Speed in government is a virtue — until it becomes a vice.

It has been disheartening to see Prime Minister Mark Carney and British Columbia Premier David Eby introduce expedient, excessive legislation under the guise of an emergency response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s ever-meandering tariff threats.

Their measures will concentrate authority, expand cabinet discretion, sidestep some existing mechanisms of oversight, restrict consultation and effectively exclude elected representatives and the public from the conversation about pivotal laws. All of it is cloaked by a get-‘er-done optimism, perhaps hubris, that Canada will somehow evolve into a G7 dynamo.

Carney and Eby employ similar arguments: that time cannot be frittered, that obstacles cannot be accommodated, that burdens cannot be imposed, and that their mandates are to build, baby, build. They assume the public accepts any shortcuts or consequences that might arise from their sudden swiftness. All these assumptions are at best questionable.

Bill C-5, being fast-tracked federally before the summer break, and Bill 15,

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