I voted for one my heros: Mark Carney.

Yesterday, my wife and I voted. I voted for Mark Carney. My vote was not influenced by the debates nor by the campaigning leading up to the election. I voted for Mark Carney because he has been one of my personal heroes for years. I am so excited by the prospect of having Carney leading country. Having Carney at the helm gives me hope. (Oh, how I pray the Liberals win and with a clear majority.)

Writing a glowing take on Mark Carney is difficult because he has accomplished so much. Where does one start? I'm going to pick his time at Brookfield Asset Management (BAM),one of world's great asset management companies and a Canadian one. Canadians can be proud.

I like to think of myself as green and I look for green concerns in others. Carney is green as is his wife, Diana Fox Carney. While heading Brookfield Asset Management, Carney gained fame and respect for his strong preference for ESG investing, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing.

Under Carney's leadership BAM favoured companies that took a measured approach to how they interacted with the natural world. Carbon emissions, energy use, waste management, pollution control and resource conservation and more were all considered when making investments.

I have an axe-the-tax relative who, thanks to the simplistic blather of Pierre Poilievre, believes one must be prepared to sacrifice the environment, to a certain extent, in order to have a successful economy. She does not want to see companies saddled with green costs that might cause them to curtail investment or something worse, like leaving Canada.

Carney had shown that being green and successful are not mutually exclusive. Addressing social concerns and believing in empathetic governance are also possible. Companies should care about workplace conditions such as employee health and safety and much more. When it comes to governance, executive compensation, board diversity and independence, transparency, shareholder rights, anti-corruption policies, and ethical conduct, all are important.

And what did Pierre Poilievre say about BAM? In three word, nothing of value. He attacked BAM. He took delight in pointing out that BAM took advantage of its Bermuda connection to escape paying Canadian taxes. What he was really pointing out was that he, Poilievre, seems to be completely ignorant of how business works.

Let me repeat what I discovered using Perplexity: "Carney said that the funds are set up so that the income generated by the investments is not taxed first at the fund level in multiple countries and then again when distributed to Canadian investors.  

Instead, the income "flows through" the Bermuda-registered funds to Canadian entities, which then pay the appropriate taxes in Canada. This structure is intended to ensure that taxes are paid once, in the proper jurisdiction, rather than multiple times at different points in the investment chain.

"The beneficiaries of the funds—such as Canadian teachers, retirees, and municipal employees whose pensions are invested—do pay taxes on their pension income in Canada. Therefore, the use of Bermuda is not about evading taxes but about optimizing the tax process so that Canadian investors are not taxed repeatedly on the same income." 

As a long-time Brookfield investor, I can assure you that Carney speaks the truth. The Bermuda connection was not news to me. If Brookfield did not take advantage of the Bermuda tax loophole, Canada might collect more corporate tax but shareholders and pension funds would receive smaller dividends and would see a capital gains reduction due to diminished after-tax profitability of the company.

Let's summarize what remains to be said about Mark Carney and it will be a long summary.

• 1965: Born in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories and grew up in Edmonton, Alberta
•  1988: earned a Bachelor of Economics from Harvard University
•  1993 and 1995: earned a Master’s and a PhD in Economics from Oxford University
• Moved on to Goldman Sachs, working in major financial centres including London, Tokyo, New York, and Toronto, eventually becoming managing director of investment banking.
•  2003: appointed Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada and briefly was Senior Associate Deputy Minister of Finance
•  2008: Governor of the Bank of Canada (At this time, he and the Hon. Jim Flaherty, worked together to successfully guide Canada through the global financial crisis.)
• 2013: Governor of the Bank of England

Carney can add to his resume the time spent as chairman of the Financial Stability Board, chairman of the Committee on the Global Financial System at the Bank for International Settlements, head of Brookfield Asset Management and even more.

I would like to add one more plus to Mark Carney's resume: Diana Fox, now Carney. What a remarkable lady to have in one's corner. 

• She holds degrees from Oxford and the University of Pennsylvania.
• She met her future husband, Mark Carney, at Oxford University, where she played on the women's hockey team and Mark Carney was backup goalie for the men's team.
• She has held senior roles at think tanks in Canada and the UK, focusing on energy and climate policy.
• She has worked as an agricultural researcher in Africa and for the charity IPPR.
• She served as executive director of Pi Capital in the UK.
• She has held leadership roles including vice president of research at Canada 2020 think tank and director of strategy and engagement at the Institute for Public Policy Research in London.
• Since 2021, she has been a senior advisor at Eurasia Group and to climate-focused funds such as BeyondNetZero and Helios Climate.
• She has served on the boards of several not-for-profit organizations, including Save the Children, Friends of the Royal Academy, Ashden, ClientEarth, the Shell Foundation, and BeyondNetZero. (I personally like Save the Children. I have supported two children for years,)
• She was described as an "eco-warrior" by The Daily Telegraph in 2012 due to her environmental activism and criticism of global financial institutions.

And what has Pierre Poilievre done? Other than attack-dog politics, not a lot. His biggest claim to fame, in my estimation, is his talent for oversimplifying complex issues with simplistic chants like axe-the-tax, spike-the-hike, Canada first, jail-not-bail plus many more. He also like name-calling, for example Sell-out-Singh. This school yard bully talk forms the base of  Pierre Poilievre's rhetoric. Canadians deserve better.

God is Dead!

For those of us old enough to remember the late '50s and '60s, there was a "God is Dead" movement at that time. According to The Guardian, the movement reached its zenith in April 1966 when Time magazine published a cover asking in large red letters over a black background: Is God Dead?

I admit I did not have much interest in the question, nor much interest in the answer. It was clearly an attack on organized religion, especially Christian. A teen at the time, the whole argument seemed so esoteric. Too philosophical.

The Guardian says this about those times:

"Ultimately, the death of God movement fizzled after only a few years in the limelight. It turned out to be a last gasp of the liberal Protestant theology that was quickly losing ground in American culture and politics to a more literalistic evangelical tide."

Now, jump ahead to today and I find myself embracing a modified "God is Dead" philosophy. I was raised an Anglican. For me, God was Anglican. I had a friend who was evangelical. Some Sundays I took a break from attendance at my church and attended his. I also attended large, hall-filling evangelical events with my boyhood friend.

These events, so important to the Christian Missionary Alliance members and the Seventh Day Adventists folk plus others, were ignored by the Anglicans. The feeling seemed to be ignore the evangelicals and they will go away.

The Anglicans were wrong. The evangelicals did not go away. Rather than wither, the movement grew. We were foolish to have ignored it. Today, to an increasing extent, evangelicals rule. Today, the God I was raised to worship, the God of my Anglican Church, is, if not dead, awfully quiet.

I have relatives who are evangelicals. They send me Internet links to preachers they follow. They believe I will profit from listening to these evangelical preachers—if only I listen. Often, I don't. I find that I do not recognize their Jesus. My gut tells me these folk are misdirected, misinformed or worse, they are fakes, frauds, false prophets. Con men.

Anglicanism in my day sought a balance of scripture, tradition, and reason. This approach was far less dogmatic than that of the evangelicals today.

Literal interpretations of the Bible, encouraging believers to drill deep into The Book, only leads to confusion. At least, this is what I was told in the '50s. Listen to your minister, I was told. Otherwise, you will find yourself deep in confusion rather than faith. At best, evangelicals were debating the trivial; at worse, they were venturing into heresy territory.

For instance, the evangelicals, I knew, believed in the "end times." Many of the hall-filling events centred around the "end times" and the "rapture." According to my minister and his deacon, the end times was a misreading of the Bible. It was a heresy that just wouldn't die. It had been promised for a thousand years. Clearly, it had not happened and I was assured it wasn't likely to happen in my lifetime either.

Faith healing was another concept foreign to Anglicans. Faith healing was held in contempt by Anglicans as it was seen as profiting from exploiting the desperately ill. God gives us the strength to fight disease. Surgery fixes it. Given the choice between a faith healer, like Oral Roberts, or a surgeon like the one who repaired my badly worn heart, I go with the surgeon every time. If I thank God, it is only in passing.

My father had heart disease. Our minister offered spiritual and emotional support. His doctor offered nitroglycerine. Taking nitro relieved the pain better than prayer. That said, God did eventually end the pain. Dad died.

So, was my God cold? Indifferent? No, not in the least. The old God of the Anglicans was not into making a lot of promises that he would not keep. My God was a realist, a teacher, a leader . . .

The Anglican God, the Anglican Jesus, spoke of loving one's neighbour as one's self. Showing compassion and actively caring for those in need was a core belief. If I had to put God on the political spectrum, God would have been left of centre.

Let's look at a few religious hot-buttons. Let's compare today's evangelical God to the God of my youth.

Public Housing: Some evangelicals are wary of tax-dollar assisted public housing. I have a friend who falls into this category. A good example would be Scott Turner who runs HUD under Donald Trump.

 

Turner was an associate pastor at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, a prominent evangelical megachurch. As a Texas state legislator, Turner consistently voted against initiatives aimed at aiding the poor and expanding affordable housing. He called welfare "dangerous, harmful" and "one of the most destructive things for the family."

 

Sidebar: I was raised in a government subsidized Wartime Housing project. My father was a department store salesman. My mother was a stay-at-home mom. Although my dad always had a full-time job, he worked hard, his jobs paid very poorly. I don't believe he ever made more than $5000 in any given year. Often he made much less. 

 

Today, I believe one of his great granddaughters is firmly against such government funded housing. Without public housing I wonder where my sister and I would have lived and how my parents would have kept their pride intact.

 

My God, my Jesus, was in favour of taxpayer-funded public housing.

 

Single Payer Health Systems: Contrary to what you may have read. Single Payer Health Systems are not socialist. It is a form of universal healthcare where the government pays for all covered healthcare while the providers are private. Think of it as healthcare insurance for all with no fine print. No loss of coverage due to preconditions.

Many evangelicals believe in personal accountability and self-reliance. If you can afford better healthcare, you should be able to have it. It is a multi-tiered, capitalist system. You get what you can pay for. Haven't got much money? You won't get much healthcare.

Dr. Steffie Woolhandler found that many who lack insurance coverage in the United States die as a result. It is probably safe to say more than 70,000 Americans, aged 18 to 64, die annually from lack of healthcare.

One might think the number of Canadians dying from lack of healthcare would be zero. It should be but it isn't. The number is not as high as in the U.S. but thousands of Canadians still die annually because of failures in the Canadian healthcare system. Wait lists are so long that people die while waiting.

My Jesus, I believe, would opt for the single payer system. Based on the data I found, the average cost of a comprehensive health insurance policy for a family of four in the United States is approximately $24,301 per year. This amount is less if the payments are employer supported.

In comparison, Canadians only spend half of what Americans do, hence the healthcare problems. No money. I believe Jesus would be in favour of raising taxes in this instance. Canadians are getting a free lunch here, or at least a low cost lunch, and it shows. The taxes, of course, would be progressive.

Sidebar: I have had robotically-assisted open heart surgery for a leaking heart valve; I have had two pacemaker/ICDs implanted and I may well live long enough to get a third; I've had a broken hip repaired with a titanium implant; I've had lifesaving emergency minimally-invasive surgery for a totally obstructed bowl; And the list goes on. In the States, I would be have died.

Free will or freedom of choice: Think of the Covid-19 vaccine. In Canada, it was, for the most part, mandatory. A lot of evangelicals were incensed by this. Anger over the mandating of covid vaccine was a big force in driving Justin Trudeau out of power. In their view, Trudeau was intent on taking freedom of choice away from Canadians. 

 

The "Freedom Convoy" participants were heroes in their eyes and Trudeau a socialist dictator. I thought taking an action that could damage, possibly irreparably, his political future was brave, gutsy, a moral choice. My Jesus would have smiled and applauded.

 

This contrasts with the evangelical Jesus, who is quite willing to sit on the sidelines while his followers seek the "truth." Many evangelicals didn't join the fight against covid immediately. No, they first sought the truth. They asked questions and listened to everyone saying anything. Everyone is worth a listen. Really? Everyone?

For instance, they learned the vaccine was rushed to market. It wasn't. Research on mRNA technology began in the 1980s and large advances were made in the following decades. Science was ready. Evangelical Christianity wasn't.

 

The Jesus of my youth was in favour of community safety over individual rights. I believe he would have seen the evangelical take to be simply selfishness. A bit of the me first philosophy leaving a stain on Christ's followers.

I could go on but I will stop here. I am finding it difficult digging into the death of my God. When my evangelical friends and relatives talk about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they claim, "It is very complex." Some even repeat Trump's and Putin's talking points.

 

My Jesus finds it easy to denounce the killing, maiming, raping and kidnapping being done by the Russians as wrong. It is not complex. As Christians we should be doing all we can to put an end to it and that does not mean bowing down to evil. I believe my Jesus would have challenged the Russians when they threatened Crimea. My Jesus would have hoped his followers would have taken immediate action, stopping the killing before it started. My Jesus has a spine.

 

Reading what I wrote, I have changed my mind. God, my Jesus, the Jesus of the early '50s may be dead to many now but it is only temporary. He will be rediscovered—resurrected. Reborn. You can't keep a good God down.

 

Do you want to know more? Check out this link: God is Dead.