In this week’s video, host John Ivison was joined by guests Ian Brodie and Gene Lang to review the tumultuous year in Canadian politics and to look at what might be ahead.

Watch the latest episode of NP Ivison , below.

The panel’s discussion focused on the ability of Mark Carney’s government to deliver on its agenda.

Lang, a former chief of staff to two Liberal defence ministers and now acting director at the School of Policy Studies at Queen’s University, pointed out that Carney faces the frustrations of attempting to move at speeds the bureaucracy was not designed to accommodate.

He said the defence investments made in the budget are unprecedented.

“Getting Canada to 2 per cent of GDP in defence funding is not a trivial thing. No government’s done it in about 50 or 60 years. It’s a big deal. It eats up a lot of fiscal room. It’s the chief reason, I think, why the deficit projections have grown so much since last December.”.

But he said there is a gulf between the prime minister’s language and the bureaucracy’s ability to deliver. “It is cavernous,” he said. “I’m very skeptical that they’ll spend it all. And it only counts for NATO purposes if you spend it.”

Lang said he doesn’t see the kind of change in mindset in Ottawa needed to solve the defence department’s chronic inability to spend the money it is allocated (the Parliamentary Budget Office said the department spent $12 billion less than Parliament granted between 2017 and 2024).

“Mr. Carney has inherited Mr. Trudeau’s public service, which I would say was built for announcements, not analysis and certainly not delivery,” said Lang.

“In a whole variety of areas, you’re seeing, I think, a real disconnect between how the bureaucracy is operating, thinking, and talking versus what the elected government is saying in terms of the directional change. (Government) is trying to turn the ship of state, but the bureaucracy is very slow in catching up to the change that Mr. Carney and some of his key ministers are trying to map out, not just in the defence file, but on a bunch of different files.”

Brodie, a former chief of staff to ex-prime minister Stephen Harper and currently a University of Calgary political science professor and a senior advisor for New West Public Affairs, highlighted the prospect of another oil pipeline to the West Coast.

“It’s an indication of how bad the last 10 years have been for economic growth, for productivity in Canada, and particularly for Alberta, Saskatchewan and B.C.’s natural resources economy, that the idea a pipeline might get into an approval queue some point in the middle of 2026 is cause for such optimism. (But) I have to say, I’m optimistic. At least we’re moving in the right direction here, even if one does get the sense that for all of the rhetoric about ‘transformational, this, that and the other thing’, we’re moving at a fairly leisurely rate here compared to the Biden administration, let alone the Trump administration.”

He said that he does not view Indigenous opposition to the pipeline as set in stone.

“Well, at the beginning of 2020, I recall there were a bunch of road blockades and, frankly, violent criminal attacks on pipeline infrastructure in Northwest British Columbia. The federal government tried to intervene. When the federal government got out of the way, it turns out the Coastal Link gas pipeline got built pretty quickly. The LNG Canada plant moved ahead on schedule and we’re now exporting significant amounts of LNG off the West Coast. It turns out that these projects unlock enough wealth that everybody sees opportunity, including the people along the route of the pipeline.”

Ivison raised the issue of the machinery of government and asked whether this iteration of the Prime Minister’s Office, in the form of Carney and chief of staff Marc Andre Blanchard, aided and abetted by Clerk of the Privy Council Michael Sabia, is more centralized than its predecessors.

Brodie said it is not yet clear to him whether the triumvirate at the top of government is connected to the departments and deputy ministers but it seems they are connected to the new agencies that have been set up, like the Major Project’s Office and the Defence Investment Agency.

“If Carney and his two lieutenants can drive those agencies forward and clear out the kind of the obstacles in their path for getting the defence investments moving and the major projects moving, then I think you can see a success. The question on whether they’re driving the rest of the government of Canada is not clear to me.

“Carney has got a team of people who think like him, look like him, and came up through the system like him. They all have similar backgrounds and they’re going to drive these new agencies as hard as possible.

“How much are they worried about the Fisheries department, the Employment and Social Development Department, what they are doing about immigration, what they are doing about Canadian heritage? It doesn’t look to like they spend five seconds thinking about that. And maybe that’s the right approach,” he said. “As long as nothing goes too spectacularly wrong, I think you can afford to have more or less a complete meltdown of the Canadian Heritage Department and it doesn’t matter in the scheme of things.”

Lang said he doesn’t think we’ve yet seen Carney’s preferred cabinet yet.

“This is basically Mr. Trudeau’s cabinet. I mean, they’re in different jobs, but most of the senior ministers are former senior ministers in Mr. Trudeau’s government,” he said. “You can say the same about the deputy ministers across town. Michael Sabia has not yet put his stamp on the senior mandarin cadre. I think a cabinet shuffle is coming sometime in 2026. And most people think a deputy minister shuffle is long overdue.”

Ivison asked about Pierre Poilievre’s prospect next year, given Carney is running on what is essentially a conservative agenda.

“I don’t think a small ‘c’ conservative government would be running the debt tracks that the current government’s projecting for the next five years,” said Brodie. “Having been involved with small ‘c’ conservative governments, the debt track caused me substantial heartburn. But certainly the focus on economics is welcome.”

He said the election showed a sharp polarization in Canadian society – on the one side, people with equity in their homes and a pension who wanted to protect against the risk of Trump and AI, who elected the Liberals to hold back that risk. “Carney got 44-45 per cent of the electorate. That’s a pretty good coalition,” he said.

On the other side, there are around 40 per cent of voters who don’t own a house or have retirement savings. “They need to take big risks and they need a disruptor in order to get to a standard of living where they think they can make ends meet,” he said.

Brodie said he thinks those two electoral coalitions are basically still intact.

“So the two parties are fighting over two or three points here or there.”

He said time might be on Poilievre’s side.

“Carney’s pitch was: ‘I look like the mature adult here. I can deal with Trump. Trust me, things will get better.’”

If it takes another year to get a deal with Trump because we think he’s going to be weaker economically or politically in the United States; if that comes at the price of the Canadian auto industry, or southern Ontario’s manufacturing capability, or at the cost of Western Canadian canola seed farmers, and we’re on this kind of slow motion process to eventually building some pipeline, I don’t see how that ends up well for Carney.”

Lang said he doesn’t think Poilievre is in control of his own destiny. “I think he’s subject to the current of events. I see two vulnerabilities for Carney that could be to Poilievre’s benefit. One, Carney was hired by the electorate to manage the economy, irrespective of the relationship with the United States. If he can keep the economy out of recession and he can keep the unemployment rate from getting any higher than it is now, and hopefully trending down, then I don’t think the public will sour on him.

“(Secondly), there’s the Liberal disease of arrogance and hubris. That’s totally within his own control and if he can control that, and the economy does reasonably well, I don’t see a lot of room for Mr. Poilievre to grow in the next two or three years. He hasn’t changed at all.

“I said on this podcast before the election, that I thought Poilievre would and could win the election, if he was able to show Canadians that he’s a serious person and could be trusted with governing a country through a difficult time. (But) I don’t think he’s shown that. He doesn’t seem to have that gear. His gear is purely oppositional.”