Ontario Premier Doug Ford, left, and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith during the First Ministers' Meeting in Saskatoon, Sask., on Monday, June 2, 2025. (Credit: Michelle Berg) Justin Trudeau’s cabinet often reminded me of a bumbling high school grad committee — earnest and idealistic, but inexperienced about how to get anything done. (My apologies to actual grad committees.)
That’s a noticeable difference with Mark Carney’s cabinet. There appear to be at least a few real grownups on Carney’s roster, including the PM himself. That makes Carney and his cabinet potentially more dangerous to Alberta.
In those departments headed by a capable minister, there’s a serious chance they might actually follow through on their promises. And the Liberals’ promises, as outlined in their campaign platform, are often variations on Justin Trudeau’s themes. Competent people with bad ideas.
For 10 years, Trudeau’s collection of ideologues, activists and “green” preachers did a lot of virtue signalling and woke pontificating, but often didn’t follow through with implementation. They assumed their good intentions and moral superiority were enough to translate fancy notions into real-world action. ADVERTISEMENT For instance, by one calculation, the Liberals under Trudeau have promised nearly $13 billion in assistance to Ukraine since the Russian invasion but so far have managed to deliver not quite one-quarter of that amount.
The Carney cabinet, at least the capable ones (not the Trudeau retreads), may know how to move between conception and application. That’s what made Monday’s summit in Saskatoon between Carney and the provincial and territorial ministers so important. Real projects and policies might come out of the discussions.
That sounds promising, but what if Albertans don’t like the programs devised by Carney and central and Eastern premiers? There were not enough details, either in the final statements following Monday’s closed-door, first ministers’ meetings or in the throne speech a week earlier, to give this province any assurance about federal plans. ADVERTISEMENT Will a cross-country pipeline or two be deemed a national priority?
Don’t know, can’t say. Will the Carney government stand up to opposition against pipelines from B.C. or Quebec?
It’s unclear. From First Nations? Even more unclear.
But to a person, all the leaders at the meeting signed off on the final statement (including Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who had refused earlier this year to sign off on the Team Canada trade strategy). And most of the attendees pronounced it the most productive federal-provincial meeting in memory. One senior adviser to Smith told me it was like night and day versus meetings with Trudeau.
At those meetings the feds came to dictate what was going to happen. This time, Carney seemed genuinely willing to listen to provincial ideas. There was no list of specific projects Ottawa is likely to promote.
It’s going to worry me until the priorities are announced. Yet at the meeting, Carney mentioned Manitoba’s Port of Churchill, Ontario’s Ring of Fire mining projects and a northwest coast oil pipeline as the sort of projects that might get fast-tracked. That’s promising, although it leaves me concerned about the eastern part of an East-West pipeline, which is just as vital as the western section to Canada becoming a true energy superpower.
We have to have increased access to both Europe and Asia. ADVERTISEMENT But the eastern half would have to go through Quebec, so perhaps the Liberals are signalling they’re not prepared to alienate a province that was once their stronghold and is on its way to becoming one again. And there was also talk in the lead up to Monday’s meeting of a “border adjustment mechanism” for carbon-intensive imports.
That’s effectively a tariff on the carbon content of goods being brought into Canada. That might — might — protect some Canadian companies in “trade-exposed” sectors, but it will make consumer goods more expensive. It also has the potential to provoke other countries to impose reciprocal tariffs that could harm Canadian exports.
Carney’s overall goal of backing “nation-building projects” to help head off the effects of Donald Trump’s unjustified and illegal tariffs is good. But the devil is in the details. And we haven’t seen enough details yet.
ADVERTISEMENT It’s encouraging to have goodwill between Ottawa and the provinces, but goodwill plus $5 will get you a coffee at a fancy cappuccino bar. lgunter@postmedia.com Related Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don’t miss the news you need to know — add EdmontonJournal.com and EdmontonSun.com to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters. You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber.
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