Barring an extraordinary comeback from his competitors, Mark Carney is expected to win the Liberal Leadership contest.
If he succeeds, he will replace Justin Trudeau as Liberal Leader and become Canada’s 24th prime minister.
With the Liberals’ poll rebound, Canadians are wondering if the “Carney charm” is a temporary trend or a broader shift of support back to the Liberals and away from the Conservatives.
In either case, while polls are helpful to indicate general leanings of political support, campaigns and the voter coalitions are the real determiners of election victories. Canada’s upcoming federal election will be about who best can lead Canada’s working class against Donald Trump’s spectre of tariffs.
Working class voters will base their vote on who will protect their jobs, sectors and paycheques.
If it indeed becomes a contest between Carney and Pierre Poilievre, the victor will be selected by Canada’s working class. Given what we know about labour’s political realignment in Canada, it would seem Carney’s work is cut out for him and Canada’s federal Liberal party.
That is, should Carney push for an early April election, that will not be enough time for him to tear down Poilievre’s forged blue-collar worker Conservative coalition. Poilievre has been courting labour far longer and more effectively than Carney. We have seen this strategy to realign labour’s vote work successfully (three times) at the provincial level under Ontario Premier Doug Ford.
Courting labour has helped Ford secure a third straight and majority government. In each election, Ford pitched his campaign directly to workers. This time around, a strong emphasis on Trump’s tariff threats helped drive blue collar workers to re-elect his government.
Ford will continue to ensure training centres are equipped with funding to train the next generation of skilled trades workers. Poilievre has been doing something very similar at the federal level.
Poilievre has done the hard work on the ground, forging relationships with strong locals and other labour industry partners. These organizations are proudly Canadian, have hundreds to thousands of workers on staff, and have no qualms about shifting political support to Conservatives, because Poilievre has been clear about his pro-worker labour policy priorities.
He campaigns on affordability policies, near and dear to workers who feel like they are getting less back in their paycheques. He promises to bring “powerful paycheques” by cutting taxes that eat into workers’ wages. The rapport he has built over the last two years will not suddenly evaporate simply over Carney’s political entrance. As for Carney himself, he will face authenticity challenges when courting labour.
Let us consider the broader picture here, has Carney met with Canada’s labour industry? Has he toured the centres and shop floors? He certainly understands the wage plight workers face, given his comments in the English spoken Liberal Leadership debate.
Does he know labour vehemently opposes any carbon tax, one which undermines productivity and wage growth? It will be difficult for Carney to convince the working class to take him for his word that his past fondness for carbon taxes stays in the past.
On another level, it will also be challenging for Carney to convince the working class that not only he has changed, but also the Liberal party. This is the same governing party who increased the carbon tax each year since it was introduced.
How can Carney also manage to convince labour to trust the Liberal party when they cut $250 million for supporting skilled trades?
This is only for Ontario, by the way, other provinces experienced skilled trades cuts too.
A government that cuts funding for apprenticeships is not an ally to the skilled trades; it certainly is not pro-worker and labour has noticed.
Carney will have a difficult time courting this voter bloc that can make and break governments, and Poilievre’s Conservatives are wasting no time to define his opponent. They are recently accusing
Carney of being “pro-Trump” for allegedly sending Canadian jobs south of the border by urging Brookfield shareholders to relocate its offices to New York City.
Carney’s campaign fired back saying that the accusation was “a desperate smear campaign,” and that the relocation was only “technical’” and had no material impact on Canadian jobs.
Well, technical or not, the relocation’s optics reflect poorly on Carney, who is trying to convince Canadians he will protect Canadian sectors, workers and their families, from moving south (or from being outrightly “economically annexed” into the U.S. for that matter).
The federal government’s poor track record on increasing carbon taxes, cutting training funds and opposing nation building projects that would have created thousands of jobs in the trades are
Liberal failures that Carney will have to wear when trying to woo the working class. It may be too little, too late.
Even still, Poilievre’s Conservatives now face stiffer competition with a re-energized federal Liberal party. If Poilievre can maintain his rapport with labour and keep workers onside, he will become Canada’s 25th prime minister.
Wellington Advocacy is a national public affairs firm. Benjamin Lamb serves clients through Wellington’s Ontario Business Line, specializing in labour advocacy.
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