Liberal Leader Mark Carney faced jabs from his opponents at Wednesday’s French-language leaders’ debate with accusations he’s out of touch with working people and won’t offer enough change from his unpopular predecessor — charges he denied as he fought back saying he’s the best candidate to handle the U.S. threat and a slumping economy.
While Carney came under attack at points, the two-hour contest was a largely polite affair and the former central banker emerged from the debate relatively unscathed.
The anglophone Liberal leader was thought to be in a tough position given he’s less fluent in French than the other leaders, but Carney held his own in Canada’s other official language.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Carney was former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s “economic adviser” and re-electing the Liberals to a fourth consecutive term would only deliver more of the same. Carney offered advice to the last government during the COVID-19 pandemic and at the end of last year on a part-time basis.
“The problem, Mr. Carney, is your party has been in power for 10 years. You are just like Justin Trudeau. We need change,” Poilievre said.
Carney didn’t roll over in the face of these attacks, saying Poilievre is the wrong person at the wrong time with Canada staring down U.S. President Donald Trump and his trade war.
“You’re not Justin Trudeau and I’m not Justin Trudeau either, OK?” Carney fired back.
“The question in this election is who is going to succeed in facing Donald Trump. We are in a crisis, the most serious crisis of our lives. We need to react with resounding and overwhelming strength. We need a government ready to act,” Carney said, promising to be laser-focused on building the economy in the face of Trump’s broadsides, if elected.
Later, Poilievre asked Carney if he was “embarrassed” to ask voters for another term after some perceived Liberal policy failures under Trudeau. He said the economy is poor, crime is up and stringent environmental policies have hamstrung Canada’s oil and gas sector while fuelling regional alienation.
Carney said he’s his own man and it’s unfair to blame him for past problems.
“I’ve just become leader. I’ve been prime minister for a month,” he said.
‘I’ve just become leader’: Carney responds to Poilievre criticizing Liberal record
Carney said in that short time he’s cut the carbon tax, worked with the provinces to break down internal trade barriers, negotiated a military partnership with Australia, started more intensive trade talks with France and the United Kingdom and agreed to sit down with Trump after this election to craft a new bilateral agreement, if elected.
“We’ve done all of that in this short time — we’ve done all of that in a month,” he said.
Asked at the post-debate news conference if Trudeau was a good prime minister, Carney said his predecessor “made important contributions to this country,” saying the last prime minister advanced Indigenous reconciliation and equity issues.
“One of the differences — and there are many — is I will put much more of an emphasis on the economy, a relentless focus on growing the economy to work for everyone,” Carney said.
Main party leaders say which U.S. products they aren’t buying during trade war
Poilievre denied in the debate he’s a mini-Trump figure who would kowtow to the president if elected, saying he’s ready to sit down with the Americans and try to negotiate a deal right away to bring this ongoing trade dispute to a swift end.
He said the Liberals have made Canada weak and dependent on the Americans and it’s time to turn the page.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said he wasn’t buying it. “You would make Canada more like the United States. You would Americanize it,” he said.
“We will never be an American state we will remain sovereign,” Poilievre promised.
Poilievre said a Conservative government would do away with environmental regulations loathed by some companies in the energy and natural resources sectors and turbocharge oil and gas development to make Canada an energy superpower.
Poilievre pressed if he would impose a pipeline without Indigenous support
Asked if he would push a pipeline through Quebec even if there wasn’t broad support there for such a project, Poilievre said: “There’s no social acceptability for the status quo.”
Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet, a pipeline foe, responded with: “What a hollow phrase. That means nothing. When it rains, it’s sunny out.”
Poilievre and Carney also sparred over the issue of immigration — with Poilievre accusing the Liberals of allowing the system to “spiral out of control,” with tens of thousands of international students and temporary foreign workers in particular coming in recent years with stricter limits only imposed on those newcomers last fall.
Poilievre said Carney is hearing from “extreme” advisers who want to grow Canada’s population to 100 million by the end of the century. Carney added Mark Wiseman, a co-founder of the Century Initiative, which advocates for ambitious population growth, to his Canada-U.S. advisory council.
Carney says Canada’s immigration system isn’t working
But Carney tried to distance himself from the past government’s handling of the file, agreeing with debate moderator Patrice Roy’s contention that immigration “went off the rails” in the post-pandemic period.
“The system isn’t working,” Carney said, promising to make the influx more manageable, especially with the health-care system so stretched.
“That’s why we need a cap for a period of time so we can increase our ability to welcome newcomers.”
Poilievre promised to block Haitians coming up from the U.S. seeking asylum in Canada as Trump moves to do away with their protected status stateside — an issue in Quebec as many of these French-speaking claimants have tried to settle there.
Carney said Haitians are among the most vulnerable people in the Western Hemisphere but there are limits to what the country can handle, saying most asylum seekers are likely to be turned back to the U.S. given the safe-third country agreement in place.
Blanchet says Canadians haven’t seen proof that Carney’s a good negotiator
Singh was chippy throughout and cross-talked with some participants, forcing Roy to cut off his microphone at one point to allow others to speak uninterrupted.
Singh lashed out at Roy, saying he was unfairly silenced because he was trying to talk about health care, an issue that wasn’t explicitly on the list of topics to discuss at the debate.
Singh said Quebecers should turn their backs on the Bloc, claiming a vote for that party is a waste.
“Mr. Blanchet, unfortunately, in the last government you showed you were as useless as the monarchy,” Singh said, criticizing the separatists for voting against NDP-backed legislation to enact pharmacare.
Singh also set his sights on Poilievre, saying the Conservatives would make deep cuts to public services to pay for his pricey proposed tax cuts.
He said Poilievre would torpedo health care as part of a drive to find savings to give more money to the wealthy. Poilievre is pitching a sizeable middle-class tax cut. Carney is proposing a similar tax cut but it’s not quite as generous and therefore less costly to the federal treasury.
Singh said Poilievre can’t be trusted to protect programs that help the most vulnerable.
“We want our health-care system to be nothing like the American one,” Singh said.
Poilievre denied he wants to make cuts to the things Canadians rely on, saying instead he would curb the government’s use of “consultants” and dramatically scale back foreign aid to pay for billions of dollars worth of new promises.
Poilievre argues he’ll protect Radio-Canada while defunding CBC
He also wants to defund the CBC while keep its French-language arm, Radio-Canada, a policy proposal criticized by the other leaders in the debate as a threat to Canada’s cultural sector.
Singh also targeted Carney with another anti-monarchy remark, saying the Liberal leader had time to meet with King Charles during a recent trip to the U.K. but hasn’t boosted how much money is available to the unemployed through employment insurance (EI).
And he went after Poilievre for what he called his “hateful” and “disgusting” comments about United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), an aid group that helps people in Gaza that the Conservative leader has called a “terrorist organization.”
Blanchet meanwhile said Quebecers need to return more of his party’s MPs to Parliament to protect the province’s interests in Ottawa.
He said Carney is too focused on Ontario, rolling out a $2-billion auto relief program in the face of Trump’s threats. He said there wasn’t enough in the works to protect Quebec’s aluminum industry.
“When it’s Ontario, the cheques come flying,” Blanchet said.
