The Sage Newsletter: The Opposable Prime Minister
Edward Greenspon
In 2007, Roger Martin, then dean of the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto, wrote a book called The Opposable Mind. It argued that the most successful leaders tend to be “integrative thinkers,” by which he meant they tackled problems holistically rather than breaking them down into component parts. Instead of seeking trade-offs, they are at ease with the sort of non-linear and multi-dimensional solutions that wouldn’t occur to conventional thinkers.
Integrative leaders, Martin explained, have an “ability to face the tension of opposing ideas constructively and, instead of choosing one at the expense of the other, generate a creative resolution of the tension in the form of a new idea that contains elements of the opposing ideas but is superior to each.”
There is no evidence Martin imagined Mark Carney, then senior associate deputy minister of finance, would one day become Prime Minister of Canada. But there is plenty of evidence that Carney’s is an opposable mind.
Exhibit A: “Canada Strong will help make America great again,” Carney uttered last week. To critics, these thoughts don’t belong in a single sentence. Carney views it differently.
It’s the same with Exhibit B: increasing oil production with a mind to reducing emissions through carbon pricing and methane and carbon capture. On the week Carney formed his post-election cabinet, I wrote that “he views these, at least for now, as complementary not conflicting goals, as counterweights not competing poles.” Despite caucus unease, he still does.
Exhibit C: Last week, Energy Minister Tim Hodgson participated in the announcement that an Asian-facing LNG export facility in northwest British Columbia will sell production to a German utility. How could that happen, many wondered, given Europe’s distance from the Pacific Ocean? Well, through the integrative magic of global trading markets and financial instruments known as swaps – the Germans essentially can swap their contracted shipments for European-bound gas.
Four summers ago, following the invasion of Ukraine, an energy-insecure German Chancellor visited Canada and pleaded with the government of the day to replace Russian gas supplies. A checkers-playing Justin Trudeau retorted that there had “never been a strong business case” for LNG from the east coast. Without natural gas export infrastructure in place, it was a moot point.
In contrast, the chess players in the current government tend to be undeterred by such constraints. They instead considered the whole problem and found the means to overcome geography in selling LNG to Europe.
At the heart of this government’s agenda rests a two-track strategy, one that commentators to caucus members are having difficulty reconciling: the urgent need to diversify away from dependence on the U.S. and the still-pressing need to maintain maximum access to the very same market. In fact, they are perfectly reconcilable, even necessarily so.
On Wednesday and Thursday, we saw the opposable mind turn to our dealings with the U.S. on the eve of CUSMA negotiations. With a flick of the procurement pen, the government announced it is negotiating exclusively with Sweden’s Saab for early warning GlobalEye planes. We were reminded this deal is in keeping with efforts to upgrade our military while reducing equipment purchases from U.S. suppliers - a not-so-subtle warning shot over the still untaken decision whether to purchase more U.S.-made F-35 fighter jets.
Then in New York City on Thursday, Carney delivered a multi-headed message on U.S. soil that a) Canada is becoming stronger and more self-reliant and b) we enjoy advantages in various areas of strategic importance to the United States. This was not the voice of the supplicant but of the partner, a partner cognizant of who is the more powerful party, to be sure, but also aware it is not without its own points of leverage. Thus his talk of a Fortress North America – a means to combine forces in specific areas where the respective national interests of the two countries are well aligned.
Carney touched on everything from Arctic security to energy and critical minerals. He promoted the importance of a new government-backed graphite mine in Quebec, which will be the largest of its kind in the G7, to energy, manufacturing and military uses. Along with Canada’s long-standing strength in uranium, potash and nickel, he positioned Canada’s critical minerals bounty as essential to continued U.S. economic and military leadership (if we can actually build mines and smelters).
Then there was aluminum, hugely consequential because the U.S. is hard-pressed to come up with the energy supplies necessary to maintain its lead over China in AI. Aluminum has long been my favourite example of the self-defeating nature of U.S. trade policy. The Prime Minister noted that the electricity contained in Canada’s ridiculously tariffed aluminum exports is the equivalent to 10 Hoover dams.
The aluminum industry provides an even more telling analogy in light of the intense AI competition with China. If the U.S. persists in a desire to onshore the equivalent of its aluminum imports from Canada, it would have to forego 460 data centres.
That’s not even playing checkers; it’s back to marbles.
For some reason, all this reminds me of Mackenzie King, Canada’s Prime Minister for 21 years between 1921 and 1948 and a man similarly familiar as Carney with U.S. powerbrokers from his pre-political career. King forever baffled the pundits with his contradictory thoughts. His ‘conscription if necessary but not necessarily conscription’ stands as one of the most famous punchlines in Canadian political history.
Yet somehow he survived in an unforgiving vocation longer than any other of our 24 PMs. King guided Canada during the Second World War, won re-election in 1945 while Churchill was going down in flames in Britain, and is the father of unemployment insurance, old-aged pensions, family allowance (today’s national child benefit), and the post-war reconstruction of the Canadian economy.
Could Mark Carney turn out to be the, er, reincarnation of Mackenzie King, without the creepiness? F-35s if necessary but not necessarily F-35s, anyone?
One of my favourite media commentators off-handedly observed this week that Carney is a man who holds complex thoughts but that’s unfortunately not the way modern political communications work.
Perhaps. But more than a year in, his approval rating stands at 60 percent.The final arbiters, voters, seem to appreciate that the current moment calls for artful chess players.
On the other hand, democracies are messier places than boardrooms. You have to carry most of the people most of the time - most of whom are far removed from the practise of integrating “the tension of opposing ideas constructively.”
As per this week’s Sage Roundtable, there are going to be bumps along the way. The prudent course is for government to communicate a comprehensive plan, be upfront that it may entail sacrifice, and fully explain every step of the way.
That’s the way to move from opposable Prime Minister to opposable Canada.
Also in Sage this week:
The rarely dormant unity challenge is back big-time as we discuss on this week’s Sage Podcast with former Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion and former Alberta Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk.
Martin Coiteux argues that the deepening Canada-EU partnership is more than a geopolitical hedge against an unreliable Washington — it's a chance for genuine mutual improvement. Europe, he writes, has something Canada desperately needs: a working single market. Canada has something Europe still lacks: mature fiscal federalism. The lesson? The most valuable partnership isn't only one that makes both stronger together, but one that makes each stronger on its own.
https://substack.com/@theverticaldispatch/note/c-268682469?r=1pgr4n&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Makes good sense, Ed!