University—Rosedale riding boundaries from the 2025 federal election. Image from Wikimedia maps.

Last year, Mark Carney presented himself to Canadians as a seasoned, level-headed economist and an “elbows up” negotiator ready to confront the sovereignty threat posed by Donald Trump. He was rewarded with a strong minority government—and an unusually generous grace period from the public. Yet he has used that time to pivot sharply away from the image of the rounded economist, who promised a mild neoliberal blend of efficient government, sustainable finance, non-market housing, and union jobs, toward something far more familiar: the caricature of a Goldman Sachs lobbyist.

First, he purged moderate progressives like Nate Erskine-Smith and Karina Gould from cabinet, eliminated the minister of labour position for the first time in a century, scaled his commitment to non-market housing down to nearly nothing, and spoke of the “sacrifices” required from working Canadians while facilitating the “capital formation” of the rich. Then he wrecked his “honest talk” image, first by trying to peddle “decarbonized oil” and then by trying to pass off the Ksi Lisims LNG fracking project as Indigenous-owned when it is Indigenous-opposed, entirely owned and operated by Texas-based Western LNG, and backed by MAGA-supporting Blackstone (British Columbia Green Party leader Emily Lowan more aptly called it “

© Canadian Dimension