Jesse Kline: Deal or no deal, Carney Liberals have failed to build Canada

It should come as no surprise that U.S. President Donald Trump’s Wednesday deadline to impose 50 per cent tariffs on $29 billion worth of Canadian goods came and passed with little fanfare — the president is famous for making boisterous threats and then backing down at the last minute. But as businesses, consumers and investors eagerly await details of a trade deal that may-or-may-not come by Friday, the lesson for Canadians should be that we cannot continue to allow our fate to hang on the whims of foreign politicians.

Of course, that’s a lesson we should have learned long ago. It’s been over a year since Prime Minister Mark Carney, fresh off an election victory, promised to “do things previously thought impossible at speeds we haven’t seen (in) generations,” including building “twice as many homes every year,” developing “new trade and energy corridors” that will turn Canada into “an energy superpower” and freeing inter-provincial trade.

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It would be unfair to suggest that the Carney Liberals haven’t made any progress on their signature election promises. But at a time of profound political and economic transformation, which the prime minister likened to the start of the Second World War and the end of the Cold War, the pace of change has been anemic, at best.

Carney, for example, promised to create a system to fast-track major projects in order to free their proponents from the Byzantine approvals process put in place by his predecessor and facilitate a construction boom that would create jobs and provide the country with the infrastructure it so desperately needs. The Major Projects Office was setup nearly a year ago, and since then, 18 projects have been referred, but none have so far been green-lit.

Carney initially said he hoped projects would be approved within a “maximum of two years,” so he hasn’t yet missed his own deadline. But even projects that were already being planned and specifically cited in the 2026 Liberal election platform continue to progress at a snail’s pace.