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Mark Carney Is Governing like It’s Wartime

The Liberals are centralizing power and moving fast. Why isn’t anyone objecting?

Travelling home recently from a business trip— I run a Canadian polling firm specializing in political and public opinion research—I tried to describe to myself, as objectively as I could, what the Mark Carney Liberal government actually is. Not what it says, but what it has done and put into motion: the legislation, the budgets, the orders in council, the deals with premiers and foreign capitals.

Let’s do a little inventory: The consumer carbon tax killed by order in council within days of taking office. Bill C-5 giving cabinet the power to fast-track projects it deems in the national interest, with twenty-three projects worth over $130 billion now referred to the Major Projects Office. A pipeline deal with Alberta premier Danielle Smith followed last week by a $20 billion prosperity agreement that bought David Eby’s acceptance of it. Immigration cut well below Justin Trudeau–era targets. Trudeau’s senate appointment reforms mostly reversed. A plan to shrink the public service by 40,000 positions while a new sovereign wealth fund expands the state’s balance sheet. A national artificial intelligence strategy. A food security strategy.

Then look abroad: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s 2 percent target hit for the first time since the Cold War, backed by a Defence Industrial Strategy and a fleet of German-built submarines. The Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement renewal under negotiation with a hostile White House. New support for Ukraine and fresh sanctions on Russia. Support for strikes on Iran while keeping Canada out of the operation. A strategic partnership with China that has restarted our relationship with the world’s second-largest economy.

This is a lot of motion in sixteen months. Two questions were going through my mind while reading this list were, first, is this the most ambitious government in a long time, and, second, why has public opinion largely applauded what would have been deeply divisive and in some ways controversial decisions?

Our latest survey, completed on July 2 with 2,366 Canadian adults, finds 54 percent approve of the job the Carney government is doing while 31 percent disapprove. It has sat near that level for months.

Carney’s undertakings are maybe the most ambitious for a new government since at........

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