Carney gets call because PM doesn’t trust team

Imagine being a Liberal minister or backbencher watching Finance Minister Bill Morneau screw things up for five years and then watching as someone from outside the team gets the call when it appears he is finally on his way out?

It must rankle. I mean, what is the point of defending the prime minister’s ethical misadventures at committee if it doesn’t even generate a look-in when a minister crashes and burns? Then again, peering around the cabinet table and into the backbenches, there aren’t exactly a lot of viable options to fill Morneau’s exceedingly small shoes. I would have phoned a friend, too.

So enter Mark Carney, economic superhero and darling of the liberal intelligentsia, who we found out this week will be providing advice to Trudeau about Canada’s POSTCOVID-19 recovery. For those unfamiliar with the ex-canadian and British central banker, Carney is like Trudeau, full of charisma and charm, but with brains. And while there are no indications Carney will actually take the full plunge and run for office, his arrival back on the Canadian scene is something Liberals have been trying to engineer for a long time.

But should anyone actually be cheering?

This isn’t a knock against Carney, who has forgotten more about the global economy than most of us will ever know. But his appointment is a blow against parliamentary democracy, where your team of MPS is supposed to form the material for your government. All of the people who ran on the last Liberal ticket and plumped the Trudeau platform are now being shunted aside in favour of an unelected technocrat.

But the world hasn’t exactly been responding well to the idea of unelected technocrats calling the shots, has it? Indeed, a large part of what people call the “populist” revolt is a rejection of the policy prescriptions and personalities that brought the world economy to its current unbalanced tipping point. And in this movie, Carney is unquestionably an A-lister.

Before Carney became a central bank governor he was a player at Goldman Sachs, the investment bank that pioneered or popularized many of the aggressive financial practices that helped crash the global economy. As Bank of Canada governor, Carney was the first central bank head to floor interest rates and leave them there, denying savers much of a return on their money. As chair of the Financial Stability Board, his mandate was to stabilize the global financial system that bankrupted many but not anyone in the C-suites of the big banks. Carney was also a hate figure to the Brexit crowd while Bank of England governor, for taking emergency action after the referendum. And while each of these decisions might have been the right ones at the time, the orthodoxy surrounding them has kept the “regular folks” crowd sour more than a decade after the crash.

Now Carney is being asked to provide advice on Canada’s most serious financial shock since the Great Depression. His advice will surely lean toward the green, an area of serious Carney interest since his departure from the Bank of England. Carney is also said to be preoccupied with reimagining the social safety net. Whether or not Canadians agree with Carney’s prescriptions, they will not, at present, have any democratic oversight over them. What happens if Trudeau swings for a Carney fence that people don’t like? I suppose Trudeau could tell them to hold him to account for Carney but, then again, it’s not like the prime minister holds himself to a high standard.

Yes, desperate times call for desperate measures, etc. But there is a soon-to-be vacated seat in York Centre, deep in the heart of Liberal Toronto. If Trudeau is in such desperate need of Carney, why not ask him to stand for office and do it the old-fashioned way?

But Carney becoming an MP and possibly finance minister opens another can of worms: his attributes outclass Trudeau’s. It’s also no secret Carney has political ambitions; there’s a reason he so assiduously courts the Ottawa press corps and maintains a residence in Ottawa, a town with few jobs worthy of his resume. If Carney comes, he’s shooting for the top.

Macdougall is a London-based communications consultant and ex-director of communications for former prime minister Stephen Harper.