Chris Selley: Mark Carney's trains in vain

If the Liberals’ basic campaign strategy was to transfer Justin Trudeau’s politics into a new, less objectionable host — less objectionable to some, anyway — then they can only be said to be knocking it out of the park. Nothing has noticeably changed back at HQ with respect to their communications strategy: Trump, abortion, gun control, all the greatest hits are on shuffle. Carney spouts nonsense somewhat differently than Justin Trudeau did, but the nonsense comes just and thick and fast: About whom he’s met in the past , about the name of the Montreal school where 14 women were slaughtered in December 1989 , about his involvement with Brookfield when it relocated its headquarters to the United States . On Sunday, CBC reported that Liberal operatives had distributed “stop the steal” buttons — a reference to some Trump supporters’ contention that their man did not, in fact, lose the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden — at the conservative Canada Strong and Free Networking Conference, the better to accuse conservatives of being horribly Trumpian. CBC reporter Kate McKenna overheard Liberal staffers bragging about it in a local watering hole. That’s just about as old-school greasy as Ottawa politics gets. There are some notable changes, of course. The carbon tax is gone. But even there, there is consistency: As Liberals always do, the second Carney ditched the tax, MPs and candidates who had defended it as revenue-neutral if not essential for the planet’s survival instantaneously pivoted to boasting of all the money they were saving us. And an Abacus Data poll suggests the Liberals are actually getting credit among voters for doing that. Still, the Liberals’ commitment to The Old Ways is truly remarkable, considering how near oblivion the Trudeau gang flew the party. I certainly never thought I would see again what might be the single dumbest campaign of recent years : In a lakeside park in Sudbury, Ont. on Sept. 26, 2019, I witnessed Justin Trudeau arrive at a press conference by canoe and announce a “a travel bursary of up to $2,000 to (help Canadians) experience places across the country from Killarney, Banff, Gros Morne, and the Cape Breton Highlands,” while “partner(ing) with Via Rail to make these opportunities accessible and affordable.” Via Rail doesn’t operate in Newfoundland, on Cape Breton, or go to Banff. It’ll get you from Toronto to Sudbury, which is about 90 minutes’ drive from Killarney Provincial Park … twice a week, and it takes seven hours if you’re lucky, and there is a much quicker bus straight from midtown Toronto straight to Killarney (and many more to Sudbury), so why would would anyone do that? It was delusional and weird on every level, evincing a total misunderstanding of how real people live, or of how Canada actually works, or both. Railway delusions aside, my basic take at the time was : imagine telling a family struggling to make ends meet that you have $2,000 to help them out … but (they) have to spend it camping … and in a government-run campsite to boot. Needless to say, the camping bursary never came to pass. But now it’s back, sort of, under Carney. His “Canada Strong Pass,” unveiled Saturday during Carney’s ongoing “campaign pause,” would “provide children and youth under the age of 18 with free access to Canada’s incredible national galleries and museums, and free seats on Via Rail when they travel with their parents,” during the summer of 2025. The campaign had already promised to make national parks and historic sites free to visit this coming summer — “free” meaning we all pay for it, naturally, as opposed to just those who use the facilities. And while there’s no “camping bursary” on offer this time, Carney pledges to “reduce prices for camping sites in national parks for all Canadians from June to August.”

Introducing, the Canada Strong Pass. pic.twitter.com/exM85OXnL0— Mark Carney (@MarkJCarney) April 12, 2025

Now, free access to museums and national historic sites is something I could get behind. (Team Carney says it’s willing to help provinces offer the same for their own attractions.) Canadians are appallingly ignorant of their history, and I don’t think we promote some of these sites enough: I blundered into the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site on Cape Breton a few years ago , never even having heard of it, and was completely blown away. Camping at national parks, I’m not so sure about. A lot of those campsites will already be booked for this summer anyway, not least because they’re quite reasonably priced to begin with. But it’s the Via Rail thing that really boggles my mind, again — that hints at a fundamental lack of understanding of what this country really is and how it works. It’s like a vision of Canada based on stamps, or on passport illustrations. Via Rail is, on its very best days, a relatively practical and efficient way to get between Windsor and Toronto, or Toronto and Ottawa, or Ottawa and Montreal, or Montreal and Quebec City. Beyond that it’s useless for people who actually need to get somewhere on time, or at all, including on a vacation or camping trip — unless you have a few days on either end to kill getting there and back, which most people, unlike politicians, do not. Indeed, the authors of the Canada Strong Pass almost seem to buy implicitly into the reality of Via’s practical irrelevance when they insist teenagers travel with their parents to enjoy free fares. Why on earth would they do that? Seventeen-year-olds go to university. Sixteen- and 17-year-olds are perfectly capable of going on trips together — to cities, to national parks, to campsites. Alas, they don’t vote. National Post cselley@postmedia.com

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