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John Ivison: Carney’s credibility faces friendly fire in the war with Iran

A prolonged conflict in the Middle East would have a potentially corrosive impact on the prime minister's glowing approval ratings

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It is progress that the Prime Minister’s Office is now letting Canadians know when Mark Carney speaks with President Donald Trump, but it would be much better if the read-out that followed didn’t subtract from the sum of human knowledge.

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The PMO said the two leaders held a conversation on Sunday about the economy, developments in the Middle East and trade relations.

John Ivison: Carney’s credibility faces friendly fire in the war with Iran Back to video

What wasn’t clear was who called whom and what, if anything, was achieved.

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From Prime Minister Carney’s point of view, we can assume he was forceful in his advice that the president should park his expectations of unconditional surrender from Iran and should instead declare an American victory as soon as possible.

To prolong the war in Iran risks unleashing the beast of inflation — if it is not already roaming the land — and it devours all incumbent governments it encounters, even blameless ones.

Oil prices rose to over US$100 for West Texas Intermediate on Monday before dipping to the mid-80s later in the day. A week ago, WTI was trading at US$71.

Even a temporary oil price shock increases the risk of stagflation — higher inflation and weaker growth — that would hurt markets and employment.

Canada’s resource industries stand to benefit: heavy sour crude grades like Western Canadian Select will gain because the crude flowing out of the Strait of Hormuz is also medium-to-heavy sour. Canola futures are up, too.

But the flip side is that Canadians are already witnessing gas prices at an average of over 150 cents a litre, up from an average of 128 cents a month ago, according to GasBuddy.

One farmer told me that urea fertilizer is now trading for $1,200 a tonne, up a third from when he bought last November.

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Carney undoubtedly passed on to Trump the concerns of the world leaders he met in India, Australia and Japan last week. Nearly half of India’s oil comes through the Straits of Hormuz.

Trump said on Sunday that a price spike at the pumps would be a “small price to pay” for global stability. But it’s far from clear that he has any idea how to deliver that stability.

When the prime minister said he supported efforts to denude Iran’s nuclear program last week, he likely envisaged a version of the 12-day war, when the U.S. and Israel attacked military targets last summer, without trying to decapitate the regime.

Instead, Trump and his deranged secretary of war have launched a campaign so haphazard it makes Dr. Strangelove look like a documentary.

Ottawa has been clear that Canada was not consulted on the strikes; that it did not participate in them and has no plans to participate in the future.

But Carney’s initial support for this muddle has proven to be the first real test of his credibility with his own party.

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Opposition leaders blast Carney's absence from Iran war debate Canadian Politics

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Anonymous Liberal MPs told the Hill Times that the prime minister should not have made any statement without consulting with his caucus, even though Parliament was on a break week and he was in Asia.

Will Greaves, an MP and former international relations professor from Victoria, released a video disagreeing with Carney’s initial position and it was endorsed by a number of other Liberals.

By March 3, the prime minister had softened his position, releasing a statement that called for de-escalation, while reiterating support for efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Carney is clearly sitting on a fence that divides Canadians (an Angus Reid Institute poll has 48 per cent opposing strikes), while attempting to avoid letting the iron enter his soul.

Polls suggest he is in a strong position at the moment. A Postmedia-Leger poll released last week suggested the Liberals have a 14-point lead on the Conservatives, which is in line with other recent polling. Not only do 93 per cent of Liberals approve of the government’s performance but so do 70 per cent of New Democrats, 55 per cent of Bloc Québécois supporters and 25 per cent of Conservatives.

Those numbers are said to be prompting deep rumblings of discontent in the Conservative caucus. The drama of Pierre Poilievre’s leadership is still playing out, with the prospect of more floor-crossers and three byelections, which, if the Liberals scored a clean sweep, would give them their majority.

But a prolonged conflict in the Middle East would have a potentially corrosive impact on those approval numbers. The rule of thumb is that every US$10 increase in the price of oil drives up the inflation rate by roughly 0.4 percentage points. The past week could add nearly one percentage point to inflation, if prices stay in the US$100 range.

Carney’s initial support for this muddle has proven to be the first real test of his credibility with his own party

Carney’s initial support for this muddle has proven to be the first real test of his credibility with his own party

Poilievre grasped at the lifeline Carney has provided in a press conference on Monday, accusing the prime minister of taking “four different positions (on Iran) in four days.”

Poilievre said Carney is trying “pander in all directions, while dividing our country and confusing our allies.”

He said the Conservatives are clear: “we support the removal of the theocratic terrorist regime in Iran, which has killed Canadian citizens, including shooting down a civilian aircraft that contained well over 100 Canadians, while terrorizing Persian and Jewish communities in our country.”

As far as regime change is concerned, the Opposition leader might as well ask to be flown to the moon, so he can play among the stars.

But he is on firmer ground when he said Canada should focus on what we can control at home, including developing projects to get Canadian resources to market and, critically, to ensuring that violence from abroad does not spill on to Canadian streets, as it appears to be doing. Poilievre noted that three synagogues have been shot at in Toronto in recent days, and the RCMP is investigating the disappearance of Masood Masjoody, a math instructor at Simon Fraser University who went missing in early February in Burnaby, B.C. Masjoody was a vocal online activist who was critical of the Iranian regime. While he had a checkered history of engaging in what the B.C. Court of Appeal judged “vexatious litigation” against people he considered enablers of the Iranian regime, his disappearance at this time is highly suspicious.

The government is trying to push its flagship anti-hate bill through Parliament, which would make it a crime to intimidate or obstruct people from accessing places of worship.

But the Liberal record of protecting the Jewish community and cracking down on supporters of the Iranian regime in Canada is lamentable.

B’nai Brith noted that there were 2,620 antisemitic incidents in Canada in 2020, prompting the Trudeau government to set up the Office of the Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism. In 2024, there were 6,219 such incidents and the office was recently abolished by Carney, having never been granted the resources to fund antisemitic education or augment synagogue security.

On Iran, it took until 2024 for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to be designated a terror organization in this country.

Last year, the Canadian Border Services Agency said it was actively investigating 66 individuals suspected of being senior Iranian government military, political or intelligence officials, all of whom would be inadmissible.

A Global News report in 2023 estimated the number of regime-linked people in Canada at 700 and the RCMP has acknowledged it has received reports of foreign interference being committed.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service said last year it is investigating death threats aimed at two Canadian journalists working for Iran International, a Persian-language TV channel. That followed the Iranian plot to assassinate former justice minister Irwin Cotler.

A B.C.-based coalition of lawyers called Stop IRGC has identified and reported 93 cases to police of IRGC members in Canada. But its founders are highly critical of the operational limitations that law enforcement faces when trying to counter Iranian transnational repression.

Poilievre said the Conservatives will be proposing plans “to identify (threats), expel them and keep our people safe.”

He said his party will also propose new measures on immigration and border control “to keep Islamic Republic terrorists out of the country.”

The war in Iran is divisive. Setting back that benighted country’s nuclear program and reducing the regime’s ability to attack its neighbours and butcher its own people is a defendable, even commendable, goal. As Cotler recently said, the UN Charter needs to be taken seriously “but it is not a suicide pact.”

On the other hand, backing Trump’s short-sighted adventurism is an uncomfortable experience for anyone with a conscience.

Yet, while reasonable people can dissent about the bombing campaign in Iran, there can be few disagreements about the need to mitigate transnational repression within Canada.

A crackdown on those connected to the regime is long overdue.

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