Carney’s Liberals say Trudeau’s Liberals were incompetent

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Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government is spending as much time attacking the previous Justin Trudeau Liberal government as it does criticizing Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives.

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The latest example occurred this week when Energy and Resources Minister Tim Hodgson censured the Trudeau government for failing to pursue policies facilitating the sale of Canada’s vast natural gas resources to European markets during its decade in power.

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“The new Canadian federal government has made a conscious choice to re-centre energy and critical minerals in how we think about not only our domestic affairs, but Canada’s place in the world,” Hodgson said in a prepared speech at the Canadian Embassy in Berlin, reported by Bloomberg News.

“Unlike the previous Canadian government, which closed the door to LNG exports, Prime Minister Carney’s government has opened it. If the demand is here and the infrastructure is built, Canada will deliver.”

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Of course, the “new” Canadian government, like the “previous” Canadian government, is Liberal.

In that context, there are two big “ifs” in Hodgson’s statement — if there’s demand for Canadian LNG after a decade of delays by Trudeau and if the private sector still wants to build the infrastructure needed to transport LNG on tankers to Europe.

That said, Carney has been attacking the Trudeau government — where he served as an informal economic adviser beginning in 2020 and as chair of Trudeau’s task force on economic growth starting last September — ever since he ran for the Liberal leadership.

During that contest, Carney said two policies of the Trudeau government — unsustainably high immigrations levels and operational spending increasing at a rate of 9% annually — weakened the Canadian economy, even “before we got to the point of these threats from President (Donald) Trump.”

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Carney often sounded more like Poilievre than a Liberal:

— He scrapped Trudeau’s consumer carbon tax — the former PM’s signature policy on climate change — despite Carney’s previous position that the tax was too low.

— He accused the Trudeau government of losing control of immigration, the federal budget, deficits and debt as well as overspending and overtaxing the middle class — all positions first argued by Poilievre.

— Carney promised a tax cut to help families cope with tough times, the only difference being that his promised cut was smaller than Poilievre’s.

— Carney scrapped the Trudeau Liberals’ increases to the capital gains tax, a position first advocated by Poilievre.

— Poilievre said the civil service had grown too large under the Trudeau Liberals and that he would reduce its size and budget by attrition, now the position of the Carney government.

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— Since the election, Carney has made concession after concession to Trump on tariffs and trade, the very concessions he warned Poilievre would make during the election campaign.

Carney’s strategy worked as the Liberals overcame a 25-point Conservative lead in the polls in late December, when Trudeau was still PM, to win a third Liberal minority government in the April election.

Most polls continue to show widespread approval of Carney’s post-election performance — although one pollster, David Coletto’s Abacus Data, reported this week that the Conservatives now hold a slim, two-point lead over the Liberals for the first time in months.

But over the longer term, Carney is going to have to produce actual results if he wants to maintain his current popularity, given early indications that he’s already backsliding in area such as immigration and the deficit, as well as conspicuously abandoning his “elbows up” rhetoric against Trump during the campaign.

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