The King's speech: Mark Carney's first test

Can Canada's new Prime Minister deliver the pragmatic leadership Canadians want?

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II delivered the Speech from the Throne at the opening of Canada’s 30th Parliament in October 1977. Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau sits to the left of the Canadian flag. PHOTO: CP

Today, King Charles III will sit in Canada’s temporary Senate Chamber, crowded with Senators and members of Cabinet and the House of Commons, attended by dignitaries and VIPs in the gallery, to deliver the Speech from the Throne.

It will be fifth such speech from this Liberal government, the first under the leadership of Mark Carney. The first delivered personally by Canada’s Head of State and sovereign since Charles’s mother did so in 1977.

It will also be the first Throne Speech watched live by many Canadians in years. Certainly, the first such speech anyone in the White House or 10 Downing St. paid any attention to, ever. Canadians are hoping this one will be different from previous speeches.

Canadians invariably elect politicians for pragmatic reasons: which of these scoundrels will do what’s best – for me, for us, for the causes and concerns I care about?

Just as invariably we fire governments who drift away from benevolent pragmatism into scandal (self-centred pragmatism: what’s in it for themselves) or ideology (the world should be the way I imagine it and you should live your lives as I believe best.)

The same is true for every voter electing every government everywhere. Benevolent Pragmatism wins. Ideology and scandals lose.

In the face of dire threats to our sovereignty, after a decade of darkness that undermined our economy and denied our identity, Canadians are looking for leadership that will Make Canada Work Again. Enough with the social experimentation. Enough with the ideological wishitwasism. Just. Do. The. Job.

Is Mark Carney the man to turn this failing, flawed Liberal government around? Canadian voters fervently hope so.

Canadians were sick and tired of Justin Trudeau and the Liberal government he led with the help of backroom puppet masters Gerald Butts and Katie Telford. They were not ready to put their future in Pierre Poilievre’s oft pugnacious hands. Enter Mark Carney, another product of the Butts-Telford politician factory, a man who’d held high profile jobs in central banking and high finance.

Carney was labelled a “proven leader” with “crisis experience” and sold to Canadians as the “adult in the room” who could face down Trump and fix Canada. Most Canadians know little more about him than that. I certainly don’t. But, my potted fern would pass believably as the adult in the room, if Justin Trudeau was the only other living thing in it. My fern was also manufactured in plastic.

Can Carney lead? I have no idea. Many people are quick to point to his career as the Governor of the Banks of Canada and England, and as Chairman of Brookfield Asset Management as evidence he can.

But, management is not leadership. Managers make decisions, allocate resources and tasks, track and redirect performance, hire and fire people. Leaders inspire those people to exceed their own expectations, unite around a common goal, put the team and mission above of personal security and self-interest, and achieve exceptional results against enormous odds. Leaders like Churchill and Zelensky inspire nations to stand resolute in the face of an awe-inspiring foe with every advantage.

“We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”

– Winston S. Churchill

Does Mark Carney have the leadership gene? We do not know. Most politicians, most CEOs, most central bank governors do not. Canada has hope Carney is the exception. For the sake of Canada, I hope so too.

So far, Carney has met with Donald Trump and acquitted himself well. He balanced sufficient suckyupiness with measured resolve. If his goal was to appear before US media cameras as an informed, competent adult in a room with a baby tyrant, he succeeded.

He has also announced his cabinet which is a study in not much change to see here.

He has appeared in two curious staged photo-apps designed to make him appear very Trump-like. He’s posed for cameras at a table, surrounded by rapturous sycophants, to sign… something. Nobody really knows what. But the scene is blocked like a Trump Executive Order signing. Except Canada does not have a president and our prime minister does not issue Executive Orders. The Governor General does frequently sign Orders-in-Council on the advice of the prime minster but – I reiterate - the GG signs them. Not the PM. So, what was Carney so flamboyantly signing and showing off to Canadians?

Nobody knows.

The PM, I’m sure, often signs things: photos for donors, headshots for adoring fans, memos perhaps, minutes maybe. But none of those things is usually cause for a media photo app. In fact, I challenge anyone to find any other Canadian prime minister in history posing for the cameras while signing something in a big folder, with a big pen, while displaying it for all to see… just like Donald Trump.

Carney and his new Finance Minister have told us, somewhat incoherently, that there will be no budget this Spring. But there will be something in the Fall. Which, if you’re counting, will be more than half way through the spending year a budget would have established priorities for.

I expect today’s Throne Speech will keep closely to the pattern laid down by Carney in his Mandate Letter and public address to his caucus this weekend. In this, Carney is taking a different tack from the Justin Trudeau habit. He’s written one mandate letter for his government, not individual letters to each minister. Set aside for the moment the performative aspect of a public mandate letter, Carney’s approach is sound.

Every organization should have a singular, overarching mission that focuses the effort of every division, department, team and individual.

No organization should have more than one strategy. Those that purport to have may strategies fail them all. There should be one strategy to achieve one goal. There may well be multiple strategic plans that underpin and enable the strategy, but there can be no confusion which rules the others.

I can’t fault any of Carney’s priorities in his one mandate letter. They’re clear. He says he will empower his ministers to find ways they can support and enable the mandate. We shall see how this works in practice. I am suspect, not because he’s wrong to lead this way, but because too many of his ministers have grown lazy and betrothed to old, bad habits that have evolved in Canadian governments over the last two generations.

Like all governments, too many of Carney’s ministers are in cabinet because they check the right boxes: from the right region, the right gender, the right skin colour, the right heritage, the right language, the right voting bloc or they tap into the right donor groups. Not very often because they’ll be good at the job.

I hope he succeeds. If he does, Canada will be better off: both for having achieved the goal, and for having redressed the institutional weakness in Canada’s governance.

So, it is in today’s Speech from the Throne that Canadians will get the first meaningful measure of the man we elected to fix this entire mess. Will it continue the full-throated ideological proselytizing that marked the Justin Trudeau era? Or, will it focus on getting down to the business of Making Canada Work Again – as Butts-Telford promised would be Carney’s remit?

We will see.

By now you will have heard the King deliver the Speech from the Throne. Did it move you? Did it inspire you? Is it a roadmap to build the united, secure, successful nation Canada should be?