Carney has changed direction, but too much of Trudeau’s damaging legacy remains

Mark Carney’s approach to governance clearly differs from Justin Trudeau’s. Carney has balanced net-zero carbon pursuits with tolerance for fossil fuels and pipelines, and the pursuit of nation-building. Unfortunately, too many leftovers remain from Trudeau’s legacy.

Trudeau opened the floodgates for newcomers, straining housing, health care and education. In 2015, Canada admitted 271,845 new permanent residents, but that flow swelled to a record 483,640 in 2024. The temporary resident population grew from about 925,000 in the 2021 Census to 3.049 million on Oct. 1, 2024. International student permits numbered 352,330 at the end of 2015 and soared to 1.055 million by mid-2024.

The Trudeau government cut this flow back in its final months, and Carney cut temporary arrivals further. The target for new permanent residents in 2026 is 380,000, with 239,800 selected through work-based and regional economic immigration plans. This year, Canada plans to admit just 230,000 new temporary workers and 155,000 new international students. This represents percentage reductions from the 2025 targets of 37 and 49 per cent, respectively, marking the sharpest one-year cuts in decades.

The civil service hiring spree has also been curtailed. From 2015 to 2024, the federal public service grew 43 per cent, while the Canadian population grew just 15 per cent. Now, the federal public service numbers 345,282, a drop of 22,490 from its 2024 peak.

Carney removed the consumer carbon tax on his first day in office last year and has taken his foot off the gas on other carbon-fighting initiatives. He moved to repeal the electric vehicle sales mandate and delayed and reduced scheduled increases to the Output-Based Pricing System (a.k.a. industrial carbon taxes). Ottawa has also put the Clean Electricity Regulations in abeyance while the Alberta Court of Appeal hears a challenge to them, and has promised to loosen them to allow a larger role for natural gas. That’s especially good news for Alberta and British Columbia and allows New Brunswick to reconsider its ban on fracking.

The Carney government also seems keenly interested in nation-building infrastructure and a more robust military. The Trudeau years saw the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion and LNG Canada, but this was overshadowed by mothballed or cancelled projects, such as the Teck Frontier oil sands mine and Northern Gateway and Energy East pipelines.

Like a drowning person finally reaching the surface for air, Canada seems poised to build. Carney is courting foreign investment dollars to replace the capital that fled the country under Trudeau’s leadership.

Trudeau built a legislative and regulatory labyrinth that smothered Canadian development. Carney’s solution, the Building Canada Act, allows cabinet-approved projects to bypass normal restrictions. This is an inferior fix because Carney created exceptions for government favourites instead of making better rules. Government-approved media continue to get federal dollars, while Ottawa’s policies still prompt Facebook to ban news on Canadian accounts.

Ottawa has doubled down on the Liberals’ regulatory and legal encroachments on free speech. Under Bill C-9, which is now law, a good-faith religious opinion is no longer a defence, and people could even be charged with wilful promotion of hatred for displaying certain symbols. And what are these symbols? Beyond the three the law names, those of any group the cabinet chooses to list as a terrorist entity.

Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, now at second reading, would require platforms to mitigate the risk that users see content that foments hatred or incites violence. A new bureaucracy in the Digital Safety Commission will watch over the results. Free speech advocates have every reason for apprehension, given how often legitimate criticism is dismissed as hateful.

Finally, the terrible deficit budgets that became a habit under Trudeau show no signs of stopping. There has been no adequate accounting of how many tax dollars will go into Carney’s ambitious nation-building, military-expanding intentions. Instead, he is as committed as Trudeau was to funding Ukraine’s defence against Russia, and even wants Canada to become the European Union’s first associate member. Canada’s reprieve from its destructive slide is only partial at best.

Lee Harding is a research fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He holds a master of public policy (U of C) and a BA in Journalism, with a career spanning major networks like CBC and Global TV, as well as landmark published research on Canadian economic and social policy.