Mark Carney vowed to strengthen Canada’s economy. Instead, he’s perfected the art of saying everything and doing nothing
Carney was at another presser this week, this time preaching to university students about “strengthening Canada’s economy” and warning that “challenges and sacrifices” are coming. Sacrifices? From who exactly? Because if you’re under 40 in this country, you’ve already sacrificed everything. You can’t buy a house, can’t save a dollar, can’t find stable work because half the job market’s been outsourced to temporary foreign workers. But sure, the problem is that you haven’t sacrificed enough.
This is the same tired sermon from the couch government, the one that never gets up, never follows through, never builds anything. They announce. They emote. They lecture. And then they go right back to the couch to film another round of “we’re taking bold action” clips for social media.
Carney stood there and talked about “shared responsibility” as if Canadians haven’t been carrying this government’s failures on their backs for a decade. The housing crisis didn’t appear out of thin air. It’s the direct result of political paralysis, endless announcements, no construction. The job market isn’t collapsing because of fate; it’s collapsing because they replaced permanent employment with government-approved temp work and called it “labour flexibility.”
And now they’re adding insult to injury with a trillion-dollar deficit, spending money they don’t have while telling Canadians to brace for “sacrifice.” It’s almost performance art: the man responsible for Canada’s fiscal implosion lecturing broke students about tightening their belts.
This government lives for the podium moment, the slow walk up, the soft lighting, the “historic” headline. But when the lights go off, nothing happens. No cranes, no hires, no policy. Just empty rhetoric echoing across a country that can’t afford to believe it anymore.
They call it leadership. It’s not. I call it couch potato politics, a government that loves to announce but refuses to move, content to watch the country sink from the comfort of its own self-importance.
Take housing. They promised half a million homes this year. Half a million. Sounds bold, sounds heroic. It’s also mathematically impossible — and everyone in the business knows it.
Here are the facts. The government’s official housing plan claims it will “double the pace of construction to almost 500,000 new homes a year.” That would be wonderful if it weren’t pure fiction. Canada has never come close to that number. The highest housing completion level in our history was around 260,000 units, and that was back in 1974. Even now, we average between 250,000 and 300,000 housing starts a year. Not completions — starts. That means the government is promising to more than double our output, with no new workforce, no new supply of materials, and no regulatory reform to make it possible.
You can’t conjure skilled tradesmen, drywall, and concrete out of thin air. The country is already short on plumbers, electricians, and framers. TD Economics called the goal “an extremely daunting task” because of these same labour and material bottlenecks. Municipal zoning rules remain slow and restrictive. Lumber prices fluctuate wildly. Every construction company in Canada will tell you: it’s hard enough just keeping up with demand now, let alone doubling it.
So what did Ottawa do? They launched Build Canada Homes, a brand-new federal agency. Sounds impressive — until you realize it doesn’t build anything. It’s another layer of bureaucracy designed to issue reports, press releases, and feel-good targets. The government says this new entity will “put Canada back in the business of building homes.” Translation: another round of announcements about how “building will one day be easier.”
The reality: instead of cranes, we got committees. Instead of nails and lumber, we got hashtags and slogans.
If you’re keeping score, this is the same pattern we’ve seen across the board. Big press conferences. Lofty goals. No follow-through. Housing is the perfect example. It’s like that friend who swears this is the year he’s finally getting in shape. He buys the gym membership, posts the motivational quote, and then sits back down on the couch with a bag of chips. That’s Ottawa today — bragging about progress it hasn’t made, measuring success in microphones, not foundations.
You want to fix the housing crisis? Get the government out of its own way. Cut red tape, open land for development, speed up permits, and let builders build. But that’s hard work. Much easier to just call another press conference and promise the moon.
They’ve announced “1,000 new border agents” so many times, you start to wonder if these people even realize we can Google things. First, it was the campaign promise, all swagger, no schedule. Then, a few months later, same line, different backdrop, more flags. Last month in Niagara Falls? Boom, “1,000 new CBSA officers!” again. This is the Liberal version of Groundhog Day: every six weeks, they see their shadow and re-announce the same press release.
The “Fentanyl Czar” announcement? Same script, same actors. They even dusted off the same number. “We’re hiring 1,000 new border officers.” Fantastic. Except… we were told that already. Twice. And still, there’s no hiring blitz, no graduation ceremonies, no deployments. Just slogans. The thousand officers exist only in PowerPoint slides and talking points — a ghost army armed with bullet-points instead of badges.
And then there’s the $617 million “costing.” That’s supposed to make it sound serious, except it’s spread over five years and doesn’t guarantee a single new officer will be patrolling the border before the next election. Imagine bragging about building an army, then admitting you haven’t bought the boots yet.
Meanwhile, fentanyl is killing record numbers of Canadians, auto-theft rings are shipping stolen SUVs through our ports like Amazon Prime, and border seizures are flat. The real smugglers must love this government, every few months Ottawa holds another press conference instead of another patrol.
This is what they do: they announce law enforcement, they don’t actually do law enforcement. They act like a press conference is a policy.
If words could stop fentanyl, the border would be sealed. If photo-ops could catch smugglers, we’d be the safest country on Earth. But you can’t police with promises, and you can’t protect a nation by recycling last year’s press release.
Mark Craney and the Liberals literally campaigned on being the guy who could handle Trump. That was his entire pitch, the calm, worldly banker who would stare down the big, bad American and come home with a deal. Remember that? “Steady hands on the economy,” “global respect,” “serious leadership.” And now? His big achievement is bragging that Canada has “the best dumpster fire in the G7.” That’s his defense. “Sure, everything’s burning, but look — our fire is slightly smaller than Germany’s!”
This is the man who said he’d stand up to Washington, negotiate from strength, restore respect. Instead, the U.S. slapped on fresh lumber duties, kept auto tariffs hanging over our heads, and poached our manufacturing jobs. Stellantis took billions in Canadian subsidies and then packed up to Illinois, and Carney’s response was to shrug and write another cheque.
It’s stunning. The guy who promised economic mastery can’t even keep factories in his own country. The “deal-maker” hasn’t signed a single new trade pact with the United States. The so-called fiscal genius has driven the deficit to a trillion dollars. And when challenged, he hides behind meaningless comparisons, “Well, we’re doing better than Italy.” Great. That’s like saying your house is half on fire, but at least the neighbors’ burned down completely.
This isn’t leadership; it’s self-congratulation in a crisis. Every sector is bleeding, autos, lumber, steel, and the man who swore he’d protect Canadian workers is giving lectures about “sacrifice” and “patience.” Canadians didn’t vote for a therapist; they voted for a leader. What they got instead is a spokesman for managed decline, a government that celebrates losing more slowly than everyone else.
At some point, the slogans stop working. The podium lights dim, the cameras pack up, and what’s left is a country that’s been talked to death. You can’t run a nation on hashtags and hope. You can’t lecture people about “sacrifice” when they’ve been priced out of their own lives. You can’t promise half a million homes, a thousand border agents, or a balanced budget when every promise evaporates the moment the applause fades.
Canada doesn’t need another press release; it needs results. Real homes built. Real jobs created. Real trade deals signed. Real borders defended. But that takes conviction, not choreography. It takes a government willing to get off the couch, roll up its sleeves, and work for the people it’s been talking at for far too long.
Until then, we’ll keep getting the same show every week, the same headlines, the same stage-managed sincerity, the same “bold new vision.” Meanwhile, Canadians will keep doing what their government won’t: getting up every morning, working hard, paying the bills, and wondering when the people running this country will finally do the same.
We need change, real, measurable, grown-up change. We need leaders who treat the country like a responsibility, not a stage. We need accountability that doesn’t vanish when the cameras turn off. And most of all, we need voters who care about results, not vibes — who stop rewarding the performance and start demanding the proof. Because until that happens, the couch government will keep sitting exactly where it’s most comfortable: doing nothing, announcing everything, and calling it progress.
