Art Adams

.@MarkJCarney has managed the unimaginable in a mere six months as PM: he’s completely recalibrated the federal Liberal Party —from a political vehicle that had become very left-leaning under his predecessor — to its traditional home in the “radical centre” of Canadian politics. The changes are as substantive as they are vast: immediately scrapping the consumer carbon tax; reversing changes to the Capital Gains inclusion rate; broad-based tax relief; a complete pivot from social program-based funding expansions to strategic, capital-oriented stimulus designed to catalyze $1 trillion in economic growth; the re-orientation of Canada’s foreign policy and trading relationships along chiefly economic lines — not values-based ones; the end of Trudeau’s “feminist foreign policy”; the building of national infrastructure projects empowered by a streamlined and expedited approvals process; historic military spending and meaningful cuts to the public service; the beginnings of sweeping trade diversification that we’ve not seen in 40+ years. You can approve or disapprove of Carney’s ideological agenda; but what you can’t claim is that it’s not at the radical centre of Canadian politics. Nor can you assert that it doesn’t meet the moment we’re in and isn’t broadly popular. I’m a Liberal because I’ve always held both centrist and more left-leaning/progressive views on the role of governments in the modern era. I’m largely aligned with Carney’s agenda, and when I’m not, I understand both the public policy and retail political calculations underpinning the PM’s decisions. Carney’s approach to gov’t is not merely sound public policy wise, it’s politically brilliant. For it appeals to “Middle Canada”, including moderate Conservative fed up with the corrosive effects of right wing populism and pragmatic progressives done with the hypocrisy of the progressive left. It’s no surprise the Carney-led Liberals are edging up in public opinion polling. I expect this trend to likely continue unabated for the reasons articulated☝️ #cdnpoli