Mark Carney changed Canada’s politics, quickly. He won a sudden Liberal leadership race, took power in five days and called a snap election – campaigning on a promise that he would change a lot more, fast.
His was a campaign built on a sense of a country in crisis, under threat from a U.S. president intent on levying punishing tariffs on Canada and undermining its sovereignty.
Mr. Carney argued that this crisis would require swift action. Comprehensive security-and-trade negotiations with Donald Trump. Sweeping away internal trade barriers. Launching major national projects. Redefining relations with the world. Building a stronger, more independent Canada.
One implicit theme ran through nearly everything Mr. Carney’s Liberals promised as a response to the daunting challenges: speed.
There would be a middle-class tax cut by Canada Day. The federal government would knock down all its internal trade barriers by the same deadline, on the way to making Canada one economy. Major infrastructure and economic projects would be approved quickly, housing built faster. The late spring and summer would be a rush to act.
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Mr. Carney won the election and formed a new cabinet on May 13. One hundred days have passed.
There was an initial whirlwind of activity: a stunted session of Parliament, a boost to military spending, Team Canada first-ministers’ meetings, a G7 summit in Kananaskis and Mr. Carney’s travels to a pair of summits abroad.
But the trade deal with Mr. Trump was given a July deadline, then Aug. 1, then TBD. The major projects have not yet been identified. The housing plan remains on the drawing board.
It has been 100 days since Mr. Carney named a crisis cabinet for what he called a generational challenge.
Here is a look at what his government has done, and not done, in that time.
‘Elbows Up’ rallies, driven by anxiety over U.S. tariffs, took hold across Canada in the weeks leading up to Mark Carney’s Liberal leadership win, and the election that followed.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
Trump and tariffsby Adrian Morrow
Mr. Carney led the flagging Liberals to victory almost entirely by persuading Canadians that a technocratic ex-banker with an “elbows up” message was the man to handle U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs and threats of annexation. Today, Mr. Trump’s tariffs remain in place, with his 50-per-cent levies on steel and aluminum, and 25 per cent on autos, particularly damaging for Canada’s economy. Talks to get them lifted have stalled. Mr. Carney made a bid to restart discussions this week in a phone conversation with Mr. Trump, but so far there is no end to the trade war in sight.
In contrast with his campaign messaging, Mr. Carney has repeatedly tried to appease Mr. Trump. He has attempted to meet the President’s demand for more border security, announced that Canada will reach its NATO commitment to spend two per cent of GDP on defence this year (the alliance has now increased the target to five per cent), axed the digital services tax and partly rolled back retaliatory tariffs.
Mr. Trump also appears to genuinely like Mr. Carney, at least compared with the President’s annoyance with former prime minister Justin Trudeau. Even after Mr. Carney pushed back on Mr. Trump’s “51st state” rhetoric during a White House meeting in May, the President praised his election victory, slapped his knee and declared: “We’re going to be friends with Canada.”
Washington talks between Mr. Trump, Mr. Carney and his officials have yet to produce a new trade deal between the countries.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
That hasn’t so far allowed Canada to get out from under Mr. Trump’s tariffs or landed it an extension on its tariff deadline, as Mexico received.
Mr. Carney has also yet to sign a trade deal with Mr. Trump, and the terms of the pacts that the President has recently signed with other countries suggest one reason why Ottawa may be holding back: In agreements with the European Union, Britain and Japan, among others, U.S. trading partners have further opened their markets to American goods while accepting Mr. Trump’s tariffs on their exports in a bid to keep him from setting the levies even higher.
“Carney is trying to stay cool, stay polite, not panic and take the first deal. I think those are the right things to do,” said Christopher Sands, a Canada-U.S. relations expert at Johns Hopkins University.
Some Americans have expressed regrets to Canada about the continuing trade uncertainty. In April, one anonymous person took out an electronic billboard in Vancouver.Isabella Falsetti/The Globe and Mail
The apparent lack of progress in talks isn’t necessarily Mr. Carney’s fault, contends Brian Clow, Mr. Trudeau’s former Canada-U.S. relations adviser. Rather, he said Mr. Trump is currently far more willing to pursue his protectionist agenda than he was in his first term because there is very little pushback from U.S. industry or the Republican Party.
“Clearly, we are not where we would want to be, but I don’t blame Carney or the Canadian government for that,” Mr. Clow said. “It’s Trump. He’s emboldened. He feels like he’s winning and we’re not seeing the reaction domestically in the U.S. that we saw in 2018 that caused him to pull back,” Mr. Clow said.
Mr. Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have also suggested that, on goods such as autos, steel and pharmaceuticals, they might prefer not to have any trade at all and instead manufacture all of it in the U.S.
Prof. Sands argues that Mr. Carney has made some good moves despite the difficulty of dealing with Mr. Trump. Trying to build a closer relationship with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, for instance, as well as looking for other trade partnerships overseas.
The real tests are yet to come: how much Mr. Carney actually increases defence spending and whether he really can eliminate Canada’s internal barriers to trade and investment to blunt the effect of the economic drag from the U.S.’s trade punishments.
It remains to be seen how Mr. Carney carries Canada’s strategy as the economic pain of the tariffs goes on. “I’m looking less at the first 100 days,” Prof. Sands said, “than at the first year.”
Internal tradeby Nojoud Al Mallees
As the country came under attack by the U.S. President, Mr. Carney promised Canadians that his government would offset the damage tariffs will bring by unifying the economy. Mr. Carney vowed to knock down internal trade barriers caused by regulatory differences between jurisdictions, which he said would boost the economy while reducing reliance on the United States. He put the potential benefit to the economy at as much as $200-billion.
During its first 100 days, the federal government followed through on its central promise to pass legislation by Canada Day to lift trade barriers that it imposes on businesses. But the bill’s reach was limited by the fact that provincial and territorial governments are responsible for most laws and regulations that impede trade within the country.
Ryan Manucha, an internal trade researcher at the C.D. Howe Institute, said Ottawa needs to “work like a central government and get co-ordination amongst the provinces,” which have all taken different approaches to tackling barriers.
A number of provinces have introduced their own pieces of legislation in the same vein as the federal law, but each jurisdiction has taken its own approach. That means businesses will have to keep track of where regulatory hurdles have been lifted, and which exceptions remain in place.
A recent TD report on interprovincial trade notes that the actions taken by provinces have not been uniform, with some including more carveouts than others. Manitoba, for example, relaxed labour mobility rules in its internal trade legislation, but excluded some professions such as lawyers. The TD report concludes that the actual gains from internal trade liberalization likely fall on the lower end of research estimates that are frequently floated. The report noted that its high estimates assumed that internal trade barriers would be eliminated across Canada. “In practice, trade barriers haven’t fully been removed,” the report said.
Mr. Manucha is hoping that governments will now work to reconcile where they diverge on internal trade. He’s also advocating for them to measure their success so that Canadians have a better sense of what the new laws are actually accomplishing. Still, he said Canada has made significant progress on the issue in recent months. “The real hard part was the political will to get it on the books in the first place,” he said.
Mass hunger in Gaza, the latest phase of a worsening humanitarian crisis for Palestinians, led Mr. Carney and allies to ramp up pressure on Israel to let aid in. Canada and some other G7 countries also pledged to recognize a Palestinian state, denouncing Israel’s plans to take over Gaza permanently.
Abdel Kareem Hana and Raad Adayleh/The Associated Press
Foreign affairsby Campbell Clark
From the moment he became Prime Minister, Mark Carney’s signal shift was the stark recognition that Canada’s place in the world had irrevocably changed.
The old relationship with the U.S was gone, he told Canadians. And it was true. Mr. Trump is a wrecking ball.
Yet managing the decoupling from the U.S. and building new relationships with the rest of the world is a more incremental business than Mr. Carney’s election-campaign rhetoric let on.
A central campaign promise was to meet Mr. Trump for a “comprehensive” renegotiation of the trade-and-security relationship. That didn’t happen.
The two met at the White House May 6, but Mr. Trump has displayed no interest in anything comprehensive. Or win-win deals with any country. And Canada doesn’t have any deal.
In talks with the G7 and NATO through the summer, Canada and other historic U.S. allies have tried to adapt to the fact that Washington’s interests are less aligned with their own than in decades past.Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
But foreign-policy change has begun. Mr. Carney moved to beef up security policy anyway. In June, he announced an immediate $9-billion-a-year boost to the defence budget – in a speech that outlined a harder-nosed foreign policy for a tougher world in which Canada will have to stick up for its own security, sovereignty and foreign policy.
This wasn’t quite like his election promises. Mr. Carney had promised to bolster the military but never hinted at the massive build-up of spending he committed to at a NATO summit later in June. And the hodgepodge of value statements in the Liberals foreign-policy platform was largely forgotten.
Mr. Carney did find willing partners for expanded relationships. At a June Canada-European Union summit, he took a step to joining an EU defence-procurement program and launched a laundry list of negotiations designed to gradually move Canada closer to Europe.
His outreach to foreign leaders for the G7 summit in Alberta included overlooking India’s foreign interference to invite Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It brought Ms. Sheinbaum to Canada on a rare foreign trip that has sparked new Mexican interest in co-operation to be explored in a meeting next month.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who gifted Mr. Carney with a soccer ball at the G7 summit, will welcome the Prime Minister to her country’s capital in September.Amber Bracken/Reuters
In global geopolitics, Mr. Carney moved closer to Europe than the U.S., notably on terms for peace in Ukraine, and more controversially, in pledging to recognize a Palestinian state – which will probably further weaken Liberal support in Canada’s Jewish community.
And inside Mr. Carney’s government, there is a conscious − and perhaps naive − desire to separate foreign-policy decisions from diaspora politics, to engage the Jewish community on anti-semitism but not Gaza, for example, or to speak to Sikh-Canadians about issues in Canada but not India.
All that together marks the biggest shift in Canada’s foreign-policy direction since the Second World War.
But outcomes won’t shift as quickly. Mr. Carney’s pointed campaign rhetoric about Mr. Trump has shifted to a more solicitous tone. Friends in Europe don’t immediately replace U.S. markets or balance U.S. power. Mr. Carney’s foreign policy is still a search for Canada’s new place in the world.
Mr. Carney, touring a sawmill in West Kelowna this month, has promised to forge ahead with ‘nation-building projects’ to stimulate the economy.Dan Riedlhuber/Reuters
Big projectsby Stephanie Levitz and Emily Haws
If Canadians re-elect a Liberal government, Mr. Carney promised this spring, they’d get one committed to building big things fast.
Federal approvals for large industrial proposals have taken too long, he argued, and the country must build everything from critical-mineral corridors, ports, nuclear-energy projects and pipelines − and build them quickly − to reduce its reliance on the U.S.
To that end, the government tabled and passed Bill C-5: the One Canadian Economy Act, which among other things introduced a streamlined process for projects that meet certain criteria, including strengthening Canada’s autonomy, contributing to climate-change goals and advancing the interests of Indigenous people.
Once on that list, the projects would be sped through existing regulatory reviews, and approved projects would get a single list of conditions that must be met in order to proceed. The government wants approvals within two years.
Indigenous critics have been wary of recent megaproject legislation, stressing that treaty rights must be respected.Blair Gable/Reuters
When the bill was tabled in the House of Commons – with a plan to push it through Parliament in a matter of weeks – concerns from Indigenous communities soared.
Some Indigenous leaders balked at being told they had just a few days to submit feedback on an outline of the bill before it was tabled, and that only some Indigenous groups were included. They also wondered aloud if the bill would ignore their treaty rights and the environment.
Some threatened a repeat of the widespread “Idle No More” protests from more than a decade ago, and several Ontario First Nations launched a legal challenge.
Mr. Carney “should have brought the First Nations to the table and said, ‘Look, we want to develop legislation that will fast-track projects, and we really want your input before we start putting pen to paper,’ ” said Chiefs of Ontario Regional Chief Abram Benedict, who organized a protest against the legislation.
Mr. Carney convened three summits with Indigenous leadership, which ended with mixed reviews.
Considering how the government has prioritized reconciliation for 10 years, that the bill generated so much antipathy was an “own goal,” said Jay Khosla, a former federal public servant who is now an executive director for Public Policy Forum.
“You can’t afford mistakes like that in a moment like this,” he said.
Premiers, while broadly supportive of the law, weren’t aligned on preferred priorities, particularly on pipelines. And, some wondered why Mr. Carney wasn’t just ripping up the existing regulatory regime entirely.
The law establishes a major-projects office and an Indigenous advisory council. Mr. Carney says both will be in place by Sept. 1.
Mr. Khosla said he’s watching for who will run the office, and whether they have the range of experience − financial, policy and otherwise − to actually push the files along.
Parliament by Bill Curry
Parliament is on track to have the fewest sitting days in nearly a century this year, with limited legislative achievements in Mr. Carney’s first months in office.
During a brief four-week sitting that followed his party’s election win, the government’s main legislative change was the adoption of Bill C-5. It aims to deliver on a major campaign theme by eliminating federal barriers to interprovincial trade and sets up a system to fast-track nation-building infrastructure projects.
The House of Commons also approved two bills related to routine spending and a Bloc Québécois bill expressing support for supply management.
Beyond that, four other government bills made little progress after they were introduced. They include C-2, the Strong Borders Act, a border-security bill that is facing civil-liberties concerns; C-3 on citizenship; C-4, a tax-related bill that faced criticism for the inclusion of unrelated changes that would shield federal political parties from provincial privacy laws; and C-8 related to cybersecurity.
The House is on pace to sit for just 73 days this year. While the number of sitting days is typically lower during election years, that would be the fewest since 1937.
That is partly because of Mr. Trudeau’s decision to prorogue Parliament in January to allow for a Liberal leadership campaign, followed by a federal election.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre had promised during the campaign that if he became prime minister, he would have Parliament sit through the summer as part of his plan for “100 days of change.”
But Mr. Carney said he would only support more sitting days if Bill C-5 hadn’t been approved.
Mr. Carney’s Liberals fell three seats short of winning a majority in April. Unlike in the previous Parliament, the Carney-led Liberals are cool to the idea of striking a formal pact with NDP MPs.
That means the Liberals will need to manoeuvre their way through the Commons one vote at a time. The Liberals relied on the Conservatives to pass C-5, while the other opposition parties in the House voted with the Liberals to approve the two spending bills.
The short sitting also left little time to get most Commons committees up and running.
The biggest parliamentary test for the Carney government will come quickly in the form of the 2025-26 budget, which is widely expected to be tabled in October.
Western University political-science professor Laura Stephenson said Mr. Carney essentially campaigned on a pledge to be a good manager, rather than on a long list of new laws. As a result, she said it will take time to assess his performance.
“So far, it’s just seemed to me, very pragmatic and business-like,” she said.
Mr. Carney’s ministers are under orders to be more thrifty with internal spending, but those savings will be more than offset by new projects in the coming years.John Woods/The Canadian Press
Financeby Bill Curry
Mr. Carney campaigned on a seemingly contradictory pledge: his government would spend less in order to invest more.
He said a Liberal government would cut back on operational spending in order to free up cash for more important things like infrastructure.
That rhetoric is headed for a reckoning on budget day.
Over the government’s first 100 days, the spending-less pledge has played out in the form of a July directive to cabinet ministers, asking them to find “ambitious” internal savings that add up to 15-per-cent reductions in program spending by the third year of the review exercise.
Yet those planned savings are sure to be dwarfed by the billions in new spending that has been signalled by the Carney government.
The Liberals’ campaign platform revealed a plan to allocate about $32-billion a year toward new spending and tax cuts above what the previous Liberal government had proposed in a December fiscal update. That included a personal income-tax cut, which the government enacted on July 1.
Mr. Carney announced major new spending in June, revealing at a NATO summit that Canada will spend tens of billions of dollars more on defence as part of an effort by NATO allies to spend 3.5 per cent of GDP on defence by 2035 and 1.5 per cent on related spending, such as critical infrastructure.
The budget will reveal how the government will pay for this new spending. The menu of options include spending cuts, tax hikes, piling on more debt or a combination of all three. So far, neither Mr. Carney nor his finance minister, François-Philippe Champagne, have tipped their hand as to their preference.
Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne is due to deliver a budget in the fall.Blair Gable/Reuters
The fall budget almost didn’t happen.
Mr. Champagne initially said in May that Ottawa would instead release a “substantive” fall economic statement, a document that is typically far less detailed than a budget. That initial timeline also implied that the Liberals would not be releasing a 2025 budget at all, given that the April election disrupted the usual timing.
In addition to accounting for all of the government’s new spending promises, the budget also will be watched closely for details related to revenue. The Liberal platform projected Ottawa would raise $20-billion in the current fiscal year from countertariff revenue related to trade tensions with the United States.
However, Canada’s tariff policies have been adjusted several times this year and preliminary reports suggest Ottawa is not on track to bring in as much tariff revenue as originally expected.
Scotiabank economist Rebekah Young said tariff revenue will likely be lower than outlined in the platform and spending will be higher, but a clear picture won’t be known until the budget is released.
“We have very little to go on,” she said. “We are left piecing together a very complex picture right now.”
The C.D. Howe Institute has released forecasts showing bigger-than-planned deficits over the coming years, largely because of the big increase in defence spending that was not part of the Liberal platform.
Institute President William Robson said the promised new defence spending adds to a bottom line that was already looking unsustainable and should push the government to move more aggressively on spending cuts.
“It’s a massive quantum jump farther in the same direction, and we have not had any conversation about what the offset to that would be,” he said.
Every year, soldiers mobilize in the Arctic for Operation Nanook, a test of their resources to defend an area increasingly exposed to foreign powers by climate change. The Carney government’s spending plan promises bigger benefits for Canadian Armed Forces members in the North.
Cole Burston/AFP via Getty Images
Defenceby Pippa Norman
Mr. Carney has spent the past several months promising increased military spending, pursuing defence co-operation with Europe, changing the role of the Coast Guard, and offering pay raises to soldiers − as he seeks to both address concerns from Mr. Trump while also reducing Canada’s reliance on the U.S. for protection.
In June, Mr. Carney said Canada would increase defence-related spending to 5 per cent of its GDP by 2035, as part of a NATO pledge. That builds on his earlier plan to hit 2 per cent of GDP this year.
The failure of Canada and other NATO countries to meet the 2-per-cent target has been a major irritant for Mr. Trump, who also pushed for the new higher target.
Mr. Carney’s commitment to hit 5 per cent would mean the largest increase in military spending since the Second World War, and will require between $110-billion and $150-billion in annual outlays by 2035. The Prime Minister has said that the increased spending will shore up Canada’s defences while also creating jobs and bolstering the domestic defence industry.
Mr. Carney and his ministers have been to Europe several times since taking office as the government seeks defence deals with governments and looks to purchase equipment, such as replacement fighter jets, from overseas manufacturers.
In June, he signed the Strategic Defence Partnership agreement between Canada and the 27-member European Union, paving the way for Ottawa to join buyers’ clubs with EU member states to procure military equipment more efficiently.
The government tabled a border bill that would expand the Coast Guard’s role into security patrols, reached a deal with Australia to develop an Arctic over-the-horizon radar system for Canada to detect airborne threats, contracted Canadian company MDA Space to outfit Royal Canadian Navy ships with a small fleet of aerial drones, and introduced new incentives for members of the Canadian Armed Forces deployed in the Arctic.
Mr. Carney unveiled a big part of his military spending plan at CFB Trenton, where he met a falcon trained to keep unwanted pests off the Ontario base.Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press
Former Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole said so far, Mr. Carney has accomplished a lot.
“He’s really oriented our foreign policy and our defence priorities in the right direction. The test for the Prime Minister will be follow through and deliberate,” he said.
Now, Mr. O’Toole said the prime minister must focus on delivering more of the items he has announced and can move quickly on. For example, finalizing a deal to procure new submarines for the Canadian Navy.
Philippe Lagassé, an associate professor at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, said he expects the fall to bring a lot more action from Mr. Carney on the defence file.
For example, he’s anticipating the release of a new or updated national-security strategy, defence policy and defence industrial strategy – the latter of which Mr. Carney highlighted in his mandate letter to ministers.
Mr. Carney’s biggest challenge will be maintaining the sense of urgency he has moved with in his first 100 days, Mr. O’Toole said, especially while he attempts to overhaul the function of the country’s civil service, as it relates to defence. But it is momentum he can’t afford to lose, Mr. O’Toole added.
“We should never forget that this country has to be prepared to stand on its own. When the Prime Minister was articulating that, I think that’s part of the reason he won the election. So let’s not lose that.”
This past Canada Day, a group of new citizens got to take their oaths en masse at Montreal’s Old Port. The Carney government is rethinking how many immigrants, and which kind, will be accepted to Canada.ANDREJ IVANOV/AFP via Getty Images
Immigrationby Marie Woolf
One of Mark Carney’s seven priorities when he took office was to return overall immigration rates to sustainable levels, while attracting the “best talent in the world” to help build Canada’s economy.
Mr. Carney took office at a time of increasing scrutiny of Canada’s immigration policies, particularly significant increases in recent years of temporary foreign workers, international students and refugee claimants.
Critics – and more recently the government − have argued that the influx of people is straining resources and exacerbating the housing crisis.
He appointed a new Immigration Minister − Lena Diab − a former immigration minister in Nova Scotia – to take on the file.
Lena Diab is Mr. Carney’s point person on immigration.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
The first test of the government’s goal to trim migrant numbers further will be this year’s immigration levels plan: Ottawa’s targets for the number of temporary and permanent residents Canada intends to admit in the next three years, set to be announced in October or November.
Ms. Diab has been consulting widely on the next round of immigration targets including with universities and colleges, whose finances have been squeezed by a cap on international student numbers introduced by former immigration minister Marc Miller.
In the face of falling public support for increasing the number of temporary and permanent residents, Mr. Miller reduced immigration levels last year. He also announced a plan to shrink the number of temporary residents − to 5 per cent of Canada’s total population by the end of 2026 from 6.5 per cent.
The Carney government has indicated that it plans to continue with this trajectory, while toughening up immigration rules, including on asylum.
Immigration targets have led to renewed tension with the provinces since the election. At the conclusion of a three-day premiers’ meeting last month, provincial and territorial leaders called for an increase to economic immigration levels to meet their labour needs. They said in a communiqué that they would use little-known powers in the Constitution to seize more control over immigration.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, at a news conference after the summit, accused Ms. Diab of not being on the same page as Mr. Carney on giving premiers more autonomy over immigration.
Despite the public barb, Ms. Diab has been continuing consultations with the provinces about the forthcoming levels plan.
Professor Christopher Worswick of Carleton University thinks Ottawa should quickly phase out the low-skill stream of the temporary foreign worker program and focus on attracting skilled high-earning immigrants that Canada needs, such as doctors. He said he sensed that the Carney government “seems to be either stalling or slow moving on the less-skilled programs.”
A program announced before the election by Mr. Miller to allow up to 6,000 undocumented construction workers to apply for permanent residence has yet to be launched.
And plans to introduce a new immigration stream to grant permanent residency to low-wage workers already in Canada, announced last April, has also yet to see the light of day.
Canada’s agriculture sector has long relied on temporary foreign workers, like these ones at a winery in West Kelowna.Aaron Hemens/The Globe and Mail
The most momentous reforms to the immigration system so far are in the Strong Borders bill. It would bar asylum claims to those who have been in Canada for more than a year and give the government fresh powers to cancel and suspend visas and other immigration applications.
Bill C-2 would also prevent people who crossed the U.S. border illegally from claiming asylum if they have been in Canada for at least 14 days, which is currently permitted under a provision of the Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States.
Soon after the election, Ms. Diab reintroduced the Lost Canadians bill to restore citizenship rights to children born overseas to Canadians also born outside the country. There are no clear figures on how many citizens this could create.
To control soaring home prices across Canada, the federal government is trying to start a new agency to speed up construction of new units.Andrej Ivanov/The Globe and Mail
Housingby Rachelle Younglai
The Carney government has made some progress in trying to get its new federal housing entity, Build Canada Home, up and running.
BCH is supposed to build homes en masse and provide financing to developers. Carney wants BCH to help double the country’s pace of homebuilding to 500,000 housing units a year.
Currently, BCH is still a concept. As the Carney government tries to design the new entity, it has been holding multiple meetings with developers across the country.
“They have been very productive meetings,” said David Wilkes, president of trade group Building Industry and Land Development Association.
Mr. Wilkes and others in the development industry have repeatedly portrayed a grim market for new home construction and stressed the need for a partnership with Ottawa as opposed to the creation of a new federal homebuilder.
“We don’t need to recreate something that already exists. That adds time and complexity,” said Mr. Wilkes.
It appears that the Carney government is taking the development industry’s suggestions into account.
In Ottawa’s preliminary vision for BCH, developers recognized some of their recommendations. Part of the vision includes ensuring that there are low-interest loans and contributions for the development of affordable-housing projects, according to a document the Housing Ministry released earlier in August asking the industry for input.
“We are happy to see that they are talking about some of the tools we are familiar with,” said Alana Lavoie, national director of housing policy and government relations with housing charity Habitat for Humanity Canada.
As for helping younger Canadians buy their first home, the Carney government has taken a step toward cutting the price of a preconstruction home. It has proposed legislation that would waive the 5-per-cent federal goods and services tax for first-time preconstruction homebuyers as long as they plan to live in the property.
It is not clear whether Ottawa has made progress on other parts of Carney’s housing plan. That includes making mortgages more affordable; reviving a 1970s tax break for investors in rental buildings; speeding up building approvals; and cutting municipal development charges in half.
Health careby Kristy Kirkup
In their spring election platform, the Liberals made a series of health-related promises, including that it would “protect” pharmacare as part of a strong public health care system.
B.C., Manitoba, Prince Edward Island and Yukon reached bilateral pharmacare agreements before the campaign that publicly covers some diabetes medications and supplies, along with contraceptives. Negotiations with other provinces and territories had to be paused when the race began.
During the campaign, the federal NDP and health organizations questioned if a Liberal government under Mr. Carney would negotiate additional agreements. At that time, Mr. Carney said the Liberals were committed to “keeping what is in place.” But he said “broader judgments” would take place in the context of a “range of priorities.”
This summer, federal Health Minister Marjorie Michel made remarks that further fuelled concerns about the fate of additional agreements. When asked about the issue this summer, she said it was a new government in a new context. “We have to have discussions with the provinces to see how we can support them,” she said.
The ministers’ comments touched off concerns from reproductive-health advocates and pharmacare proponents who are concerned that Ottawa may not ink other deals.
Health Minister Marjorie Michel and the Carney government are under scrutiny from pharmacare advocates over whether more provinces will sign on.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Recently, several provinces and territories publicly said they are ready to come to the table but that has yet to happen. Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles recently wrote to Premier Doug Ford, saying Ontarians should not be stuck paying out of pocket for essential medications.
In an interview, Canadian Medical Association president Margot Burnell echoed that patients’ abilities to access necessary medications should not depend upon their ability to pay.
The federal Liberal platform also included other health-related pledges, including that credentials for medical professionals should be recognized by provinces and territories.
In July, The CMA called on the federal government to scale up provincial and territorial practices, like fast-tracking programs for doctors.
The organization said it would like to see government spending for targeted national recruitment.
Dr. Burnell said provinces and territories and the federal government agree that physician labour mobility is “critically important.” However, legislation from the Carney government known as C-5, which focused on labour mobility, did not specifically include physicians.
She said the CMA would also like to see doctors being able to immigrate to Canada and have credentials assessed quickly and appropriately by medical colleges.
“There’s a willingness to do this now,” she said.
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