Banking on the next Prime Minister

It's not normal times, and it's not a normal election; sorry, Pierre.

Donald Trump isn’t negotiating. He’s said what he wants and he’s not going to stop taking a hatchet to the U.S. economy until he gets it.

Canada needs to look at ways to deal with it as one would a fly; it’s going to keep coming back, dive-bombing your head, unless you can smack it down with a swatter.

I say we don’t bother putting out a Premier or the Prime Minister, or any Minister, to announce retaliation. For that, you need a “press secretary”.

That’s in quotes because I don’t want a real press secretary; I want an actor who can play bored really well. I want lots of eye-rolling, and emotionless, perhaps monotone speech. And let’s give them a name the USians cannot pronounce, like Tsawwassen Etobicoke.

“Sigh. I’m here today to announce the same thing we announced last time, we will respond to tariffs in the same way we did last time,” they’ll say.

“What is that, specifically?” A reporter will ask.

“Same as last time. Just look back at your notes,” they’ll reply blandly.

“Do you have any words for the President?” Another reporter will ask.

“I have two,” they’ll say cryptically, and just stand there.

“What are those two words?” Many will be asking.

“Tax this.” And they drop the mic and walk away.

Somewhat seriously, though, this guy doesn’t want diplomatic relations, he wants good television and people talking about him.

Dude made a car commercial in front of the White House yesterday — he’s a joke.

Unfortunately, he’s a joke who is intent on annoying the absolute crap out of us, like a fly, and we don’t have much to retaliate with that won’t hurt us in return; except patents.

And we don’t need to make a big announcement about it either; just invest heavily in Canadian technology and be done with it. Make big announcements about grant funding in the industries we want to build and let the best and brightest come to us.

Of course, that will only happen if the liberals win.

It’s not partisan

Back when Justin Trudeau looked like he wasn’t going to step down, I didn’t care if Pierre Poilievre won. I mean, Poilievre was probably going to win if he didn’t, so, I just accepted the fact and hoped he wouldn’t be a complete disaster.

That’s what you do when the people you voted for don’t get in; you still hope for the best because why would you hope they fail you and every other person in the country?

I wanted an election so that Canadians could give someone a mandate to deal with that D-list celebrity down south.

Instead, we got a leadership race and premiers out doing their own thing because they weren’t going to listen to Justin Trudeau anyway.

To me, Mark Carney looked like what I suspect is a typical Laurentian elite. Sure, he grew up in Edmonton, and yes, he was offered, and accepted, a hockey scholarship to go to university, which is probably an acceptable alternative if you aren’t going to be drafted to the NHL — for a hockey player. I imagine.

Taking that opportunity — to get an education at an Ivy league school like Harvard because you play a good game on an icy surface — and then working on Wall Street for the next decade or so before joining Canada’s Department of Finance in 2003 and working with Liberal and CPC governments, and helping to stave off the worst of the 2007 financial crisis (caused by those idiots down south) as Governor of the Bank of Canada, would have made Mark Carney a top choice for conservatives.

In fact, he was.

Stephen Harper, as Prime Minister, was so impressed with Mark Carney during the financial crisis, that he did, in 2012, invite Mr. Carney to become finance minister.

Mr. Carney turned the offer down because he still had another year left in his appointment to the Bank of Canada.

It’s also possible he politely declined to join Stephen Harper’s cabinet down because when the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada merged with Canadian Reform Alliance Party to form the Conservative Party of Canada, they told former PCs to go join the liberals if they weren’t conservative enough. Just a guess.

After completing his tenure at the Bank of Canada, Mark Carney accepted another position leading a central bank, this time, in Britain at the Bank of England.

A guy who grew up in Alberta was the first non-citizen ever asked to lead the Bank of England. Which is pretty cool.

Many happily claim all the Ryans, and Jim Carreys, and even, up until he went orange, Wayne Gretzkys who headed south to make their millions, but there’s a few too many conservatives in my immediate family who suddenly don’t think Mark Carney is “Canadian enough”. I guess it makes them feel better about supporting a guy who made the oft-celebrated conservative career choice of “elected official” at 23 and hasn’t looked back. But I digress.

When it looked like the best we were going to be offered was someone the electorate loved to hate and the same but called Pierre Poilievre, I just wanted to get it over with so we could move on with the more pressing matter of Donald Trump trying to cop a feel every other day.

Then, the banker stood up.

Canada’s leadership needs skills, not partisanship

Let’s face it — few of us really think much about the benefits of being a sovereign nation.

I, at least, have been blessed with such an incredible amount of freedom and opportunity in my life (for all the reasons) that I didn’t have to think about it. I even had so much privilege as to make a purposeful decision to ignore current affairs, news, and politics, and be able to comfortably focus on other things.

To be fair, I didn’t like hearing about how many people were murdered the day before, or how a bunch of assholes in one country decided that they were going to murder a bunch of other people in another country for reasons that meant a whole lot to their tiny, insignificant selves.

And politicians say the dumbest things.

I never really gave much thought to why it’s fabulous to live in a place where we get to decide for ourselves who is allowed into our country, and make long-term plans about the future we want for ourselves, and our children, and our grandchildren.

Lo and behold, a decade after I took an interest, I have been afforded an opportunity to confirm my own bias that electing people with a decent skillset matters far more than the banner they’re flying.

I’ve said it before; if I could, I would ban political parties and force voters to choose the best person for the job.

You know, like you would if you were running a business and looking for a new VP, but preferred a person with skills over your mate’s son who “ran” dad’s business but was kept away from actual decision-making because his only “real world” experience was as a tele-bill collector when he was a teenager.

I’d be the last person to suggest that being an elected official was unimportant; it’s one of the most important jobs out there — and that’s why we look at what they did before they were elected.

Mark Carney has been in leadership roles where decisions had to made about more than just how many flags to put behind a lectern for your attack ad. He has, since the early 2000’s assisted whichever government was in power from the Department of Finance Canada. He’s run two central banks.

Canada is heading for a crisis of its own and it will include a financial crisis because that idiot down south wants us to become the 51st state and he doesn’t care how many Americans he has to run over to make it happen.

I think Pierre Poilievre would have made bad decisions during normal times, but the stakes were not as high as they are now, and we probably would have survived it.

We can’t afford to hire our mate’s son right now — we need someone with leadership skills who can work with people on both sides of the aisle. And if he has had a successful career as a financier as well… I just don’t see how we can say no.

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