{"id":140494,"date":"2026-07-23T04:14:35","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T04:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/140494\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T04:14:35","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T04:14:35","slug":"mark-carney-red-tory-the-tyee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/140494\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Carney, Red Tory | The Tyee"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Canadian political landscape is fundamentally shifting under Prime Minister Mark Carney \u2014 and to be informed participants in our democracy, Canadians must recognize this reality.<\/p>\n

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The tipping point came yesterday when Scott Gilmore officially assumed<\/a> the role of Carney\u2019s new principal secretary.<\/p>\n

Gilmore (no relation to me!) had been serving as Carney\u2019s senior adviser on foreign, defence and security policy. Now, he\u2019s filling shoes left empty by Tom Pitfield, whom Carney just appointed to the Senate.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s where things get interesting (or perhaps, more accurately, revealing).<\/p>\n

In a post announcing he\u2019d be joining Carney\u2019s office about a year ago, Gilmore said he has \u201cbeen hoping for well over a decade that [Carney] would enter politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something else Gilmore was publicly advocating for just under 10 years ago, too: a new conservative-leaning party<\/a>. Specifically, a progressive conservative one. In fact, columnist Paul Wells wrote at the time<\/a> that Gilmore had been \u201cwandering the land looking for signs of a Red Tory revival.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking back, the man who would go on to become Carney\u2019s principal secretary appears almost prophetic: today, Mark Carney is prime minister \u2014 and Canada arguably has a Red Tory party.<\/p>\n

The latter just so happens to still be called \u201cthe Liberal Party of Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n <\/p>\n

Yes, the Liberals are moving to the right<\/p>\n

Carney\u2019s Liberal party has been making announcements at a dizzying pace, all while dismissing criticism and questions with reminders of the \u201cmore dangerous and divided world\u201d that we\u2019re living in.<\/p>\n

When looked at together, those announcements take an interesting shape. Canada is set to spend massively<\/a> on a new pipeline \u2014 one that would make us money only if the world gives up<\/a> on preventing climate catastrophe. We\u2019re also spending big on military and defence, including a new submarine purchase that\u2019s set to be the biggest defence splurge<\/a> in our country\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

Still, Carney will tell Canadians there are other things we can\u2019t afford. To hear Carney tell it, we can\u2019t afford to meet our greenhouse gas emissions reductions targets \u2014 that would be too expensive, he said<\/a> in a recent \u201cForward Guidance\u201d video (despite the astronomical price tag<\/a> of climate-induced damage).<\/p>\n

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Carney Under the Sway of the Broligarchs<\/p>\n

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Carney also scrapped<\/a> a proposed increase to the capital gains tax inclusion rate, a tax that would have applied<\/a> only to the ultra rich \u2014 those who make more than $250,000 per year off stocks, mutual funds or investment properties. That decision stripped more than $17 billion of potential revenue from federal coffers, according<\/a> to an estimate from the parliamentary budget officer. In a country with the worst wealth gap<\/a> in our recorded history, apparently asking the ultra-rich to pay a bit more isn\u2019t something we can afford \u2014 lest we fail to, as Carney put it<\/a>, \u201cincentivize builders.\u201d<\/p>\n

All that sounds a lot like right-wing politics to me. While some might argue this is a return to decades-old, pre-Trudeau iterations of the Liberal party, even Liberals who served in those governments have started to raise the alarm about what their former party has become.<\/p>\n

Lloyd Axworthy, who served as foreign affairs minister under Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chr\u00e9tien, authored a piece published<\/a> in the Walrus under the headline \u201cCarney\u2019s Liberals Are Governing Like Conservatives \u2014 Just More Politely.\u201d<\/p>\n

The former Liberal cabinet minister highlighted a lot of what I already spoke about, but also touched on budget cuts<\/a> that will harm Indigenous communities and cruel new immigration policies.<\/p>\n

\u201cSmall-l liberals \u2014 people who still think of the Charter as a living thing, who care about refugee protection, Indigenous justice, gender equality, international law \u2014 are running out of political space,\u201d Axworthy wrote<\/a> in the piece.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir values haven\u2019t disappeared. The party that used to carry them is just moving on.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Liberals aren\u2019t the only ones shifting<\/p>\n

The Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre, meanwhile, have gone even further right.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve got MPs posting<\/a> about \u201cpervert costumes\u201d in an attempt to denigrate Pride parades, and their leader is incessantly attacking<\/a> the rights of transgender people. Poilievre has also adopted a Trump-like habit of attacking<\/a> journalists for doing their jobs and a disturbing willingness to parrot<\/a> conspiratorial language.<\/p>\n

<\/a> <\/p>\n

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Mark Carney Is Turning His Back on Climate Action<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s enough to make Carney\u2019s conservatism seem almost palatable in comparison \u2014 until you remember that he\u2019s also rewarding Alberta Premier Danielle Smith with pipelines while keeping mum about her attacks<\/a> on transgender youth and erosion<\/a> of public health care.<\/p>\n

In fact, Carney\u2019s conservatism is so overt that it\u2019s fuelling conservative infighting as strategists, influencers and supporters debate how to best someone beating them at their own game.<\/p>\n

One former spokesperson for Poilievre said that Carney has been \u201con an absolute tear since becoming PM.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOn every metric, the Liberals have been absolutely outclassing us across the board,\u201d Anthony Koch wrote on X<\/a>, setting off a firestorm of debate and infighting that saw former Poilievre staffers square off with right-wing influencers about the future of the party.<\/p>\n

So we\u2019ve got Conservatives that have gone full populist right, and Liberals that are effectively a reborn federal progressive conservative party.<\/p>\n

On top of that, the NDP is still licking its wounds after an absolute clobbering<\/a> in the last election. Recent polls suggest their new democratic socialist leader, Avi Lewis, is making<\/a> some significant headway on that front \u2014 but he\u2019ll need to become more known if he\u2019s going to really challenge the two-horse race our first past the post electoral system incessantly tries to impose on us.<\/p>\n


\n <\/p>\n

To change a reality, we first have to accept it<\/p>\n

While it can feel depressing to confront ourselves with how right-wing our politics have become, it\u2019s also essential that Canadians acknowledge reality \u201cas it is \u2014 not as we wish it to be,\u201d to quote<\/a> our current prime minister.<\/p>\n

Partisans who have long identified with the Liberal brand are twisting themselves into pretzels, repeating the word \u201cpragmatic\u201d as a cheap salve to soothe the gnawing feeling that these are the very policies they\u2019d decry if they came packaged with a Conservative logo.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s exactly what makes Carney\u2019s government so threatening for anyone with progressive values.<\/p>\n

<\/a> <\/p>\n

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As Carney Redraws the Political Map, Where Do New Democrats Go?<\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/p>\n

His Liberal government effectively serves as a Trojan horse for these right-wing, pro-corporate policies. Before we can even discuss the policies themselves, we first have to convince people there\u2019s something they might not have expected inside.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say there aren\u2019t Liberals who genuinely do champion these policies. The party has always been centrist, sometimes teetering more rightwards and, in other iterations, a bit more towards the left.<\/p>\n

But what\u2019s startling about the discourse around Carney is the number of people who fail to see the major political realignment that has taken place under this prime minister\u2019s tenure.<\/p>\n

Canada doesn\u2019t have a Liberal party and a Conservative party as we previously understood their ideologies, with Liberals as the \u201ccentrist\u201d option and Conservatives on the right. We now have a progressive conservative \u201cLiberal\u201d party and a hard-right option in the Conservatives.<\/p>\n

Within this political landscape, Canadians can support whomever they want.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019d argue we can\u2019t have conversations or debates about Canadian politics unless we acknowledge our new political reality.<\/p>\n

This is adapted from an earlier post<\/a> to Rachel Gilmore\u2019s Substack Bubble Pop. \"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Canadian political landscape is fundamentally shifting under Prime Minister Mark Carney \u2014 and to be informed participants…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140495,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[46372,2044,3178,118,46373,46374,111,46375,1214,46376,46377,46378,40723],"class_list":["post-140494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mark-carney","tag-anthony-koch","tag-avi-lewis","tag-danielle-smith","tag-liberal-party-of-canada","tag-liberals-moving-right","tag-lloyd-axworthy","tag-mark-carney","tag-paul-wells","tag-pierre-poilievre","tag-red-tories","tag-scott-gilmore","tag-small-l-liberals","tag-tom-pitfield"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}