John Ivison: Carney takes to showboating as the Liberals savour their comfort zone

TRURO, N.S. – Mark Carney may be a political novice but he is quickly learning the value of staged photo ops. The new Liberal leader is clearly not in the same league as his predecessor Justin Trudeau when it comes to apparently spontaneous, meticulously planned shots, like the time the former prime minister jogged past teenagers on their way to a prom. Early in the campaign, Carney was in danger of losing a digit when he tried his hand at woodworking at a trades school in Vaughan, Ont. But the new man is comfortable with anything to do with kids or hockey or, preferably, both. On Saturday he painted Easter eggs with a group of youngsters in Newcastle, Ont., emblazoning his egg with that kiddie favourite: “Time to Build.” On Monday, he donned a Team Canada jersey at a farm in Truro, N.S. to play ball hockey with a group of local children, who, fortunately, kept their elbows down. These campaign stops are, at face value, ludicrous. But they allow the leader to prove he is a good sport and is not the desiccated technocrat his opponents claim. On Monday, a goal against a bunch of under-10s was celebrated with a display of Carney riding the stick, Tiger Williams-style. He had one eye on the cameras at all times. “He’s a much better politician than I thought he’d be,” said one woman in the crowd. The sneaking suspicion is that this tolerance for the performative side of politics will expire in about a week. It helps that there has been a weightlessness to the Liberal campaign in the past two days, as if their internal polling is showing the election is in the bag. As noisy protesters standing on the road outside the farm chanted “WEF puppet” (referring the World Economic Forum) Carney put his finger to his ear and jokingly told his audience, “Sorry, I’m listening for the order coming in.” The Liberals’ worries of the debates and the platform launch appear to be behind them. The $225 billion in new spending unveiled in the Liberal platform proved to be a tempting target for Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, but his attack has been blunted by the fact the Conservatives have yet to release their own platform. (Poilievre said it’s coming Tuesday.) “We have a fully costed plan. Pierre Poilievre doesn’t have a plan and he is hiding $140 billion in cuts,” Carney said when asked about the new spending in Prince Edward Island on Monday morning. The Liberals claim that Poilievre’s pledge to match every dollar spent with a dollar in cuts means he will have to meet his $140 billion in new measures by taking a hacksaw to existing dental care, pharmacare and child-care programs. In reality, most of the Conservative measures are tax cuts, not traditional spending, but there’s no doubt that Poilievre’s $14 billion-a-year income-tax cut reduces his room for manoeuvre. The ambiguity has taken the sting out of Poilievre’s attack. Back in rural Nova Scotia, the feeling is that the Liberals could take the Cumberland—Colchester riding that was won by Conservative Stephen Ellis by 12 points in 2021. The fact that Carney is here in the final days of the campaign means that the Liberals believe it is in play. It should be fertile terrain for Poilievre. But this is Robert Stanfield country; the former Progressive Conservative leader was from Truro. It has never embraced western conservatism, rejecting the Reform Party when it became the official opposition in 1997. And by the accounts of the people at the rally, their conservative neighbours are not embracing the current Tory leader. Bill Casey was elected in the riding seven times, first as a Progressive Conservative, then as a Conservative, and, after being expelled from the party for voting against the 2007 budget, as an Independent. He left politics for six years, but in 2015 he ran and won as a Liberal. Casey was at the event on Monday and said that many high-profile Conservatives he knows in the riding are not voting for Poilievre and may not vote at all. The area is highly dependent on agriculture, and trade and tourism with the United States, and Casey said Carney’s plan to build Canada and protect jobs is resonating across the riding. The Liberal candidate is local businesswoman Alana Hirtle, and if she emerges the winner early in the proceedings next Monday it is going to be a long night for the Conservatives. National Post jivison@criffel.ca

• John Ivison: Conservative hopes resurrected by Carney’s eye-watering spending plan
• John Ivison: Mark Carney's platform relies on fiscal alchemy and hopeful assumptions

Get more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what’s really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here.