LILLEY: Mark Carney offers words – Pierre Poilievre's words – but we need action

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Listening to Prime Minister Mark Carney lay out his new plan to start building Canada on Friday, one thing became clear – Pierre Poilievre won the argument even if Carney won the election.

“Canada is a country that used to build big things, but in recent decades it’s become too difficult to build in this country,” Carney said.

Anyone who has listened to Poilievre over the last several years would instantly recognize many of the proposals that Carney has put forward.

These weren’t just policy proposals that Poilievre had put forward during the election that Carney somehow magically stole in the campaign. These were ideas Poilievre had spoken about time and again as he crisscrossed the country, holding rallies and building up his army of supporters ahead of the election, while Justin Trudeau was still prime minister.

Ideas like allowing Canadians to work in whichever part of the country they wanted.

Poilievre advocated for that policy for tradespersons and professionals alike.

Getting rid of bureaucratic red tape that stopped goods and services moving between different parts of Canada – yet another policy Poilievre championed for years.

These weren’t ideas the Conservative Leader dreamed up in response to the economic turmoil brought about by Donald Trump’s tariff measures or his decision to revamp the American economy and the global trading order. These ideas were the bread and butter of Poilievre’s plan to give Canadians more personal economic freedom and to boost the lacklustre Canadian economy.

It’s likely cold comfort to the currently seatless Conservative Leader, that his ideas will now be implemented by the party that once scoffed at him when he raised these ideas in the House of Commons.

Regardless of which party and leader puts them forward, they are the kinds of ideas that we need now.

Canada’s latest unemployment rate is the latest sign of an economy in decline. The national unemployment rate is 7% – in Ontario it’s 7.9% and in Toronto it’s 9.1%. In Alberta, the unemployment rate is above the national average at 7.4%, while both Edmonton (7.3%) and Calgary (7.8%) are also above the national average.

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We are on the brink of a recession according to the economic forecasts from several of Canada’s big banks.

“We’re in an economic crisis,” Carney rightly said during his news conference on Parliament Hill.

The PM went on to say Canada is facing unjustified and illegal tariffs before pivoting to say we need to build here in Canada. He touted the benefits of tearing down barriers that make it easier to trade with the Americans rather than each other.

“That will allow more goods, more services to be transported, sold, and bought across our nation without restriction, generating new opportunities for Canadian businesses and lowering costs for Canadian consumers,” he said.

This should have been Canada’s path all along, but for a decade, the Trudeau Liberals were too busy trying to do what they could to shackle the economy. He passed the West Coast tanker ban, he put in place an emissions cap on the oil and gas industry, his industrial carbon tax is still hurting industry and he passed Bill C-69, which hurts all kinds of natural resources projects and industrial projects across the country.

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Carney is leaving all of those policies in place while trying to sound like he will build big projects of national interest.

Straddling two sides of the same road is a dangerous ploy, but that is what he’s doing. Keeping the old policies in place, assuring all the groups that don’t want our economy to be unleashed that things will be fine, while also trying to sound like Poilievre.

Carney may have some of Poilievre’s words but he doesn’t have his belief that building these projects is the right thing to do. Let’s hope his much-vaunted business acumen is enough to see some projects through to fruition.

For now though, all we have are words when what we really need is action.

blilley@postmedia.com