{"id":6823,"date":"2026-04-17T01:59:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T01:59:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/6823\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T01:59:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T01:59:20","slug":"nelson-majority-government-is-all-mark-carney-really-wanted-to-build","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/6823\/","title":{"rendered":"Nelson: Majority government is all Mark Carney really wanted to build"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was indeed \u201cbuild, baby, build.\u201d But it was neither infrastructure nor an energy superpower that Mark Carney was targeting \u2014 it was a majority Liberal government.<\/p>\n

And while that came to fruition this week, courtesy of traitorous floor-crossings allied with the prime minister\u2019s polished rhetoric, Alberta has stood, somewhat bemused, like a waiting bridesmaid, hoping against hope the bouquet will finally arrive in its hands.<\/p>\n

It won\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Sooner or later, Premier Danielle Smith will discover what so many Alberta leaders have discovered before her: trusting the Liberals is akin to planting those delicate annuals in an early-May garden, trusting hope over bitter experience.<\/p>\n

That famous memorandum of understanding signed by Ottawa and Alberta last November is increasingly appearing as little more than political window-dressing. The idea that it would accelerate vital energy projects was certainly appealing, given how important this is for both our province and the rest of Canada.<\/p>\n

But as the weeks roll along, that document looks increasingly shopworn.<\/p>\n

Fittingly, the first date involving an actual accomplishment was April 1. Naturally, that passed without anything happening. There are a bunch more dates set out in the agreement, but they, too, appear as pie-crust promises, made to be broken. (Hey, this is Canada, a country where calls for more consultations with stakeholders have become our national pastime.)<\/p>\n

And now, with the Liberals set to be in power with a majority government<\/a> for another three years, the pressure on Carney to actually follow through on his pledge to build stuff faster is gone. Alberta\u2019s hopes of another oil pipeline to the West Coast will almost certainly vanish as well.<\/p>\n

Still, as long as the Grits hand out a few occasional goodies, such as larger GST rebate checks and a temporary axing of the federal fuel surcharge<\/a>, most Canadians assume Carney has their backs. Sometimes, however, it dawns on us regular Janes and Joes that things are getting tougher every year and that an extra couple of hundred bucks handed out by the feds doesn\u2019t make a dent in the financial challenges we face.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why we are becoming increasingly unhappy with the passing of time.<\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n

Ever since 2012, a partnership between the United Nations and Gallup polling has analyzed data such as GDP, health, inequality, social support, freedom and generosity to rank the quality of life across 140 countries. This massive undertaking results in The World Happiness Report each year.<\/p>\n

In 2015, Canada placed a respectable sixth overall in those ratings, behind Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway and Finland. That\u2019s not bad.<\/p>\n

Ten years later, our country was in 25th place. There\u2019s not enough room to list all those ahead of us, but it includes nations such as Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Mexico and Kosovo.<\/p>\n

Year by year, during that decade, we slipped down the rankings. There appears to be no reason that the downward trajectory will reverse any time soon. Our reputation as a prosperous, enlightened land increasingly rests on past accomplishments.<\/p>\n

Nowadays, we are going downhill at dizzying speed.<\/p>\n

Some people might have already realized that 2015 was a watershed year in Canada \u2014 the one in which Justin Trudeau became prime minister. Remember how we were told that happy times were here again, following the rather dour but stable leadership of Stephen Harper?<\/p>\n

They weren\u2019t. Among all the virtue-signalling silliness, financial irresponsibility and the endless hunt for historical victimhood, ordinary Canadians lost their footing. The country changed beneath us, and not for the better.<\/p>\n

In an infamous interview with the New York Times just after taking power, Trudeau declared Canada would be the first post-national state. \u201cThere is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada,\u201d he proudly announced to the world.<\/p>\n

He lived up to his word. That\u2019s what we have become. And if anyone \u2014 including Smith \u2014 believes Carney is either willing or capable of turning that clock back, they are massively mistaken.<\/p>\n

Chris Nelson is a weekly writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was indeed \u201cbuild, baby, build.\u201d But it was neither infrastructure nor an energy superpower that Mark Carney…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[164,17,3178,2577,117,111,141,713,3990],"class_list":{"0":"post-6823","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mark-carney","8":"tag-alberta","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-danielle-smith","11":"tag-liberal-government","12":"tag-majority-government","13":"tag-mark-carney","14":"tag-prime-minister","15":"tag-rest-of-canada","16":"tag-saeed-khan"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}