Even though the relic media are all singing from the government’s hymn book — because they might lose their generous subsidies if they don’t — a few dispiriting details about the real state of Canada’s economy still slip through:
This is the Carney economy in one picture.
He sold himself as the adult in the room. The banker. The international dealmaker. The man who could handle Trump and restore confidence.
Instead, Canadian manufacturers are preparing their exit.
According to the KPMG survey, 42% of manufacturers have already moved some production to the United States or are considering doing so. Another 36% are cutting investment, 12% have paused spending and 9% have cancelled projects altogether.
Manufacturing jobs are disappearing. Investment is drying up. Factories are moving south.
Businesses respond to incentives, costs and uncertainty. They do not remain in Canada because Mark Carney gives polished speeches about nation-building. They go where taxes, energy prices, regulation, labour costs and access to markets make production worthwhile.
Carney promised competence. What Canadians are getting is stalled trade talks, falling investment, disappearing jobs and another Liberal government that seems incapable of understanding how private-sector wealth is actually created.
A great many Canadians now see Carney as an incompetent ideologue in a good suit, surrounded by the same Liberal machine that helped create this mess.
And what consequences does he face?
Very few.
Carney is rich. His family is secure. His pension, investments and connections are intact. He will never worry about a mortgage payment, a grocery bill, a lost factory job or whether his children can afford a home.
The people who pay for his failures are workers, families, small-business owners and young Canadians whose futures are being shipped across the border.
That is the ugliest part of modern government. The people making the decisions are often insulated from the consequences. They can damage an economy, lose jobs, drive away investment and still retire wealthy, respected and welcomed back into corporate boardrooms.
A résumé is not an economic policy. A banker’s vocabulary cannot hide factories closing and investment leaving.
Canada is not being built. It is being hollowed out, while the people responsible remain comfortable.
This is why I thought the announcement on Friday that a Republican senator is calling for Carney’s assets in the US to be seized and to refuse him a visa … it’s beyond weird that a Canadian Prime Minister would have over 90% of his personal assets invested in the United States rather than in Canada. This gives Trump another handle on Carney, if he chooses to use it.
On her Substack, Melanie in Saskatchewan envisions how this may play out:
AI image from Melanie in Saskatchewan
So let me make a prediction: Any day now, your government will solemnly discover the importance of proper forest management.
There could be a task force, or a federal strategy, a minister standing solemnly in front of some trees. Perhaps an announcement that Ottawa has been “working around the clock” on a comprehensive plan that, by a miraculous coincidence, became urgent only after the American president threatened tariffs and a U.S. senator started talking about sanctions.
Should that happen, Canadians will be entitled to ask a very simple question: What finally changed Ottawa’s mind?
Was it concern for Canadians living through evacuations, destroyed communities and weeks of choking smoke? Was it the economic damage caused by recurring fire seasons? Was it pleas from provinces, northern communities and forestry workers for better prevention, mitigation and emergency capacity?
Or did the urgency arrive only when Washington threatened to slap another charge on Canadian exports and Senators possibly sanctioning Canadian officials like yourself? You personally have A LOT at stake if you are sanctioned since the majority of your wealth investment portfolio is in America.
The timing on this matters a great deal. It matters whenever a government suddenly treats a long-standing domestic problem like a national emergency only after somebody powerful outside the country attaches a financial consequence to it.
Trump has accused Canada of “wilful negligence” in maintaining its forests and says he intends to ask you what Canada plans to do. Your emergency management minister responded that governments have invested billions in fire prevention and forest sustainability since 2020. That defence deserves to be examined very closely and very carefully, because Canadians can reasonably ask what those billions purchased, where they went and why so many communities remain frighteningly vulnerable. To say it plainly … Canadians simply do not see any value for the dollars spent.
You announced spending of $317 million to lease 10 water bombers and heavy helicopters for rapid deployment to provinces because the wait time for them to be built is too long. So, here’s a fun little arithmetic exercise for Ottawa: water bombers are built right here in Canada — jobs, sovereignty, the whole patriotic package you’ve been selling — yet the federal shopping list remains stubbornly empty.
With $317 million, you could buy three heavy scoopers and have pocket change left for spotter planes or a helicopter, or — and this is where it gets embarrassing — you could roll out 45 to 55 single-engine Fire Boss aircraft, scattering an actual national fleet across every province that needs one. But apparently the government prefers its firefighting budgets theoretical. It is here that I will remind you, Fort Mac, Jasper and Lytton should have already provoked this response to act years ago.
The United States is hardly in a position to lecture anyone without hypocrisy. It is enduring its own brutal wildfire season, and fires do not stop at customs booths to declare their country of origin. Climate, drought, lightning, forestry practices and emergency capacity all play a role. There is plenty of responsibility, contradiction and political theatre to go around here. America has somehow managed to turn airborne smoke into an international trade dispute, because apparently even oxygen now requires a customs declaration. But that doesn’t absolve Ottawa. Again … Fort Mac. Jasper. Lytton. The warnings were already there. The time to act was then, but Ottawa chose navel gazing instead. In my books, that means today’s consequences lie with the governing Liberals.
