The Weekly Wrap: We’ll soon know if Carney is a progressive or a pragmatist

But it would be premature to declare him a pragmatist prime minister. He hasn’t yet defined a lane for his government between progressivism and pragmatism. Recognizing a Palestinian state signaled to progressives what some of his tax, spending, and regulatory moves have sought to signal to pragmatists. Even his formulation about balancing “austerity” with “investment” reads as an effort to keep both wings of his coalition satisfied. That is why the coming budget is so important. It will reveal whether Carney is prepared to stop hedging and pick a lane between progressivism or pragmatism. The size of the budget deficit will be a key marker. For those of us who hope his pragmatism wins out, this week has been encouraging. But the reaction to the Roberts invitation is a warning: the political risks from the progressive wing are real, and Carney’s balancing act may only get harder. Immigration is now front and centre Last week I wrote that immigration had finally broken through as a political issue. For years, politicians and elite commentators sought to keep it on the margins of political debate. But eventually they couldn’t hold it back. This week proved the point. Pierre Poilievre’s announcement that a Conservative government would abolish the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program shows just how far the Overton Window has shifted. Consider the history. As a minister in the Harper government, Poilievre and his colleagues oversaw significant growth in the TFW program. After serious controversies, the Conservatives eventually brought it back under control, but they never contemplated shutting it down altogether. It’s worth noting, by the way, that at the time that the program’s expansion was harshly criticized in a 2014 op-ed in the Toronto Star by then-third party-leader Justin Trudeau. His critique was powerful and ultimately correct. There was only one problem. Once Trudeau became prime minister, he presided over an expansion of the program that made Harper and the Conservatives look rather restrained. What was once a target of Liberal outrage became another instrument of the government’s policy of mass immigration. As the excesses of Trudeau-era immigration policy became evident, there was a shift in the public views on the issues. Polls told us that Canadians were beginning to doubt the previous era of high levels of immigration, even if no mainstream politician was quite prepared to go there. Credit therefore goes to Conservative MP Jamil Jivani, who helped lay the intellectual and political groundwork by calling for the elimination of the TFW program before others were prepared to. His efforts show the power of policy entrepreneurship even in a Westminster system that often discourages it. It also reflects how dramatically the political environment has changed. Under Trudeau, Canada has experienced population growth that more closely resembles the developing world than a G7 country. The scale has forced politicians to reconsider assumptions that once seemed off-limits. For better or worse, immigration is no longer a peripheral issue. It’s set to dominate our politics in a way I’ve never seen in my lifetime. As Parliament returns, expect the debate to get louder, sharper, and more fundamental. Canada has entered a new phase of immigration politics, and there’s no turning back. Bigger than baseball This week marks the 32nd anniversary of New York Yankees pitcher Jim Abbott’s no-hitter against the Cleveland Indians. It was a remarkable game not just for what Abbott achieved, but for how he achieved it. Abbott was born without his right hand. But from an early age, he was determined not to let his disability keep him from playing sports. He taught himself to throw with his left arm, then snap a glove onto his throwing hand fast enough to field a batted ball. That effort and determination didn’t just help him overcome his handicap. He excelled. Abbott went on to become one of the best pitchers in college baseball, a U.S. Olympian, and eventually a first-round draft pick in Major League Baseball. Even if you set aside his disability, Abbott’s career stands out. He won more than 85 games across a decade in the majors. The no-hitter on September 4, 1993, was a fitting capstone to years of dedication to his craft. But his influence went well beyond the pitcher’s mound. A new ESPN documentary, Southpaw: The Life and Legacy of Jim Abbott, captures the profound impact of Abbott’s example on children with disabilities around the world, including a young Canadian girl born without a hand named Tracey Dupuis. We meet her years later, thriving as a mother, wife, and teacher in Windsor, and still grateful for the encouragement Abbott once gave her. We also learn that parents would bring their disabled children to meet him ostensibly to hear for themselves that a disability didn’t have to define or limit their lives. One gets the sense from the film though that those moments were often as much for the parents to hear that message as they were for the young children. As kids, my brother and I used to pretend we were Jim Abbott. We’d pitch to each other and try to transfer our gloves to our pitching hands as quickly as we could. We knew then that he was a special player. What this documentary shows is that he was also a special person. His positive influence on disabled children and their parents has proven to be an even greater legacy than that no-hitter 32 years ago.