Gregory Jack: Mark Carney has his majority. Now comes the hard part
The prime minister has bought himself more time to act, and less room to fail
By: Gregory Jack
It is a season of discontent in Ottawa and across the country as we head toward summer.
The Consumer Price Index report for March shows a 4.4 per cent increase in grocery prices, and a 4.3 per cent increase in rent. These are fixed expenses; Canadians cannot defer their rent or mortgage payments. Uncertainty doesn’t begin to describe the situation in the Middle East, nor the next moves of an American president that seems determined to increase global U.S. dominance through brute force. But Canadians’ concerns begin at home.
By hook or by crook, and almost a year to the date of the 2025 election, Prime Minister Mark Carney has finally achieved his majority government. He chose both hook and crook, by “borrowing” many of the platform ideas of his opponents, thereby neutralizing opposition, and by luring discontented or ambitious MPs into his caucus to push the Liberals over the majority threshold.
Tapping into his banker background, on April 19, Carney delivered “Forward Guidance” to Canadians in a YouTube video, warning us all to prepare for a long process of disentanglement from the United States, which is no longer a reliable neighbour partner. But our integration with the U.S. is so deep and longstanding that it’s going to be hard to break up with America even if we want to.
Carney’s caucus today resembles the bridge Brian Mulroney built between Quebec separatists and western discontents in the 1980s, a bridge that collapsed spectacularly with two failed constitutional accords. Carney is hinting at no such grandiose systemic ambition; re-wiring the economy so it is less reliant on America is ambition enough. Carney must now get on with governing competently, connecting his national strategy to household strain and turning the situational unity acquired through anti-American rhetoric into something more durable.
Governing effectively means delivering results, and showing the receipts. His majority gives him a narrow window to “get things done,” but not a broad window to drift into other projects. For Canadians, addressing affordability and inflation is priority number one, and the recent gas-tax holiday probably isn’t going to be enough in an endurance economy. In the March 2026 “What Worries the World” survey, almost half of Canadians (49 per cent) said inflation was a top three concern, and that has likely only worsened with the recent consumer price index data.
To that end he must also bring the Forward Guidance to people’s kitchen tables. A recent poll Ipsos did for MNP found that four in ten Canadians are within $200 or less of not being able to meet their monthly financial obligations. That’s not good in an environment where prices can rise by that amount in a month at the gas pump alone. Carney tells Canadians this will all take time, and that probably is true when measured against his ambitions. But immediate results must be visibly apparent so they align Carney’s timeline (years) with the timeline currently being faced by many households (months).
The summer is his chance to do so. The language used in Forward Guidance must translate to BBQ-circuit talk. Come the fall we will have a new federal budget, CUSMA negotiations will ideally be advancing, and the questions of national unity will return via the Alberta referendum and Quebec election. Not to mention the U.S. midterms, during which Canada may well be used as a foil or target by both parties. We stand to suffer collateral damage no matter what we do.
If the energy crisis continues to benefit Alberta via oil profit, to the detriment of the east in terms of daily living costs, Canada may find itself a country with its “head in the oven and feet in the freezer,” borrowing the words of former Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz. Transforming the national unity Canada has benefitted from in the united front against American tariffs into a true national project will be a tall task, but none of this matters if Carney cannot keep the country together.
New and existing Liberal MPs are all gathered in a big tent that stretches across the spectrum and the country. But like Mulroney’s bridge, it is vulnerable to inertia and grievance politics if progress is not made, and if Canada is only situationally united, that is, united against American influence. Blowing deadlines, like the Alberta MOU implementation deadline of April 1, or project review deadlines, can quickly thwart Carney’s ambitious plans of action via eroded credibility.
It is easy to imagine in two years, when Carney is three years into his mandate, discontent surfacing in caucus as floor-crossing MPs have been unable to advance their preferred issues, and Canada’s economy has continued to teeter, perhaps falling fully into a recession. By then the public’s patience for the government to enact Carney’s ambitious agenda will have run out as the government has had to continually play whack-a-mole while missing self-imposed deadlines.
None of this is intended to suggest Carney is not in a strong position. Ironically, he has more time on his hands now with a majority, but less time to actually implement his plans. The Americans are circling, and there is no guarantee the next trade deal — if there is one — will in any way resemble what we currently have. We stand to lose the protection from tariffs that we have enjoyed since President Trump returned to the White House. Our national character will be challenged with provincial elections and referendum questions. The clock is now ticking, and the Forward Guidance from Canadians is clear: it’s time to start visibly fixing things now.
Gregory Jack is senior vice president with Ipsos Public Affairs (Canada)
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The Liberals bought themselves unlimited room to fail by bribing almost the entire media, and are using it to the full.
After a year of no accomplishment whatsoever except backing off on a few of Trudeau's newest and most egregious plans (and of course shoveling billions out the door without tangible results), the biens-pensants are saying "now it's time for Carney to get to work".
In three years, they will be saying "he just needs another mandate for his banking brilliance to bear fruit. And those Conservatives are icky."
Carney and his Liberals now fully control the House, Senate, Courts, and the media. The Elbows Up Election was our last chance to attempt to reverse the course we've been on for a decade. The only choice Canadians have at this point will be to leave this country (if they can figure out somewhere that will take them), or join what Jen adroitly coined the Canadian Octopus Economy.
The only federal instituion in any question of changing, really ever, is the House, and the earliest that could theoretically happen is 2029. The Senate and Courts are appointed by the PM/PMO, so no change is possible there; in fact, they can be further stacked with those loyal to the Liberals/CCP.
The media? Well, with a few notable outliers like The Line (assuming Matt & Jen still have the heart to continue it by 2029), I wouldn't count on any fair and balanced criticism coming from the fifth estate (which is now actually the fifth column).
That leaves Carney three years to tie up any annoying loose ends of democratic function and accountability left in our 'federation' before he has to have one of those annoying 'elections' again, which will by that point be Canadian Kabuki Theatre, as will 'debates' in the House, Senate, and Courts. It's over. We now live in Mark Carney's Octopus's Garden.