Last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney staged a photo-op more evocative of an American president than a Westminster statesman. Flanked by ministers and flashing pens, he theatrically signed an order directing his government to prepare a motion for a middle-class tax cut—cameras clicking, messaging crisp.
“Canadians sent a clear message: they need to see improvements in their affordability,” Carney declared. “We are acting today on that, so that by July 1, as promised, that middle-class tax cut—that will reduce taxes for the 22 million Canadians who pay federal income taxes—that tax cut will take into effect.”
It was an odd staging for a leader in a Westminster parliamentary system, where fiscal measures must pass through Parliament via formal readings and votes. Carney appeared to be channelling Donald Trump’s flair for executive orders. In the U.S., executive orders flow from the president’s role as head of the executive branch.
In Canada, however, there is no constitutional analog. Here, the prime minister is not a separate constitutional actor but the head of a government that is dependent on the confidence of the House. The difference is more than stylistic; it speaks to entirely different structures of power.
Carney has already used his executive authority to request almost $75 billion in public funds without consulting Parliament. Carney was granted a first order-in-council releasing $40.3 billion in emergency funds, issued through what are called “special warrants” on April 1st, and a second on May 2nd for $33.1 billion.
Soon after, news broke that Carney’s government might forgo presenting a budget this year, potentially leaving the country without an updated fiscal plan or debt picture for nearly a year, since Justin Trudeau’s precipitous Fall Economic Statement prompted Chrystia Freeland’s resignation. While strictly legal, the scale and sequencing of these special warrants suggest a troubling willingness to treat parliamentary debate as an optional step, rather than a constitutional obligation. These powers are meant to be exceptional, not foundational.
The decision not to provide a budget has since been walked back in the face of public outcry, but the budget will not appear until fall, and the episode underscored the same instinct: a preference for centralized, top-down governance over parliamentary scrutiny.
This is not just a stylistic quirk—it reflects a deeper orientation. Carney’s governing posture is that of a managerial CEO, not a first among equals. He appears more inclined to work out policy details in the closed confidence of the prime minister’s office than in full cabinet deliberation, let alone in the noisy, leaky Commons. Cabinet, under this model, is less a venue for debate than a stage-managed show of unity.
Wayne Long, secretary of state for Canada Revenue Agency, said approvingly that Carney at the helm would mean “government run like a corporation.” But governance is not corporate management. Corporations answer to shareholders; governments answer to citizens through elected representatives. Efficiency, while appealing, quickly slides into opacity when public accountability is treated as a nuisance rather than a duty.
This, of course, tracks with Carney’s path to power. He has spent his career as an executive—most notably as a central banker—accustomed to command without constituency. Despite his surprisingly effective performance on the campaign trail, he has virtually no parliamentary experience, having only won a seat in the House of Commons a few weeks ago.
As The Hub’s editor-at-large, Sean Speer, noted on last week’s Hub Roundtable, Carney has no real power base within the party and no organic political following. Hence, a cabinet filled with Trudeau-era mainstays: Anita Anand, François-Philippe Champagne, and most ominously, Steven Guilbeault.
This drift toward presidentialism is not unique to Carney. Around the world, parliamentary systems are increasingly bent to the will of charismatic executives, from Emmanuel Macron in France to Narendra Modi in India. Many would argue that it was Stephen Harper who perfected the art of governing via a strong PMO. But Carney’s case is distinct in its speed and in the contrast between his technocratic aura and the anti-democratic instincts it conceals.
In his 2014 book, The Once and Future King, Canadian-born U.S. scholar F. H. Buckley warned presciently of the “imperial drift” within the American republic, where charismatic “Great Men” promise disruption from above and govern through personality, not process. Buckley, a constitutionalist, lauded Westminster democracy for its structural humility. In such systems, any saviour complex is swiftly tempered by the architecture of government itself.
As Buckley puts it, freedom is more secure “when the person with power is a jug-eared prince.” In constitutional monarchies, the pomp is kept separate from the policy. Prime ministers, meanwhile, must survive the indignities of Question Period, fend off backbench revolts, and barter within their own caucuses. Their charisma is not the fuel of governance, but its liability.
By contrast, Carney appears to be bypassing these constraints—governing not as the leader of a party, but as a redeemer with a mandate. That may win him headlines in the short term. But if he continues to confuse the PMO with the West Wing, Canadians may soon rediscover the virtues of the old, unflashy, constitutional limits.
Joanna Baron is Executive Director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, a legal charity that protects constitutional freedoms in courts of law and…
