The Weekly Wrap: Mark Carney’s contradictory coalition

Yet it didn’t really confirm which direction he’ll lean as prime minister. He committed to cutting spending and borrowing more. He promised to boost growth and expand entitlement programs. And he talked about building energy infrastructure and cutting carbon emissions. There was, in effect, something for the different parts of Carney’s broad and diverse coalition.

This will ostensibly work for now. But at some point, Carney’s ambidexterity will doubtless present risks. On some issues—like the approval of an oil and gas pipeline, for instance—he’ll ultimately need to pick sides. On others—like the Israel-Hamas war—the risk of playing it down the middle is that he’ll alienate everyone, as Trudeau himself learned.

The impending appointment of a new cabinet and a speech from the throne later this month will be the next chance to try to figure out who the real Carney is and what kind of prime minister he’ll be.

Canadian business leaders are stepping into the public policy ring—good

Last week, I wrote about some interesting signs from the Canadian business community that it increasingly recognizes that it cannot afford to be silent on policy and politics. It must be prepared to defend markets and capitalism from populists of the Left and the Right.

This, of course, comes with risks and tradeoffs. The incentives for entrepreneurs and executives to keep their heads down are quite powerful. But staying silent in the face of anti-business and anti-development ideas is no longer an option.

This is particularly important on the subject of resource development. After a decade of a growing regulatory burden—including even on industry’s ability to talk about its climate efforts—we’re starting to see business leaders push back against these wrong-headed policies and instead make the full-throated case for developing the country’s natural resources, including oil and gas.

Days before the election campaign kicked off, 14 energy CEOs penned an open letter to the party leaders that set out specific policy reforms to boost investment in energy development. Thirty-eight CEOs signed a follow-up letter this week to Prime Minister Carney that outlined the urgency of moving ahead with these types of pro-development reforms. This is a huge development. Industry leaders like TC Energy’s CEO François Poirier deserve tremendous credit for being clear and public in their case for such a reform agenda.

The Business Council of Alberta has similarly championed a positive message and a policy agenda in favour of economic growth in general and resource development in particular. For instance, its CEO Adam Legge published a must-read op-ed in the Edmonton Journal following Monday’s election that made the case for what he characterized as “build, baby, build.”

If Canada is to grow itself out of another “lost decade,” it’s going to require more voices in favour of economic growth and the conditions that enable it. It’s encouraging, therefore, to see more and more business leaders step up.

Twentieth-century American political scientist Richard Weaver famously wrote that “ideas have consequences.” The only question, of course, is whether they’re good ideas or bad ideas.

The renewed involvement of entrepreneurs and executives in Canadian public policy debates is reason to think that good ideas might yet ultimately prevail.

This isn’t your grandfather’s Conservative Party

There has been a lot of focus on the Conservative Party’s overall performance in Monday’s election, including that the party’s share of the popular vote was the highest since 1988. Yet the more interesting insights lie underneath these top-line numbers.

When I worked for former Prime Minister Stephen Harper more than a decade ago, I attended some focus group sessions. It was instructive to hear what the participants thought about the Harper government and the Conservative Party.

Notwithstanding the party’s self-image as an egalitarian movement, people still instinctively viewed Conservative politics as “Bay Street,” elitist, and generally responsive to high-income earners. As party strategist Dan Robertson used to remind us, the persistence of this broad yet false perception was among the Conservative Party’s biggest political liabilities.

Fast forward to Monday’s results. Not only did the Conservatives’ overall vote tally grow, but the composition of the party’s support has also evolved. Over the past twenty years and accelerated under Pierre Poilievre’s leadership, the Conservative Party has gradually become a young, multi-ethnic, working-class coalition. It’s no longer your dad’s or your grandfather’s Conservative Party.

This comes with huge opportunities. Gains among non-traditional voters—particularly from former blue-collar NDP voters—has expanded the Conservative Party’s voter universe and made the party competitive in ridings across the country that were previously seen as unwinnable. It has also brought new energy and ideas that have been additive to Conservative politics.

It must be said, by the way, that former Ontario Progressive Conservative cabinet minister Monte McNaughton deserves a lot of credit for this progress. He’s been the country’s first mover in the political realignment. And he generously brought his experience and relationships to bear on the Conservative Party’s recent election efforts.

But these developments also come with some risks. These non-traditional Conservative voters may for instance not be as inclined to conservative economics as traditional ones. They’re not socialistic but they’re also not Milton Friedman acolytes. The party’s platform made various compromises—including for instance on auto subsidies and deficit spending—that were at least in part an effort to reconcile conservative first principles with the interests and perspectives of these realignment voters.

Such policy compromises shouldn’t necessarily be rejected outright. They’re a natural consequence of trying to accommodate new and different voters into a broad-based coalition. But they must be understood as tradeoffs and there should be limits. McGill economist has rightly described these choices as the “political puzzle of the age.”

As Conservatives assess the lessons from this week’s election, one of the biggest opportunities and challenges for the party will be building on the meaningful gains achieved with realignment voters. The goal must be one of addition but not at any expense. Solving this puzzle may indeed determine the future of Conservative politics itself.