Matthew Lau: Disaster #1 or Disaster #2 for Liberal leader?

Both Carney and Freeland were involved in the disaster that was Trudeau's government. Who wants more disaster?

Published Jan 22, 2025  •  Last updated 0 minutes ago  •  3 minute read

Whoever wins the leadership race, the Liberal Party of Canada being led by one of these candidates is a disaster happening to a disaster, writes Matthew Lau. Photo by Adrian Wyld and Jason Franson/THE CANADIAN PRESS

Who is the better choice for Liberal leader and prime minister, Chrystia Freeland or Mark Carney? Same question rephrased: Do you want this disaster, or the other disaster? Both Freeland and Carney were significant contributors to the past nine years of disastrous federal policy-making under Justin Trudeau, whose record includes essentially zero real GDP growth per capita, falling business investment, an economic productivity crisis, rising unaffordability, oppressive taxation and regulation, crumbling public services and widespread social disorder, including significant increases in violent crime.

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Trudeau’s economic agenda was shaped and supported by both candidates — Freeland as his deputy and “minister of everything,” Carney as a senior adviser — so they share responsibility for its disastrous consequences. If Trudeau’s record is a disaster, their records are, too. The Liberal Party of Canada, itself a disaster, will almost certainly be led by one of them. I am reminded of the time Colonel Klink of Hogan’s Heroes fame asked, “How can a disaster happen to a disaster?”

Which disaster would be better for leader? Disaster #1 became finance minister in August 2020, inheriting an already bloated pre-COVID budget plan that called for program spending to rise from $353.6 billion in 2020-21 to $389.1 billion by 2024-25, when the budget deficit, according to the pre-Freeland projections, would be $11.6 billion. While spending predictably skyrocketed far above original plans because of the pandemic, Freeland never restrained spending after it was over, essentially making much of the spending explosion permanent.

Indeed, on the day Freeland resigned, the fall economic statement that she refused to deliver showed program spending reaching $489.7 billion in 2024-25 — in other words, $100.6 billion more than in the plan she inherited, even before accounting for dramatically higher debt interest payments. And that’s likely an underestimate, given the Liberals’ tendency to revise spending estimates higher at each update. According to the fall fiscal statement, the projected budget deficit, again likely underestimated, was $48.3 billion, not the pre-Freeland $11.6 billion.

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If government spending was a disaster under Freeland, so was tax policy. On her watch, the Trudeau Liberals proposed multiple special taxes to punitively target financial institutions, a share buyback tax and a capital gains tax hike, although, thankfully, some of these proposed taxes have not yet been implemented and may never be. These tax hikes were on top of annually escalating payroll and carbon taxes and threats of punitive special taxation of grocery stores. In consequence of these disastrous economic policies, while in the United States the pandemic proved to be just a blip in business investment and GDP growth, in Canada real business investment and GDP per capita remain below pre-pandemic levels.

Sounds pretty bad. But now consider disastrous candidate #2. While his role in the disasters of the Trudeau years was more behind-the-scenes, Carney was “deeply embedded in Trudeau’s circle for years,” as Calgary MP Michelle Rempel Garner writes, serving as a senior policy adviser and then chairing Trudeau’s task force on economic growth. And “Carney’s fingerprints are all over the Liberal policies that have driven up costs for ordinary Canadians,” Rempel Garner explains. “He’s long championed carbon pricing, praising Trudeau’s $170/tonne carbon tax as a ‘model for others.’” That is the same carbon tax that he and Freeland are now disowning.

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As Peter Foster wrote in these pages in 2021, “Mark Carney … claims that western society is morally rotten, and that it has been corrupted by capitalism, which has brought about a ‘climate emergency’ that threatens life on earth. This, he claims, requires rigid controls on personal freedom, industry and corporate funding.”

So: which disastrous candidate should Canadians favour to replace the disastrous prime minister and lead the disastrous Liberal party? It’s a tough question. That Trudeau prefers Carney, however, is nearly conclusive evidence he would be the worse disaster. Either way, the Liberal Party of Canada being led by one of these candidates is a disaster happening to a disaster. Yes, Colonel Klink, such a thing is possible.

Matthew Lau is a Toronto writer.

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