Donna Kennedy-Glans: Carney’s unity push risks replacing debate with managed consensus

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks at the 2026 Liberal National Convention in Montreal Saturday, April 11, 2026. (John Kenney / MONTREAL GAZETTE)

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For years, I worked alongside one of Alberta’s most respected business leaders, the late Charlie Fischer, longtime CEO of several major Canadian energy companies. An engineer by training with a sharp mind and commanding presence, Charlie could build almost anything — pipelines, plants, businesses — but he refused to steamroll differing points of view, including mine when we disagreed.

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A tall, larger-than-life figure with strong convictions, he was frequently courted by political recruiters. Yet the public spectacle of parties bashing each other in Question Period and in the media made him deeply uncomfortable. Even when former Prime Minister Joe Clark sat down with him and explained that the job of the official Opposition is to oppose and hold government to account, Charlie thought it was a waste of time and talent. He could never be persuaded to run for office.

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In Charlie’s world, engineers confronting a shared problem would sit down together to solve it, all the while knowing that competition remained the ultimate goal.

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If Charlie were alive today, I dare to speculate he would welcome an invitation to join the Carney cabinet. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s brand of pragmatism has quietly overturned many of the ideological enthusiasms that once defined the modern Liberal party. Having inherited a broken and unpopular party, Carney has, in just one year, steered it toward a more results-oriented approach that borrows heavily from conservative priorities. It is technically possible that Charlie wouldn’t even need to be elected to be brought into cabinet — though he would almost certainly be encouraged to run as soon as possible.

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Another reason? Carney has succeeded in making overt partisan politics less relevant — and Charlie deplored partisanship. When Liberal delegates gathered in Montreal for their national convention this past weekend, partisanship was swept under the carpet in favour of “widening the circle” to defend national unity.

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“This is not the time for politics as usual, for petty differences or political point scoring,” Carney told the cheering crowd. “United, we will build … a Canada strong that no one can ever take away.”

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The tent is now so wide that if Heather McPherson, the NDP MP for Edmonton Strathcona, had been alert to the direction of events, she might well have reached out to Carney ahead of Monday’s by-elections to follow in the footsteps of Nunavut NDP MP Lori Idlout and her ideological rival Marilyn Gladu, the former social conservative MP.

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Yes, the mechanics of power — judicial appointments, Senate selections and tight control of policy and purse strings — remain firmly partisan. But overt partisanship has taken a back seat to a bigger question: Who is better positioned to deliver what many consider a “conservative” agenda? To some of my friends, Carney is the best conservative leader the Liberals have ever had.