Was the timing of Mark Carney’s feel-good “fireside chat” video released Sunday mere coincidence, landing as it did the day before concerning inflation numbers?
Or was it a deliberate calculation to point out that Canadian fur traders were all over the northern plains before the Americans had left St. Louis, a day ahead of confirmation that consumers are now paying $2.50 for a single bloody cucumber?
Carney’s 10-minute YouTube video was a very slick piece of communication, without necessarily appearing so.
The prime minister positioned it as “forward guidance,” echoing his use of the technique of getting ahead of bad news when he was a bank governor. It might equally be billed as a “pre-emptive strike.”
It has been suggested it was an effort to replicate the calm, informal tone of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “fireside chats” or Winston Churchill’s radio address after Dunkirk (though my late father long remembered listening to “the finest hour” speech as a nine year old, and, with all due respect, I doubt anyone will recall this one 50 years after the fact).
But it was an effective attempt to confront and calm the anxieties Canadians are experiencing because of the geopolitical turmoil taking place beyond their borders.
Carney said he would not sugarcoat the challenges and would outline what the government is doing in response. He said he would explain “what’s working and what isn’t” — though, as befitted a brazenly partisan political broadcast, there was very little self-reflection.
He said the U.S. has fundamentally changed its approach and “many of our former strengths based on close ties to America have become our weaknesses.”
Businesses are holding back on investments, restrained by “the pall of uncertainty.”
But he said the government’s plan, and a nation of “tough, decent, caring people who grow stronger in adversity,” will see us through.
It’s hard to imagine anyone who has not already succumbed to Carney derangement syndrome watching the video and not feeling somewhat reassured that someone, somewhere, is doing something.
Former NDP leader Tom Mulcair said the prime minister had “pulled off something quite amazing.”
But any reassurance would probably go up in a puff of smoke on contact with Statistics Canada’s latest report on monthly average prices on selected food items. Cucumbers, milk, butter, eggs, apples, bananas, carrots, pasta and coffee cost more than ever, often much more. Celery was $1.59 last October, now it’s $4.29 a unit. A 340-gram bag of coffee would have cost you $5.36 just five years ago; now it’s $9.51, according to StatCan.
Food inflation was 7.8 per cent in March, the largest increase since August 2023.
As concerning is the broader inflation rate for March, which increased to 2.4 per cent year on year, up from 1.8 per cent in February.
That hike was mainly driven by higher energy prices due to the war in the Middle East. Consumers paid 21.2 per cent more for gasoline than they did the month before, the largest jump on record.
The government’s suspension of fuel taxes kicked in on Monday, which should shave 10 cents off a litre of gas. But prices have already risen to $1.74 a litre, according to the Canadian Automobile Association, thanks to events in the Middle East.
The irony is that new business outlook and consumer expectation surveys released by the Bank of Canada on Monday suggest that business sentiment and consumer confidence had improved slightly in the first quarter of the year, but both surveys were taken before war broke out.
When the Bank of Canada went back to update its surveys to include the impact of the war, it found a significant shift in the outlook, with revised expectations from both businesses and consumers on the inflation rate. Business leaders surveyed in the update expect inflation to hit 3.8 per cent a year from now. That is nowhere near the 8.1 per cent it peaked at in June 2022.
But, before upcoming free-trade negotiations with the U.S., it adds to Carney’s “pall of uncertainty,” retrenching investment, and persuading consumers to cut spending and push back major purchases.
Carney’s invocation of General Isaac Brock and the ghosts of French Canadian voyageurs like Toussaint Charbonneau, who were already living among the Indigenous Mandans in present-day North Dakota when Meriwether Lewis and William Clark made their way up the Missouri, may improve morale — at least until Canadians go grocery shopping or fill up their tank.
This government has led a charmed life to this point, but the return of rising inflation is likely to put a pall on its fortunes going forward.
National Post