Mark Carney took the benefit of the anti-Trump mood when he won the Canada election and over- promised about what he could deliver. As parliament in Ottawa resumes there is chatter about how much he can actually make stick.
Donald Trump has imposed punishing tariffs on some sectors of the economy, like steel and autos, but has granted a majority of Canadian goods a broad tariff exemption under the current US-Mexico-Canada free trade deal. Recent opinion polling suggests that voters are feeling less panicked by Trump but increasingly worried about the economy. A recent poll indicated that Canadians felt Carney was too focused on the US president at the expense of other pressing concerns.
Mark Carney, 116 March 1965 7.56am Fort Smith, NT, Canada, was sworn in on 14 March this year at 11.28 am Ottawa, which has a financially-blocked Pluto in the 8th plus a tricky, swampy Saturn, Sun, North Node, Neptune and Scheat in the 10th opposition a 4th house Moon which suggests a less than robust approach and one at odds with the electorate’s wishes and security (Moon in 4th). The late Virgo Moon will be in line with the approaching Virgo Eclipse as it also opposes the Neptune – with tr Neptune Saturn in hard aspect as well all winter which points to an electorate worrying about security.
One of Carney’s problems is that he has an over-hopeful, high-finance Jupiter opposition Neptune which sits on top of the Canada tough-frontiersman Saturn in Scorpio opposition Pluto. So whatever momentary uplift he offered to the voters, once the dust settled they would start to worry about his ability to deliver. On the Carney/Canada relationship chart by 2026 tr Pluto will continue to conjunct the composite Neptune and square the composite Venus as the early hopes start to fade with financial realities biting.
The Bank of Canada chart, 11 March 1935 is showing the strain over the next two years plus with the Solar Arc Pluto conjunct Mars in 2026 and SA Mars opposition Pluto in 2027.
The Canada country chart, 1 July 1867 12 am Ottawa, if the start time is accurate, is changing its future outlook and direction as well as its friends with Pluto moves this year into the 11th house for years to come; and sensing a lessening of old ties and ambitions with an uncertain tr Saturn Neptune moving through the 12th. Tr Uranus through the 2nd will make for financial ups and downs for several years ahead, not necessarily disastrous but less steady than before. Tr Jupiter through the 4th this year will make the country keen to find security within their own borders and will bounce out with more exuberance from July 2026 for a year with tr Jupiter through their 5th.
Canada’s relationship with the USA, never amiable at the best of times is under strain exactly now with tr Pluto making the final square to the composite Saturn; with uncertainty in 2026 and a tussle for the upper hand in 2027.
Carney’s personal chart with its stellium in Virgo of Uranus, Moon, Pluto, Mars sitting across from his Pisces Sun, Venus and Saturn square a Gemini North Node is more impetuous and unpredictable than his image might suggest. Plus a Boris Johnson head-in-the-clouds Jupiter opposition Neptune. His Solar Arc Midheaven will oppose his Moon, Pluto, Mars over the coming year into 2027 which suggests slow progress if not absolute deadlock. Whether or not he will last the course is not clear from his chart but he is certainly running into total catastrophe towards the end of this decade.
I see you know little about Québec politics, which is understandable since they are inscrutable to the English Canadian mind. You may look to Pablo Rodriguez as a savior, but he is simply not taken seriously. He is increasingly known as the man who has nothing to say. The pro-secessionist party, the PQ, has a 29-point lead among francophones in the latest poll. They are over 75% of the population. Rodriguez is a blow-out, perhaps one of the weakest Liberal leaders ever.
Carney will be the third prime minister to face the threat of secession. The others you mention lasted only months or were elected once that threat was over.
As for Alberta, all I can say is that a province that won’t even pay for its own police force or public pension fund, and continues to spread lies about equalization, can only be met with knowing smiles in Québec.
It is no use pretending to knowledge you do not have.
André:
Your condescending tone is laughable and easily dismissed because it is now demonstrated that I knew enough about Quebec politics to have corrected your erroneous statement that Mark Carney will be the third Canadian prime minister to face a separatist government in Quebec when in fact, that there have already been six: I listed them for you in my first post in this thread. I also know enough about Quebec politics to have made a second post to correct an omission, adding Bernard Landry to the list of Parti Québecois (Péquiste) Premiers of Quebec whom former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien outlasted because Landry’s name was omitted in my original post. In my defence, I would add that most Quebeckers found Landry to be forgettable, too, and rendered their verdict at the polls on April 14, 2003 by electing Jean Charest’s Liberals in a landslide!
You now have moved the goalposts by writing: ”Carney will be the third prime minister to face the threat of secession.” Indeed, this statement is true because Carney has Alberta to worry about, a fact mentioned in my original post. An astute observer will note that you didn’t state whence the current threat facing Carney comes, but it comes from Alberta, not Quebec. Currently, there is an active campaign by Albertan secessionists to gather signatures on a petition to force Danielle Smith’s provincial government to hold a referendum on the question of Albertan independence. Quebec separatism is not a threat to Carney now because there is no guarantee that the secessionist Parti Québécois will win the next election because it hasn’t been held. Topping it off is your foolish declaration: ”It is no use pretending to knowledge you do not have.” That’s really rich, André, seeing how YOU have no knowledge of who will win the next election in Quebec because it hasn’t been called!!
Sure, polls that Pierre St.Paul-Plamondon is currently the most popular of the provincial party leaders in Quebec and that the Péquistes lead the other parties, but what guarantee is there that Plamondon will win a majority government in a field with five parties each receiving at least five percent or more support in the polls, let alone win a minority government at the next election?
As I stated earlier, counting chickens before they hatch is foolish. Pierre Poilievre looked like a sure bet to form a majority government for the last eighteen months of the Justin Trudeau government but when we Canadians went to the polls this past April 28th, Poilievre wound up losing his own seat in the riding of Carleton and his Conservative Party lost to Prime Minister Carney’s Liberals. Poilievre only returned to the House of Commons this week because a backbencher from Alberta in a solidly Conservative riding stepped down so that a by-election could take place, one that Poilievre won.
Even were Plamondon to become Premier of Quebec next year, a poll this week showed that the majority of Quebeckers don’t want a referendum on independence. Support for independence is only at 35%. It was at just under 41% during the 1980 referendum that René Lévesque’s Péquiste government had called and at 49% in the 1995 referendum called by Premier Jacques Parizeau. I suspect that our passports will still have King Charles requesting that foreign governments be nice to us because it doesn’t appear that any République Québécoise will be issuing you one anytime soon.
As for your absurd and false claim that I know little about Quebec politics, my bilingual father was born in a town in the Outaouais, I myself was in French Immersion programs in Ottawa schools from Kindergarten to Grade Twelve, and decades ago, I graduated with a High Honours B.A. in English and History from Carleton University. My Third Year professor for a course on Quebec history from 1860 to 1980 was the late Dr. Jean-Pierre Wallot, a former head of the National Archives of Canada and ardent champion of Quebec independence whose appointment by the Mulroney government to head National Archives was controversial, especially when the Archives decided to build a massive conservation facility across the Ottawa River in the then barren eastern suburbs of Gatineau, Quebec instead of in Ottawa where there were more centrally located plots of suitable land already owned by the federal government at Tunney’s Pasture or on the Lebreton Flats that were much more easily accessible by public transit. Wallot was actually suspected by some historians of recommending the Gatineau location for the conservation centre so that valuable Canadian historical artifacts could be held for ransom as bargaining chips in the event of a successful referendum in support of Quebec independence!
I also like to point out that one of the best biographies of Maurice Duplessis written by anybody was by a bilingual anglophone who took the time to go through the documents and make his case: Conrad Black, aka Lord Crossharbour. Being a francophone Québécois doesn’t necessarily endow you with a greater understanding of Québécois society, politics and history.
I’ve worked in bilingual positions within the federal service, watch and listen to the news on Radio-Canada and TVA to maintain my French, and I read books in French, the last being Claudine Bourbonnais’ excellent _Le destin c’est les autres_. I have a far better understanding of Quebec than you think. Speaking of books, some of the texts I came to read while taking Dr. Wallot’s course at Carleton were co-authored by the recently deceased sociologist, Guy Rocher, another ardent champion of Quebec independence. I have also read the memoirs of René Lévesque and Lucien Bouchard.
As for Alberta, its lot of secessionists appear to be grossly entitled buffoons whining about a fourth straight federal Conservative Party electoral loss to the Liberal Party of Canada, and their numbers are only about 30%. There is no legitimate cultural argument to justify Albertan independence, unlike Quebec where the overwhelming majority of the population speaks and lives in French and have been using the civil code instead of common law for non-criminal judicial proceedings. Albertans have not called for a withdrawal from the Canada Pension plan or for a provincial police force because of the unnecessary costs involved in setting up a provincial pension plan or to create a police force.
For future reference, André, please don’t presume that others don’t know a subject as well or even better than you claim to know. In the meantime, take the egg on your face and make an omelette. Eggs are too expensive to waste these days, and in the first two months of 2025, American authorities at the Canada-U.S. made more seizures of them than they did of fentanyl.
John
Canada has mounting problems ahead. The Saturn-Neptune conjunction in its 12th will square its Sun-Uranus conjunction in the 4th next year, marking epochal change. It will soon have its first Neptune return in its first house forcing it to face reality or retreat into denial, as it does on many issues. Pluto will slowly make its way into a T-square with its Saturn-Pluto opposition at the end of the decade, which may be a brutal wake-up call.
Carney’s first budget in early October appears to be headed to a deficit of almost 100 billionC$, a record by far. He has a minority government, so will have difficutly passing it. His honeymoon appears to be ending, so it is all downhill from here. Next year, he will be the third Canadian prime miisiter to face a separatist government in Québec, where the current government is mired in scandal and incompetence.
Actually, André, should Pierre-St. Paul Plamondon’s pro-secessionist Parti Québécois come to power in the next provincial election, then Prime Minister Mark Carney would be the seventh Canadian prime minister to face a separatist government, not the third. Up to now, six Canadian prime ministers have faced pro-separatist provincial governments in Quebec.
During the first period of Péquiste rule under Premiers René Lévesque and Pierre-Marc Johnson (1976-1985), there were four Canadian Prime Ministers: Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Joe Clark, John Turner and Brian Mulroney.
When the Péquistes returned to power in Quebec in September 1994 under Jacques Parizeau, Jean Chrétien was the Canadian prime minister. Chrétien outlasted Premier Parizeau and his successor, Lucien Bouchard.
The Parti Quebecois had a brief minority government under Premier Pauline Marois from 2012 to 2014, at which time Stephen Harper was Canada’s prime minister.
While I agree with you that Premier François Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec is mired in scandal and incompetence, you may be counting chickens before they are hatched in assuming that the Péquistes will return to power in next year’s provincial election. Certainly, Pierre-St. Paul Plamondon is popular and riding high in the polls right now, but the Liberal Party of Quebec has elected a new leader in Pablo Rodriguez, and polls still show that a healthy majority of the province’s population are opposed to independence.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s real problems with secessionists are in Western Canada where dark money from American conservatives is financing separatist sentiment in Alberta. They covet Alberta’s oil and natural gas, but they would also like Saskatchewan’s reserves of potash, too, if they can get them.
Oops! I forgot that former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien outlasted a third leader of the pro-secessionist Parti Québécois who served as Premier of Quebec, Bernard Landry. Chretien was still Canada’s prime minister when Landry’s party lost in a landslide at the polls to Jean Charest’s Liberal Party of Quebec on April 14, 2003.
This mistake of mine doesn’t change the fact that up to now, six Canadian prime ministers have faced pro-secessionists provincial governments holding power in Quebec.
The “epochal change” you mention is very concerning. My fear is invasion, because the US Administration is volatile and untrustworthy, and eyeing all our natural resources, including our vast lands to the North bordering the Arctic Ocean and all our fresh water.