After five weeks of promising that he was the man to stand up to U.S. President Donald Trump and rebuild the economy, Prime Minister Mark Carney now finds himself having to deliver on the campaign promises he made to Canadians; but he won’t be able to do it alone.
The Liberals won 169 seats in the election, falling just short of the 172 threshold for a majority government and will have to rely on support from other parties to pass legislation.
Opposition parties say they’re open to helping the government on the issue of tariffs. In his concession speech Monday night, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said his party would “work with the prime minister and all parties with the common goal of defending Canada’s interests and getting a new trade deal.”
Where opposition parties are less likely to be willing to help the new prime minister are his platform promises, which the Conservative decried as too expensive while the NDP argued they didn’t focus enough on working Canadians.
Among Carney’s cornerstone pitches are a planned cut to marginal tax rate on the lowest income bracket. The Liberals say the one percentage point reduction will save dual-income families roughly $825 dollars per year. The Conservatives promised 2.25 percentage point cut in their platform.
Some economists have criticized the cost of the tax cut, which is expected to run roughly $22 billion over four years.
Carney is also promising to spend big on infrastructure, dedicating $5 billion to the Trade Diversification Corridors Fund, which he says will be used to construct critical infrastructure like ports, railroads, terminals, and possibly pipelines. Most of that funding is budgeted for this year.
Meanwhile Carney’s other major promise, to roughly double the speed of housing construction in Canada to 500,000 new builds per year, doesn’t have the same rapid timeline.
Carney has promised several new initiatives, including getting government back into the business of building homes and reducing municipal red tape, but his timeline to speed up construction to those levels extends to the end of the decade.
The Liberals have also promised a significant jump in defence spending; the $18 billion allotted over the next four years is their single biggest expenditure, and includes a promise to strengthen arctic security, raise military salaries and construct new base housing.
Carney has promised to hit the NATO target of 2 per cent of GDP spent on defence by at least 2030.
