Welcome back to This Week in Canada, where the whiskey is running dry, the economy is shrinking faster than Mark Carney’s approval ratings, and the justice minister swears that Canada isn’t the Wild West. (Just ignore the gunfire!) Saddle up for an action-packed week from up north!
Mark Carney’s campaign for prime minister was built on urgency. He said that Canada was in crisis, hammered by Trump’s annexation talk and tariffs. He was sworn in five days after winning leadership of the Liberal Party, called a snap election that delivered a mandate, and vowed to make Canada “the strongest economy in the G7.”
Just over 100 days into the job, what has Carney actually delivered?
The economy has shrunk for two straight quarters, including a worse-than-expected drop of 1.6 percent in gross domestic product on an annualized basis in the second quarter. U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum are biting hard, and exports tumbled 7.5 percent in the second quarter. That was the steepest drop in five years.
Sixty-six thousand jobs vanished in August, swelling the unemployment rate to 7.1 percent, a nine-year high if you ignore the 2020 and 2021 Covid years. Machinery and equipment spending declined for the first time since Covid.
The good news is that President Donald Trump says he likes Carney “a lot.” (I’m not the only one to call it a “bromance,” though some people prefer to give Carney the nickname “Trump whisperer.”) Our new prime minister deserves credit for taming the tariff storm, quelling all that 51st state hysteria, and winding up with one of the best trade deals with the U.S. in the world.
