The new government's Throne Speech included promises to forge a new relationship with the U.S., make Canada an energy superpower and become a hub for science and innovation.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

Prime Minister Mark Carney is not managing expectations.

That’s what most politicians do when leading a country, or a province, or any other jurisdiction where millions of people are watching for lofty promises to turn into results. You under-promise and over-deliver, you fudge the timelines, and you temper your language so that you’re not saying you will land a man on the moon before the decade is out, but rather, that your country should “commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

It’s a slight difference but an important one, both for political reasons (no one wants to be the Prime Minister to proudly exclaim that an election would be the last decided by first-past-the-post voting, only to sheepishly walk that back a couple of years later) and for moral ones: some people will make real-life decisions based on quasi-realistic political promises. If they genuinely believe you will make housing prices affordable in the foreseeable future, they might shelve plans to relocate to a place where a house doesn’t cost 10 times the average annual income.

Mr. Carney, nevertheless, is........

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