Prime Minister Mark Carney does the coin toss prior to the 112th Grey Cup, in Winnipeg on Sunday.FRANK GUNN/The Canadian Press
Did it matter that the Carney government’s “generational” budget came and went without the earth shaking? Or that national-interest major projects to be fast-tracked have mostly already been approved but are still some way from completion?
The second list of such projects, unveiled by Prime Minister Mark Carney on Thursday, included three mines, a liquefied natural gas facility, a northern B.C. transmission line, and an Iqaluit hydro project – and a plethora of promises that they will change the future of the country.
“On their own, any one is transformational,” Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson posted on X. “Together, they will make Canada stronger for generations to come.”
Wow. That’s a big pledge to current and future generations from a government that hasn’t yet delivered the landmark industrial-development revolution at the centre of its agenda.
And the unusual thing is that Mr. Carney’s government keeps promising more generational and transformational things. Rarely has a new government thrown so many balls in the air, so high. And kept doing so over and over.
Liberals head into final confidence vote on federal budget expecting a narrow win
Even now, eight months after he first became Prime Minister, Mr. Carney is trying to juggle them through Monday’s confidence vote on his minority government’s first budget.
There is no palpable sense that his Liberal government is in serious danger of being defeated in the House of Commons – even though on Sunday, opposition MPs had still not publicly indicated they will provide the two votes or four abstentions that the government needs to survive.
If the Liberals do get through that test, they will get the gift of time – six months or more before they are likely to face such a threat again. That’s time to work on delivering on some of the expectations they have created.
But the remarkable thing is that they have gotten this far through a constant ratcheting up of expectations – never pausing the promises of big, landmark accomplishments to come.
That’s at odds with some of the conventional Canadian political communications that told leaders that it’s wiser to under-promise and over-deliver.
These are Carney’s new major projects, and some of them won’t be easy to finish
But Mr. Carney won power by building expectations: promising to revamp the Canadian economy to cope with the crisis posed by U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to Canada’s economy and its sovereignty. And while his party’s political messaging hasn’t been as sharp since he took office, the campaign of great expectations has never stopped.
When the prospects of a palatable trade agreement with Mr. Trump cooled, Mr. Carney and his ministers simply pumped up the hype about the agenda at home.
One big part of that was the promise that the Nov. 4 budget delivered by Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne would be a “generational” blueprint for transforming Canada’s economy. But it didn’t live up to all of the hype. It was more cautious and, in the end, overshadowed by Conservative MP Chris d’Entremont crossing the floor.
Mr. Carney had said he would present a Climate Competitiveness Plan that he described would be a comprehensive approach to using climate-change policy to enhance Canada’s economic competitiveness. But by November, the plan was slimmed down to vague statements and tucked into the budget.
That was in part because the Liberal government is still juggling other big expectations, in talks with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith over what she has called a “grand bargain” that would allow oil development, and a pipeline, in return for action on greenhouse-gas emissions.
Alberta’s Danielle Smith says agreement with Ottawa expected to be signed in coming days
So many of Mr. Carney’s ambitious plans have been reworked into new promises with each step in a process.
There is now a Major Projects Office, and two sets of projects were unveiled, even if this government didn’t start them and it’s hard to tell if incremental progress is being made. There is a Build Canada Homes office beginning the process to launch construction projects some time next year.
Of course, there is a mismatch of timelines between the years required to break ground on mines and power lines and the mere months the Liberal minority government has between confidence votes in the Commons.
Mr. Carney has somehow managed that disconnect not by lowering expectations but by continuing to build them up.
If his government survives Monday’s vote, it will win time to start delivering on those expectations. At some point, there will be too many to keep juggling.