A little yelling seems to come with the job of being prime minister

Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne is a deft deflector and trotted out that art on Friday with this description of his boss, Mark Carney.

“It’s rare in the history of the country where you’ve got a leader, a prime minister, who’s got 50 per cent in polls nationally,” Champagne said in French. “That demonstrates that people appreciate Mr. Carney’s work, and people understand the environment in which we find ourselves, a complex environment.”

Champagne was not asked about Carney’s popularity. He was answering a question raised by a column written by my colleague Althia Raj, which reported that the prime minister yells at his Liberal colleagues behind closed doors.

Social-media reaction to the column was predictably polarized, with Liberals calling it an unfair or even inaccurate dig and non-Liberals saying, sometimes hilariously, that Carney should yell more.

“Part of Mark Carney’s appeal to normals is that he’s mean to Liberals,” journalist Jen Gerson, co-founder of The Line, posted on X.

The reason that the column generated such a flood of comments is that people are still trying to figure out what to make of Carney, who is enjoying the popularity that Champagne talked about, but also shaking up the Liberal status quo.

Little snippets occasionally emerge about how he’s an exacting boss, impatient with questions he doesn’t like (a trait that has flashed up in encounters with reporters) and unforgiving with those who haven’t mastered details before speaking to him. But, as more than a few Liberals have said to me, shouldn’t a boss have high standards for competence?

Nor would Carney be the first prime minister to show his temper now and then.

I don’t recall many stories about Brian Mulroney losing his temper with colleagues, and his caucus-relations skills were extraordinary. No prime minister since has come near him in that department.

Jean Chrétien’s temper was set off by disloyalty, especially as his government became riven in the leadership drama between him and his finance minister, Paul Martin. There was one memorable caucus meeting in the waning days of Chrétien when he barked at Carolyn Bennett (a Toronto MP who would go on later, post-Chretien, to become a cabinet minister.) The leaks of that outburst came out immediately, I recall.

Even before he became prime minister, Martin had acquired a reputation for yelling at many who worked with him — “the beatings,” his people called them. One of his close advisers was bemused by Martin’s reputation as a yeller at Finance, noting to me that “with Paul, you get to yell back.”

I don’t know that many people yelled back at Stephen Harper when he was prime minister and he too, was famously impatient and prone to a tantrum or two when things weren’t going his way. In March 2005, Harper was caught on video at a party convention kicking a chair, sending it skidding a couple of metres.

Harper also held a long-running grudge against most journalists, announcing early in his tenure he was simply going to avoid them — which mostly he did.

Justin Trudeau wasn’t known for tantrums (although an elbow-pushing incident in the Commons in the early days was held up as an example of one). His way of showing impatience or anger was simply to cut off contact with the perceived offender. He once told me that he was like his father, Pierre, in that his first instinct on getting poked was to sharply poke back, but he worked on keeping that in check, such as around Donald Trump, for instance.

I’ve been casting through this history of prime ministerial temperaments, prompted by Raj’s column, and wondering whether displays of temper are just part of the job. The pressure is intense, the stakes are usually high, and the political workplace is filled with ego, emotion and ambition.

But it’s also a professional workplace, where the people at the top set standards that they would expect from those farther down the chain. One person’s high standards can be another’s hostile work environment.

Champagne was clever to deflect to Carney’s high poll numbers. But that change of subject raises another couple. What if those numbers sink? What if those who are complaining (anonymously) now start thinking of leaving and putting the Liberal government back into minority position again?

Carney, in just a year, has mastered a lot of the art of being prime minister. The reports finding their way to Raj and others though indicate that people management may still be a work in progress.