ANALYSIS: While Liberals chase Carney, Conservatives crow about a blue-collar candidate

The Trudeau Liberals and former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney have been engaged in the strangest of dances for more than a few years now.

Carney came out as a Liberal Party of Canada supporter in 2021. His priorities — dealing with climate change above all else — are Liberal priorities. Some Liberal MPs want him in Parliament on their side of the House. And on Sunday, according to The Globe and Mail, the prime minister himself and Carney “held talks” — was it a negotiation? A summit? Were lawyers present? The Globe did not say — about Carney “joining the government” in some unspecified role.

Carney does not now work for the government of Canada in any capacity. He’s busy doing other things.  But many Liberals wish otherwise and believe his arrival as a Liberal MP would somehow revive the flagging political fortunes of the Trudeau government.

Set aside that unproven assumption, though, for a moment to consider instead the candidate recruitment priorities of the Liberals and their chief opponents, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives, and what that might tell us about the two parties’ relative standing in the polls.

While the Liberals chase a former central banker like Carney who moves easily among global elites, Conservatives Friday were crowing about their man running to represent a working-class neighbourhood in northeast Winnipeg. Colin Reynolds, a construction electrician and a “proud” private sector union member, is the nominated Conservative candidate in the riding of Elmwood–Transcona, now without an MP since New Democrat Daniel Blaikie went to work for Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew. For the coalition Poilievre is trying to put together, Reynolds is just what the Conservatives want.

Forget that Poilievre has been a