Prime Minister Mark Carney after his cabinet was sworn in, May 13, 2025. Photo courtesy Mark Carney/X.

Mark Carney’s Liberals scored an election victory just a couple of weeks ago, thanks in no small part to a consolidation of progressive voters from other parties such as the NDP. These voters are the main reason Carney was able to hold off Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives, who themselves had a strong performance in terms of raw vote share.

You might think that Carney would reward the progressive voters who kept him in office, but the opposite has so far proven to be true: Carney’s cabinet appointments and priorities indicate a sharp-right turn, even more than was foreseeable based on his already conservative pre-election transition cabinet. This is evident on many fronts, above all housing and labour.

Much of Carney’s platform was a right-wing embrace of Poilievre’s economic policies, from gutting the carbon tax to slashing the scheduled capital gains tax on millionaires and billionaires. But housing was a supposed exception. Here, many hoped Carney was sincere in his pledge to use state power to build housing on a scale similar to the 1940s and 50s. One reason for this optimism was because—prior to the election—he kept Nathaniel Erskine-Smith in........

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