Will the public believe Poilievre or Carney on the economy...

Plus, Ford's poll numbers, more on the Charter and a big modular step forward.

What to make of the fiscal update that Carney delivered via Frankie Bubbles on Monday?

Not much to be honest, because there wasn’t much to it. It’s one of the rare occasions in my career where I wasn’t writing about a budget or fiscal update on the day it happened and frankly, I didn’t miss much.

There is the Sovereign Wealth Fund, which I have dubbed the Sovereign Debt Fund given that it is all on borrowed money. I’ve written about that here at the newsletter and in my column for the Toronto Sun.

Yesterday, I was writing about the fiscal update and how despite claims otherwise, this whole thing is a dud. Spending is up, the deficit is up and despite spending not being as high as predicted six months ago, there is no bold thinking.

We really do need better than that.

Poilievre says Carney is wrong on the economy…

In Question Period today, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was saying that once again, Mark Carney was wrong on the economy. I happen to agree with Poilievre, I said so in my column, but I’m wondering if Canadians will be buying the message Poilievre is selling.

Like Mark Carney or hate him, this is one credentialed man. And while I know and understand that credentials don’t mean you are right, many people don’t look past credentials.

In QP, Poilievre wasn’t making the ham-fisted argument that he did recently in saying Mark Carney is badly educated on economics, but will swing voters believe that he has the economic answers rather than Carney?

One smart and accomplished Conservative campaigner told me that once the Liberals switched from Trudeau to Carney, the election became a resume contest. In that battle, there was no way for Poilievre to beat Carney.

Admittedly he came close and if the campaign had gone another week without a Trump eruption, I think Poilievre might have been able to win. As they say in Quebec though, if my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a bus.

Right now, most Canadians don’t see Carney as doing bad on the economy and they are still blaming pretty much everything about he economy on Trump even if he’s not to blame. That gives Carney a get out of jail free card so to speak, which means that it doesn’t matter if Poilievre is right, people aren’t ready to believe him.

Doug Ford’s falling poll numbers…

Are Doug Ford’s poll numbers falling?

Absolutely.

Should he and his team be panicking?

No, but they should be concerned and make adjustments.

Several polls have come out over the past few days, including one that was released after I wrote this column and posted the video below. They show Ford falling and some show the Liberals, who don’t have a leader rising.

I’ll put the Liberal numbers being so high down to the Carney effect. Just like when Justin Trudeau was federal leader and deeply unpopular he drove down Ontario Liberal support, Carney being popular is helping them.

Ford is down, let’s be clear on that, but once the Ontario Liberals choose a leader, things will change.

My view is that Navdeep Bains, the former Trudeau cabinet minister is a bigger threat to Ford than Nathaniel Erskine-Smith. I’m not completely discounting Erskine-Smith, but I do know that many Ontario Liberals are organizing to stop him from becoming the Ontario Liberal leader.

While Erskine-Smith excites the left-wing of the Liberal Party, he’s essentially a New Democrat who wants to have a shot at being elected. He would likely have trouble getting elected in a general election and there are concerns being raised about whether he can revive the Ontario Liberal Party.

Let’s be blunt, the Ontario Liberal Party has never recovered from their 2018 defeat and a big part of that is that their EDA’s, or electoral district associations, havre fallen apart. Some people think that you can win elections by just going big on social media, or with a great war room or maybe with an ad buy.

If you don’t have a ground game, nothing else matters.

A big milestone for Ford and Ontario…

Ford started talking about SMRs, small modular reactors, early on in his time as premier.

People thought he was nuts and it wouldn’t go anywhere.

He was able to convince other premiers to join him in trying to get this idea off the ground and Alberta, Quebec, New Brunswick all signed on to help. That was around 2019, which is a long time to be talking about an issue with no results.

On Thursday, Ontario took a big step forward.

That is a massive crane installing a 2.1-million-pound Basemat module for the Unit 1 SMR at the Darlington site.

This is a major step forward for the project and is a good thing for Ontario. This is one of the many good projects that Ford and his government are shepherding through the system.

The problem for Ford, like any politician, is that voters are the ultimate “what have you done for me lately” group you will ever find. It reminds of this scene from Monty Pythons movie Life of Brian.

About the Charter…

For those of you who have lots of time, you may have already listened to the Full Comment Podcast this week. I interviewed former Newfoundland Premier Brian Peckford about the patriation of the constitution, the deal to bring about the Charter of Rights and the Carney government’s attempts to change all of this.

I posted the full interview yesterday for the newsletter, you can listen to it here.

If you don’t have 45 minutes, here’s a shorter video with some clips talking to Peckford. I also wrote a column on the issue here.