EDITORIAL: Can Mark Carney fix Justin Trudeau’s blunders?

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It’s ironic Mark Carney’s success as prime minister is going to depend on his ability to resolve a perfect storm of bad policies by Justin Trudeau that undermined the Canadian economy.

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From a decade of high deficits and debt, to immigration levels exceeding Canada’s economic ability to absorb new arrivals, to a bloated federal public service, to Trudeau’s carbon tax, unrealistic electric vehicle mandates and loss of focus on the need for new oil and gas pipelines, Carney has inherited a poisoned chalice from his predecessor.

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While those challenges have been exacerbated by U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, Carney himself acknowledged during the Liberal leadership race that Canada’s economy was weak long before Trump was elected president.

The fact Canada experienced the worst record of economic growth under Trudeau since the government of R.B. Bennett during the Great Depression underscores the challenge now confronting Carney.

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While he has shown himself to be less of an ideologue than Trudeau – Carney’s position on carbon pricing, for example, is almost unrecognizable from his view prior to entering politics that carbon taxes weren’t high enough – the unanswered question is whether his solutions to the problems he inherited will be substantially different from the failed policies of his predecessor.

Carney, after all, was an economic advisor to Trudeau going back to the start of the pandemic in 2020 and last September was appointed as chair of Trudeau’s task force on economic growth, prior to Trudeau’s resignation in March.

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During the election, Carney promised $130 billion in new spending over four years, with total deficit spending of $224.8 billion.

That was 71% higher than the $131.4 billion in deficit spending Trudeau predicted during the same period in his fall economic statement released last December.

Carney says the difference is that his policies will cut the operational spending of the government down to an annual increase of less than 2% compared to 9% under Trudeau and he’ll use the savings to invest in new nation-building projects – details to come next month in a federal budget for which no specific date has yet been announced.

That will give Canadians an early indication of whether Carney is planning a true break from Canada’s lost economic decade under Trudeau, or more of the same.

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