Media quickly adopting Carney-speak as the nation moves on from a leader whose name dare not be spoken

It’s a new era and the once-sacred “T-word” has become profane.

AI image of “the predecessor” generated using Meta AI

Curiously, in an otherwise straightforward, sound piece of reporting this week, the Globe and Mail’s Laura Stone commits the fault that typifies current Canadian media mush-mouthing.

She lapses, seemingly unconsciously, into Carney-speak from the get-go.

“Prime Minister Mark Carney has broken with his predecessor’s convention of releasing mandate letters that detail the goals for each of his new ministers and their departments, instead issuing a single short document that outlines broad priorities with few specifics,” her opening sentence informs us.

Hardly a five alarm banshee revelation about a topic over which Canadians will howl or huzzah from the rooftops, right? The problem? The word “predecessor.”

It’s the deflecting noun that the current PM used with OCD insistence throughout the recent federal election campaign and, indeed, from the moment he chased his “predecessor” off the stage and assumed power as our unelected prime minister. It was of a piece with the phrase “preceding government” that he used to refer to the administration that his “predecessor” led for the decade just passed.

That would be the (proper noun) Liberal government of (proper nouns) Justin Pierre James Trudeau, aka Justin, aka numerous other improper nouns appended to his baptismal moniker by Canadians who were less than his stupendous fans. There were a lot of them.

You might also remember Justin Trudeau as the predecessor Prime Minister who was at 22 percent in the polls, and Justin Trudeau as the Prime Minister of the preceeding government whose Liberal party was at a historic 16 percent bottom feeding low before that self-same Justin Trudeau resigned five months ago.

Of course, it was entirely coincidental that Prime Minister Mark Carney, as he was called even before he won the Liberal Party leadership (never mind the general election) and replaced Justin Trudeau, neglected, errr, ummm, forgot to call his “predecessor” by name or affirm that the “preceding government” to which he referred was, in fact, the Liberal Party government led by one Justin Pierre James Trudeau.

Or, without getting all heebie-jeebie conspiratorial here, perhaps it wasn’t such a coincidence after all. After all, there is the unexplained mystery of Carney neglecting, errr, forgetting his “predecessor’s” name when that very “predecessor” (i.e., Justin Pierre James Trudeau for those charting at home) hired pre-unelected Prime Minister Mark Carney as a “special economic advisor” to the “preceding government” and, in fact, offered him a post as unelected finance minister, which was politely declined because, well, why be # 2 when the fix is in to make you El Supremo?

Perhaps, somehow, somewhere, some reporters with nowt else to do on a slow news day could dig into this “what’s in a name”mystery and solve it. But they don’t. And they won’t. And, as Laura Stone innocently exemplified, they have slipped into the obfuscating speech pattern that has rendered the “predecessor” prime minister someone whose face should be on milk cartons so that if he’s ever spotted being bundled into a car trunk, his last known whereabouts can be reported to the Missing Persons bureau of the local constabulary and an Amber Alert sent out.

Yes, solving that mystery matters. Why? Because without that minimal level of history and historical sense, all that’s left of politics is the lying. Journalism long ago earned the sobriquets “history in a hurry” and “the first draft of history” precisely because of its capacity (and therefore its role) to tend the garden of plausible cause and effect in politics and, excuse the la-di-da language, society writ large.

Even at the level of simply avoiding the laughably ludicrous, that tending role is important. Not to pick on the Globe and Mail, but recently one of its writers penned (inadvertently I assume) an absolute howler of an analysis piece on why it was crucial for Prime Minister Mark Carney to (re-)appoint François-Phillipe Champagne as finance minister.

It was vital, the side-splitter insisted, to have someone with Champagne’s depth and experience running the money managing portfolio of the new government. The cut of Champagne’s jib would prevent bureaucrats from running riot over the incoming inexperienced administration and seeking to “green light” all their fantastical wish-fulfillment projects. Moreover, Champagne’s steely intellect forged by fire in the “preceding government” would serve the new Carney crew well in fending off media jackals with the sniff of scandal in their nostrils.

Ah, yeah. So here are a couple of flies in the analytical ointment that went unnoticed.

First, there’s the foundational claim of the Liberal Party during this spring’s election. While Carney is completely inexperienced in electoral politics, having never stepped an elected foot in the House of Commons, his stellar resume and vast involvement in global banking and finance was said to more than compensate for his greenness. Indeed, he would carry the whole of government on his stalwart shoulders unlike, just for example, Conservative leader Pierre Polievere, who had “never had a job” except for his 20 years as an MP and cabinet minister in the, wait for it, House of Commons.

But what now? According to the Globe “analysis,” it’s the experience of Champagne as finance minister that will compensate for the (previously irrelevant) inexperience of the prime minister to whom the finance minister reports; a prime minister, just to underscore, whose vast experience in finance is sufficient to get him – and Canada – through all manner of financial pickles.

Alas, things soured even further, analytically speaking. The finance minister, whose vast experience is supposed to save the financially superior prime minister from the pitfalls of his parliamentary inexperience, was actually appointed finance minister only on March 25 this year. That’s a mere two months of On the Job Training. Champagne is only marginally less a newbie to the finance portfolio than Carney is to the prime minister’s office. Newbie guides newbie. How’s that likely to work out?

We saw the answer in full cringing red-faced colour when the not vastly experienced finance minister announced there would be no federal budget this year. The not-at-all experienced prime minister then publicly countermanded the two-month-experienced finance minister a few days later and said, oh, yes, there would be a budget this year, but just not right now.

Call it the cause and effect of journalists adopting political talking points without bothering to ask the questions that are journalism’s historic raison d’être. Call it the cause and effect of journalists forgetting their job is to ask the questions that connect the dots between yesterday and today, not sound like a prime minister who dares not speak his “predecessor’s” name.

(Peter Stockland is a former Editor-in-Chief of the Montreal Gazette)