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Brimming with confidence and nationalist pride, Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered an online video address this week to explain how his government’s tariffs on $27-billion worth of imports from the United States was an essential retaliatory move. “This won’t be easy,” he said in words carried across all media, “and I won’t pretend otherwise.”
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The retaliatory tariffs amount to another escalation in a trade war launched by President Donald Trump, but Carney’s comments — filled with today’s top policy clichés — portrayed the Trump tariffs as another historic moment in Canada’s never-ending battle to maintain its independence from the ever-expansionist United States empire.
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In his 15.24-minute official video, titled “Forward Guidance: A Stronger Canada,” Carney promised to do “whatever it takes” with our “resilient economy” to help Canadians who have been “building strong” for more than a century. Canada is “more resilient, more independent” and ready to get “shovels in the ground” and “buy Canadian,” said Carney. One of Canada’s strangest traits: “resilience.” It is certainly one of the PM’s favourite clichés.
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The “Forward Guidance” label on Carney’s video raises the question: Where is he taking us? Into what kind of policy future is he “guiding” the Canadian economy?
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At one point in his video, Carney makes familiar comments on the reasons Canada walked away from trade negotiations. But then Carney claims that it was “a shame” that Canada could not accept the proposed U.S. trade terms “because a mutually beneficial trade agreement between Canada and the United States is possible.” Such a deal, he added, would need to respect Canadian sovereignty and build “on our complementary strengths.”
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The desirability of a good long-term deal was echoed the next day by Royal Bank of Canada CEO Dave McKay. Speaking at a banking conference, McKay said he is worried about the expansion of the trade war. “It’s important that we get a good long-term deal for Canada. There’s enormous benefit on both sides of the border … the relationship is important for America and it’s important to Canada.”
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But is Carney actually guiding Canada toward a good long-term deal with the United States, an objective that is next to impossible with Trump? There is also ample reason to doubt that a trade deal is actually high on the Carney priority list. Through his Forward Guidance comments, the prospect of a mutually beneficial U.S. deal received about 40 words of attention compared with about 2,000 dedicated to putting Canada on a high-speed train away from U.S. domination via major expansion of government intervention.
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The full details of Carney’s grand remaking of Canada is to be spelled out in “The Hinge: Time To Build An Even Better Canada,” a book that has been rumoured and promoted for some time but has yet to be published. The Forward Guidance video comes across as a bit of summary of what one might expect in The Hinge.
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For now, the video is a useful summary of Carney’s plan to bring increased government involvement and management of the economy: new trade routes, less reliance on the U.S., buy-Canadian policies, the construction of major infrastructure, new ports, energy corridors, hospitals, electricity grid expansion, homebuilding subsidies, and support for artificial intelligence, mining and mineral development.