Carney in Primetime

Listen here, or read below

This past Wednesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney made a speech to Canadians in primetime. This was noteworthy as these 7:30 PM addresses are not at all a common occurrence. Prime ministers only make these kinds of addresses every few years, so it was theorized that there would be a significant update in this speech.

The government is releasing a new budget in the next couple of weeks - so we were assuming there would be a large announcement about that budget.

In the end, the speech was over 3000 words and took over half an hour to recite. It’s really long, so we’ve read it, analyzed it and broken it down.

Speech first. Analysis later.

Here it is (heavily paraphrased):

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"My fellow Canadians, we are in a really difficult situation, particularly because of the US - but we have been in bad situations before. We get out of it by being bold and unified!. We’ve done this in the past. We’ve gotten too close to the Americans and it puts our economy and jobs at risk. They have us in a bad position, but we’re still in the best position to work with them.

We have a tonne of strengths with resources, personnel, values, institutions, and lots of potential. Because of all this, we can restore our place at the top.

The upcoming budget is about:

• Building

• Taking Control

• Winning Economically

It is going to be an enormous investment in:

• Public Safety

  • Securing Borders

  • Gun Control

  • RCMP

  • Legislation on criminals and criminal activity including hate speech

• Improving the Economy

  • One Canadian Economy Act (Framework for unifying provincial trade)

  • Major Projects Office (Organization to help with large national projects)

  • $60 Billion in energy and resource investments already - more to come soon

  • Fixing the discrepancy between wages and cost of living

We are going to focus on building more homes, supporting local Canadian industries and businesses. We are starting a new defense agency. We are going to make sure we buy more Canadian and sell more Canadian goods to Canadians.

We are also buffing our international trade outside the US with major partners like Indonesia, and working on it with China & India. The pledge is to double our trade outside the US in 10 years.

We are going to focus on setting our youth up for success, with better pathways to the trades.

We cut taxes for the middle class. We are going to keep the recent social programs like Dental, School Food, and Childcare. We are also adding new federal benefits for low income people.

All this being said, there will need to be tough choices and sacrifices made in other areas. To minimize cuts, we are going to streamline the government and make it more efficient. We have already started doing this.

This turnaround will take time, but we are projected to be doing well compared to the rest of the G7. In order to succeed, we need buy-in from everyone.

Let’s go Canada."

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What stands out most about this speech is that it reads and presents as if Mark Carney is still on the campaign trail.

The underlying sentiment is quite positive: it focuses on young Canadians, protecting our industries, diverging as much as we can from the US when it comes to trade and strategy.

These ideas were fundamentally what Carney’s campaign was about back in April as he pivoted away from the Justin Trudeau Liberal era.

Frankly, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who could argue with the spirit of any of these ideas. The issue from a critical lens is that there are no detail on how any of this will get accomplished. On pretty much each and every one of these points, the critical question to ask is “Well what do you mean Mr. Carney?”

For example, declaring that Canada is going to double its exports outside the US is a bold idea. Presumable we would have already done this if it was so easy, and us expanding our trade likely means we need to displace someone else.

This government is already half a year old, and the only big deliverables have been preliminary work. Two acts, that in theory set the table for inter provincial trade as well as Infrastructure projects. However, none of these have translated into any actual change quite yet.

On the one hand, Carney is promising investments in this country like never before. On the other hand, he is suggesting that Canadians should expect pain and sacrifice. So, without any details it’s really hard to speculate on what any of that actually means.

It will be extremely difficult to spend more and save. One possibility is that this can be accomplished via operational efficiencies. Though again, it’s all talk at this point so we really just don’t know.

Liberal detractors say that Carney is full of it and that he’s just continuing on the Trudeau Legacy - spending and spending. Liberal supporters will say that this budget is about setting up the future for success, and that there is no better person than Carney to lead Canada into the trade war with Trump.

Detractors say that there is still no deal, and that it’s clear Carney was fibbing about his negotiating prowess. Supporters would say that he’s standing up to the bully.

Realistically, we won’t know for sure until the budget is released.

For now, we are left with what amounts to a campaign speech outside an election cycle. The sentiment was fantastic, and highly positive. But it could easily be nonsensical rhetoric designed to obfuscate a lack of results. At least we seem to have departed the Trudeau post-national era.

There have been rumblings that the Liberals want another federal election soon. This would be in the hopes that they could lock in a parliamentary majority for four years with a strong mandate while the NDP remains weak.

I was highly sceptical of the veracity of these rumours.

No longer.

This is the first time I have felt that a snap election is a realistic option. The Liberals made expert use of the Prime Minister‘s position in the lead up to April‘s election. It would be logical for them to employ that same strategy here. They can keep the vibes positive, contrast Carney to Pollievre (and paint him as a Trump-light), and focus on promises that are years away and therefore hard to criticize.

The bottom line is that it will be fascinating to see what this budget actually has in store. Until then, Canadians will have to make due with promises alone

The 2025 federal budget is expected to be unveiled on November 4th.

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