Who is Champagne, the minister selling Canadians on Carney’s 1st budget?
Global News
Champagne is an old-school retail politician who prefers pressing the flesh to digital communications. Liberals tend to describe him with one word: gregarious.
As Prime Minister Mark Carney looks to sell Canadians on his first-ever budget — one that he’s billed as containing both once-in-a-generation capital spending projects and austerity measures — Liberals say he picked the right salesperson for the job.
Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne takes the spotlight Tuesday to present the Carney government’s first fiscal blueprint — a document delayed by half a year during the ongoing tariff war with the country’s closest trading partner.
That tariff battle threatens the country’s economy and forms the backdrop of the entire budgetary plan.
Champagne will be engaging in down-in-the-weeds discussions with his former bank governor boss — a politician famous for his focus on policy details over politics — while also selling Main Street on what could prove to be an expensive fiscal plan.
Champagne, 55, has worn many hats during his time in politics, but no one in Ottawa would confuse him with the stodgy Bay Street backroom types who tend to end up in the job of finance minister.
He’s an old-school retail politician who prefers pressing the flesh to digital communications. Liberals tend to describe him with one word: gregarious.
“He’s the biggest, most enthusiastic bundle of energy that we have in caucus,” said Liberal MP Marc Miller, a colleague of Champagne’s for the past decade. He said the finance minister is the same person in private and in public.
“In order to be good in politics, you have to be able to present to Canadians the best case,” Miller said. “You can’t just sit there and write an op-ed and be the political equivalent of paint drying on the wall. (Champagne is) not that.”
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