Mark Carney wants to help Canada lose those stubborn 10 pounds we can never seem to drop

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There is this idea that keeps coming up when people talk about Mark Carney’s plans to get very big things done very quickly in order to buttress the Canadian economy against Donald Trump’s addled onslaught.

I’ve heard it in political analysis and regular conversations lately – in fact, I’ve said it in those contexts a couple of times myself. It’s usually a statement like, “I wish him well” or “I hope he succeeds,” but always in the exact same tone of voice: an upward lilt of hope, tethered to an anvil of skeptical pessimism.

The Prime Minister has, after all, promised to build a slate of large projects of national importance, intended to become the cornerstones of a renewed and resilient Canadian economy. He says we’ll knit a single Canadian economy out of the regulations and roadblocks that currently carve it into 13 stubborn fragments, and cultivate new international trading relationships with countries that want our abundant gifts and are not currently losing their minds in real time in front of the whole world (my words, not his).

Mr. Carney’s frequent refrain is, “We can give ourselves far more than the Americans can ever take away.” It’s a pleasing idea: Mr. Trump’s asinine trade war can spur Canada to finally fix the weakness we’ve been limping around on for decades, and in doing so, at least partly fill in the economic crater left by the big orange guy’s blast radius.

These are not modest undertakings.

“We’re going to have to do things previously thought impossible at speeds not seen in generations,” is how Mr. Carney frequently frames it.

But the vexing thing about tasks that seem impossible or take a long time to pull off is that there’s usually a reason – often a whole fistful of them – why they don’t happen quickly, or at all.

The Prime Minister has pledged, for instance, to whittle down the decision time frame on big projects to two years from the current five, by eliminating onerous and duplicative approvals that are strangling ambition and productivity. The regulatory part of that equation Mr. Carney and his government can control; what they can’t are Indigenous communities and environmental groups already feeling railroaded, or the protracted legal challenges that could result.

Similarly, tearing down interprovincial trade barriers and diversifying international trade is like those 10 extra pounds Canada has always been meaning to shed. We keep circling back to the idea, we know we would be healthier and more mobile if it happened, and our ambitions for improvement are sincere, but going to the gym and eating less cheese is really hard.

Nova Scotia, for example, was praised for leading the way with legislation that would let professionals practise in the province without being relicensed. That legislation has since been watered down because licensing bodies in Nova Scotia warned that it could create a no-man’s-land in which they would not have authority to investigate complaints about outside professionals practising in the province, while the licensing bodies from the home province would have no jurisdiction.

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There is certainly plenty of maddening inertia, intransigence and inefficiency in the various systems Mr. Carney will need to bend to his will to make his big, fast plans come to life, and wiping those out would be a boon for all of us. But as the Nova Scotia example shows, there are very real complications tucked in among the stupider stuff; hard things are hard to do, no matter how laser-focused you are.

In the urgency of the economic threat, an uncommon goodwill and flexibility has been set loose. You can see Mr. Carney trying to move fast and capitalize on that, while the Overton window of what provinces, leaders and ordinary citizens will accept has been blown wide open by the fetid wind issuing from the White House.

But with those projects of national importance, for instance, the moment there is a shopping list – and inevitably, some provinces see their pet projects on it and others don’t – that contented purring emanating from the premiers in Saskatoon as they flanked Mr. Carney at the First Ministers’ meeting earlier this month is likely to turn to snarling from some quarters.

And then there’s the thousands of invisible hands tasked with turning the gears on Mr. Carney’s big plans.

Journalist Kathryn May, a long-time expert on the civil service, wrote this week about the obvious marching orders from the Prime Minister contained in the brusque demands of Bill C-5, dubbed the One Canadian Economy Act.

“He expects the public service to change how it works: less process, more results. Less caution, more action. Fewer barriers, more execution,” she wrote.

Ms. May’s diagnosis is that Mr. Carney is demanding a complete public-service overhaul, but without the usual reports, task forces and plodding strategies. He’s just going to hitch the bureaucracy to his rear bumper and stomp on the gas.

Now, Mr. Carney has named Michael Sabia, a mandarin and a corporate executive who seems magnetically drawn to managing organizational upheaval, to run the entire bureaucracy as Clerk of the Privy Council. On Monday – when he surely knew he had the job, but before the rest of us did – Mr. Sabia told a Globe and Mail conference focused on building a stronger Canada that “we have an ambition deficit” – just after warning that he didn’t want to offend anyone.

How all of this shakes down will amount to a fascinating diagnostic test on the big creaky beast of the Canadian state. Can the civil service be whipped into something more efficient and nimble by a sheer act of will? How do we calculate our grand trade-offs in this country, and how do those priorities move around depending on the moment? Can we do things bigger, better and faster simply because we want to or need to, or is public life just not that simple?

So far, Mr. Carney’s answer to how all of this will get done for Canada now, finally, after decades of ruminating on those pesky 10 pounds, is essentially, “Because I’m here, and I say so.”

I wish him well. I hope he succeeds, for all of us.