Mark Carney’s majority government won’t change tough times

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Now that Mark Carney has become the first prime minister in Canadian history to achieve a majority government not at the ballot box, but through floor-crossing, what is he going to do with it?

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Can Canadians hope he’ll now spend more time solving the real-world affordability problems facing families today and less time trying to get more opposition MPs to join the Liberals to swell government ranks?

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Probably not.

‘Elbows up’ didn’t last long

Consider Carney’s record on the main reason Canadians elected a minority Liberal government a year ago — his claim he was best equipped to sign a new trade and tariff deal with U.S. President Donald Trump.

While running for the Liberal leadership, Carney said Canada would respond to Trump’s economic threats with “dollar-for-dollar” tariffs with the goal of having all of Trump’s tariffs removed.

Despite his “elbows up” rhetoric during the election, Carney had already backed off that position by the time he became PM, saying it was unrealistic because the U.S. economy is 10 times the size of ours, and conceded it was unlikely a deal would remove all of Trump’s tariffs.

After “deadlines” to reach a deal with the U.S. first by July 21, 2025, and then by Aug. 1, 2025, failed to materialize, Carney’s position became that “no deal is better than a bad deal,” then that Canada has already achieved “the best trade deal of any country in the world” with Trump.

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But that was because of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement on trade, which is up for renewal on July 1, a deadline the Americans say is unlikely to be met.

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Canadians continue to suffer

Meanwhile, the affordability crisis confronting Canadians after a decade of Liberal government mismanagement by Justin Trudeau — high unemployment, high food inflation, anemic per capita growth — haven’t changed.

While Carney promised to spend less and invest more than his predecessor, what he’s done, according to the parliamentary budget officer, is reclassify $94 billion of operating expenditures as capital investments meaning, according to the PBO, that his pledge to balance the federal operating budget in three years is unlikely to be met.

Indeed, Carney has moved the goalposts on his promises so many times in less than a year that it’s impossible to keep up — which is obviously his intention.

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