After that needless stumble with the awful Kevin Roberts invite -- described as a "Christo-fascist" by Dale Smith in a blistering column Thursday -- Prime Minister Carney hit it out of the park today as he announced his wide-ranging "Building Canada Strong" agenda.
On trade:
On helping Canadians affected by tariffs:PM Carney is rolling out a sweeping Buy Canadian policy, arguing the U.S. can no longer be trusted as a reliable trading partner. “What’s going on is not a transition, it’s a rupture,” said Carney.
— Politico (@politico.com) September 5, 2025 at 10:16 AM
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On Ukraine:PM Carney on upcoming housing announcement… pic.twitter.com/npCSuN8Zrt
— Deborah Gibson (@luvcaffeine) September 5, 2025
This whole thread is worth reading:"Mr. Putin is the cause of this war—he's the reason for the killing. He is not going to dictate the terms of the peace," says PM Carney when asked re: Russian President Vladimir Putin's rejection of a proposal for Western troops in Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire.#cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/agWihkuR65
— CPAC (@CPAC_TV) September 5, 2025
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As for that Maple MAGA complaint that "Carney isn't doing anything!":Standing Ovation just now for PM Mark Carney at TIFF 50th opening. www.youtube.com/live/VLsGYfd...
— 🇨🇦Cre8ivCanuck📎 (@cre8ivcanuck.bsky.social) September 4, 2025 at 6:34 PM
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LNG Developer Announces $15B Project Off Newfoundland. ⬇️
— Mark Marissen (@marissenmark) September 3, 2025
The company’s CEO says the announcement would never have happened without policy changes introduced by Prime Minister Mark Carney. https://t.co/NbwUih9ehp
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And on a side note, here's something that needs to be remembered:
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Here is some commentary about Carney's announcements:
Leni Spooner / Between the Lines
(And by the way, I hope nobody thinks I actually found a photo of Mark Carney playing baseball. Its ChatGPT, of course.)
Are We About to Double Up on #ElbowsUp?The Planet Democracy: Unfiltered North
Carney’s “Rupture”: From Free Trade to Fortress Canada
Prime Minister Mark Carney didn’t mince words this week in Mississauga. In unveiling a C$5 billion Strategic Response Fund, a sweeping Buy Canadian procurement policy, new supports for farmers, and even a pause on the EV sales mandate, he called the moment what it is: “a rupture, not a transition.”
That word choice matters. A rupture means a break. A clean tear in how things used to work. For decades, Canada has lived in the free-trade era — where the assumption was that the rules of open global commerce held steady. With NAFTA, CETA, CPTPP and the WTO, we were a model trading nation.
But this week’s announcement makes clear: those assumptions are gone. Canada is moving early to cushion industries and households against a world where mercantilism — protectionist, self-reliant, elbows-up trade — is back.
...Carney’s package isn’t just a band-aid — it’s a strategic pivot. Here’s the plain-language breakdown:
-C$5B Strategic Response Fund to help industries weather the tariff shock, prevent layoffs, and buy time to retool.
-“Buy Canadian” procurement push so federal contracts prioritize domestic suppliers — and provinces and municipalities are encouraged to follow suit.
-Pause on the EV sales mandate for 2026, easing pressure on automakers but drawing sharp criticism from climate advocates.
-C$370M in biofuel and farm supports, cushioning Canadian farmers against retaliation and opening new markets.
This is government acting early. Not scrambling after the damage is done, but pulling out all the stops now to give Canadians a cushion in the transition.
...Elbows up has always been about consumer sovereignty. Now it’s also about national resilience.
Retreat or Resilience?
The easy critique will be that this is a retreat — a step backward from Canada’s role as a free-trade nation. But there’s another way to see it: as resilience, as sovereignty, as preparation for a harder-edged global economy.
Carney’s government is not just responding to tariffs. It is repositioning Canada for a world where mercantilist instincts dominate. The real question is how we — as consumers, voters, and communities — choose to engage with that shift.
The Doer vs. The Ditherer: Carney at Work, Poilievre on SeinfeldDean Blundell
Mark Carney is busy building a modern industrial strategy for Canada. Pierre Poilievre, after 20+ years of accomplishing nothing, is busy workshopping his George Costanza impression.
Mark Carney is busy building a modern industrial strategy for Canada. Meanwhile, Pierre Poilievre is busy workshopping his Seinfeld material, comparing Carney to George Costanza. After 20+ years in politics with nothing to show for it, maybe Poilievre is the one who has perfected the art of looking busy while doing absolutely nothing.
The Architect vs. The Pretender
It is a tale of two politicians. One just unveiled a serious, forward-thinking industrial strategy for Canada and made a tough but pragmatic call on EV mandates. The other spent his week perfecting his George Costanza impression. No, seriously.
Pierre Poilievre, a man who has been collecting a six-figure salary from taxpayers for 20+ years, stood before cameras and called Mark Carney’s summer a “big show about nothing.” He actually compared Carney to the Seinfeld character who famously tried to look busy to avoid getting fired.
The irony is so thick you could cut it with a knife. While Carney is making moves to protect Canadian jobs and modernize our economy, Poilievre is recycling sitcom plots from the 90s. It is a bold move to call someone else useless when your own resume is thinner than a crepe. After two decades in government, what exactly has Pierre Poilievre built? We will wait.
Carney Makes the Tough Calls
Let’s talk about what a real leader does. This week, Carney’s office announced two major policy moves. First, they unveiled a new industrial strategy designed to boost Canadian manufacturing, secure supply chains, and create high-paying jobs right here at home. It is a detailed plan to make Canada a powerhouse in the green economy, from critical minerals to clean tech. You can read the nitty-gritty here.
Second, Carney made the difficult but necessary decision to pause the federal electric vehicle mandate. Why? Because the United States is dragging its feet, and forcing the transition too quickly without our largest trading partner on board would kill Canadian auto jobs. It is a logical choice that puts Canadian workers ahead of rigid ideology. It is the kind of decision a grown-up makes when faced with complex global realities....
BREAKING: Canada Lost 66,000 Jobs in August And Mark Carney Just Announced A Game Changing Plan To Get Canadians Working Again
Don’t Pin It on Carney—Start With Trump’s Trade Shock (and Trudeau’s Permitting Paralysis)
...What to Watch in the Next 90 Days
1. Permitting reality vs. press release: Does the new Major Projects Office actually cut duplicative reviews and set statutory shot-clocks? If yes, capital will notice—fast.
2. Procurement pull-through: Do Buy Canadian rules convert into purchase orders for Canadian steel, rolling stock, transformers, heat pumps, grid gear, and defence components?
3. BDC money out the door: Are SMEs seeing approvals in weeks, not quarters? Liquidity delayed is liquidity denied.
4. Reskilling at speed: Do 25–30k Canadians actually enroll this fall in programs tied to real vacancies (EV supply chain, construction trades, energy systems, defence manufacturing, agri-tech)?
5. Youth on-ramps, including apprenticeships, co-ops, and paid training slots, must now scale. A 14.5% youth jobless rate is not a rounding error—it’s a future productivity crisis.
The Playbook Canada Needs (and Carney Says He’ll Run)
-Build at industrial speed (not program speed): housing, transmission, ports, rail, energy, defence.
-Lock in domestic demand through Buy Canadian so firms scale before export.
-Targeted shock absorbers for tariff-exposed communities—keep viable firms alive through the storm.
-Skills, skills, skills: treat reskilling like critical infrastructure.
-Diversify trade without pretending the U.S. goes away: Europe, Mexico, Indo-Pacific—plus grow our own market with procurement and housing-led demand.
If the government executes, August will look like a turning point—the month the damage peaked and the rebuild started. If we lapse back into announcement theatre, buckle up for more months like this.
Bottom Line
August’s job losses are the invoice for Trump’s tariff chaos colliding with years of slow-walked Canadian projects. Mark Carney’s been in office four months; One Canada hasn’t begun to move dirt. Don’t buy the “Carney caused it” narrative. Hold him to account for what comes next: faster permits, faster builds, faster money, faster training.
That’s how you turn a grim jobs print into a recovery story—with cranes, crossties, and contracts, not hashtags.
(And by the way, I hope nobody thinks I actually found a photo of Mark Carney playing baseball. Its ChatGPT, of course.)
6 comments:
Speaking of faster training, this can't be left only to governments or be simply contingent on government handouts. Canadian companies need to shoulder their responsibility to train the next generation. I know three students in engineering co-op programs who each sent out between 150 and 200 co-op applications and received no offers. I'm told this is not at all unusual. One student who did get a position found it in fhe US, with Elon Musk's Tesla. It's hard to see how we ride the wave of new technology without training the next generation of engineers.
For industry to create jobs in Canada, Canadian industry will have to gets its collective large ass sales force out selling to overseas markets. The convenience of the US market is no longer rosy.
DJF
I don't praise the Trudeau/Notley TMX caper. I condemn it, just as ff expansion is condemning the human race.
Carny's (intentional spelling btw) love affair with ff's belie his post UK stint as a 'climate champion'. go figure
And sure let's send Canadian troops to the Ukraine to get them killed and help provoke WW3.
One problem with expecting Canadian industry to step up is, most of it is foreign owned. We have a branch plant economy, and the foreign parent companies have no interest in creating a lot of jobs in Canada.
Maybe if we nationalized some of 'em.
Interesting comments. On a side not, I remember talking to an employment counsellor 40 years ago who said one of the problems was that Canadian businesses often complained about how university or college graduates "weren't ready to work" -- but she pointed out that this meant they expected the taxpayers to cover much of the costs of training workers, rather than accepting responsibility for investing their own money in training people after their formal education was done. I thought it was an interesting point, and now I can also see the importance of companies being willing to make investments in sales too, rather than expecting governments to fund all of it.
Canada has been too friendly with US manufacturers. We're paying the price.
I don't know what PM Carney knows, but I think he is our best bet right now.
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