If Mark Carney can launch his federal Liberal leadership candidacy on a US late-night talk show, Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston might as well announce new provincial legislation at an Ontario election campaign event.
Both Carney and Houston reckoned they would get more media coverage by staging events in unconventional venues, and they were right. On Feb. 20, Houston joined Ontario Premier Doug Ford at a provincial election campaign event near Toronto. There, in the biggest media market in the country, the Nova Scotia premier announced he would table legislation to eliminate barriers to interprovincial trade.
Houston’s campaign appearance generated more buzz than he would have received had he staged an event back home. Coverage included a frontpage story in the Ontario edition of The Globe and Mail. Further, the optics were right – starting with the Team Canada jersey he donned on the day of the big final of the Four Nations Faceoff final between Canada and the US. (Later that night, the good guys won.) The Toronto event also signalled the national importance of the issue at stake – knocking down internal Canadian trade barriers to help revive a national economy in serious freefall, as the nation fearfully awaited the so-called Trump tariffs.
A month or so before Houston’s Toronto gambit, Carney travelled to Manhattan for a very friendly chat with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. The bromantic duo delighted in attacking Canada’s US President Donald Trump, while coyly if unofficially announcing Carney’s campaign as the coronation candidate in the Liberal leadership race.
With his US showbiz gig behind him, Carney moved on to the tougher task of battling his principal opponent – former Trudeau cabinet minister Chrystia Freeland – in the federal Liberal leadership campaign. Carney struggled to communicate clearly in the French-language debate this week, and then battled to distinguish himself from his three rivals in the English-language debate Tuesday evening.
Carney survived the debates, but the dominant impression left of viewers was not of strategic or nuanced differences in their policies, but of a unanimous, all-candidate attack on the American president. That assault on the Donald was pitch perfect for the political moment in Canada, but the CrowsNest consensus holds that a nation-building moment is now urgently required.
Yes, Canada won the big hockey game against the US, but new evidence seems to be emerging daily to show we are falling further and further behind our best friend, ally and economic rival on the economic front. To put it succinctly, Canada’s productivity and personal income levels are falling dramatically in relative terms. This will have impacts of everything from the cost of groceries to – speaking of hockey – the likelihood that a Canadian team can attract enough talent to win a Stanley Cup, in this highly taxed nation with its weak currency.
If Carney wins the leadership on March 9, as expected, he will have some (probably limited) time to prove his mettle as a nation-builder. As for Premier Houston, he has now asked other provinces and territories to pass legislation which mirrors Nova Scotia’s initiative to eliminate internal trade barriers. This is a cautious approach – Nova Scotia isn’t racing down the track with its free trade legislation clutched in its hand, ready to pass it off to other provinces in a relay. Instead, it has invited everyone to run as a team in a very important race. Here’s hoping all provinces and territories prove willing to toe the starting line.
-30-