Practicing Deception
Vincent J. Curtis
4 June 25
In the brevity of his presence on the
public stage, Canadian Prime Minster Mark Carney has made numerous
demonstrations of deception, which are contrary to trustworthiness, to good
order, and to good government. No, I’m
not referring to the accusations of plagiarism or to his claims to the
successful work of the Minister of Finance of the Harper Government, the late Jim
Flaherty; no, I’m referring to actions like those below.
One of first acts as Prime Minister was to
announce that he was cancelling the carbon tax, and, with a flourish, signed a
document in an impressive looking red folder. The show resembled U.S. President
Donald Trump signing an Executive Order: poof, it was the law of the land. The
carbon tax was created by legislation, and it would take legislation to repeal
it; hence, the carbon tax was not actually cancelled by his signature as Carney
claimed it was; and the piece of paper in the impressive red folder that Carney
signed had no force of law.
Orders-in-Council are documents that have force of law in Canada, and
these are signed by the Governor-General upon the advice of the Cabinet or the
responsible Minister. The OIC that the Governor-General signed in this instance
merely reduced the rate of the carbon tax to zero; the law creating the carbon
tax is still in force and on the books, and the tax rate can be raised at any
time by another OIC: a carbon tax on commercial products like gasoline and
diesel fuel is still the law of the land; the legislation hasn’t been repealed,
either by Carney’s signature, the Governor-General’s signature, nor, so far, by
Act of Parliament. The show was
political theatre that looked like a Trumpian exercise of power to the casual
viewer.
Another series of acts of deception by Mark
Carney concerned retaliatory tariffs by the Canadian government on goods
imported from the United States; these tariffs were imposed in retaliation to
tariffs suddenly imposed by the Trump Administration on Canadian goods. Carney’s
tariffs were announced with great fanfare, and were offered as a sign of Mark
Carney’s toughness and decisiveness against Trump; “elbows up” and all
that. These tariffs were supposed to
collect $20 Billion, which were to be put towards the relief of those sectors of
the economy affected by the Trump tariffs.
Secretly, on April 16th, within weeks of their imposition,
Carney introduced a program of exemptions, crafted in a way that makes it look
like the tariffs remain in force, but any importer can request, and upon
request receive, an exemption from paying tariff on goods imported from the
United States. This program wasn’t
published in the Canada Gazette effectively until after the election (Published
April 25; election April 28), though the exemption program came into force on April
16th, i.e. before being published in the Canada Gazette. This is why the Liberals refuse to answer the
question put to them in the House of Commons, “how much tariff has been
collected so far?” And “how can the government provide relief, or support, to
those sectors of the economy affected by the Trump tariffs, when we’re
collecting no money for it?”
Another area of deception concerns Bill
C-69, the anti-pipeline legislation.
Carney has been making allusions to the construction of “nation building
projects” that enjoy “consensus”, and hasn’t rejected openly the idea that oil
and gas pipelines from Alberta qualify as “nation building projects”, at least not
yet. He has proposed get-arounds to deal
with specific projects he approves of.
In the case of the anti-pipeline legislation, he’s hinted that a special
piece of legislation would be crafted to override the sticky provisions of C-69
for that particular case. This is not
good-government legislating; it’s deceiving someone, such as the people who
voted for and support C-69 as being decisive against more pipelines from
Alberta. But Carney doesn’t need to come
out against pipelines from Alberta; he merely says “if there’s a consensus”,
which there won’t be, because the Premier of British Columbia, David Eby, is adamantly
opposed to running a pipeline through B.C. to reach tidewater from Alberta; and
members of Carney’s own cabinet, such as Steven Guilbeault, are fervently
opposed to more oil and gas production from Alberta. Carney can appear to favor expansion of oil
and gas production in Alberta, but be helpless to make it happen, which is his
preferred option, given his long involvement in the Net Zero movement. Deceptive
atmosphereics.
Another example of deception concerns the
“decarbonized barrels” going through oil pipelines, as a condition of building
new pipelines. The process of extracting
and upgrading Alberta bitumen was developed in the 1960s; roughly one quarter
of the extracted bitumen is burnt to provide the heat and power to extract and
upgrade the remaining three-quarters.
“Decarbonizing” means that either hydro or nuclear power replace the
combustion of bitumen; that saved one-quarter becoming product for sale, for
others to turn into, and burn, as fuel.
Alberta premier Danielle Smith has said that decarbonization has to
occur after the pipelines are built; the revenue from a one million
barrel a day pipeline will provide the money to pay for the construction of a
nuclear reactor to replace the bitumen as the energy source to run the
extraction and upgrading process. She’s also said it would be a failure if
government had to build all these things, and not the private sector. Carney,
the Net Zero guy, refuses to build a pipeline unless it carries “decarbonized
barrels.”
Another, particularly disturbing, act of
deception concerns the failure to produce a budget in the spring session of
parliament, and pretending to be defeated by the summer recess routinely
scheduled for late June. Carney was the
man with a plan; the banker, experienced in business; it therefore came as a
shock even to Liberal supporters when the government announced that it would
present no budget for fiscal 2025-26.
The public shock was so great, that a fiscal update was then floated to
be presented in September. A budget may
yet be produced in September. The Carney government, and its immediate
predecessor, has had the Department of Finance at its permanent disposal; it
has last year’s budget as a recent example; it has last fall’s fiscal update;
and it has Carney’s own seemingly omnipotent “experience” available to it, and
yet something as basic as a budget is beyond its powers? This is deception; the
Carney government doesn’t want the full scale of the fiscal crisis before the country,
with a deficit exploded beyond $100 billion, known to the public; at least not
yet. Pierre Poilievre said he would work
the parliament through the summer, if elected, to get Canada’s affairs put in
order quickly, so pretending to be helpless before a rule of parliament is
deceptive.
Carney still enjoys the honeymoon period of
his Prime Ministership, and might win a majority if an election were forced on
the country right now. The good
atmospherics he generated at the recent First Ministers’ Conference adds to his
popularity, or at least to the illusion that something good is being done, and
that he is competent. His Trudeauesque
performances in Question Period demonstrate that deception and contempt for its
opponents remains the dominant attitude of the Liberal government: the new man isn’t
being honest in the House, and nothing has changed despite the change of
leader.
It will take a few months for people to see
through the deception and fakery of Mark Carney as Prime Minister. His habit of
employing deception as the smoother path than to face up to difficulties in a
manful way, leads to a breakdown in trust, to bad government; and Canada has
already had enough of that.
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