NP View: Mark Carney has delivered little. It's time he answered for that - National Post

Prime Minister Mark Carney in Banff on Friday, September 11, 2026. Gavin Young/Postmedia Photo by Gavin Young /PostmediaArticle contentMark Carney has been a “wartime” prime minister for all of his 18 months on the job. He has been astute enough that trade conflict with the United States has bolstered his support in Canada with the prime minister fully wrapped in the flag.

To question Carney’s actions or motives at such a time is seen as treasonous in some quarters yet it is precisely because of the immense power and support now resting with the prime minister that questions should be asked. Canadians have put their faith in Carney and it is only right and proper to ask whether that faith has been misplaced.

A new Angus Reid poll shows the prime minister is so popular that should an election be called, the Liberals would win by a landslide. And yet all we have is a tariff war with Donald Trump.

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Apart from “Elbows Up,” one of the prime minister’s main themes has been: build big, build bold and build fast. Paradoxically, to achieve that aim he instituted another layer of bureaucracy with the Major Projects Office. The Building Canada Act was passed last year with the purpose of streamlining federal regulatory processes but, as the C.D. Howe Institute pointed out this week, it is just another hurdle to overcome.

“None of these mechanisms address the fundamental sources of uncertainty in Canada’s regulatory system: political decision-making over individual projects and open-ended criteria that require regulators to consider broad public policy objectives,” says the C.D. Howe analysis.

The new “streamlined” system didn’t work for Saskatchewan-based potash giant Nutrien, which chose to build a new export terminal in the U.S., almost certainly because of onerous regulations in Canada, a University of Saskatchewan agriculture economist told the CBC.

Canada is not building big or bold and certainly not fast.