How has Carney’s cabinet handled its first 100 days? Our columnists answered your questions

Open this photo in gallery:

It has been 100 days since Prime Minister Mark Carney named a new cabinet to tackle what he called a generational challenge. His election campaign was built on the sense of a country in crisis, under threat from a U.S. president intent on levying punishing tariffs on Canada and undermining its sovereignty – he promised speedy solutions to daunting problems.

There was an initial whirlwind of activity when he became Prime Minister: a stunted session of Parliament, a boost to military spending, Team Canada first-ministers’ meetings, a G7 summit in Kananaskis, Alta., and Mr. Carney’s travels to a pair of summits abroad.

Carney’s cabinet is 100 days into its term. Here’s how it’s changed Canada

But progress on the trade deal with the U.S. has been rocky, and a housing plan remains on the drawing board. From the economy to foreign affairs to health care, Globe reporters outlined the many ways Mr. Carney’s cabinet has changed Canada since taking office.

On Aug. 25, Globe columnists Andrew Coyne, Robyn Urback, Konrad Yakabuski and chief political writer Campbell Clark answered reader questions on the first 100 days of Mr. Carney’s cabinet.

Readers asked about negotiations with U.S. President Donald Trump and his unrelenting tariffs, new legislation, work on interprovincial barriers – and what this all means for the Canadian economy. Here are some key points from the Q&A.

Questions and answers have been edited and condensed.

President Trump and tariffs

Open this photo in gallery:

Mr. Carney looked very confident about the previous Aug. 1 tariff deadline during the G7. Did Mr. Carney misunderstand what the U.S. wanted with Canada? Is he actually prepared for handling the demands the U.S. will be making regarding USMCA negotiations next year?

Andrew Coyne: Good questions, without good answers. I’d cut any prime minister a good deal of slack in dealing with Mr. Trump. Trade negotiations are pretty barmy at the best of times – both sides basically have a gun to their own heads. (“You better reduce taxes on your consumers, or we’ll increase taxes on ours!”) But usually, there is some understanding that both sides want to get to a deal that lowers barriers overall.

That’s not the case with Mr. Trump. He likes – loves – tariffs for their own sake, even if he has several mutually contradictory reasons for doing so. Beyond that, it’s very difficult to see what his objectives are, and so far as it is possible to get a bead on them at any one moment, they are as likely as not to have changed in a couple of days, depending on his mood or who spoke to him last.

In sum, no one really knows what the U.S. wants with Canada, and as such, it makes preparations regarding USMCA very difficult. Mr. Trump himself praised USMCA as the greatest trade deal ever after he negotiated it, but now denounces it as a sellout. How does anyone prepare for that?

Campbell Clark: It’s funny, because when I was covering the G7, I didn’t think Mr. Carney looked all that confident about the deadline as some thought. It was initially supposed to be 30 days, and Mr. Carney said that deadlines could add focus to negotiations, but Canadian officials had already suggested it wasn’t a hard and fast 30 days. In August, there has been radio silence on trade. And certainly, the Carney government is thinking about ways to preserve USMCA, and the demands the U.S. will make, which might make tariffs permanent.

One issue is that none of the deals that Mr. Trump has struck with other countries would be easy to swallow for Canada – 15-per-cent tariffs won’t help the auto sector. Mexico also does not have a deal with the U.S. yet.

Trump’s objective seems to be to weaken Canada’s economy until we plead to become the 51st state. Do you believe he has changed his mind? Is the Carney government preparing Canadians for the shock of three more years in the crosshairs of the U.S.?

Coyne: I think it’s entirely possible – in fact, probable – that Trump will return to this theme at some point. It’s not based on any rational fact base, and therefore is incapable of being falsified by events. It all depends, again, on his mood, and what else is going on. The one constant with Mr. Trump, the one prediction I think is safe to make, is that his behaviour will get steadily worse, as indeed it has worsened over the last 10 years. It has to.

The only way he can provoke the outrage on which he and his followers feed is to keep exceeding expectations of how bad he can be. Since everything he does, no matter how outrageous, soon gets baked into expectations, that means he has to do still worse things to get ahead of them. If we’re very lucky, the current policy of trade barriers, plus talk about the 51st state will be as far as Mr. Trump goes. But it could easily go beyond that.

Clark: I don’t think Mr. Trump ever changes his mind. When Mr. Carney went to the White House in May, the president sort of accepted that Canada didn’t want to be the 51st state (He said it takes two to tango), but then said he’d never say never. I don’t think Mr. Trump is actually working on a strategy to make Canada the 51st state. He just believes in beggar-thy-neighbour policies, and that he doesn’t win unless someone else loses. He said explicitly he wants tariffs to make it uneconomical to make cars in Canada. He does not think a strong Canadian economy is good for the U.S. He has apparently been talking privately for years about Canada one day being part of the U.S., so I’d guess it will come up again one day.

Robyn Urback: It’s a fool’s errand to try to get inside Donald Trump’s head, but I’m a bit of a fool so here goes: I don’t believe Mr. Trump has changed his mind. If you were to ask him now, he’d certainly say he still believes Canada should become the 51st. He said so as recently as about a month ago. But the situation for Mr. Trump has changed both domestically and globally. He went from declaring a trade war against Canada and Mexico “on day one” (though it didn’t actually happen on day one) to declaring a trade war against the world.

In short, I think he’s distracted. He’s sending the National Guard to Washington, trying to come up with bogus cases to deport supposed gang members, painting the border wall black, raiding the home of his former national security adviser and so on. It’s a lot of work! Hard to think about annexing another country when you’ve got all of that going on. I think the best approach that Canada can take is to try to keep our head down and hope that Mr. Trump continues to be distracted by paint samples at Benjamin Moore.

Is Carney’s agenda really about extricating Canada’s economy from its dependence on American largesse or are they just working to restore the status quo? If we can become immune to American policy swings, how long might that take?

Konrad Yakabuski: Mr. Carney has raised expectations about reducing Canada’s dependence on the U.S. economy, but this will only happen slowly and, likely, only marginally. If you talk to business leaders, they want trade diversification, but not at the expense of existing Canada-U.S. trade relations and supply chains. Protecting USMCA is their top priority.

Mr. Carney’s talk about joining European countries in joint defence procurement is so far mostly just talk. He has promised a defence industrial policy. But most of Canada’s defence industry is intimately tied to the U.S. industry. We may get some idea about how serious Mr. Carney is when he announces a decision on the F-35 purchase review. But after backing off the digital services tax and lifting countertariffs, it is hard to see Mr. Carney cancelling the F-35 contract.

Coyne: I think nearly everyone agrees it would be nice to be less dependent on the U.S. economy, but getting there is much easier said than done. Governments have been trying to diversify our trade for decades, with little to show for it: The combination of proximity and size makes the gravitational pull of the U.S. economy pretty hard to resist.

The current crisis makes it more imperative to make progress, and the Carney government will probably go to greater lengths than previous governments to do so. But it will take time, and in the meantime, they have to do what they can to avoid a blowup with Mr. Trump. So while they are furiously working away at building closer trade ties with other countries, they’re trying to rag the puck with the Americans, hoping domestic opposition to Mr. Trump’s trade agenda – and Mr. Trump generally – will weaken his hand over time.

Prime Minister Mark Carney announced last week that Canada is removing retaliatory tariffs on some U.S. products in a bid to reset trade discussions with the White House. Do you think that is the right move?

Urback: My view is that it is indeed the right move, though no doubt those who voted for Mr. Carney’s “elbows up” strategy might be feeling a bit betrayed these days.

The U.S. exempted USMCA-compliant goods from its tariffs, but we did not. The Americans told us again and again that the discrepancy was an irritant in negations, and frankly, we need to keep them happy (and keep that exemption going). My sense is that the government’s approach now is to basically kick the can down the road until we get to USMCA renegotiations in earnest, which is probably the right way to go.

Coyne: It’s probably unavoidable. Look, whether we put your elbows up or down, it’s highly debatable whether we’re likely to have any impact on Mr. Trump. I don’t think there’s anything terribly wrong with trying one and then the other. I rather liked Mr. Carney’s analogy to a hockey team roughing up their opponents in the first period, to “send a message,” before turning to the business of putting pucks in the net later on.

I generally don’t like trade wars, or retaliatory tariffs, but that’s with a more rational opposite number, motivated by the usual combination of economic and political considerations. With Mr. Trump, the psychological element takes on greater weight. He delights in domination, so showing that you refuse to be dominated is probably worthwhile.

How badly and how soon does Prime Minister Carney need a win on trade?

Clark: I think he needs wins on the economy, but not necessarily on U.S. trade. The political question about whether he needs a deal with Mr. Trump will be coloured by the fact that Canadians see Mr. Trump as a bully, and whether any other prime minister would have got a good deal. But he does needs wins on the economy, such as announcing one or two of those big projects he promised, trade arrangements with other countries, and a popular budget.

Legislation

I agree that there has been a great deal of activity by the Carney government, but it appears there have been very few actual accomplishments – measures that will improve the lives of Canadians. Is that a fair assessment?

Urback: I think you’re right. So far, we haven’t seen too much by way of tangible change on the individual level. There are exceptions, though: the income tax cut that came into effect on July 1, and of course, the elimination of the carbon tax.

We’ve seen plenty of intention, including legislation to tighten refugee eligibility, expedite major infrastructure projects, and remove federal trade barriers – but not a lot of outcome. The challenge is that “outcome” takes years in many of these areas, and decades if we’re talking about things like major infrastructure projects. We can’t really blame the government for that after just 100 days, but certainly the “announcement stage” will start to get old fast (particularly because the Trudeau government rarely seemed to move beyond that stage).

Coyne: It’s both fair and unfair. They’ve introduced several important pieces of legislation, most of which I find overly broad and/or unwise:

• C-2: Combining draconian limits on the rights of refugee claimants with extraordinary provisions granting investigators warrantless access to information on subscribers, not just from internet service providers or telecoms, but a whole range of service providers.
• C-4: Combining a dumb tax proposal, the cut in the lowest tax rate – which would cost billions, much of it for upper-income taxpayers, without improving incentives to work, save and invest – with a measure exempting political parties from provincial and federal privacy legislation.
• C-5: Combining a measure removing federal barriers to interprovincial trade with a Henry VIII provision allowing cabinet, or indeed a sole minister, to exempt certain projects from all sorts of regulatory requirements.

So I’m not sure I share the premise that we should measure government according to how much it has been doing, at least in such a short time frame. I’d prefer a slower, more considerate government.

I’m not a gun fan or a gun owner and never will be. However, the gun buyback initiative just seems crazy to me. The cost is astronomical and the payback seems incredibly limited. Am I missing something?

Urback: I’m like you – not an owner, not a fan. But I agree, it’s crazy. It won’t address the sources of firearms-related crime, the cost already has been astronomical, and it seems to exist mostly to piss off legal gun owners while placating those who don’t understand gun crime in Canada. But that’s politics. If Mr. Carney is looking for cost-saving measures, however, scrapping the program would be a good one. I’m not sure his government would see it as worth the political cost, though.

Defence, housing and health care

Open this photo in gallery:

In terms of the big files of trade – defence, housing, health care – which accomplishments, in the first 100 days, could the Carney government have achieved but didn’t?

Coyne: Frankly, I’m skeptical of any. They’ve announced a big spending increase in defence – appropriately, in my view – but actually getting the spending out the door, or even figuring out what to spend it on, will take time. As it should. I would have preferred to see a budget earlier than October, even if it was likely to be overtaken by events: a 1994 budget, if you will, to set the stage for the 1995-style budget that is to come. As to the rest, I think 100 days is an arbitrary marker. There will come a time when the government can be held to account for not having accomplished more, but I don’t think we’re there yet.

Urback: There is so much that could theoretically be done if the Carney government – or any government – was unconstrained by convention, or fear of political pushback. On housing: scrap the federal ban on foreign buyers only for new or preconstruction units, to encourage new development. On health care: scrap or rewrite the Canada Health Act and model it after Japan, or the Netherlands, or France, or other countries where there is a mix of public and private financing and delivery. On defence: sign a contract for some damn submarines. Use your imagination! And then think twice, because this is Canada, silly, and we could barely handle eliminating the penny.

Clark: Clearly the big files, in the Carney government’s view, are trade and major economic projects. So far there is no U.S. deal – no country really has a good deal – and the major projects have yet to be identified.

On defence, there has been a sudden and substantial increase in military spending, with more promised for the future.

But on housing, the Liberals promised to build a new housing agency quickly, and to build a modular housing industry in Canada that could speed up building. That is still working its way through the bureaucracy with few details of what is to come.

When will the housing strategy actually see shovels in ground?

Clark: Wait till next year, earliest. There have been hints that the fall budget expected in October will be heavy on housing and we know the bureaucracy is working on setting up the new housing agency promised in the election campaign. But details have been scarce. You have to expect that big initiatives announced in the fall won’t lead to shovels in the ground till at least 2026.

Internal trade

Open this photo in gallery:

It seems that interprovincial barriers have been “reduced” from a bureaucratic perspective. However, I don’t feel we have seen any other improvements, except for the announcement that regulations have been relaxed. Did we lose the momentum on interprovincial trade? Are the provinces even doing anything or making any updates?

Yakabuski: Some premiers have picked the low hanging fruit and made fine declarations about building one Canadian economy, but it remains that the bulk of interprovincial trade barriers are in areas of exclusive provincial jurisdiction in the service sector, and removing them is unlikely to happen any time soon. Transportation (trucking) and construction are areas of potential, but it will be hard to do this without creating a race to the bottom. Which standards should apply?

How can the Prime Minister promise speed, when the real power-holders are the provincial premiers?

Urback: In some areas – infrastructure, notably – the federal government will need sign-on from the provinces. But there are others wherein Mr. Carney could act with the urgency he has said he will adopt.

On defence, he announced in June that Canada will reach the new NATO target of 5 per cent of GDP by 2035. His government introduced Bill C-2 on border security (and a bunch of other things thrown in, too, like every good omnibus bill) and we should find out more about its immigration plans in the fall. In theory, and without the provinces, Mr. Carney could make changes to the Canada Health Act (I’m dreaming), or scrap the wasteful boondoggle that is the firearms buyback program (also dreaming) or introduce new bail reforms (more grounded in reality).

Yakabuski: The federal government has extraordinary powers under the Constitution, should it choose to use them. But, yes, the provinces are semi-equal partners in the federation. The common front or Team Canada approach that has existed since Mr. Carney became Prime Minister is bound to show strain as the conflicting interests of the provinces become more apparent.

British Columbia’s NDP government does not want another oil pipeline to the West Coast. Alberta wants as many as it can get in both directions. Ontario is all about protecting its auto and steel industries. Quebec wants to protect aluminum access to the U.S., but it has been more supportive of Mr. Carney’s move to drop countertariffs than Ontario, which wants tougher countermeasures on U.S. steel. Mr. Carney will also face resistance from the provinces if, for budgetary reasons, he is forced to freeze or slow the the growth in transfers to the provinces. So far, he has only said he will not cut them.

Coyne: This is a permanent conundrum in Canadian politics. The federal government has the power in theory to eliminate internal trade barriers – a major drag on our productivity – but lacks the legitimacy to do so, and therefore the will. Federalism is one thing, but our system is a debased version of it, in which the feds are afraid to do the sorts of federal things for which they were intended. Remember, the only purpose of federating was to form a federal government. If we’re not willing to let it do its job, it calls into question the whole enterprise.

Clark: It’s true, the premiers have a lot of power, but not over everything. They obviously have a lot of power over internal trade barriers, which is why the July 1 deadline on Mr. Carney’s promise to remove internal trade barriers was about the federal barriers. Removing most of them required agreement from premiers, and there has been a little progress on that.

But the Prime Minister has a lot of power – for trade rules and negotiations, and spending power. The promise to quickly approve major infrastructure projects, at least the ones that cross provincial lines, depends a lot on the federal government’s willingness to harmonize its approval process with the provinces. But working out those complex rules isn’t that quick, either.

And of course, moving things through the federal bureaucracy, such as setting up a housing agency, takes time too.

Environmental issues

Where do climate initiatives fit into Carney’s action plan for Canada?

Yakabuski: This is one of the biggest enigmas about the young Carney government. Prior to running for the Liberal leadership, Mr. Carney championed the energy transition. His writing on the subject was unequivocal.

Yet, as Prime Minister, he has eliminated the consumer carbon tax. He has said or done little to suggest that environmental issues are a top concern. Next up: electric vehicle mandates? It is hard to see them surviving in the current context. The auto industry is dead set against them. If Mr. Carney lifts the mandates, it is bound to create strain within the Liberal caucus.

Finance

Open this photo in gallery:

What are the best and likeliest ways the Carney government can increase revenues?

Yakabuski: The cupboard is pretty bare. And with President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill extending U.S. tax cuts permanently, the issue of tax competitiveness creates a barrier for Canada to raise taxes here. That does not mean that there is not room for Ottawa to review tax expenditures or subsidies to business. So far, the Carney government has exempted tax expenditures from its Comprehensive Expenditure Review.

Clark: I don’t think there will be a lot of political room for Mr. Carney to raise revenues. One of his first symbolic moves – very similar to the first symbolic moves of former prime ministers Harper and Trudeau – was a tax cut. It seems fairly clear that Mr. Carney’s political weakness is on affordability issues, so raising personal taxes is politically dangerous. He was against an increase in capital gains taxes. The trade war and tariffs are already scaring away investment, so he isn’t likely to raise corporate taxes. The Liberal campaign platform projected $20-billion in tariffs revenues this year, but Mr. Carney has been softening retaliation, so those revenues will be lower. I think we can expect an effort to trim government programs and a larger deficit.

Coyne: Best, certainly, is to raise the GST – or even better, expand the base of the GST to include, for example, groceries. Broadening the income tax base would also be wise, but experience teaches that would need to be accompanied by tax cuts to have any chance politically, so probably not a great revenue-raiser.

Likeliest? Dunno. The instinct would be to raise top rates of income tax, but a) we’ve already pushed them pretty high, b) the productivity crisis strongly suggests it’s time to lower them, and c) there just aren’t enough rich people to raise the kinds of revenues needed.

I would push back on your claim that there aren’t enough operational savings to cover the planned spending increases. I mean, you’re right, there aren’t. But there are other areas of spending that have so far been ruled out for cuts that we need to rule in: Transfers to provinces and transfers to individuals, notably pensions, are both ripe for reform. Politically explosive, of course, but so is every course before the government.

The civil service industry

Government employment is a very significant fraction of the service economy. The drive for reduction seems to be based on the assumption they aren’t contributing appropriately and would be better employed elsewhere, in a sector where well-paid employment is already very scarce. Would it not be better to focus on increasing efficiency in a civil service that is bound in red tape and heavily concerned with potential civil liability?

Coyne: Surely one is a function of the other. A more efficient civil service, less burdened by the concerns you mention, would not need to employ as many. Just how many civil servants we need is an open question, but the very rapid increase in federal employees per capita since 2015, coupled with the lack of any improvement in services (to say the least) strongly suggests we could get by with rather fewer of them.

Yakabuski: By naming Michael Sabia as Clerk of the Privy Council, Mr. Carney seemed to suggest that public service reform was a top priority. Mr. Sabia has only been on the job for about six weeks, so it is too soon to expect much major movement on this front. There is fear and loathing in Ottawa, nonetheless.

The local media are fixated on cuts to the public service. But unlike previous rounds of public service reform (under Jean Chrétien in 1995, and Stephen Harper after 2011), it remains to be seen how deep Mr. Carney’s cuts will go. Unlike Mr. Chrétien and Mr. Harper, he does not have a majority in the House. More important than cuts, the real imperative is to make the public service more innovative and responsive, restoring its role in policy development. Mr. Carney seems to be counting on artificial intelligence to eliminate a significant number of jobs, but resistance from the public sector unions will make this harder than it sounds.

Other portfolios, such as AI and banking

Open this photo in gallery:

I was impressed and excited to see a Minister of AI, but have not heard anything from this portfolio all summer. AI is moving at an astonishing rate around the world, privately and publicly. What has Canada done to keep up?

Coyne: Do we know this? I’m seeing lots of reports of AI “hitting a wall.” The rapid gains from scaling up the amount of information that large language models train on have been more or less exhausted, so any wins from here on are going to have to be eked out from better algorithms and more computing power. I don’t doubt that eventually AI will have far-reaching benefits, but Canada can participate in these without having to be “leaders” in AI. So I’m skeptical of the need for a Minister of AI, to begin with.

Two areas where I, like too many other fellow Canadians, feel that we deserve better options and services is in air travel and the banking industry. Why do we not welcome international or U.S. competition in these markets? Is it worth overhauling these sectors for the sake of consumers?

Yakabuski: I would argue that if the Carney government makes any changes in these areas, it will be part of the negotiations with the Trump administration, which has complained repeatedly about Canada’s “closed” banking sector. Canada does not prohibit U.S. banks from operating here, contrary to Mr. Trump’s contentions, but Washington appears to want Ottawa to lift some of the regulations on American banks, including current capital requirements.