Western Standard - August 18, 2026


Has Carney actually delivered anything？


Episode Stats


Length

2 minutes

Words per minute

159.69

Word count

458

Sentence count

32


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 So we're talking about our fine prime minister a year and a half into his mandate.
00:00:04.580 What's he managed to do so for Nigel?
00:00:06.600 Well, you know, that's the thing.
00:00:08.060 Not too much, really.
00:00:09.680 What got me started on this train of thought was not so much Mr. Carney.
00:00:14.660 I've got kind of used to the idea that he makes announcements and nothing happens.
00:00:18.960 But Pierre Polyev is sinking in the polls.
00:00:23.240 And I cannot wrap my head around how he can be doing so badly in the polls when he's really not done anything wrong, while Mr. Carney has not really done anything right and is yet is leading him by, according to some polls, which I don't actually believe, but 19 percentage points.
00:00:48.100 So I thought maybe we need to take a look and see if Mr. Carney has actually done a few things that merit the popularity he's now enjoying, but he hasn't.
00:00:59.380 So let's just go over this. He was elected in April of last year, so he's been in office for about 15 months.
00:01:06.920 Now, you can't turn an oil tanker around on the spot and you can't take a Canadian economy that's been decimated by nearly 10 years of his predecessor and expect everything to turn around in a few weeks or even a few months.
00:01:23.320 But after 15 months, you should see some signs of where the growth, where the new action is going to come from.
00:01:31.760 But, you know, I'm not seeing it.
00:01:33.920 he established the Major Projects Office to make things move fast.
00:01:40.660 There are presently 19 projects in its mall, but only one has been announced,
00:01:46.420 and that was one that was well advanced before Mr. Carney became prime minister,
00:01:50.920 never mind they set up the office.
00:01:53.720 So there's an awful lot of it's out there, it's in the future, it's coming, but it isn't here yet.
00:01:58.960 So that's, you know, that's with the major industrial development.
00:02:01.660 on defense. He said, right, we're going to meet the 2% NATO standard, 2% of GDP spent on defense.
00:02:10.300 Well, what did he do? He gave everybody a pay raise, incorporated the Coast Guard into the
00:02:14.160 military. Suddenly, we're at 2%. That's not really the object of the exercise. And then on trade,
00:02:23.060 he's gone around the world signing memorandums of understanding. The only trade that we've really
00:02:29.040 seen as an agreement with China to import vehicles, which does nothing for Ontario's
00:02:35.520 auto industry. We don't have a comparable thing exporting to China. So, you know, when do we call
00:02:42.880 time on this experiment and say, all right, you've had a chance. Now, you know, now we need to see
00:02:49.440 some performance. And if not, we're going to condemn you.