“It’s time to build, strong!” implore the ubiquitous Government of Canada ads now inundating all our media platforms — to build an economy “by Canadians, for Canadians.” Likewise, in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s now famous Davos speech, he stated middle powers such as Canada “must develop greater strategic autonomy: in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance, and supply chains.” The PM spoke of the need to diversify our trading relationships, but was also clear that we must “build our strength at home.”

Welcome words, to be sure. But as numerous critics have rightly noted, Carney’s record is all too frequently characterized by a gap between lofty rhetoric and his government’s delivery in practice.

A key missing piece in our economic resilience plan, not to mention in our moribund efforts to decarbonize our society: modern public enterprises, a new generation of what in Canada we call “Crown” corporations.

I can rightly be accused of fixating on the need for new Crown corps. Why? Because in their absence, the best we can do is indirectly incentivize others to do and build what is needed to get a job done — which, if you were looking for a one-sentence summary of the federal Liberal government’s lackluster climate plan, look no further.

Carney’s overall approach to climate remains firmly rooted in two core policies –– carbon pricing (now only for the industrial sector, with the terms still TBD) and an ever-growing package of climate-related tax credits for companies willing to make energy transition investments (although the juiciest of such credits are reserved for dubious carbon-capture projects). These market-based policies will have some effect, but not nearly at the speed and scale required. The largest beneficiary of them to-date, landing credits worth as much as $15 billion, has been the Stellantis EV battery plant in Ontario. But significantly, this extraordinary outlay doesn’t change the climate equation and create a plant that wouldn’t otherwise exist; rather, it succeeded at the time in landing a plant in Canada rather than the US (with the company showing little gratitude of late, as it caves to Trump’s bully-tactics).

Just two days after the release of the 2025 federal budget last November, federal Environment Commissioner Jerry DeMarco released a report showing the poor take-up rate of these climate-oriented tax credits. No one is coming to our rescue! If we want to rapidly see the mass production and deployment of energy-transition technology, equipment and infrastructure, we are going to have to do it ourselves.

Take the urgent need to build out an east-west electricity grid — all we got in the budget is a 30 per cent tax credit. It isn’t going to work.

Like Mark Carney, C.D. Howe was no lefty. But unlike Carney, Howe was in a genuine hurry and when the private sector proved unwilling or unable to quickly produce what was needed at scale, Howe would create a new Crown enterprise to do it.

This approach can’t work because so much of the climate-related infrastructure we need — high-speed rail, urban transit, renewable energy, electricity transmission — is inherently public.

But it’s not just on climate where the government’s economic strategy is stuck. Carney talks about the need for a “made in Canada” economy, but his whole approach is to cajole and entice the private sector — he’s become encourager-in-chief. Outside some........

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