Mike Colledge: Is Canada headed in the right direction?
Comparing Carney’s first few months to those of his predecessor.
By: Mike Colledge
Maybe it is too early in the prime minister’s mandate to judge his performance. However, throughout the 2025 federal election and since beginning to govern, Prime Minister Carney has said repeatedly that Canada has been — and is — facing a series of urgent crises and that he intends to lead a government that moves and builds faster than any Canadian government ever before. So perhaps taking measure of his impact almost four months in is fair game.
There has been no shortage of praise from all corners for Carney’s early days at the helm. The news media, business leaders, provincial leaders and even some opposition members have collectively issued a “so far, so good” verdict. All with the caveat that “the devil is in the details” or “the best is yet to come,” depending on their political point of view.
Canadians are also giving the prime minister the benefit of the doubt, with more Canadians telling Ipsos that the country is now headed in the right direction (from 31 per cent in March 2025 to 46 per cent in June 2025, a 15-point gain). There is obviously still much more work to do and the real proof of a stronger economy that also delivers the things Canadians care most deeply about — such as better health services, a safer neighbourhood, a more secure country and rising personal incomes that will cover the “required” things in life — will take more time.
How much time does the prime minister have? It is hard to say. Financially most Canadians are feeling pressured and the gap between Baby Boomers and all other generations remains significant. In a recent study Ipsos found that 40 per cent of Baby Boomers say that they “almost always choose the lowest price” when making a purchase. It’s a good measure of how much someone is feeling the “pinch” of a weak economy. This rises to 73 per cent of Generation Z who say that they “almost always choose the lowest price.” No amount of announcements, G7 summits, or prime ministerial proclamations are going to quickly ease these pressures. The worry for Carney is that this gets worse before his governments’ actions start to make it better.
But let’s give credit where credit is due. A 15-percentage point increase on “heading in the right direction” is good momentum for a prime minister who inherited a bit of a mess. The previous prime minister had worn out his welcome with Canadians and in many ways (fair or not) had become the personification of all that ails us as a country.
For sake of comparison, let’s look at Carney’s predecessor and how fast he turned around this “right direction” metric when he won his first election. As it turns out, former prime minister Justin Trudeau had similar early success at moving the “right direction” response, from 39 per cent in October 2015 to 46 per cent by December of 2015.
This is, I admit, a somewhat unfair comparison. After all, the world is quite different in 2025 than it was in 2015. Trudeau inherited a happier electorate. Prior to his election, four in 10 Canadians felt the country was headed in the right direction. But in the Canada Trudeau left for Carney 10 years later, only three in 10 felt the country was on the right track. Further, the public dismay when Trudeau was elected was relatively short lived.
Canadians had weathered the 2008-2009 economic downturn but by 2015 were looking to do better than just get by. They still recalled the heady pre-2008 days when Canadians of all ages and incomes could ride the growth wave and most could see the Canadian dream of home ownership and a comfortable life and retirement within their grasp. Trudeau’s message of hope resonated for people who could still remember the good times.
By 2024, this dream had disappeared for many, with only 30 per cent telling Ipsos their financial prospects would improve within the next 10 years. Carney could not lean on hope. He instead held a mirror up to Canadians, admitting to them that there was much that needed to be done to fix the country. He notably stopped short of saying that Canada was broken.
Finally, the world outside of Canada’s borders seemed much calmer in 2015. Sure, there were Syrian refugees who the then-prime minister made a priority to bring to Canada, and a price on carbon that was brought in to address climate change, but those challenges don’t seem to compare to today’s. There is Trump, tariffs and trade (we will just leave the commentary at that). There is war in Europe and the Middle East. There is far more economic pessimism and uncertainty, and an ongoing recovery from the COVID-19-induced inflation. We still have climate change but no longer seem to think we need a price on carbon to solve it. And even in areas where we — the world collectively — seem to be making progress, like AI, there is as much fear as there is optimism.
It’s safe to say Carney’s early days have been — and will continue to be — more difficult than his predecessor’s. Unfortunately for him, in addition to climbing a steeper hill, he is also likely to have a shorter runway. He has a minority government. Trudeau’s majority government had a positive start but began to run into some troubles by late 2017, when a majority of Canadians started to feel the country was once again headed in the wrong direction. He ended up with a minority after this second election campaign. Trudeau was saved by the 2020 pandemic and the rebounding years that followed — until the rebound stopped. Barring another pandemic or perhaps a world war, Carney is unlikely to have an all-consuming single issue to make Canadians forget about their current woes or the loss of their dreams.
The closest thing for Carney has been U.S. President Donald Trump’s musing about Canada becoming the 51st State. It was a big enough issue to swing voters into his camp during the election but since then his “elbows up” positioning has softened, as have Trump’s annexation threats.
The “right direction” metric is not a measure of progress. It is a measure of how people feel today. Whether we feel we are headed in the right or wrong direction is in no way a predictor of where we will end up. Only time will tell if Carney is making enough of the right moves. He may not have as much time as he hopes.
Mike Colledge is president ESG of Ipsos Canada. Some results from this column are drawn from Ipsos’ new Future of Canada’s Federal Public Service study. Click here for more information.
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Carney won the last elections with a campaign of fear. He had the right audience as Canadians are risk averse and extremely politically apathetic. All of a sudden it didn't matter that the liberals were inept, incompetent and seemingly corrupt, had mismanaged the country's economy for ten years, were completely devoid of any idea or sense of how to turn the ship around, they had found a boogie man with which to exploit the electorate's fears and that became the only thing that mattered. Elbows up and Never 51 became the rallying cries for the politically fearful and uninformed. There will be a price to pay, a very steep price but no matter, Canadians are still walking around with their elbows up and their heads in the sand. Promising Canadians good governance is useless, they only respond to fear mongering and promises of "free stuff".
Canada is a country in steep decline and more bad liberal policies won't fix that but it's ok, we have "free" healthcare! Elbows up baby!
In four months all Carney has done is announce spending. As a former banker he should know there is another side to the ledger and that is income. He has made no changes to increase GDP. It is all promises and no action.