I did support Carney and I hope he does good things, and I don’t think the following scenario would occur but I realize this belief is entirely based on my judgement of Carney’s character which could be wrong.
I was thinking about the proposed gas pipeline to the east coast. If Carney hopes to be re-elected, he can’t ram a pipeline through Quebec using emergency powers if such exist. Or he’d lose his seats in QC. Instead he’s gotta give significant concessions to QC, like ownership, high royalties, etc. Stuff that he and Blanchet can sell to the Quebecers. I think this is certainly possible for a gas pipeline.
But then the following disaster scenario occurred to me. He likely has significant Brookfield investments in that blind trust. He likely has a seat open on that board whenever he quits public service. What if he uses emergency powers to ram a whole bunch of infrastructure, through P3s, where the private partner retains ownership, and the partner is Brookfield. Do as many of those as possible, get kicked out of office and sit on Brookfield’s board, that much richer, while we get saddled with an even angrier and vindicated CPC fascism.
Thoughts?
Edit: Thanks for wading into my election PTSD nightmare!
I think it’s worth pointing out that the LPC is not really in a good place, even if they did win the election and formed a minority government. People were frustrated with them, and we know this from earlier polls, the popular vote, particularly on the fact that the CPC is right on their tail, and the fact that too many of the ridings were extremely close calls (yes there’s vote splitting, but I’d say that’s only one factor in the CPC’s huge surge). If Carney does anything funny, it doesn’t just cost him his political career, it would wipe out the LPC in the next election, and may even effectively paralyze the political centre and left for years to come (given that we now have a much weakened NDP, and only 1 Green seat). People in the LPC should be aware of this, or at least I hope they do, cause it will most likely be the end of most of their political careers.
So I believe there’s pressure within the LPC to keep Carney in check.
Sure, he could blindside literally everyone and do things that would benefit Brookfield, but there’s no guarantee that it would actually benefit himself due to the blind trust. Carney would become a pariah to Canadians, and make people even angrier at Brookfield, which may, in turn, even if not immediately, hurt their bottom line. We haven’t even gotten to the legal battles that will ensue. Carney would have to be pretty stupid to make that kind of gamble, compared to actually just working normally as a politician and get his pension and live ultra-comfortably. But, we do have lots of dumb politicians that would do that, all over the world, so it’s an understandable worry. Just look at recent kleptocratic episodes, and how a good chunk of these kleptocrats barely served jail time and/or paid back what they’ve stolen.
Yeah, this is an important part of the picture. Anything but really good execution with tangible results from the new government would likely be faced with a con win in the following election. Especially if the CPC replace PP with someone less unlikable. Even the typical level of grift and incompetence may be enough. I think the situation is similar in this regard to Kathleen Wynne’s first election but the stakes are higher. If there are serious fuckups a wipeout is likely as you said.