Ellen Murphy @ellnm - Twitter Profile

ellnm retweeted

over 1 year ago

Carney eschews anti-business populism. The Conservatives should too Over the weekend, Prime Minister Carney met with a group of senior energy executives in Calgary and reportedly said to them: “Thank you…for what you’ve been doing to help build our country…build our economy, build a future.” It’s a straightforward message, but it’s also a rather extraordinary one, even if it shouldn’t be. Over the past decade or longer, we’ve grown so accustomed to politicians on both sides of the spectrum taking populist shots at business leaders that it seems strikingly unconventional for a prime minister to laud them. Especially when it’s not for their corporate social responsibility or their civic philanthropy or their commitment to diversity, but instead for their basic profit-maximizing efforts to invest capital and build stuff. Carney, of course, didn’t come up through conventional politics. A big part of his career was in corporate boardrooms making those types of decisions. This unique background has seemingly inoculated him from the cheap, knee-jerk, anti-business populism that has come to pervade our politics. That’s a positive aspect of his political persona. Politicians shouldn’t be pro-business per se. They ought to instead be pro-market, as Milton Friedman used to say. But that doesn’t mean being anti-business either. Today, a lot of them—including too many Conservatives—have come to be neither pro-market nor pro-business. They’re inclined to both intervene in markets and slag businesses and business leaders. Carney’s more favourable disposition towards business is therefore a useful corrective. And there’s evidence that it might extend more broadly within this government. Last week, Ministers Evan Solomon and Melanie Joly both publicly congratulated Bell and TELUS for major investment announcements. This is a major contrast from the anti-teleco politics of the past 15 years or so. What’s disappointing is that Conservative MPs were critical of the ministers for “blatant cheerleading” on behalf of these companies. Cheerleading? If a government sees its role as creating the conditions for private capital, then isn’t it a good thing if companies invest in the economy? Isn’t it a case of markets working? Isn’t that something worth celebrating? Business leaders aren’t going to like everything the Carney government does. In fact, there’s a strong likelihood that on certain files—including internet regulation, for instance—the government will be bad for markets and businesses. But the prime minister’s anti-populism disposition is a nice change from what we’ve come to expect. Entrepreneurs and executives occasionally deserve a thank you for their contribution to the country.

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Ellen Murphy

@ellnm

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