As Carney Will Learn, Canada Is a Country That Grinds Down Every Prime Minister

Mark Carney is enjoying quite the honeymoon. In early June, Abacus Data found that 38 percent of Canadian respondents believe the country is headed in the right direction. In today’s climate of polarization, institutional mistrust, and ambient dread, that’s extraordinary. Even more so when paired with Carney’s approval rating (51 percent) and the government’s job performance (53 percent). If that picture sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve been here before. As Abacus Data CEO David Coletto notes, those numbers are the highest “since the early days of the Trudeau majority government in 2015.” We remember the optimism and energy and possibility of a decade ago. We also remember the months and years that followed during which it seemed the new prime minister could do no wrong, could be touched by no scandal, could be held back by no one at home or abroad. We also know how that went. It went the way it usually does: a great fall from a great height. Icarus by way of scandals, housing inaction, the pandemic, and a subsequent convoy occupation of Ottawa. As it struggled along in the face of a prolonged affordability crisis—one suffered around the world—the country became utterly fed up with Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government. But Carney is not a Liberal in the way Trudeau was. He’s an elite, but he had a long and notable career before entering electoral politics. He has international stature independent of the party brand. He’s also new. He came in and managed to save the party from electoral oblivion—and many in his caucus owe their jobs to him. This gives him leeway to jettison unpopular positions and course-correct without remorse. He’s a pattern breaker. And one pattern he’s keen to break is the political cycle of disillusionment, though he isn’t the first to claim the mantle. Carney and his team seem to be betting that goodwill will stem from competence rather than charisma—swapping “sunny ways” with “plan versus slogan.” He’s also attempting to cash out that goodwill fast, signalling he won’t let idealism get bogged down in bureaucracy and endless box checking. He wants to prove that this time, Ottawa can actually get stuff done. His to-do list is gutsy by Canadian standards. Carney ran on having a plan to deal with Donald Trump’s tariffs. He ran on making Canada a world leader, renewing, or reasserting, if you prefer, our place in the world and rearming the country’s military. He ran on making homeownership achievable for the millions of Canadians shut out of the market. He ran on having a plan to dismantle domestic trade barriers by July 1, Canada Day. He ran on growing the economy by “catalyzing” private investment. In sum, Carney ran on a nation-building project of the highest order, a John A. Macdonald without the railroad and, step on it, government at the speed of business. Out of the gate, Carney has had an early win: Bill C-5, his flagship legislation packed with the ambitious economic promises he’s staked his mandate on. Its passage shows his government can move quickly, and at scale. But it’s a controlled win. Bigger tests—housing, inflation, military procurement, Indigenous sovereignty—lie ahead, and none of them come with the broad consensus that C-5 enjoyed. Moreover, the early success risks feeding a dangerous illusion: that political momentum and technocratic efficiency are enough to override Canada’s deeply entrenched structural challenges. They aren’t. A single bill, no matter how well timed, doesn’t neutralize the opposition, calm provincial tensions, or resolve the economic anxieties of millions of Canadians. Carney’s challenge isn’t just to pass legislation—it’s to govern in a way that shifts public perception from early optimism to durable trust. Right now, Canadians are giving him and his government a thumbs up, a vote of confidence in his plan and his capacities. But if he mistakes a head start for a clear road ahead, he risks stumbling like so many of his predecessors. C-5 is a major step. But it’s not proof the system is working in his favour. Not yet.

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Canada is a difficult country to govern. We’re a small to medium open economy next to a global hegemon in decline, a country on which we rely for defence and the majority of our trade. Our country is marked by entrenched oligopolistic economic players, pronounced and enduring regional tensions, provincial governments with which the feds share a complicated division of powers, and courts that don’t mind having their say when evaluating the legal standing of public policy. Governments must also manage their own caucus, which isn’t always an easy task. Members of Parliament disagree with one another and with the cabinet, including the prime minister. Local concerns can trump national ones for local representatives. And then there’s the inevitable hurt feelings and bad blood that come with those representatives being left out of cabinet or committees or otherwise sidelined, an affront to the egos and expectations that accompany public life or, indeed, induce one to enter it. Then there’s Parliament itself, with its opposition parties, Question Period, and committees—and the other chamber just down the road from the House of Commons, the Senate. Governments need to manage the legislature, including opposition parties, which will seek to slow or stop them. In recent years, the House of Commons has become increasingly toxic and obstructionist, slowing the pace of governing and making life miserable for government-side MPs, especially at committee. But even in the best of times, opposition in the House exists to hold the government to account. And as for the Senate, it has its own history of amending, holding up, or even rejecting bills from time to time. To our credit, we have a robust—at least by global standards—Charter of Rights and Freedoms that guarantees strong, though not universal, rights protections for individuals and some groups. But that also hems in the government (thank god). Indigenous populations are major political players, prepared to assert their rights and defend their land. Social movements and protests are also a check on political power. And then there’s the unpredictable: wars, natural disasters, tragedies, and global public health crises, for instance. It’s a lot to manage, particularly when the electorate can be fickle. Carney has aimed high, for himself and his government. We’re told that’s the kind of guy he is. He sets benchmarks, he has big expectations. But it’s worth recalling that on June 9, in the early rollout for Bill C-5, Politico noted that the prime minister learned a hard truth: “the House of Commons doesn’t often move as quickly as a boardroom.” Reporters Nick Taylor-Vaisey and Mickey Djuric wrote that government officials had tempered their ambitions—aiming to eliminate as many internal trade barriers “as possible” by July 1. In the grand sweep of things, it shouldn’t matter much whether barriers that have stood for decades are eliminated on July 1 or August 1 or in September or October. What matters is that the government shows significant results—commensurate with the ambition with which Carney promised them. As it happened, he met his deadline. But as aggressive as Carney has been to date—zeroing out the carbon tax rate, leading the new Parliament with a personal income tax cut bill, promising to meet the NATO target of 2 percent of GDP on military spending by March—from here on out, things will only get tougher. We’ve already seen some indications the government is having more of a rough time of things than the neophyte prime minister might have expected. There’s Trump’s increased steel and aluminum tariffs and the government’s decision to take its time in responding—a reminder that managing the US will take more than impassioned speeches about national sovereignty and keeping our elbows up. The speech from the throne, which follows the opening of Parliament, was adopted without a recorded vote, but the New Democratic Party had indicated its plans to vote against it. Days before, the Liberals lost a vote—166 to 164—on a non-binding amendment in the response to the speech. It calls for the government to present a budget update before the House of Commons breaks for the summer. It was the Liberals’ first loss, and an early one. It didn’t change the government’s plans. It certainly didn’t bring it down. But it was a shot across the bow, and a reminder of what opposition parties could do. In the government’s first days, a handful of its cabinet ministers found themselves in headlines they’d rather not have been a part of. Housing minister Gregor Robertson got flak for saying housing prices didn’t need to come down—after the government promised housing affordability. Culture minister Steven Guilbeault, formerly of the environment and climate change ministry, strayed from his new portfolio when he said the country didn’t necessarily need new pipelines, prompting a scolding from the oil and gas industry and Alberta premier Danielle Smith, who’s been flirting with a provincial separatist movement. Guilbeault’s comments appear to have complicated his actual mandate to create new national parks. Smith has since come out against creating any federal parks in her province, saying on her radio show that “we certainly don’t need Steven Guilbeault telling us what is important to protect in Alberta.” So much for a smooth start. Defenders of the Liberals will say the early goofs by cabinet ministers are no big deal, tempests in teapots, jumped-up non-stories from the gotcha media. But the stories reflect deeper challenges and divisions that matter. For instance, the fact that managerialism in politics often runs into reality: the “smartest guy in the room” still has to horse-trade to get things done, and the “best” ideas may still face any number of fatal veto points. And then there’s political reality. For instance, Canadians have limited trust in the government’s capacity to deliver on building homes, and the Liberals are loath to do anything that lowers prices—and owner equity—because they’d face popular revolt from the homeowner class. The Smith / oil and gas industry–Guilbeault dust-up is a performance in miniature of a long-run showdown between the federal government and competing interests, advocates, stakeholders, and Indigenous nations on the energy and infrastructure files. Infrastructure in this country, especially for energy, is a third rail. In early June, justice minister Sean Fraser said Indigenous peoples don’t have a veto on national projects as the government announced it would introduce a bill to speed up approvals—from five years to two—for large projects. He apologized the next day after a call from Assembly of First Nations national chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak. That apology had a short half life. Indigenous leaders have already come out forcefully against Bill C-5, condemning the lack of consultation, warning of threats to Indigenous rights and the environment, and demanding the legislation be withdrawn. It’s a reminder that any political decisions of consequence will have to pass with care through a process that will shape those decisions, that will take time, and that may threaten to kill a policy before it ever sees the light of day. Ahead of the G7 meeting in Kananaskis, Alberta, the government drew fire for inviting Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, whose government is accused of interfering in Canada’s elections and of killing a Canadian on Canadian soil. Last October, Canada expelled six Indian diplomats and consular officials over the affair. Carney also invited Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, whose country has a wretched human rights record, including the murder by bone saw of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Bin Salman stayed home, but Modi attended and was met with protests. The backlash is another reminder that the government can claim it’s doing realpolitik by talking with the likes of Modi and bin Salman all it wants—Canadians will judge the acceptability of those decisions on their own terms. We are routinely told that Carney is smart, credentialled, and capable. Reciting “In Carney we trust,” however, won’t cut it for long. Canadians disagree, deeply, and that disagreement is central to our politics. But there’s a line between pushback against managerial politics out of step with reality and toxic partisan, identarian, or parochial gatekeeping. There’s a difference between not being able to get things done because they are the wrong things to do and not being able to get things done because we simply can’t get things done. The former is part of a healthy democracy; the latter is an illness and fatal in the long run. Carney will have to find a way to respect the former and fix the latter. And to do it, he will have to face a machine that has ground down almost every prime minister before him.The post As Carney Will Learn, Canada Is a Country That Grinds Down Every Prime Minister first appeared on The Walrus.