Acting in the Best Interests of Shareholders -- Lying to Canadians

"The period between 2010 and 2024 has been economically remarkable."

"For most of the period, interest rates were at their lowest level in history[ but] earnings grew at their slowest rate in, probably, more than 200 years."

"At the heart of it all was a period of abysmal growth in productivity, and with it, living standards."

London Institute of Fiscal Studies

 

"The most common feedback we hear from investors encourages us to position [Brookfield Asset Management] for inclusion in some of the most widely followed global large cap stock indices, including in the U.S." 

Mark Carney December 1 letter to shareholders

Former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney, who's running for the leadership of the federal Liberal Party, speaks to the media following the candidates' English-language debate, in Montreal on Tuesday. (Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press)

"Anybody who knows anything about business knows that boards have a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders."

"At the end of the day, [Carney's] job as chairman of the board was to act in the best interests of shareholders."

Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson

With the resignation of Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the hastily-called Liberal leadership campaign set to roll up on March 7, when the winner of the campaign will then inherit the prime ministership of Canada for as long as it take for the re-convening of Parliament and an inevitable election to take place with Canada's other official political parties all expressing their non-confidence in the Liberal party that has led the country astray for a decade, the leading candidates appear to be the past finance minister in this government, Chrystia Freeland and international banker Mark Carney.

 

Both pledge to take Canada in a different direction, to haul it out of the nonfunctioning status that Justin Trudeau had worked so assiduously to bring to fruition, from his dedication to environmental issues, deliberately hamstringing the exploitation of Canada's energy resources, admitting an unsupportable number of immigrants, refugees, foreign students, farm workers and illegal migrants whose presence burdened the faltering universal health care system, the housing market and led to toxic divisions between provinces and various elements of the population.

 

Never mind that Chrystia Freeland had been an enthusiastic promoter of Trudeau's ruinous reign, or that Mark Carney had been an adviser to the Liberal government, and his own oft-stated priorities mirror those of the man he is now campaigning to replace. The one-time Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor, environmental activist and elite board member of numerous institutions is now portraying  himself, just as Trudeau before him did, as the only one who can pull Canada out of its economic doldrums and unite Canadians against the imminent threat of U.S. President Trump's ruinous tariff threats.

 

He portrays himself at campaign stops, in interviews and debates as someone he is not. The "formal decision of the board" of Brookfield Investment of which he was chairman  to expatriate its head office was a decision made after he left the board to run for Liberal leader, he claims. While the opposition Conservatives claim Carney "sold out Canada" by overseeing the Canadian investment house move to New York, a December memo has been unveiled that puts the lie to Carney's claim of innocence. 

During the Liberal English-language debate for the leadership he referred to his tenure at the Department of Finance: "It was my privilege to work with Paul Martin when he balanced the books -- and kept the books balanced", he boasted. Except for the fact that his Finance Department presence was in 2004, a full decade after Paul Martin's 1995 budget led to the 1998 book balancing.

 

During an interview on The Daily Show, he boasted of avoiding a U.S.-type banking crisis in 2008-09: "We didn't let our banks do things that they didn't understand just because all the other banks were doing them", referring to complex financial products like subprime mortgages during the U.S. meltdown. "As Governor of the Bank of Canada during the 2008 financial crisis, Mark guided Canada through one of the most turbulent economic periods in modern history" his LinkedIn bio reads to credit him with "protecting jobs and helping ensure that Canada came out stronger". It was, in fact, the banks themselves credit is due to.

 

"I have helped manage multiple crises and saved two economies" he said in referring to his seven years as governor of the Bank of England, when Britain's economy stuttered from bad to worse when he was at the helm, and since, nosediving from 2020, when he left. Yet another Trudeau, one whom, yet again, the Liberal Party of Canada, which has brought the country to a state of 'post-nationalism', mired in Critical Race Theory and DEI, one where Muslim mobs parade through the streets celebrating the Hamas 'victory' over Israel, is prepared to carry on.

 

Canada can do better, much better than that. With the intention to leave the Liberal Party out of contention and return a rational, common-sense Conservative Party and its leader, Pierre Poilievre to preserve what is left of Canada and guide it intelligently back to its original proud state and get on with the job of correcting all the malfeasances of its predecessor. 

"I always tell my clients that rule number one of communications is don't lie."

"The truth is going to come out eventually, lying only worsens the blow."

Hannah Thibedeau Communications professional