Just The Facts: One Year of Carney
Ottawa, ON – One year ago, Mark Carney was sworn in as Prime Minister, saying that “Canadians will judge the change that they receive. That’s the right thing, and I’ll do what’s necessary with the people I have around the table in order to deliver that.”
Let’s look at the change Carney has delivered:
Food Inflation
Food inflation is now rising twice as fast as it was before Carney took office. Food prices skyrocketed 7.3 per cent year-over-year, leading to Canada having the worst food price increases in the G7. It adds up to Canadian families being projected to pay nearly $1,000 more in food costs this year.
Meanwhile, food purchased from restaurants alone was up 12.3 per cent in the same period, with take-out and fast food up by 14 per cent. That means it’s no surprise nearly half of restaurants are operating at a loss or barely breaking even, with 7,000 closing last year and as many as 4,000 projected to close in 2026.
Shrinking Economy
Canada is the only country in the G7 with a shrinking economy, contracting by 0.2 per cent in the last quarter of 2025. That has a real impact on jobs, with over 100,000 full-time jobs lost in February alone, the largest single-month decline since the Great Recession (outside the pandemic).
That adds to the 1.5 million Canadians who are now without a job, pushing our unemployment rate up to 6.7 per cent – the second highest in the G7.
Meanwhile, 22.8 per cent of those unemployed are trapped in long-term unemployment, well above the pre-pandemic average of 17.1 per cent.
For youth, it’s been even worse: last summer, they experienced the worst youth job market since the Great Recession (outside the pandemic). The problem hasn’t gone away, with almost 50,000 youth losing their jobs last month and the youth unemployment rate rising to 14.1 per cent.
More Debt
Carney’s budget was the most expensive in Canadian history, with the deficit almost doubling to $78.3 billion. Far from spending less, the budget added $90 billion in new spending, costing every Canadian family roughly $5,400. And there’s no relief on the horizon as the Parliamentary Budget Officer found “it is unlikely that the Government’s declining deficit-to-GDP fiscal anchor will be respected.”
No Homes
New housing construction will drop 16.6 per cent as Carney’s housing agency expects housing starts to fall to as low as 212,000 per year by 2028 – well below the 10-year historical average. Their latest forecast finds housing starts will be 55 per cent below the CMHC’s target necessary to restore housing affordability.
Failing to build homes has a real impact: housing prices will continue to rise over the next three years, and “many households will delay buying homes and choose to rent longer.” So far, the Liberals’ solution – a fourth housing bureaucracy – has spent zero dollars on capital investment and spent the year building no new housing.
There’s plenty Carney hasn’t changed: our broken immigration system, skyrocketing violent crime in our major cities and the Liberal anti-development laws that block pipelines and energy projects. One year in, Carney’s promises have been revealed to be just an illusion. Sadly, the reality makes this one anniversary that Canadians won’t be celebrating.