Canada’s Mark Carney and the legacy of an economist-PM

Manmohan Singh is dead, long live Manmohan Singh! Mark Carney, the new Prime Minister of Canada, has had a career not very different from India's economist-Prime Minister, who died last year. If Singh was the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Carney was the Governor of the central banks of not one, but two countries — Canada and the UK. Both were finance ministers, although Carney was a peg lower as the deputy minister in Canada's department of finance. Carney and Singh got their doctoral degrees from the University of Oxford.

Most important of all — Carney's challenge now is Canada's economy, just as Singh's gargantuan challenge was India's economy in 1991, when he became Finance Minister. As Prime Minister in 2004, development continued to occupy most of Singh's time. Unlike India 34 years ago, Canada's economy was only facing surmountable problems until Donald Trump started a trade war with it, the closest ally and economic partner of the US.

Besides, Trump is threatening to make Canada the 51st state of the US. That has prompted Carney's political slogan for the coming election — 'Canada strong'. With that, his rival and Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre's poll slogan 'Canada first' has lost its edge. It now sounds like plagiarism of Trump's "America first."

Until the 47th US President threw down the gauntlet and began referring to previous PM Justin Trudeau as Governor Trudeau, seriously offending the sensibilities of most Canadians, it was presumed that Conservatives would win the next election due by the outer deadline of October 20. Latest opinion polls, however, suggest that with Carney as Liberal Party leader, electoral fortunes may be reversed.

There is still a long way to go for any definite prediction. Increasingly, Canadian voters appear to have been impressed by their new PM's unequivocal assertion that "Canadians know that new threats demand new ideas and a new plan." Carney said in his acceptance speech that "they know new challenges demand new leadership." If he succeeds in bringing Liberals back to power, it will be like Trump's upset win over Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Public discourse in India tends to exaggerate India's place and role in every global development. The domestic media now finds an "India angle" where none exists, or if it does, it is actually minor. Carney's reference to India since the day he threw his hat in the ring for Liberal Party leadership has made front page news in most English newspapers in this country.

A perusal of his transcripts shows that among the hundreds of thousands of words he has spoken during his campaign to succeed Trudeau, Carney has said only three sentences about India. They are noteworthy, all the same, because they were said even as the new PM was otherwise effusive in praise of Trudeau. India was a pet hate for Trudeau. It is entirely possible that Carney said what he did because he had been briefed about what has been recently going on behind closed doors between India and Canada to reset their bilateral relations. In many western democracies, potential new leaders receive daily security briefings even before being elected, unlike in India.

In one of the three sentences, Carney has acknowledged that "we have an opportunity to rebuild our relationship with India." But caution is paramount because he is not offering India a blank cheque. The key to improving bilateral relations is that "there needs to be a shared sense of values around that commercial relationship and if I am Prime Minister, I will look forward to that opportunity."

It was Trudeau's "sense of values" which wrecked Canada's relations with India in the first place. It augurs well for a rapprochement that extraneous factors which were not there when relations began spiralling downward now exist. The most impactful of these factors is Trump. His erratic and ill-considered actions are prompting every country to forge new alliances and mend ruptured ones like the one underway between Ottawa and New Delhi.

On the Indian side, definite indications of a thaw began appearing in statements and briefings by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) late last year. This gathered speed with Trudeau's resignation in the first week of January. A new Canadian high commissioner and deputy high commissioner are likely to be in place by autumn, if not earlier. Vice versa, India's head of mission will take up his post in Ottawa.

The irony is that a diplomatic spat which erupted after the killing of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar was largely insulated from the rest of India-Canada relations throughout this episode. Even after Trudeau alleged in the House of Commons of complicity by Indian agents in Nijjar's murder, the Premier of Saskatchewan province, Scott Moe, visited India. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar praised the partnership with Saskatchewan, on which India is heavily dependent for import of lentils and one variety of wheat, among other items. Another visitor was Ontario's Minister of Economic Development and Trade Victor Fedeli.

When diplomatic relations with Canada are normalised, Ottawa will hopefully stop sending Indo-Canadians to its High Commission in New Delhi and consular posts in Bengaluru, Chandigarh and Mumbai. India has long matured as an emerging power to be influenced by sentiment of that kind. It has been New Delhi's experience that Indo-Canadians, including a former high commissioner, looked at their postings as an opportunity to promote themselves in their native places in India and with their extended families, instead of doing their best for promoting bilateral relations.

One galling incident comes to mind. During Trudeau's disastrous India visit, the Tricolour national flag was flown upside down during one event. The MEA protested. Instead of controlling the damage, an Indo-Canadian diplomat, who managed that event, blamed the event management company and refused to take responsibility or apologise.

Indo-Canadian diplomats posted to India have a false sense of entitlement. If they don't even know how to position India's national flag, it speaks of a serious flaw in their management of relations.