One of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s signature differences from the Trudeau era is his passion for negotiating and signing memoranda of understanding with foreign governments, corporations, organizations, and NGOs. Most Canadians had probably never encountered the term before 2025 brought a regular stream of media reports of yet another MoU signed in a nice little performance for the cameras. Carney loves MoUs because they allow him to travel around the world, meet foreign dignitaries, bankers, and business leaders in luxurious settings, and produce mediagenic signing ceremonies on the regular. Most MoUs are about as valuable as the paper they’re signed on in real-world terms, but they allow Carney and his ministers to present a façade of purposeful motion, action, and success for minimal effort. Perfect for a government that lives and breathes to the media cycle.
L. Wayne Mathison points out that previous flurries of MoU negotiations have resulted in almost no change, regardless of the media fuss at the time of signing:
This is why I am skeptical when politicians announce billions of dollars in MOUs as if the money is already in the bank.
We have seen this movie before. Jean Chrétien’s Team Canada missions produced hundreds of signed agreements and plenty of impressive headlines.
Yet research by UBC economists Keith Head and John Ries found no statistically significant increase in bilateral trade attributable to those missions.
That does not mean trade missions are useless. Relationships matter. Opening doors matters. Some individual companies may land real business.
But an MOU is not a completed investment, a new factory, an export shipment or a permanent job.
Judge governments by what actually gets built, invested and sold after the cameras leave.
Announcements are easy. Results are the hard part.
