FIRST READING: Mark Carney’s left-wing enemies

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Generalized anti-capitalists

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Earlier this month, Carney held his Canada Investment Summit in Toronto, pitching international financiers on a list of pre-approved, shovel-ready resource projects. And the event attracted an estimated 1,000 protesters.

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The theme of the protest was kind of all over the place, but it included the environmental group Dogwood,  World Beyond War and Common Horizon, a group opposing “corporate greed.” Various labour unions and Indigenous organizations also sent representatives.

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Common Horizon, for its part, said their members showed up because Canada is increasingly poorer and afflicted by toxic air and water, which is why Carney needs to “invest in us, not put our country up for sale for the ultra-rich.”

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Organized labour

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Labour unions – particularly public sector ones – will usually come around to fighting any government in power, even if it’s NDP.

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But in just the last month, several events have aligned to make Carney a particularly potent bogeyman for organized labour.

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Carney’s plan to privatize four Canadian airports incensed the Union of Canadian Transportation Employees, who told him that they’re not for sale. “Selling a stake in our airports, whether to foreign or domestic investors, is not in the interest of the travelling public,” read a Sept. 15 statement.

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And then Carney’s newly tabled Building Canada Strong Act really galvanized union opposition because of its provisions streamlining Ottawa’s ability to order federal employees back to work if their strike runs counter to the “national interest.”

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The Canadian Labour Congress, which has supported a lot of Carney’s efforts on trade thus far, responded to the bill saying “we cannot have our elbows up against Trump with our hands tied behind our backs at the bargaining table.”

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Migrant activists

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Migrant activists began targeting Liberals in late 2024 after then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to “turn off the taps” of a post-COVID spike in temporary migration higher than anything in the country’s history.

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In one particularly notable encounter, then Immigration Minister Marc Miller told a House of Commons committee that he expected Canada’s non-permanent residents to leave the country voluntarily – only to be immediately confronted outside by activists telling him they would do no such thing.

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“Mr. Miller, we are the people you are trying to kick out of the country. We are human beings and we are not taps to be turned on and off,” said a representative with the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change as Miller pushed past him.

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Carney has continued to pursue reductions in student visas and other temporary migration streams, with the result that groups such as the Migrant Rights Network and the Canadian Council for Refugees have continued to frame his government as cruel deportationists.

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The Migrant Rights Network, in particular, seeks immediate permanent status for anyone currently in the country, and accuses the Carney government of abandoning them to “wage theft, unlivable homes, abuse and mistreatment that threatens their wellbeing and our collective society.”

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Anti-militarists

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One of the more defining features of the Carney government is how it has opened the floodgates on military spending. The Department of Defence has effectively been running on a shoestring since the 1990s, but Carney has nearly doubled its budget overnight.

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Just as the House of Commons was reopening this week, a small delegation of women’s peace activists held a press conference on Parliament Hill to denounce the “dangerous” and “carbon-intensive” expansion of the Canadian Armed Forces.

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“We are opposed to the federal government’s plan to rebuild, rearm and reinvest in the Canadian military,” said Tamara Lorincz with the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace. Also in attendance was the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom-Canada.