Throughout the federal election, and many, many times since, Prime Minister Mark Carney has told Canadians that the plan for growing the country’s economy is to “build baby build.” With the Carney Liberal’s stewardship, Canada is to be the strongest economy in the G-7 Nations. Today this forecast of a robust, dynamic economy is often repeated by the prime minister and a gaggle of his ministers, from Mélanie Joly to François-Philippe Champagne. Yet, to date, the Carney Liberals have been short on delivering positive business and trade news. In place of any economic results, they have made great fanfare of creating a federal housing agency, announcing a military procurement agency, and opening the doors of a new major projects office. Let’s review these initiatives.
A new federal housing agency, Build Canada Homes
Carney announced the government’s federal housing initiative, Build Canada Homes (BCH), with a photo-op backdrop of a 24-hour-mock-construction site in Carney’s own riding of Nepean. The Liberals are committing a “generational investment” of $13 billion to have the federal agency construct an initial 4,000 homes on six federally owned public sites in Dartmouth, NS, Longueuil, QB, Ottawa, ON, Toronto, ON, Winnipeg, MB, and Edmonton, AB. The construction of these homes is scheduled to start next year. There are now plans made to phase up to 45,000 homes on these sites in the coming years.
The Liberals state that the initiative is the fulfillment of their campaign promise to build 500,000 new homes each year. When BCH is fully operable, it will be managing 88 federal properties across the country and a construction program that will use prefabricated homes and mass timber technology. BCH will also prioritize the purchasing of Canadian-made materials for the prefab units.
Carney has selected Ana Bailao, a Liberal GTA operative and former Toronto city councillor, to be CEO of the new agency. Bailao was in the news this week announcing that a Downsview property site in Toronto would be the first “mega project” for BCH. The government’s plan is to build more than 500 modular homes here in the coming years and it has also contributed $280 million to expand a local trunk sewer to service the lands. Bailao’s office is now “recruiting companies” to deliver factory and modular homes for the site.
On X, to mark the government’s auspicious occasion, Carney posted: “We’re going to build homes at speeds not seen in generations — using Canadian technology and Canadian materials.” Seriously? This government agency is delivering 500 prefab homes in the next few years in a city where it is estimated that as many as 1,000,000 immigrants have settled in the last few years.
Nothing about the BCH adds up. Consider that the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) has forecasted housing starts will drop in the next few years, and this year could be as low as 237,800 units. CMHC projects Canada needs 5.3 million new homes by 2035 – 478,800 completions per year – to restore affordability. Again, the Liberals promised a program that would construct 500,000 homes per year: they are delivering zero homes in 2025 and 4,000 homes in 2026. That is with Bailao presumably finding her companies to build and place the prefabs. If it was not for the $13 billion of taxpayers money, the BCH would be farcical, as slapstick as the fake photo op the prime minister held to announce the government’s plan for Canada’s housing crisis.
The just announced Defense Investment Agency
In early October, Carney held a press conference to announce a new federal bureaucracy that will manage Canada’s military procurement system. The Defence Investment Agency (DIA) is established to streamline and accelerate the procurement process of rearming the military and to build new domestic manufacturing and supply chains.
The DIA will oversee the quadrupling in spending on the Canadian Forces worth billions of dollars. In the prime minister’s news release on the DIA, Carney stated that Canada will align “more closely with partners such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and France, who already have dedicated procurement bodies, making joint defence purchases and partnerships easier and more efficient.” The DIA is to ensure Canada is fully engaged in “the European Union’s Readiness 2030 plan, a multilateral effort with our European allies to reinforce defence supply chains and industrial capacity among allied nations.”
Carney also announced that he has selected RBC executive Doug Guzman as CEO. Interesting that the prime minister and Liberal spinmeisters played up Guzman’s RBC position and downplayed his Goldman Sachs position. What went unsaid was that Guzman worked alongside Carney at Goldman Sachs. Carney and the Liberals also did not share the fact that Guzman is being paid $679,000 annually for three years.
In a Globe and Mail interview, Stephen Fuhr, Canada’s Secretary of State for Defence Procurement said the new DIA will ensure “speed of relevancy.” However, the gritty details reveal something else. The agency will only oversee military procurements valued at $100 million or more, even though 85 per cent of all procurements are under that threshold. The new bureaucracy is being built to replace the procurement systems established in the federal departments of National Defence, Public Services and Procurement, and the Canadian Coast Guard – all of which will presumably need to remain intact to handle the 85 per cent of the government’s procurement files. It will take eight to twelve months for the new DIA offices to become fully operational – and get up to speed to be relevant for 15 per cent of Canada’s military purchase.
The government’s Major Projects Office
In the spring, when Carney shared with Canadians his plan to fast-track large infrastructure projects of national interest, he said the initiative would be managed out of a Major Projects Office (MPO). On Sept. 1, the office opened its doors. Carney selected Dawn Farrell as its CEO – most recently the Board Chair of Trans Mountain Corp (who was in the Chair to oversee their pipeline project come in billions of dollars over budget and years late). Carney is quoted: “We are moving at a speed not seen in generations to build ports, railways, energy grids… I am thrilled that Dawn Farrell, one of Canada’s most experienced executives, is stepping up to help lead this vital priority.”
Carney and MPO then announced five major projects that it would begin to work on – a LNG facility in Kitimat, B.C., a nuclear plant in Clarington, ON, a port container project in Montreal, QB, and two mines in northern B.C. and McIlvenna Bay, SK. All five projects have already been approved and some are already under construction – they are not new projects. There was no solid timeline provided on when the next major projects would be announced (perhaps November – the Grey Cup weekend maybe).
Carney has teased industry sector players and the Canadian public about a list of potential projects, advancing six strategies for new developments, and his priorities around mining critical minerals. Energy minister Tim Hodgson has affirmed that the MPO will ensure that the five selected major projects would be built. For its part, the MPO has established a new indigenous advisory to include indigenous perspectives in all its decision-making processes.
Still, six months in, there are no new infrastructure projects announced in Canada. No new investments or business deals. No shovels in the ground. And no news about pipelines and the development of Canada’s oil and gas sector. It was shortly after the MPO opened for business that over 90 energy sector leaders signed an open letter to Carney and began speaking out about the government’s inadequate response to the country’s sagging economy and the need to re-vitalize resources development, specifically the oil and gas sector. The ask of Ottawa is to repeal the federal emissions cap, overhaul regulatory laws, and accelerate the approval process for oil and gas projects. These requests are also part of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s long standing request of Carney to do away with “the nine bad laws” – and she has given him a new timeline of Grey Cup weekend.
The MPO has been quiet on the development of the oil and gas sector. Last week in Ottawa, when Carney met with his Liberal caucus, he played down the prospects of any pipeline. He then stated in the press, “Conventional energy projects, including pipelines, it is absolutely clear…all of our discussions with the Province of Alberta include material carbon capture storage alongside conventional energy projects.” So, it appears that the greater east-west tilt during the Grey Cup weekend will be played off the football field.
Meanwhile, recently released data shows that the country’s economy contracted in second quarter of 2025 with exports plunging 27 per cent and business investment collapsing by 10 per cent. There has been $54 billion in capital that left Canada between May and September this year – since the election. The OECD financial data just reported that Canada remains the weakest economy of the G-7 – as measured by GDP per capita – and this data reaffirmed that Canada will have the worst growth in all advanced countries through 2060.
And in response to this economic demise of the last six months, the Carney Liberals have opened new government offices in Toronto, Calgary, and Ottawa, and the prime minister is front and centre telling Canadians his plan to “build baby build bureaucracies.”
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.
