliefs to trick Canadians into a 4th Liberal government.”
- The media aired a portion of their live stream discussing the lowering of the carbon tax. A discussion back and forth between two journalists says that basically the carbon tax can be brought back and raised to whatever they want, one of the journalists says, “this is what the conservatives say” and the other agrees that this could indeed happen.
- This was also confirmed on CTV Senior Political Correspondent Mike le Couteur’s show by his panel after Mark Carney and his cabinet made this decision.
- Le Couteur said, “technically the consumer portion of the carbon tax is hanging around” and that to fully remove the tax an Act of Parliament would be needed and future dynamics may influence whether or not the tax comes back.
- There is also the question of industrial carbon pricing. The actual plan put forward calls for a carbon tax on producers and effectively a carbon tax tariff - both of these plans though would need to go through the House of Commons.
- Alberta Premier Danielle Smith was not declaring victory she said, “that’s why we need an election - to get some clarity on just how badly he’s going to punish the oil and gas sector and what that new industrial pricing scheme he talked about during the leadership race is going to look like”
- The problem is that according to recent reports from the Parliamentary Budget Office, the impact of measures like that would be passed on to consumers and the emissions cap next to the carbon tax will still go up lowering nominal GDP by $20.5b and GDP itself by 0.39% in 2032.
- There are still many levers that this government plans to pull in the guise of climate protection that will impact our economy.
- The carbon tax repeal act was the first act of the UCP government in 2019 removing the provincial NDP carbon tax, later the federal government applied their tax on Alberta.
- Carbon taxes have been a central figure around elections in Alberta since 2019 and as the saying used to go “screw the west, take the rest” it’s going to take a lot of convincing of Albertans and those skeptical of the federal tax that the carbon tax is actually gone until legislation is passed officially removing the carbon tax.
- Media establishment types are quick to say that the consumer carbon tax is done and while the price is set to $0 the tax still exists and is an existential threat to many out west.
- The conservatives should take a victory lap and commit to driving the final nail in the coffin of carbon pricing in Canada. A coffin that first opened with Trudeau’s carve outs in an attempt to save the furniture.
- The real question is whether or not the consumer carbon tax will be removed from legislation and what the industrial taxes will look like.
- Supplementals:
Quote of the Week
"We have new ministers with new ideas, ready to respond to new threats and seize new opportunities.” - New Prime Minister Mark Carney on his ‘new’ cabinet consisting of many old faces
Word of the Week
Follow through - to continue an action or task to its conclusion
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Show Data
- Episode Title: It’s Trudeauover
- Teaser: Mark Carney wins the Liberal leadership race, Alberta makes a deal with Japan on LNG, and David Eby wants to give himself unchecked powers. Also, Carney sets the carbon tax to $0 on day 1.
- Production Code: WC-409-2025-03-15
- Recorded Date: March 15, 2025
- Release Date: March 16, 2025
- Duration: 1:06:56
- Edit Notes: Nova Scotia PCs break
Podcast Summary Notes
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