Mark Carney is causing a stir

The plural of anecdote is not data, but there's something interesting afoot.

After being sworn in less than a week ago as Canada’s 24th Prime Minister, Mark Carney has already met with leaders of allied countries across the pond, secured a deal with Australia to construct military radar system for the arctic, and is rumoured to be days away from calling the next election.

Certain people are at least trying to be angry about “something”, though.

In one exchange of moving goalposts I endured with a relative online, their reasons were that Mark Carney does not have a seat in the House of Commons, and only registered members were able to vote.

Or, the Westminster Parliamentary system, apparently.

For those in the back, every Progressive Conservative Premier since Peter Lougheed became Premier of Alberta through a leadership vote available only to members of the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta.

Though there may be more, the last PC Premier, Jim Prentice, as well as our current Premier, Danielle Smith, both became premier through a leadership race and neither of them had a seat in the Legislature when they won.

Mr. Prentice, along with his equally unelected but named Cabinet Ministers, was sworn in as Premier of Alberta on September 15, 2014, and won one of four by-elections October 28, 2014 (along with said ministers).

Ms. Smith was sworn in as Premier on October 11, 2022, and won a by-election held in Brooks-Medicine Hat after former MLA Michaela Frey stepped down on November 8. This was despite there being an open seat in Calgary-Elbow, vacated by former UCP Justice, and then Jobs Minister, Doug Schweitzer in August 30, 2022.

Since I started following politics, I’ve only missed out on voting in two leadership races I was eligible to participate in; the final PC leadership in 2017, and the recent federal LPC race. To the former, I was really only there to watch and learn, and the latter required me to stop at the post office and verify my identification and I forgot; there’s been a lot going on.

Between them, I voted in the leadership races of the Alberta Liberal Party, CPC, UCP, Alberta Party, CPC, CPC, UCP, and Alberta NDP races. Only one of those was a race that would elect the next Premier.

The barrier to participation is usually a membership fee of $10 — the Liberal Party of Canada was free to register to vote — and a willingness to vote for the best person for the job, rather than the worst person running because you hope they’ll be easier for your team to beat.

Needless to say, it’s not really an easy sell to partisans, and few others care enough to be involved.

I’ve said before that I tried to be partisan once and it just didn’t take. Turns out, a banner, or party affiliation, does not adequately inform the voter about the type of person they’re electing. That’s how we get people who think government policy should be influenced by beliefs that are actively harmful to people; like disrespecting people’s right to exist, or refusing to commit to measurably affordable healthcare and adequately funding public education.

Interestingly, the same people who decried Justin Trudeau’s ability to be Prime Minister because he was a math teacher (who also covered drama classes while another teacher was on leave), are the same ones claiming a career politician whose income and job security has never been affected by an economic downturn is capable of meeting what we’re facing in the future.

“Finally; a decent PC running for Prime Minister”

I enjoy talking about current affairs with people who have a strong grasp of the topic. I also spend a lot of time consuming partisan rhetoric from multiple sources and can recognize it easily when it’s repeated back to me. I get more than enough of that directly from the source, thank you very much.

Those unfortunate encounters aside, I do like getting down to the basis of why people think the way they do.

In addition to the above, the next conversation was one I had personally with my mom. She used to be pretty politically aware but it’s fallen off a lot over the years. So, I had to fill in a lot of background when she said that she really liked Mark Carney and was glad there was “finally a decent PC running for Prime Minister”.

Through that background, though, I found that I didn’t really disagree with her description.

When the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada merged with the Canadian Reform Alliance Party (I’m never calling it anything else), there was an assumption that it was a merger of equals.

Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a few years after he moved on, was less diplomatic about it.

“You’ll hear ‘I’m a pragmatist’ or ‘I’m a centrist’ and coming from the mouth of a conservative usually means they’re left of centre but somehow want to be in a conservative party,” Mr. Harper said during an interview with Ben Shapiro back in 2018.

“I’m talking firmly about conservative values; free markets, family, faith, the flag, etc.”

Except, those values aren’t exclusive to conservatives. What Mr. Harper wanted was a “pure” conservative party; a party that came with the baked in preference to expel anyone who didn’t conform to specific beliefs about what those “conservative” values were allowed to look like in practice.

Jason Kenney, long seen as Mr. Harper’s right hand man while he was Prime Minister, attempted to recreate the same at the provincial level with his United Conservative Party, driving a wedge in Alberta where the Progressive Conservatives had successfully held the province together for a generation.

When I thought of it like that, in terms of who would look like a classic Progressive Conservative leader, Mark Carney — raised in Alberta, educated at an Ivy League school on a hockey scholarship, who then went on to have a successful career in finance — is exactly the type of person I would envision, too.

It reminds me of that time I met a woman, who’d recently moved to Alberta from Ontario, at a launch for the Alberta Liberal leadership race in 2017. As we were talking, she told me that she was very surprised at the candidate platforms.

“In Ontario,” she said, “this would be more like the PC party.”

At the time, we had an NDP government that was launching a campaign across the country about how great our oil sands were. I came to the conclusion that every party, at least in Alberta, is just more conservative than they look everywhere else.

“My kind of conservative”

Another story that was shared with me this week was similar, except the other person said that Mark Carney was their “kind of conservative.”

This conversation, like the one I had with my mom, happened in Alberta.

To me, this is what we are also seeing in the polls — a recognition of the fact that Mark Carney isn’t someone people immediately identify as a “liberal”.

It also doesn’t help that both Prime Minister Stephen Harper (in 2012), and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (heavily rumoured, anyway), offered Mark Carney the role of Finance Minister within their respective parties.

If each of those leaders could see Mark Carney as being a welcome addition to their cabinets, then maybe it’s not just those of us far away from the action who see it, too.

Here in Alberta, it wasn’t just that the PCs that disappeared; the Alberta NDP successfully edged out the liberals and the Alberta party, leaving us with either a party that was once seen as the furthest left, and a conservative option that more closely resembles the Wildrose, once seen as the furthest right.

I don’t know if PCs have felt that pull from the conservatives federally, as I admit I have not spent nearly as much time in those circles as I have in the provincial ones, but it’s entirely possible that Mark Carney’s background, combined with his demeanor, and manner of speech, represents that position to more than just a couple of people in Alberta.

In a space where you’re either conservative enough or not welcome at all, I can see why the Liberal Party is the only space for someone who would have fit the progressive conservative mould.

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