[jkaplowitz]

You do realize that that former Liberal leader Justin Trudeau is not the Liberal leader who is currently pushing this bill, right? Justin Trudeau is now a private citizen with no official role in his party, in the House of Commons, or in government beyond what applies to any former leader/MP/PM (e.g. former PMs remain Privy Council members).

The current Liberal leader Mark Carney has spent his whole career in the banking world, including running both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England at different times, except for running for and winning his current political roles last year. Far from being elected again and again, he’s only been elected once ever in party office and once ever in public office.

Mark Carney and Justin Trudeau have very different policies on fiscal and economic matters, to the extent that Carney would probably be a Progressive Conservative if that party still existed at the federal level.

There’s more I could say about the substance of Trudeau’s remark and comparing his China policy to that ofnother PMs like Harper, but that whole tangent is off-topic for this thread, since - again - Trudeau holds no role relevant to current Liberal legislative decisions.

[newsclues]

I do realize that (am Canadian), but you are incorrect to say Carney and Trudeau have very different policies. Many of the cabinet members are the same, and as they say, people are policy. Perhaps the tone of messaging has changed, but it's the same government, with most of the same stupid policies.

Same party, same people, just a new leader, but it's the same direction. There was no 180 pivot for Canada, just a new "elbows up" slogan from another CCP puppet PM. https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/china-allies-paid-2000-...

[jkaplowitz]

CCP allies paying to attend a fundraiser co-hosted by an MP who was a Conservative until December does not contradict my point about Carney being economically a Progressive Conservative. I’m not saying that either Carney or that co-hosting MP belongs in Pierre Poilievre’s version of the Conservative Party of Canada. Certainly Carney doesn’t (I don’t know much about the other MP’s views). I’m saying that if the former Progressive Conservative Party of Canada had not merged itself out of existence, Carney (and quite possibly also the other MP) would be in that party rather than the Liberals. With the current federal party configuration, Carney is indeed within the centrist big tent of the Liberals, but very much economically to Trudeau’s right.

To be clearer on the tangent I said was off-topic, I am not saying Carney is opposed to engaging thoroughly with China. He isn’t. But that’s more of a Conservative position than a Trudeau-style Liberal position.

Evidence: former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper is the one who signed a major free trade agreement with China which has a really long duration (for some purposes a full 31 years), which allows Chinese state-owned enterprises to sue the Canadian government like private investors, and which is in many ways asymmetrical in China’s favour. Not Trudeau. Look up 2014 FIPA if you want more info on that agreement.

The Trudeau quote you cited is real, but Trudeau’s actual actions have been far less pro-China than either Harper’s or Carney’s. Keep in mind that plenty of the criticism which Trudeau received over that quote came from within the Liberal party, meaning it isn’t like the Liberal party is disproportionately filled with CCP admirers. Some individuals will have that viewpoint in both major parties, but it’s certainly not accurate to say that it’s more dominant among the Liberals than the Conservatives.

Also be careful about assuming that the National Post will present things fairly. Like many (maybe even most?) well-known Canadian newspapers, they are part of Postmedia, which is majority-owned by an American financial firm with close ties to the US Republican Party. Their non-opinion news articles generally do avoid factual falsehoods, but they often use style and selective omission to present a very biased view of the truth in the service of right-wing messaging goals.

[joenot443]

It seems disingenuous to suggest that the choices Trudeau made in his cabinet aren’t still being felt by the LPC and the rest of the country to this day.

Painting Carney as a progressive conservative doesn’t seem like a good faith position, I’m skeptical of your earnestness here.

[jkaplowitz]

> It seems disingenuous to suggest that the choices Trudeau made in his cabinet aren’t still being felt by the LPC and the rest of the country to this day.

I agree that would be disingenuous, but I never said that. Of course the choices made by every Canadian prime minister in their cabinet are still being felt by their party and the rest of the country slightly over a year after they leave office. Trudeau is no exception.

> Painting Carney as a progressive conservative doesn’t seem like a good faith position, I’m skeptical of your earnestness here.

It’s a very widely held position and widely discussed in many sources.

As one bit of evidence that he has some appeal to the conservative wing of the political spectrum, Carney himself stated in February 2025 that former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper had offered him the role of finance minister in 2012. The response by Harper-era staffers tried to make him look as bad as they could without lying, which is unsurprising treatment of a then-Liberal leadership candidate given how partisan politics works nowadays, but notably they never denied that what he actually said was accurate.

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mark-carney-stephen-harper-...