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Category: Chairman’s Desk

Affordability has become the only issue — everything else is just noise

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Nothing corrodes political credibility faster than pretending a problem doesn’t exist. Especially when that problem is one that voters feel in their bones. And nothing angers voters more — or accelerates their distrust — than denying the reality that life is getting more expensive.

You can stall, spin, or distract from this fact. But eventually, the bills come due.

Last week offered two striking examples of just that.

First up, U.S. President Donald Trump.

It was a bruising week for the orange menace to the South. In the first major elections since 2024, Democrats swept contests across the United States. In New York, mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani secured a decisive victory. In Mississippi, Democrats flipped two Republican-held state Senate seats, breaking through the GOP’s supermajority in a state long considered untouchable. Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill scored double-digit wins in gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey. The list goes on.

The common thread? Democratic candidates being laser focused on the cost of living and pocketbook issues.

Sensing the danger ahead of the 2026 midterms, the Trump administration scrambled to catch up. Suddenly, the issue of affordability was the theme of the week.

Trump unveiled a plan to send $2,000 cheques to low- and middle-income Americans, funded by tariff revenues. He directed the Justice Department to probe price-fixing in the meat industry. He announced a deal aimed at cutting the price of weight-loss drugs. And he even floated a rather ludicrous plan for 50-year mortgages to help lower homeowners’ payments.

All of it — however far-fetched — amounted to real action. But his words told a very different story.

Days after the elections, Trump described affordability as a “new word,” and dismissed it as a “con job” by Democrats. Later, he declared, “I don’t want to hear about affordability.”

In other words, pure denial.

This kind of reality-bending has long been Trump’s political hallmark. But cracks are forming. Next year’s midterms will show just how deep they run and whether Trump’s rhetoric begins to align with the reality his administration is being forced to confront.

But denial takes subtler forms too. And you don’t need to look across the border to find them.

Here at home, despite Conservative infighting, last week was no picnic for the Liberals. Their budget landed with a dull thud. The announcement of several new “major projects” largely met the same fate.

As communications products, both leaned heavily on the familiar themes of nation-building: infrastructure, productivity, long-term competitiveness.

All worthy goals. All necessary. And yet, for most Canadians, entirely beside the point.

Because none of it answers the questions keeping families up at night: How do I afford Christmas gifts this year? What can I put on the table this week without blowing the grocery budget? When will anything actually get cheaper?

Ask anyone on Bay Street and they’ll give you the logic: strengthen the fundamentals, and the rest will follow. Build a more productive, self-sufficient Canada and affordability pressures will ease. Eventually.

But that word — eventually — is only half the problem.

Because when families watch prices climb and rent devour more than half their paycheques, and then hear politicians talk about productivity targets, megaprojects, and long-term competitiveness, it sounds like their priorities are upside down.

Talk about anything but the thing that’s hurting people most, and voters reach a simple conclusion: you don’t get it. They don’t hear a plan to help them, they hear a government talking past them.

It isn’t outright denial, but it lands exactly the same way.

It’s often said that in politics, perception is reality. That’s the real danger here. Whether it’s Trump mocking affordability or Ottawa talking around it, the result is the same: people stop listening. And when governments fixate on what they want to say instead of what people need to hear, they cross an invisible line, from governing to gaslighting.

And the truth is this: voters can forgive mistakes, but they won’t forgive denial of the problem they confront every day in the checkout line.

As Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government settles into the hard realities of governing, it faces that very test. If it keeps sounding like it’s talking past Canadians — no matter how sound the policy or grand the strategy — it risks being heard the same way Trump was: as leadership in denial.

Denial comes in many forms. But whether it’s shouted from a podium or buried in bureaucratic jargon, it leads to the same place — political defeat.

It took the Royals far too long to reach the right answer on Andrew

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There’s a maxim in crisis management: in moments of reputational jeopardy, go to “endgame” fast.

If someone must be fired or demoted, if an apology is owed, if a line must finally be drawn — do it as quickly and humanely as possible. Don’t dribble out half-measures and euphemisms. Don’t wait. Don’t hope the smell dissipates on its own.

Because it won’t. The longer you dither, the worse it gets.

The House of Windsor has demonstrated that truth in real time. Every extra year, month, minute Prince Andrew retained even a trace of title or privilege — and every cent that could be traced, directly or indirectly, to the public purse — the institution paid compounding interest on reputational damage.

Instead of moving decisively, the palace took the slowest walk to the most obvious conclusion. And they are now paying the penalty for that hesitation.

Let’s recap this slow-moving car crash. In 2011, Andrew’s friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein came to light, and he stepped down as the U.K.’s special trade envoy. Years later, in 2019, came the infamous BBC “Newsnight” interview — an exercise in self-immolation — in which he claimed he had “no recollection” of ever meeting Virginia Roberts Giuffre, despite the now-famous photo with his arm around her; insisted he could not sweat; and otherwise strained credulity through plain old blubbering.

In the aftermath, he was stripped of the “His Royal Highness” style.

But recent events delivered the coup de grâce. An email surfaced showing Andrew remained in contact with Epstein long after he suggested the relationship had ended — chummily and revoltingly promising they would “play more soon” and were “in it together.” On top of that, Giuffre’s posthumous memoir, “Nobody’s Girl,” landed in Britain with detailed allegations of her encounters with Andrew.

The result: Andrew has now been stripped of the “prince” title, all other honours removed, and he’s being shown the door at Royal Lodge.

I’m counting well past three strikes.

You could argue royalty does not play by the same rules as everybody else. But no one is exempt from the rules of public favour. And public favour is the monarchy’s oxygen.

By avoiding endgame and choosing a drip-by-drip discipline — another style stripped here, a privilege removed there, a wincing statement when the headlines flared — the Royal Family didn’t just fail to cauterize the wound, it allowed it to keep reopening and reopening. And each partial step invited the same question: Do they actually understand the gravity of this?

Moving to endgame fast matters because it signals just that understanding. It shows the people in charge grasp the scale of the wrongdoing and are acting — not managing optics, not protecting one of their own, but protecting the standard.

Linger, and you communicate the opposite: an irrational attachment to the person over the principle.

Of course, families are anything but rational. They are complicated, sentimental, and often forgiving to a fault. That may be the best argument for why it took so long; but it is no excuse. In leadership — especially where one’s legitimacy rests on trust — mercy cannot outrun accountability.

There’s another, frequently overlooked, reason to get to endgame: it is better for the person you’re cutting loose. It gives them a finality that allows them to move on, instead of living on permanent probation and relapsing into fresh embarrassments that drag everyone back to the beginning.

Several currents finally converged this week. The King was publicly heckledabout Andrew. The Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, broke with the usual kid-glove deference and endorsed proper scrutiny of Andrew’s peppercorn lease at Royal Lodge; the Public Accounts Committee duly asked for documents. And, if palace whispers are right, the generational gears engaged: William and Catherine pressed for a clean break.

They’re not wrong to see urgency. Only four working royals are under the age of 70. The institution’s future depends on a smaller, harder-working cadre who cannot afford reputational freeloaders.

Monarchy survives on public standing — and on the judgment to protect it. At last, the next generation seems to have decided that the endgame had arrived.

It should have been reached years ago. But late, I suppose, is better than never.

For Mark Carney, when it comes to selling trade policy, the best defence is a good offence

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Your boss walks out of a long, protracted set of negotiations with a deal that’s absolutely vital to your future.

They have two options for how to characterize what they’ve achieved.

Option one. “We got the best deal.”

Option two. “We got the best deal … possible. Under the circumstances. In light of all the pressure. Not to mention the mountain of leverage our opponent was hanging over our heads!”

If you don’t find option two particularly inspiring, you’re not alone. But that, in essence, is exactly the kind of message the boss of Canada’s economy, Mark Carney, will have to deliver as he prepares to sell his government’s trade policy with the United States and China — our two most consequential, and most complicated, economic partners.

That challenge applies to whatever emerges from Carney’s trip to Asia this week, where he’ll likely meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in hopes of easing long-standing trade disputes. But it applies most directly to any announcement of a long-awaited U.S. — Canada sectoral trade deal — once, that is, U.S. President Donald Trump’s temper tantrum over Ontario’s Reagan-themed antitariff ads subsides.

Of course, choices like the one I began this column with are invented luxuries. But they make the point. There is a world of difference between communicating from a position of strength and one of constraint.

How to best communicate from that latter position — how to balance acknowledging the limits of Canada’s leverage while projecting strategic competence — is a question that has defined much of this young government’s tenure.

As Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters before embarking on his first official visit to Asia on Friday, “Look for months we have stressed the importance of distinguishing things we can control and the things we can’t control. We can’t control the trade policy of the United States.”

That’s a message designed to elicit a little sympathy and understanding, to remind Canadians their government is doing the best it can dealing with a radically unpredictable partner. But over the next few weeks, that message will be tested like never before.

Because nowhere is this challenge more acute than in selling a sectoral trade deal negotiated under duress. When the bargaining partner is the same force driving the instability in the first place; when key sectors are certain to emerge bruised; when the wine, inevitably, must be watered down.

The announcement of any sectoral trade deal won’t just be another stage in the wider negotiations with the U.S., it will be a stress test for the government’s entire communication strategy, credibility, and command of the national story.

And to pass that test, the Carney government needs to remember only one thing: the best defence is a good offence.

On an issue like this, the opposition has only two credible messages that matter. First, to point out the flaws of the deal; second, and more importantly, to insist, “we could have done better.”

Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre will argue he would have driven a harder bargain, saved more Canadian jobs, stood toe-to-toe with Donald Trump without blinking, and resolved everything much sooner.

The Liberals shouldn’t waste energy denying the imperfections of the deal. Instead, they should go on the attack and ask him: how?

How exactly does one outflank a protectionist White House? How does an opposition leader who has never sat at a diplomatic negotiating table imagine he’d do better against the most unpredictable U.S. president in modern memory?

That’s the counterpunch Carney needs to throw.

Canadians understand we don’t live in a perfect world. Canadians understand this government is not playing with the best of hands. And a successful offensive strategy will remind Canadians that while they may not like the hand they’ve been dealt, they trust the person playing it more than anyone else.

The fact is, governments sometimes need reminding they don’t need to play defence 24/7. There are moments when going on the offence, when holding the opposition’s feet to the fire for a change, is necessary.

When the opposition’s entire case rests on a hypothetical — a Monday-morning quarterback’s fantasy of a “better deal” that never existed — that’s exactly when you stop defending and go on the attack.

The generals’ summit wasn’t about war abroad — it was about control at home

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I’ll admit that it can be challenging to know when to write about the Trump administration. It’s like having a noisy neighbour: for the sake of your sanity, oftentimes it’s simply best to ignore them. Other times, you simply have to name the behaviour for what it is.

That time is now.

When it became known the Trump administration had summoned the nation’s top generals and admirals from around the world to gather at a mysterious event in Quantico, Virginia, conspiracy theories swirled. Perhaps it was to formulate battle plans for World War Three. Maybe it was to announce a new foreign deployment or signal some global provocation.

But, as we have come to expect from the administration, the truth was stranger than fiction. What unfolded at Quantico was not the unveiling of plans for war abroad, but a chilling signal aimed inward, at America itself.

It wasn’t the usual spectacle of U.S. President Donald Trump’s rhetoric that set this gathering apart. Yes, there were the predictable broadsides against “woke” policies, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s glorification of the “warrior spirit,” and tired justifications for renaming the Department of Defense back to the “Department of War.” Trump even dusted off his greatest hits: Biden’s autopen, the Nobel Peace Prize and even Canada as the “51st state,”

All of that was predictable theatre.

What was new was this: America’s military leadership was told their next priority would not be overseas in some conflict-ridden corner of the globe, but home in the United States — specifically in those cities run by Democratic mayors. The likes of Washington, Chicago and Portland, which by Trump’s logic are breeding grounds for chaos and “career criminals” where police have lost control. Democratic idylls that, to any God-fearing MAGA follower, must be hellscapes. And that Trump suggested should serve as “training grounds” for troops to combat “the enemy within.”

Some of the greatest writers and theorists of the 20th century attempted to define fascism. For Walter Benjamin, it is the “introduction of esthetics into political life.” For (the sociologist) Michael Mann, a “movement of the lesser intelligentsia.” For Robert Paxton, the “most self-consciously visual of all political forms … a chauvinist demagogue haranguing an ecstatic crowd.”

And it is all those things. Hegseth’s pointed emphasis on male grooming, his disdain for “fat generals,” his obsession with male fitness standards — all reinforce these points.

But fascism isn’t just pageantry, to function it requires the hard machinery of power and intimidation: the military itself.

The U.S. armed forces, with its tradition of political neutrality, stands as one of the final institutions resistant to Trump’s project of total partisan capture. Last week, that firewall showed signs of cracking.

The message from Quantico was unmistakable: the defenders of democracy, both at home and abroad, are now to become enforcers of the MAGA agenda.

Actions speak louder than words and Trump and Hegseth’s words were meant to drive action. More boots on the ground in American cities. Soldiers patrolling not in a foreign nation but on domestic streets. To intimidate Americans into submission under Trump’s rule and, yes, to pick up trash when they have nothing better to do.

That is about as unmistakable a step toward fascist rule as one can imagine.

Unlike his first term, the safeguards on Trump’s ambitions are now exceedingly thin. But if the impassive looks on those generals and admirals were any indication, hope rests in the men and women who swore an oath to protect the U.S. Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Trump himself put the stakes in stark relief when he said: “It’s a war from within. We have to handle it before it gets out of control.”

He’s dead right about one thing: there is a war from within. The question now is who’s waging it — and on whom?

Mark Carney faces a rare challenge for a Liberal PM: Selling a Conservative budget

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Let me give you a scenario. See if it sounds familiar.

After years of Liberal rule, a Conservative party is swept into office on the strength of a campaign promising to cut waste and invest more strategically.

Soon, that new government faces its first real test: the budget.

In the lead-up, they issue stern warnings that portend difficult decisions. Efficiencies are being sought. Deep cuts are in the offing.

Far from being a political vulnerability, this is treated as a coup — a return to fiscal sanity. And the signal is crystal clear: the grown-ups are back in charge, and the big red pen is coming out.

This, of course, is the standard script for many newly formed conservative governments, here at home and around the world.

And it might have been the story of Mark Carney — were it not for that one pesky, complicating detail: he doesn’t lead a new governing Conservative party. He leads the same Liberal one that presided over the overspending in the first place.

That legacy creates a profound communications challenge. Far from invigorating his base, Carney may well be forced to alienate key parts of it in the name of restoring fiscal order.

Layer on a shrinking economy and rising unemployment and you get quite the predicament.

But it’s precisely the nature of that predicament that makes the communications strategy surrounding this budget absolutely critical.

Political rollouts of this magnitude tend to follow a predictable choreography.

Step one: lay the foundation. Almost immediately after taking office, Carney directed his ministers to identify “ambitious savings,” with an overall target to cut operational spending by 7.5 per cent for the 2026-27 fiscal year.

Step two: set realistic expectations. Last Sunday, the Prime Minister announced that the deficit “will be bigger than it was last year.” (For the record, last year’s figure was an eye-watering $61.9 billion.)

Step three: apply a touch of budgetary finesse. On Tuesday, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne told reporters that the government will draw a line between operational spending and capital investments (as is done in the UK). Translation: operational costs will be trimmed, investments in infrastructure, defence and housing will grow.

Final step: drive home a clear, concise political message.

That final part is still emerging. But I would argue the path is clear.

Because the communication around this budget doesn’t have to be defensive, or an act of tightrope walking.

On the contrary, it’s an opportunity to show Canadians that the Liberal party has turned the page from the Trudeau era. To demonstrate the progressive base holds zero sway. That the age of expansive social programming and limitless spending is dead and gone.

No apologies required.

Will some voices on the progressive flank howl in betrayal? Yes, they will.

But Mark Carney was not elected as the heir to Justin Trudeau’s political project. He won on a different promise entirely — one rooted in economic expertise and a credible plan to steer the country through global uncertainty.

That movement, his new tent, was never about the progressive base. It consisted in peeling away soft Conservative support and capitalizing on the fact that the NDP voters had no other choice to stop Poilievre.

That math hasn’t changed.

So, here’s my message to the Liberal strategists: It’s not a vulnerability to communicate about cutting waste. It is an asset. Lean into it.

To be clear, there will be a political penalty to be paid. Pockets of that progressive support will be infuriated.

But to be blunt, those voices don’t have a dog in the fight.

The Carney government will not — and cannot — deliver cuts with the same relish and ideological clarity as a Conservative government. But they can make a powerful case that the age of indulgence is over, and that every dollar spent must now be justified against the stark backdrop of global volatility and a domestic affordability crisis.

No matter what, Pierre Poilievre will say this budget overspends and underdelivers.

But if Mark Carney can demonstrate that the government is reining in waste and investing strategically, he doesn’t just rebut the opposition, he redefines the Liberals. He sends a reminder his is a new government not just in leadership, but substance.

And given where Liberals stood in the polls just one year ago, delivering that reminder and proving that transformation isn’t just worthwhile, it’s essential.