Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks during a news conference at the National Press Theatre in Ottawa.DAVE CHAN/AFP/Getty Images
To govern is to choose, the old adage runs. The old adage is wrong. More often, to govern is to straddle.
Politicians are disinclined to choose by nature, of course: left unsupervised, they will nearly always prefer guns and butter to guns or butter. But many of the most important issues do not lend themselves to binary, either-or choices.
The question is never literally “guns or butter” in some absolute sense, but guns or butter at the margin: how much less butter is worth how many more guns, and vice versa. Hence the economist’s answer to the old adage: it’s not about solutions, but trade-offs.
Just now Mark Carney is facing a number of particularly difficult trade-offs, which puts him in the position of having to perform multiple simultaneous straddles: not only between competing options but between trade-offs. Should he devote more of his scarce time to one, or the other? The answer, of course, is both. To govern is to lose sleep.
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The first of these trade-offs has to do with the competing claims of the environment and the energy sector. Mr. Carney is famously concerned about climate change. He is also famously concerned about getting elected, and keeping the country together. So out with the carbon tax, first, and now … in with another pipeline?
Maybe. The next decision point is July 1, the deadline, under the MOU signed by Mr. Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, for Alberta to submit its application to the federal Major Projects Office. The problem: the project still does not have a private-sector sponsor.
Mr. Carney, right, signs an MOU with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith in Calgary, November , 2025.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
That’s important because the project is supposed to be designated as a project of national interest under the Building Canada Act by Oct. 1. Still, that’s a formality, right? Well, maybe. What else is happening in October? Just an election in Quebec, famously skeptical of pipelines, on Oct. 5, and a referendum-on-a-referendum on secession in Alberta, famously insistent on pipelines, Oct. 19.
And in between, there is supposed to be consultation with affected Indigenous groups. And securing financing for the Pathways carbon-capture storage project, on which the pipeline’s progress depends. And surmounting environmental and political opposition to the project in B.C. And, of course, rounding up that private-sector sponsor.
Suppose these questions are not resolved by Oct. 1. Is Mr. Carney going to give the thumbs-up to such a dodgy proposal four days before an election in Quebec in which the Parti Québécois might ride anti-oil sentiments to victory? On the other hand, is he going to veto it, two weeks before Alberta’s refereferendum?
Or will he find some fantastic fudge that manages to do both, or neither? Or rather, both and neither? To govern is to straddle.
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At the same time, and not unrelated, he is facing another trade-off: how far to diversify our trade and defence alliances, in a bid to reduce our dependence on the United States, while still recognizing that we are, in fact, dependent on them for both.
People sometimes talk about “building the plane while flying it.” In this case, we already have a plane. It’s just on fire. So we’re trying to build a whole second plane while still flying the first one, desperately hoping we can get the second plane finished and jump to it in time before the first one slams into the ground. Meantime, we are forced to, yes, straddle between the two.
Mr. Carney takes part in an event at a new housing development in Orleans, Ont., in May.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Third trade-off. The Prime Minister has big plans to spend big – on defence (see: less dependence), on infrastructure, especially for trade (see: ditto), on housing, on productivity, possibly on pipelines. But he’s also facing a rapidly deteriorating fiscal situation, with deficits now forecast to exceed $60-billion for years to come – partly because of the uncertainties surrounding our relationship with the United States, our internal divisions and whether we can build pipelines.
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So: spend more? Spend less? Or somehow find a way to do both at the same time (balancing the “operating” budget while running deficits for “capital”)? To govern is to straddle.
And then there’s that fourth trade-off, the one that sort of sums up the others: holding onto the support of centre-right voters, the ones that abandoned Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives for Mr. Carney’s Liberals, while protecting the Liberals’ left flank, newly vulnerable in light of Mr. Carney’s defence-spending and environment-shredding propensities.
Lean to the left? Lean to the right? Stand up, sit down, fight fight fight?
You’re probably thinking I’m going to end this with the same tired refrain: To govern is to straddle. No. To straddle is to govern.