Mark Carney isn’t here to play

“No games.” That was how Prime Minister Mark Carney said he would handle the process of calling a byelection for Pierre Poilievre, who will need to find a new seat in the House of Commons after losing his seat last Monday. He could, if he wanted to, drag things out for as long as six months, forcing Poilievre to miss the spring and fall sessions of Parliament and perhaps stoke more unrest within his party. Instead, Carney will give him the chance to return as soon as possible. 

This, along with the rest of his first press conference after winning the election, is the clearest sign yet of how he intends to differ from his predecessor — and his opponents. Poilievre, after all, is a practiced parliamentary game player, one who delights in using every piece of political leverage at his disposal. Carney, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have time for that sort of small ball. He has a country to run. 

And so, Carney will let Poilievre stay at Stornoway, even though a strict reading of the rules suggests he ought to be evicted. He will probably try to find a way to grant the NDP official party status, even though they came well short of earning it in the election. And he might yet make some changes that give parliamentarians — including the ones on the opposition benches — the ability to question witnesses, propose legislation, and otherwise better interrogate the issues of the day and the government’s handling of them. 

In so doing, he’ll make it obvious that this is not the second coming of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government, one that failed to live up to the promise that it would do politics differently. Carney is also drawing a useful distinction with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who has seemed determined to play the role of his biggest provincial antagonist.  Smith, after all, has refused for months now to call the byelection for Edmonton-Strathcona, where NDP leader Naheed Nenshi will run (and win). If she were capable of feeling embarrassment, she would be feeling awfully flush with it right now. 

Carney’s relative generosity when it comes to his own opponent isn’t entirely altruistic or high-minded. By getting Poilievre back into the House of Commons as quickly as possible Carney is ensuring that the version of the Conservative leader Canadians see is the one that repulsed many of them in the last election. Poilievre’s job right now, aside from winning a seat in the House of Commons, is presenting voters with a kinder and gentler version of himself. By putting Poilievre back into the House as quickly as possible, where he has long been defined by his boundless capacity for pugilism and pettiness, Carney seems to be trying to hedge against (another) political makeover. 

There’s a broader strategy at work here, too. By letting his opponents expose the smallness of their politics, Carney’s will start to look bigger by comparison. This might not satisfy the Liberal partisans in his midst, although after he saved their party from political oblivion they almost certainly won’t push back very hard. But it will look good to the sort of middle of road Canadians he’ll need to win the next election, whenever it comes — the ones who largely abandoned the party near the end of Trudeau’s leadership. 

In a moment where the political stakes for Canada could scarcely be higher, Carney seems focused on the things that actually matter to Canadians. He sounds willing to work with Poilievre’s Conservatives on issues like interprovincial trade barriers, economic corridors, and resource development. Indeed, for all of Danielle Smith’s tedious ultimatums and provocations, he still reached out to her in good faith — and apparently broke through, at least for now. Rather than trying to fight with his Conservative opponents on every issue and idea, Carney could dare them to work with his government instead. 

With Poilievre still at the helm, of course, that seems like an unlikely outcome. Absent a complete personality transplant, he seems congenitally incapable of playing nicely with others, much less ones who don’t share his ideological convictions. And so, Carney can begin framing the next election as a choice between someone who wants to build things and someone who can’t help but attack them. Maybe he isn’t so bad at this whole politics thing after all.