Stop calling Mark Carney a closet conservative

Mark Carney is not a conservative. This seems like a ludicrous thing to have to clarify. After all, he is the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada—the same party that, under Justin Trudeau, governed according to a distinctly modern progressive playbook. That tradition is defined by an expansive view of social justice, a strong emphasis on rights and inclusion, and a belief that good process is itself a moral outcome. In practice, it saddled the country with Byzantine regulatory regimes, an endless maze of consultations and consent, and a pricey economic approach that leaned heavily on redistribution and demand-side stimulus. Too often, every problem was met with the same reflexive answer: more government intervention layered on top of what already existed. Guardrails mattered. Quotas mattered. Procedure mattered. Saying the right thing—and saying it the right way—mattered even more. Not Carney, though. He inherited that legacy, and much of the caucus behind it (one suspects with mixed feelings), but so far he is not reproducing it. His instinct is not to pile on ever more symbolism and sanctimony, but to tackle a more fundamental—and more uncomfortable—question. Why has it become so difficult for Canada to deliver the basic material foundations of prosperity at all? Or as the prime minister puts it: “We used to build big things in this country, and we used to build them quickly.” What Carney is pointing to is a kind of institutional sclerosis that has taken hold across the Canadian state. Over time, well-intentioned reforms have metastasized into a “vetocracy” that struggles to get anything done. The result is a country that can announce grand plans, fund generous programs, pass sweeping legislation, and micromanage questions of equity and representation—yet still can’t build homes at scale, deliver major infrastructure on time, or move energy projects from proposal to completion. That failure of delivery is the problem Carney is trying to solve. And it is also why he is so often misread. It’s true that he has borrowed selectively from the Conservative Party of Canada. From repealing the consumer carbon tax to reversing changes to the capital gains tax to cracking down on crime and immigration abuses and even adopting a more growth-oriented tone on productivity and investment, Carney has been willing to lift ideas he believes will improve the state’s ability to function. But borrowing tactics is not the same thing as sharing a governing philosophy. Though he is shrinking parts of the public service, what Carney is not doing is shrinking the role of government or rolling back the state. In that sense, he is not a conservative dressed in a red suit, as many have mused. For conservatives, the answer is typically less government. Fewer rules, lower taxes, and a greater reliance on markets to sort out scarcity. Carney’s answer is different. He wants a government that is stronger where it counts, and one capable of coordinating capital, accelerating approvals, aligning incentives, and delivering large, complex projects in the public interest. Just because those plans don’t involve state-imposed gender parity doesn’t automatically make Carney a right-wing guy. He is simply trying to make the state more competent, with the understanding that market forces are not the enemy, but a necessary element. That places him in a different intellectual lineage altogether—one increasingly described as “abundance liberalism.” Abundance vs. scarcity At its core, abundance liberalism begins with a simple but bracing observation that many of the problems consuming modern politics are no longer primarily about distribution, but about scarcity. And much of that scarcity is self-inflicted. Housing is scarce, not because jurisdictions lack land or capital, but because they have made it extraordinarily difficult to build. Infrastructure is scarce, not because governments cannot afford it, but because approval timelines stretch so long that costs explode and public confidence evaporates. Scarcity is also a self-perpetuating instinct. If one assumes there are only so many ways to divide a pie, the natural impulse is to focus on taking pieces from the haves and giving them to the have-nots. A scarcity mindset privileges limiting and constraining. In law, it expresses itself through caps, moratoriums, conditions, and an ever-expanding chain of veto points. Abundance theory challenges that instinct. It argues that progressives cannot redistribute their way out of scarcity if they refuse to expand supply in the first place. In other words, a more durable way to help the have-nots is to simply bake a bigger pie. The energy MOU as a test case A clear example of Carney-style abundance economics in practice is the energy memorandum of understanding he struck with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. Instead of treating energy policy as a moral problem to be managed through bans and caps, the MOU outlines a framework in which it is possible to build more, export more, and decarbonize more—all at the same time. Abundance demands a “yes, yes, yes” approach, rather than the “no, no, no” politics of yesteryear. Some progressives will no doubt balk at this interpretation. Ezra Klein himself—co-author of the book that gave name to the movement—has been explicit that abundance liberalism is not a licence to ignore climate constraints, nor a cover for fossil fuel expansion. But what Klein thinks about the Alberta oilsands—if he thinks of them at all—has no bearing on the governing choices facing Carney. The MOU is, at its core, an exercise in state capacity. It focuses on reducing uncertainty for investors, aligning federal and provincial regulatory timelines, and coordinating infrastructure decisions long treated as separate. Market access is acknowledged as a prerequisite for investment. Industrial decarbonization is treated as a scale problem. Carbon capture, emissions-reduction technologies, and export infrastructure are positioned as complementary rather than contradictory. Crucially, the agreement rejects the scarcity logic that has dominated oil and gas debates for the past decade. It does not assume that constraining supply will, by itself, deliver lower emissions. Instead, it accepts that emissions reductions in an energy-producing country depend on building cleaner systems that are functional, competitive, and commercially viable. Achieving that outcome requires expanding options across energy sources. This is abundance liberalism applied to a politically unforgiving file. Seen this way, the energy MOU is not a deviation from progressivism, nor a concession to conservatism. It is an acknowledgement that Canada cannot decarbonize through paralysis—and that there is no greener, brighter future if we starve the economy that must build it. Or, as my grandmother likes to say, even the most clever cook can’t make a meal without rice. The politics of “yes, and…” The same abundance logic runs through the rest of Carney’s domestic agenda. From housing to productivity to income inequality, his instinct is not to tax, regulate, or lecture his way out of every problem. To many, that reads as conservative. In diagnosis, it often is. But his solutions stop well short of simply getting government out of the way. Instead, Carney’s answer is to grow the underlying system so that there is more to go around in the first place. Redistribution is meaningful when there is something substantial to redistribute. Regulation works best when it enables outcomes rather than suffocating them. That belief is neither conservative nor libertarian. It assumes an active state—one that plans, coordinates, and invests—but judges that state by whether it can actually deliver. For now, abundance theory remains largely an American debate, circulating among U.S. progressives wrestling with the failures of their own institutions. There, it competes for influence within the Democratic Party. In Canada, the language of abundance remains relatively unfamiliar. But the same tension is beginning to take shape in a different form. If Trudeau-era progressivism represented one pole, Carney now represents the other. Canada’s more centralized, top-down political culture has allowed Carney to impose himself on the party and tilt that internal contest in his favour. What remains unclear is whether this shift resonates with rank-and-file Liberals. And as Democrats remain consumed by their own internal battles over whether growth is largely a force for good or bad, they may be missing the fact that a live test case of their debate is quietly unfolding north of the border. Carney’s wager is that the Liberal Party—and perhaps modern liberalism more broadly—can only survive if it learns how to say “yes” again at scale, on time, and in the real world. Whether that wager succeeds will matter far beyond his own political future.