“Carneynomics” is nothing more than this government’s spin on existing Liberal policy. This isn’t a bold pivot from the Trudeau era; it’s a polished remix of Liberal orthodoxy, ditching progressivism for productivity while promising new policies that have not quite materialized.
The “Carneynomics” pitch to the policy community is a partisan’s effort to build a foundation below the hollow term “pragmatist.” I’m not sure anybody knows what that means in practice. It sounds really good and works even better for a politician. A public policy pragmatist may mean something very different to you than it does to me. Importantly, it does for each federal party’s respective voter base.
After the political capital accumulated by his résumé runs out and it’s actually time to govern, the Liberal pundits will push Carneynomics to brand his policies as productive or pragmatic, and not overtly, but intrinsically progressive. Yet, the pragmatic blend of productivity and progressivism the Liberals are pitching today is so far not that different from the Trudeau government. Generally, if the Liberals put forward ideas that worked under Trudeau, or were at least hard for the Conservatives to challenge — like prevailing wages attached to ITCs — they can continue selling Carneynomics. Why do something unless it has a track record of working?
Mark Carney’s chief platform architect and budget director under Justin Trudeau, Tyler Meredith, hypothesized on what to expect from “Carneynomics.” It suggested to me that Canada will create new government agencies to tackle perennial problems because the existing administration is incapable. Additionally, the government would rather leverage scarce public dollars to subsidize economic growth in specific areas instead of a broad tax cut for everyone, only those that buy into Carney’s agenda deserve to grow. It is even proposed that scrapping the oil and gas emissions cap can be justified by replacing the practical cap with an effective cap using coercive fiscal policy tools. Pragmatic. Productive. Progressive. This is “Carneynomics.” I disagree. These are Liberal ideas, and frankly, Trudeau-Liberal ideas.
Today, Liberals want Canadians to accept that progressive policy exists in balance with productive policy, and that is what it means to be pragmatic. It is a salable narrative for the Liberal Party. It’s one they need to maintain their coalition of boomer centrists, Island of Montreal radicals, and New Democrats. Remove the rhetoric and you can see it in practical terms. There are no penalties for domestic pension funds who ignore Canada; instead, the government proposes large incentives to draw them back in. The Liberals have even swapped the oil-and-gas emissions cap for coercive fiscal tools to “enable” investors to part with their money “willingly.”
This is a convincing narrative but purposefully omits the endemic conflict in what Carney was elected to do and what his caucus will permit him to do. There are key progressive policies such as the Oil Tanker Moratorium, Oil & Gas Emissions Cap, and Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (30×30) that you can take out of the rhetorical spotlight, but until it’s abandoned completely, it will not disappear from the opposition crosshairs. The Liberals are incapable of repealing these core policies of principle and holding their coalition together at the same time.
In omitting progressive policy from the public debate to frame Carney as a pragmatist, he will have to avoid talking about the regression of core progressive policy. One example might be reneging on Trudeau-era immigration targets. This is a leading political issue right now in every poll, and parties across the West would jump to campaign on it. Carney’s coalition generally sees this issue as inflammatory. To maintain the illusion that he’s a pragmatist, in Budget 2025 I predict he will signal to the swing centrists that the government will follow through on lowering immigration targets by accounting for its numbers in their economic models. Afterwards, the government will continue to blow past its own targets (like they’re doing now) and campaign on exceeding growth projections. Pragmatic. Productive. Progressive. Showing the illusion of real change where change needs to happen.
Altogether, don’t be fooled by the spin doctors. The Carney Liberals have not repealed any Trudeau policy past the carbon tax order-in-council to get them elected. Tyler Meredith’s recent budget teaser does not highlight any new policy frontiers for the Liberal Party of Canada. We are led to believe there will be greater integration of artificial intelligence in the public service (watch for Cohere); this may include a projection of displaced FTEs. We should also expect a plan to deploy $150 billion in capital to stimulate $500 billion in investment. We can also expect the same prevailing wage and apprenticeship placement conditions attached to ITCs. In the end, there will be no movement on anything outside of the traditional policies presented by the Liberal Party of Canada for the past decade. All spin, no substance.
