Chris Selley: Carney’s EU cuteness is an unwelcome return to Justin Trudeau’s playbook

It has been an exemplary few days in the world of prime ministerial communications, though not in a good way. PMO Comms World hasn’t changed much since Justin Trudeau’s departure, interestingly. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s gang is still far too cute for its own long-term good, launching trial balloons and then deflating them, leveraging foreign (especially American) media when able, and apparently believing that their popularity in the polls is proof of this strategy’s success.

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It isn’t. It’s just proof of what Carney is able to get away with these days.

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The Wall Street Journal’s report, published Sunday, that Canada is pursuing “associate membership” in the European Union, and that the EU is “open to the idea,” was a fine piece of journalism with a lot of resources behind it. It cited officials, albeit mostly anonymous, “from a dozen different governments involved in … conversations” to back up the story.

No doubt the Journal asked the PMO to comment on this, which is when the PMO could have poured cold water on the idea right out of the gate. For that matter, if Carney didn’t want this story out there, he and his representatives could presumably have made that clear to their EU partners during these “conversations.”

Those dozen governments’ officials mentioned everything from “frictionless” trade in goods and services to allowing Canadians to work in Europe without a visa — and, presumably, vice versa. You might reasonably call such an agreement “associate membership,” though that’s not a category that currently exists. Helpfully for the Liberals, it could mean anything.

“What we are looking and will begin discussion for is a unique alliance … between Canada and the European Union,” Carney told reporters hours after the Journal story dropped. Speaking to Bloomberg, Carney called it a “high-ambition process.” But never “associate membership,” whatever that means, heavens no.

I suspect the PMO’s communications gurus are quite pleased with themselves. Now, low-information voters who support deep integration with the EU, or even some kind of official membership — or who think they support it, never having really considered the idea other than as a rebuke to President Donald Trump — have something to latch onto. And Carney-friendly EU skeptics have the PMO’s denials to latch onto as well. When Conservatives quite rightly complain Carney is trying to sneak us into the EU, The elbows-up crowd can point to news stories ostensibly debunking the idea and dismiss them as cranks.

An Abacus Data poll conducted Sept. 4–9 found a remarkable 49 per cent of Canadians support (or think they support) Canada becoming a full-on EU member state, while only 30 per cent outright oppose it. Asked about “closer integration,” 81 per cent of respondents said they supported it, including 75 per cent of Albertans and 70 per cent of Conservative voters.

I won’t belabour the issue of why so much of this EU-relationship discourse makes absolutely no sense. Icelanders rejected EU membership talks 53 per cent to 47 in a referendum last month, with 83 per cent turnout. At a time when you might expect Iceland to be eager for more geopolitical shelter, the “no” campaign won the day with a message focusing on sovereignty — especially Iceland’s indispensable fisheries and its cultural tolerance (though it’s far from universal) of whaling, which is strictly banned in EU waters.

Preserving Canadian sovereignty is exactly the argument the Liberals would face if they pursued any serious kind of economic integration with Europe — especially assuming the process dragged on past the end of Trump’s presidency, when a lot of Canadians will suddenly rediscover their love of the status quo.

In the meantime, the whole foofaraw is very unbecoming of a government that claims to be getting serious. As is true with many things Carney says and does, it remains fascinating to see him planting and fertilizing the seeds of his own eventual defeat.

National Post
cselley@postmedia.com

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