New Liberal leader Mark Carney ‘has changed our party overnight,’ she maintains
As far as longtime Laval-area political insider Frank Mansi is concerned, the Liberal Party of Canada was helped not just by the arrival of its new leader Mark Carney, but also (if perhaps unintentionally) by U. S. president Donald Trump.
“I think Trump has helped us because even the separatists are realizing that, hey, Canada’s here to protect us,” Mansi said in an interview during an event last Saturday to mark the opening of incumbent Vimy Liberal MP Annie Koutrakis’s campaign office.
He sees the April 28 election as being partly anti-Trump, although primarily a pending expression of pro-Canadian feeling that is bound to generate a higher-than-usual voter turnout.
All agree an important election
Mansi was one of more than 50 people – virtually all committed Liberals – who turned up for the gathering. Something that appears certain during what is bound to be one of the shortest federal election campaigns on record is general agreement it’s going to be an important vote.
In an address, Koutrakis gave three reasons for this, the first two being the Trump tariffs, which stand to have a huge impact on the Canadian economy, and the threat to Canada’s sovereignty posed by the Republican president’s claim to Canada as the 51st U.S. state. The third, she maintained, is Conservative leader Pierre Poilièvre.
Regarding the Liberals’ newly-elected leader Mark Carney, who stepped in and replaced Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister, Koutrakis said, “He has changed our party overnight. We are now back to what we should always be and what Canadians are: in the centre economically and politically.”
The Carney election platform
Koutrakis, who is running for a third term, noted that the Liberals’ platform under Carney includes a proposed middle-class tax cut of up to $825 per family, rebuilding and re-arming the Canadian Armed Forces, a $2 billion strategic response fund to fight the tariffs and protect threatened auto workers’ jobs, and a $5 billion federal investment to diversify inter-provincial trade corridors.
“We believe in a strong economy to make our people better off,” she said. “And a strong economy to finance the social programs and defenses we need. That’s where elections are won. If you have to find anyone in the world to fit the moment, it would really be hard to do better than Mark Carney.”
Koutrakis said she remembered Carney’s monetary intervention in 2008 during the global financial crisis when he was governor of the Bank of Canada. She was working at that time in the investment field as a CIBC Wood Gundy assistant branch manager and she had to field questions daily from distressed clients worried about their retirement savings.
Was reassured by Carney
“Having someone at the time at the helm like governor Carney was very reassuring,” said Koutrakis. “And I think as a G7 country we came out of it pretty strong.” With that said about Carney, Koutrakis took a few swipes at Poilièvre, suggesting that the Conservative leader’s credentials are so relatively few compared to Carney’s, that Poilièvre “prints his CV on his business card.”
While noting that she doesn’t like to participate in partisan politics, she acknowledged the necessity of being able to work with an opponent “who is, you know, ah, mature, balanced.
“In fact, if you’re dealing with someone that’s always negative and toxic and not offering solutions but just offering slogans, it’s very hard to do non-partisan work with that person,” she continued. “So, I will continue to do my best, but in this speech, I added a little bit of partisanship.”
