Prime Minister Mark Carney says one thing in Ottawa and another in New York. He prefers scripts and lecterns. Otherwise, he talks in broken sentences, using modifying statements and ambiguous phraseology. He repeats euphemisms, platitudes, and progressive catch phrases. He tends to speak in first-person when claiming an accomplishment and uses a passive voice when addressing a failure of government. He overuses bromides and likes to slip in nostalgic jargon intended for his Boomers’ audience. It’s Mark Carney’s suave politicospeak and Canadians heard an earful of it this past week.
“That process is settling in”
Statistics Canada reported that Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP) declined marginally in the first quarter of 2026, after negative growth in the last quarter of 2025. An economist’s definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters with declining GDP. As a point of fact, the data shows that Canada’s economy has declined in three of the last four quarters, a period coinciding with the spring 2025 re-election of the Liberals in Ottawa. Jack Mintz, president’s fellow at the University of Calgary School of Public Policy, commented on the country’s economic malaise, “It’s not a great picture. We’ve had this poor growth in investment now for many years, and this is continuing the trend.” Steven Globerman, of the Fraser Institute, echoed this assessment, “Canada’s capital investment and productivity emergency persists. Substantial increases in business investment in asset categories critical to productivity growth are required before Canada will be able to say that the emergency is over.”
The prime minister, however, did not utter the “R” word when responding to a direct question about the Statistics Canada report and whether Canada is in a recession. Carney answered, “I’ll say this about the economy. You know, we are in the process of laying the foundations for a stronger, more resilient, more independent Canadian economy. That process is settling in.” He described Canada’s latest data as “uneven” and the economy showing “some weakness, in part because of clear decisions by the government.” He then pinned the country’s troubled economy on his government’s “taking back control of immigration” which has resulted in lower population growth, and “reined in government spending.” He later added, “You have these crosscurrents as the economy is being fundamentally transformed. We’ll continue to work; we’re making progress but there’s more to be done.”
The questions regarding Canada’s recession carried through numerous news cycles as the prime minister avoided attending the House of Commons for a couple of days and then, when he did show up, he refused to seriously engage with Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. For days ministers repeatedly blamed U.S. President Donald Trump for Canada’s shrinking economy. Outside of parliament, the press corps aggressively challenged Poilievre on “his negativity” in raising the Statistics Canada data. In contrast to these deflections from the prime minister and Liberal mouthpieces, Poilievre was direct in addressing the new economic data. In one scrum, the Opposition Leader asserted, “Mr. Trump’s policies are affecting all G7 countries and none of them are in recession. Mexico shares a border with the United States; Mexico is not in recession. Only Canada, under Mark Carney’s Liberal policies is in a recession…. It seems the other countries despite Mr. Trump’s unfair tariffs have been able to craft policies to avoid recession. It is only here under Mark Carney’s policies that we find ourselves in a recession.”
Introducing the new Ministerial Advisory Council on Rights, Equality, and Inclusion
This week Carney was at the Holy Blossom Temple, a Jewish synagogue in Toronto, to announce his government’s action on the crisis of antisemitism in Canada. Given the subject matter it was remarkable that, while denouncing the rising incidents of antisemitism, the prime minister failed to mention the source of the problem. Carney made no mention of Israel, Zionism, or October 7th, and he avoided identifying the perpetrators of the vile antisemitic actions in the streets of Toronto, Montreal and across the country. More to the point, Carney delivered a series of platitudes to the Jewish community with no reassurances that the federal government would seek out the purveyors of hate, apply the law, and protect the wronged. Michael Geist, University of Ottawa professor, assessed Carney’s hollow words, “In delivering a speech lacking in urgency, that prioritizes criticism of Israel over the safety of Canadians, and which comes up empty on new ideas, the Prime Minister failed to meet the moment.”
No words can possibly convey how insulting Carney’s new committee – the Ministerial Advisory Council on Rights, Equality, and Inclusion – is to many in Canada’s Jewish community.
Simon Wolle, CEO of B’nai Brith Canada, summed up the Jewish community’s profound disappointment in the prime minister’s address and announcement: it has neither “acknowledged the full scope of the systemic failures that have allowed anti-Semitism to flourish, nor identified those responsible for inciting and fomenting anti-Semitism across the country.” Wolle contended, “Canada is not facing an anti-Semitism awareness problem. Canada has an anti-Semitism problem. The country has been poisoned with Jew hatred and we need a remedy. Our children are no safer today than they were yesterday. Threats to our communities and institutions remain equally unchecked today as they did yesterday.”
There have been strong, biting reactions to the inadequacy of Carney’s orchestrated speaking event at Holy Blossom Temple. Perhaps the Globe and Mail editorial board put it most civilly in their lead editorial, “The missing words in Mark Carney’s antisemitism speech”: “He should have said: ‘If you oppose Israel’s existence, if you demonize Jewish-Canadians, you are wrong, you are hateful and I stand against you.’” (Note to the prime minister: the G&M editors have effectively expressed the essence of the matter in a single sentence of plain-speak.)
Canada will make America great again
In another orchestrated event, the prime minister was south of the border to speak at the Economic Club of New York luncheon where, surprisingly for the unflappable champion of the “elbows up” downtrodden, Carney declared to an American business investor audience that Canada is poised to make America great again. American Press reported that “Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called for a new partnership with the United States on Thursday” and, he is quoted as saying, specifically, “Let’s be absolutely clear. Canada Strong will help make America great again.”
Clearly, the prime minister’s Trumpian turn of phrase was intentional. With a looming CUSMA deadline before him, National Post political columnist Terry Newman observed that the prime minister’s eleventh-hour Maple MAGA jingoism appears to be a tacit admission that his anti-American rhetoric has been a huge mistake. Perhaps, though Canadians have heard no explanation of the PM’s turncoat performance. Back in Canada, Liberal MPs and the prime minister’s apologists in legacy media have all tied themselves into pretzels to say Carney’s MAGA moment is not a contradiction and betrayal.
Two weeks ago, Carney was telling Canadians that our ties to the U.S. have become a weakness that must be corrected and he also warned that the economic integration with the U.S. can be “weaponized” by our largest trading partner. But, apparently that was then and Canadians are told “this is now.” That was Ottawa and this was New York. In a CTV Power Play panel discussion, one of the members of the PM’s own Advisory Committee on Canada-U.S. Economic Relations, Lisa Raitt, expressed the obvious about the Carney Liberals’ mixed signals and the conflicting position it places CUSMA negotiators in. In part, she surmised, “I think Minister LeBlanc is heading into a woodchipper…they [the American administration] are just going to lay out exactly what’s been agreed to by Mexico and the expectations on Canada to acquiesce.”
Whatever may come of Dominic LeBlanc’s meetings in Washington – and for that matter, whatever might transpire with the country’s sagging economy, or with the deliberations of the new Ministerial Advisory Council on Rights, Equality, and Inclusion – with issue after issue, Canadians are likely to give the benefit of the doubt to the confident sounding Carney and his ad nauseum use of politicospeak.
Chris George is an advocate, government relations advisor, and writer/copy editor. As president of a public relations firm established in 1994, Chris provides discreet counsel, tactical advice and management skills to CEOs/Presidents, Boards of Directors and senior executive teams in executing public and government relations campaigns and managing issues. Prior to this PR/GR career, Chris spent seven years on Parliament Hill on staffs of Cabinet Ministers and MPs. He has served in senior campaign positions for electoral and advocacy campaigns at every level of government. Today, Chris resides in Almonte, Ontario where he and his wife manage www.cgacommunications.com. Contact Chris at chrisg.george@gmail.com.
