Howard Anglin: Carney only offers ‘change-lite’

So far, Carney’s “impossible” ideas are to spend even more than Trudeau and make a few ad hoc exceptions to Trudeau-era laws that are discouraging investment. Actually repealing those laws? That is still unthinkable. For all the talk about Carney’s fiscal conservatism (mostly by Ontario journalists who couldn’t spot a conservative at the Bearberry Saloon), his ambition doesn’t even extend to restoring the regulatory status quo ante of the Harper years, let alone Harper’s balanced budgets. When it comes to spending, immigration, crime, and (for all his talk of cutting government) the size of the public service, Carney’s plans won’t get us close to 2015 levels. At best, he’ll turn the clock back a few years and ramp up again from there. Some ambition. This shouldn’t be a surprise when you look at who Carney has brought in to help him run the government. I don’t mean the cabinet deadweight he inherited, like Mélanie Joly, Chrystia Freeland, and Bill Blair. I mean his own picks. Every one is an Ottawa establishment man; every one was a Trudeau man. Carney’s hand-picked clerk of the Privy Council was Trudeau’s chairman of the Canada Infrastructure Bank and later Trudeau’s deputy minister of finance; his chief of staff served on Trudeau’s transition team and was Trudeau’s man at the United Nations; and his principal secretary was Trudeau’s hapless minister of justice. Carney himself, of course, was Trudeau’s choice to advise the Liberal Party on economic policy. Forget thinking outside the box, these guys are the box. No wonder Carney’s idea of the “unthinkable” turns out to be eminently thinkable, even within the strictures of the Laurentian echo chamber. To his credit, Carney has done a good job of selling the perception of change to our credulous media. In gushing profiles, he is a man of boundless energy who doesn’t suffer fools gladly (who does?) on a mission from G-d to shake up Ottawa. Don’t believe it. Carney is a company man, and his company has been banausic bureaucracies and Canada’s cautious corporate culture. What he considers unthinkable is what raises eyebrows in boardrooms, not fists in the streets. Radicalism for the mandarins, not the masses. Carney offers change Bay Street-style, stirred not shaken. Disruption for people who use the word “disruption” unironically in PowerPoint presentations. Dynamism for grey men in grey suits, to whom “innovation superclusters” sounded sexy and a new federal housing agency feels daring. What we can expect from Carney’s Liberals is a lot of loudly trumpeted half-measures. Tweaks to Bill C-69, perhaps; some politically-calculated exceptions to the emissions cap and federal laws; lots of tough talk on crime followed by slight, ineffectual amendments to sentencing and bail laws. What we won’t get is results. We are long past the time for half-measures. Every year of Liberal government delays the tear-down and rebuild that so many Canadian institutions need. And the consequences of putting off real change? That’s not worth thinking about.