Mark Carney: world-class résumé, world-class speeches, and a housing target that politely declined to show up.
Starts are running at about half of 500,000 a year. Young Canadians get to enjoy the exciting new national project of never owning anything. Very modern.
Cost of living? Solved, apparently, by mailing cheques and pausing the gas tax. Inflation stayed sticky anyway. Who could have guessed transfers aren’t the same as building more of the things people actually need.
He walked away from U.S. talks because sovereignty. Brave. Also expensive. Exporters and households get to subsidize the principle while investment sits in a holding pattern. Diversification is coming any decade now.
Climate: dumped the carbon tax, EV mandate, and emissions cap, then greenlit more oil and gas. David Suzuki says he’s driving the country into a ditch. The old targets will be missed. At least the summits still look good.
Deficits are large, budget claims keep slipping, and the industrial-strategy era has not yet produced the productivity miracle. But the branding is excellent.
Judge him on houses, groceries, and growth—not the applause. The applause is doing fine.