Competency.
Five weeks is a long time. Anything can happen.
It is 2025 after all.
Anything can happen.
Chances are, the stranger things get, especially any further bizarre emanations coming up from the increasingly black hole south of our border, the more competency is what voters will flock to when they go to vote for their next prime minister on April 28th. 
Anything’s possible.
And if that’s the ultimate ballot question – Who can best deal with the mad king aspirant? – Well, that’ll be a no-brainer. Former Governor of the Banks of Canada and England, Mark Carney, credited with not allowing the Canadian economy to crash and flame out during the economic crisis of 2008/2009 and saving the U.K. from a fiery re-entry after Brexit. Both countries harmed but not broken, depending on who you ask or how deep you plumb the depths of the respective recoveries. Who prospered most? Who suffered most?
A calm, steadying presence during both emergency moments. A level head. Coolness under fire.
Etc. & Etc.
Mark Carney
Our nation turns its anxious eyes to you
Woo, woo, woo.
As a traditional non-Liberal voter, I have adopted a Reith Lectures version of Carney in order to rationalize the support I may throw his way. Maybe he’s a different kind of central/investment/Goldman Sachs banker who actually believes in non-monetary Values with a capital V. While VP at Brookfield Asset Management he was point person on the firm’s environment, social and governance investment strategies. That’s got to count for something, right?
Early signs since winning the Liberal leadership have not been promising. While scrapping the carbon tax and proposed capital gains tax hike could be looked at as simply clearing the Trudeau slate, it does all seem, I don’t know, predictably fiscally conservative. Exactly the direction a banker would take.
But he has been unwavering in his pushback to the hostility coming from the White House on an almost daily basis, almost immediately turning his attention to Europe after becoming prime minister and making no gesture of conciliation toward the US. 
Competency.
If Carney’s able to turn this campaign into a showdown between just two sides, a choice between the Liberals and the Conservatives, essentially marginalizing every other party but those two, he could also make it a referendum on the smarminess of Pierre Poilievre and his backing by MAGA-friendly premiers like Alberta’s Danielle Smith. A question of national unity. You’re either with us or against us.
Whispers of a Liberal majority government, unthinkable two months ago, might not be simple wishful thinking.
Interestingly, this presents a window of opportunity for the NDP, so far, a party under the leadership of Jagmeet Singh seemingly incapable of rising to the occasion of taking advantage of opportunities that come its way. Relegated to the ash heap of history by early polling numbers, official status very much in jeopardy, this might be the go for broke moment it needs to be relevant once more. If Singh and his campaign brass acknowledge that there will be no disaffected Liberal voters to be casting a net for, the party’s single-minded strategy, it seems to me, during the Trudeau years especially as his popularity waned after the last election in 2021, then a hard, unapologetic left turn would be in order.
If threatened tariffs lead to increased layoffs and unemployment, put a universal basic income on the table. Slam it down hard. All that talk of pipeline infrastructure bringing western oil and gas east instead of south? Champion green energy infrastructure including the commencement of high-speed rail in the Windsor-Quebec City corridor. Extend and expand the reach of pharma and dental care. Along with eliminating trade barriers between provinces, push further into provincial and territorial jurisdiction to help bolster the healthcare and educational systems, enabling them to be better prepared and attractive alternatives to anyone choosing to flee the increasingly repressive confines of the United States.
While your’re at it, why not take up a broken Liberal promise from 2015? Electoral reform.
Take the moment and opportunity to push for a rebuilding of the Canadian economy that is not only less dependent on our undependable neighbour but is also more fair and equitable. Strict adherence to neoliberal policies have led to the undermining of those values that we are tout as difference makers between us and the US. 
The federal NDP shouldn’t ignore the groundswell of support that the likes of Bernie and AOC are seeing on their Stop the Oligarchy tour or the outrage of regular people directed at their elected representatives at townhall meetings throughout the States at the moment. It is a reaction against not just the political, unconstitutional malfeasance they’re experiencing but the unjust system from which it has sprung. It is a reaction that transcends our border.
Demand more than just competence. Demand a better place for all those who will be left out and left behind in what will be inevitably a reconfiguring of our country in a Trumpian new world order.