Carney is Trump…but boring
Mark Carney sold Canadians on competence.
After years of Justin Trudeau’s increasingly unpopular government and against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Carney appeared to be the grown-up in the room. He didn’t rant, insult opponents or dominate the news cycle, consistent with Canada’s tall poppy syndrome.
That may prove to be his greatest political achievement.
Because once you look beyond the polished presentation, the substance of Carney’s agenda begins to look remarkably familiar. His government is prioritizing fossil fuels, military spending, corporate investment and deregulation while sidelining many of the social and environmental priorities that once defined the Liberal Party.
Trump governs through outrage. Carney governs through respectability. But increasingly, they are moving in similar directions.
Take the economy.
Carney’s vision is built around pipelines, critical minerals, industrial projects and expanding the trades. There is nothing inherently wrong with those sectors — they are important parts of Canada’s economy — but they are hardly a blueprint for the future.
The fastest-growing industries globally are clean energy, artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, biotechnology and the care economy. Countries that dominate the next century will invest in research, education, renewable energy and digital infrastructure. Canada, meanwhile, risks doubling down on industries that powered the last century.
For someone once celebrated internationally as a climate leader, Carney’s embrace of oil and gas expansion is particularly striking. His government argues that Canada can increase production while reducing emissions, but that still commits billions of public dollars to infrastructure whose long-term demand becomes more uncertain every year.
China has shown what large-scale public investment in renewable energy can accomplish. Regardless of one’s views of its political system, it has become the world’s leader in electric vehicles, batteries and renewable energy manufacturing. Canada could be building that economy. Instead, we remain focused on exporting more fossil fuels and hoping the market never changes.
The same narrow vision extends beyond energy.
One of the most overlooked features of Carney’s agenda is what it ignores: women and the care economy.
Child care, education, health care, elder care and disability supports are not simply social spending. They are economic infrastructure. When governments invest in care, more people — particularly women — are able to participate in the workforce. Productivity rises. Families become more financially secure, fewer children experience poverty and people are cared for with dignity.
When governments fail to invest, the work doesn’t disappear. It is downloaded onto families, where women still perform the overwhelming majority of unpaid caregiving.
Pipelines create construction jobs. Child care creates an economy.
Yet one receives constant political attention while the other is often treated as an expense rather than an investment.
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Carney’s priorities also raise difficult questions about whose rights are negotiable.
Carney’s early life as the son of a principal of an Indian Day school, seems to have instilled a desire to extend the genocidal policies his father helped reinforce. His government’s determination to fast-track major infrastructure projects has reignited concerns among Indigenous communities that constitutional and Treaty obligations to consultation are increasingly being treated as obstacles rather than foundational principles.
Internationally, Carney’s foreign policy has become increasingly transactional. Canada continues strengthening economic relationships with countries whose human rights records deserve far greater scrutiny, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, China and India.
Trade is necessary. Diplomacy requires compromise. But Canadians should at least acknowledge the ethical cost of those relationships instead of pretending economic partnerships exist in a moral vacuum. When Canada invests in nations that fund terrorism, it is our tax dollars paying for the weapons used to massacre civilians.
Even defence policy reflects an older way of thinking.
Admittedly, pre- 2024 Canada treated America as our over-protective older brother with the Military Industrial Complex spending seeming sufficient to keep us both safe. But now, our Big Brother has become a racist, unpredictable drunk uncle. Although it is important to meet NATO commitments, we should be careful not to invest billions in weapons designed for yesterday’s wars. Modern warfare is changing rapidly. The Iranians managed to down a F-35 jet in the first weeks of the war using weapons that cost .001% of the ticket price, proof that the $100 million jet is not that good at modern warfare.
Meanwhile, climate change is already threatening Canadians every summer through wildfires, floods and extreme weather. Investments that strengthen disaster response, emergency evacuation and climate resilience would protect Canadians every year — not only in the event of war.
What makes Carney so politically effective is precisely what makes him difficult to criticize.
He doesn’t sound ideological. He sounds pragmatic.
He doesn’t promise revolution. He promises management.
But management is never politically neutral. Every budget reveals priorities. Every dollar spent represents a choice not to spend elsewhere.
When governments invest billions in pipelines instead of child care, military procurement instead of climate adaptation, and resource extraction instead of clean energy, they are making ideological choices, whether they admit it or not.
Carney has successfully convinced many Canadians that he represents a break from the politics of Donald Trump and Pierre Poilievre.
In style, he certainly does.
In substance, the differences are becoming less obvious.
Trump shouts his worldview. Carney presents his in a PowerPoint.
Both ultimately place far greater faith in markets, resource extraction and maintaining an inequitable status quo than in the public institutions and social investments that have long defined Canada’s more progressive vision.
Competence matters. Civility matters.
But they are not substitutes for values.
