Take it from veteran columnist and financial writer Diane Francis.
"At a moment when Canada most needed to tread carefully, we've managed to score a classic goal on our own net," she writes. She is talking about Carney's latest gaffe in cancelling the Digital Services Tax (DST) on American tech companies, passed a year ago.
"The decision to start collecting the DST while we were engaged in delicate trade and security talks with the US has put us on the defensive and handed President Trump a convenient stick to beat us with," agreed former Chamber of Commerce CEO Perrin Beatty.
In negotiations, contentious issues should be negotiated between the two parties -- not unilaterally imposed by one nation just before talks begin. Duh! Why didn't Carney understand this? At least he should have kept the tax in abeyance as a bargaining chip, but not implemented, while negotiations were underway.
But Carney is a global banker -- not a negotiator and certainly not a politician. Trump, of course, is a master of both. Carney is used to dealing with "yes men" from the top down. Politics only succeeds from the bottom up.
So, having won the election with his "elbows up" refrain, he has now switched to "knee down". What a joke. What a disappointment for all those who voted for him. They were duped.
And to add insult to injury, he has not heeded the first rule of negotiations, which is that you do not put up a "D" team against an "A" team. But sure enough, he has appointed his "D" team to lead the charge: Kristin Hillman, a career civil servant and diplomat, most recently ambassador to the US, and Dominic LeBlanc, a professional Liberal politician, well-known tippler and bosom buddy of the hapless disaster Justin Trudeau. Neither has any experience in business, trade, investment, entrepreneurship, technology or finance.
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We're in deep trouble with Carney |
They will be eaten alive by Trump's team, headed by US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, a successful entrepreneur, self-made billionaire, technology expert and philanthropist who was named "One of the world's 100 most influential people." Hillman, hitherto familiar with only diplomacy and playing nice, will end up battered, bruised and bloodied after Lutnick gets finished with her across a table.
Wow, way to go!
I have said from the get-go that Carney would be a calamitous prime minister. So far, I have been proven right.