The Liberal Party of Canada, which is set to form a minority government after securing a fourth consecutive term, is sometimes known as Canada’s “natural governing party”. The moniker has some truth to it: they were in power for roughly seventy years in the twentieth century, including a 22-year stretch from 1935 to 1957, a record that at the time was only bested, in the British world, by Rhodesia’s United Party.
To some Canadians, the Liberal Party’s nickname serves as a reminder of the Liberals’ arrogance, duplicity, and corruption. But many a generation of ambitious politicos have thrown in their lot with LPC precisely because it represents a guaranteed path to power and patronage, which in Canada is shamelessly distributed by the leader of the day to his followers. The same is true for most members of Canada’s governing class, the so-called “Laurentian elite”, for whom support for the Liberals is not so much an article of faith as it is an automatism.
The result is a formidable election-winning machine, but one that has no principles whatsoever. At no point was it more obvious than with the seamless transfer of power from Justin Trudeau to Mark Carney, the carpetbagger the party recruited to save itself from electoral oblivion. To smooth his path to power, the party disqualified two competing leadership candidates (Mr Carney is now running for the seat of one of the two candidates, who was also forbidden from standing for re-election).
After easily winning the leadership, Mr Carney’s first move was to scrap the hugely unpopular consumer carbon tax, a flagship policy of the past three Liberal governments, and a policy which he has publicly endorsed many times. Without any apparent sense of shame, the party machinery, along with ministers who weeks ago were defending the tax as absolutely necessary to save humanity from extinction, began to brag about having scrapped it, while attacking the Conservatives — who had made opposition to the carbon tax a centrepiece of their platform — for not doing the same. Incredibly, according to some polls, the Canadian public seems to have bought it.
Having once proudly boasted about serving as Justin Trudeau’s economic adviser for several years, Mr Carney campaigned on claiming that he had nothing to do with the past decade, during which Canada has suffered from every sort of calamity imaginable, be it economic or cultural, as a result of the Liberals’ policies. Most shamelessly of all, after a decade of accusing Canada of being a genocidal state, the Liberals wrapped themselves in the flag — and once again seem to have convinced Canadians that they were the patriotic party.
Ottawa-watchers know that Mark Carney’s Liberal Party and Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party are the same thing. Carney’s chief of staff is a failed Trudeau minister, while his director of policy is a former Trudeau adviser, whose vacuous smile obscures much low cunning. Gerald Butts, Trudeau’s disgraced principal secretary, is back in the fold, as is David Lametti, the former justice minister who, more than almost anyone else, is responsible for disabled Canadians being offered euthanasia. Almost every one of Mark Carney’s ministers has behind them a long list of Trudeau-ear failures, both policy and moral.
To Liberals, this will reaffirm their long-held belief that they have a natural right to govern Canada
None of this seems to have mattered to Canadians voters. Between Donald Trump’s deranged ravings about making Canada the 51st state and Carney’s shiny CV (Canadians are an almost uniquely credentialist people, particularly when the credentials are foreign), the sins of the past decade were forgotten. Having a few months ago vowed — if the polls are to be believed — to consign the Liberal Party to the history books, they have instead given it a new lease of life.
To Liberals, this will reaffirm their long-held belief that they have a natural right to govern Canada, and that the Liberal Party’s interests are Canada’s interests. How could they not, when they seem to have, more than any modern democratic party, the Mandate of Heaven? Principles are a-plenty in the marketplace of ideas; but there is only one prime minister. And if the Canadian people have to pay the price for another four years of managed decline, it is the one which they themselves have chosen to pay.
