Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: [OT] Our next prime minister will be Mark Carney
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2025 13:01:48 -0400
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 98
Message-ID: <vqn5ts$imt3$3@dont-email.me>
References: <vqmo2o$imt3$2@dont-email.me> <vqmpl8$1c2na$3@dont-email.me>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Injection-Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2025 18:01:50 +0100 (CET)
Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="df870360584c6d6ab19a83c7b90966b7";
	logging-data="613283"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18XDGn9bJV5pxGa58YxRlzFWyTz4YH3ISE="
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird
Cancel-Lock: sha1:+SQ6vxdvNGmHehbrJH4WQ1ydY/Y=
In-Reply-To: <vqmpl8$1c2na$3@dont-email.me>
X-Antivirus: Avast (VPS 250310-2, 3/10/2025), Outbound message
Content-Language: en-CA
X-Antivirus-Status: Clean
Bytes: 6985

On 2025-03-10 9:32 AM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
> Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
> 
>> The Liberal leadership convention has finally chosen a new leader and,
>> to the shock of almost no one, Mark Carney is the winner. (He got 86% of
>> the votes from Liberal Party members, runner up Chrystia Freeland got
>> less than 10%.) That means he will become our next prime minister as
>> soon as Trudeau formally steps down, which is expected in the next few
>> days.
> 
>> Carney's term as PM may well be rather brief. He's widely expected to
>> call an election in the next few weeks, hoping to use a renewed interest
>> in the Liberal Party to win. I sincerely hope that voters are not
>> fooled: the Liberals have only put lipstick on the pig that is their
>> party and will maintain all the same policies as under Trudeau with the
>> exception of the much-despised carbon tax. But Carney is even more
>> fanatical about Net Zero than Trudeau was and has promised to replace
>> the carbon tax with something even more effective - i.e. even more
>> destructive of the Canadian economy - so that we can meet his carbon
>> reduction goals.
> 
>> But at least the odious Justin Trudeau is finally on his way out so
>> we'll be spared having to endure his performative virtue-signalling.
> 
>> By the way, Carney has never stood for elected office before and has no
>> seat in Parliament, meaning he will not actually be able to participate
>> in parliamentary sessions directly. He'll have to delegate others in his
>> cabinet to do the things that a prime minister usually does. There's
>> precedent for this though so procedures are in place. But it's also why
>> Carney will be keen to have an election very shortly: he really needs a
>> seat in parliament to look the part of a leader. Here's hoping that
>> Carney's fate is to be only a footnote in history, as the guy who was
>> Prime Minister for a few short weeks until the next election established
>> a massive Conservative Party majority.
> 
> Thanks for the information. I had no idea party leadership didn't have
> to be M.P.s Is that true for lesser party leadership posts or just Prime
> Minister?

The PM chooses the cabinet and I think he also chooses the House Leader 
and Whips. Traditionally, all cabinet members are MPs but I recall one 
exception from 1979. Joe Clarke defeated Pierre Trudeau in 1979 but had 
only a very narrow majority of the seats. When he staffed his cabinet, 
he got Senator Lowell Murray to join the cabinet in a major role. This 
raised a few eyebrows but there was a precedent for it, although not 
necessarily in Canada. (We use precedents from Britain too.) Clarke lost 
a confidence vote a few months later and we had another election; 
Trudeau got back in, despite the fact that he'd actually announced his 
intention to resign the leadership of the Party after his defeat by 
Clarke. He hadn't actually resigned though and when Clarke narrowly lost 
a budget vote forcing an election, the Party talked him into staying on. 
Somehow, all the things that had lost him the 1979 election got 
sufficiently forgotten that he was re-elected with a majority.

For what it's worth, a rather pivotal moment in history *almost* 
involved that precedent. When Germany invaded Denmark and Norway in 
April 1940, Neville Chamberlain effectively lost the last of his support 
among the MPs in the (British) Conservative Party and knew he'd have to 
step down. The only two credible replacements were Winston Churchill and 
Lord Halifax, the latter of whom was most definitely NOT an MP. However, 
there had been precedent for people from the House of Lords to serve in 
cabinets and as PM. Chamberlain had Churchill and Lord Halifax come to a 
meeting with him and offered the job of PM to Lord Halifax first. Lord 
Halifax declined, otherwise we might have seen very different leadership 
in WW2.

Jean Chretien, who you may remember from the 90s, didn't have a seat 
when he won the leadership of the Liberal Party. An MP in a safe seat in 
New Brunswick, Romeo Leblanc (father of current Finance Minister Dominic 
Leblanc), resigned from his seat and Chretien ran to fill it in a 
by-election ("special election" is the US term). Chretien won and had 
his seat in Parliament. Mark Carney *could* conceivably go that route 
too but the pundits believe he will simply call a full federal election 
in the hope of getting a seat that way. The Liberals have some momentum 
at this moment but if they try to hang on without an election, they will 
clearly reveal themselves to be the same bunch of corrupt, incompetent 
clowns so they really need the election to happen BEFORE the bloom has 
come off the Carney rose.

Trump has *really* helped the Liberal Party despite his contempt for 
"Governor" Trudeau with all his talk of tariffs. The country is in such 
turmoil over the tariffs and the impact on the economy that the Liberals 
have somehow regained some credibility as the ruling party. Up until 
very recently, the Conservatives had a lock on a big majority. Carney is 
an economist with a record of having been Governor of the Bank of Canada 
AND of the Bank of England and this may succeed in duping enough Liberal 
supporters to come back to the party simply because he isn't Justin 
Trudeau, who is widely despised. Carney will not make a substantial 
difference in policies from the Trudeau-era Liberals which is why he won 
so readily among Liberal Party members. But if there is any sense in our 
electorate, everyone else should run away from the Liberals because this 
incarnation will be no better than the Justin Trudeau incarnation.

Lorne Gunter explains why:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8RfcjNsAiA [5 minutes]

-- 
Rhino