By Don Newman

May 15, 2025

For an action-oriented new government about to reinvent the Canadian economy, find new trade and defence partners and withstand the onslaught of President Donald Trump and his tariffs and territorial ambitions, this week was not an auspicious beginning.

Instead of appearing as a crack, recently elected team of men and women ready to redefine Canada, the first meeting of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s cabinet looked more like the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.

And it wasn’t just the rookies. Veterans of the last Trudeau government were making the most egregious gaffes. The biggest of those came from Steven Guilbeault, a long-term climate change activist who served as environment minister in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet.

More than anyone else, Guilbeault has enraged Western Canadians, their provincial premiers and the oil industry with his sponsorship and campaigning for laws restricting natural resource development and pushing for zero emissions and electric vehicles. Carney obviously needs him in his new cabinet. He is popular in Quebec, where the Prime Minister has made him his Quebec lieutenant. But instead of the environment Carney has made him Minister of Canadian Identity which is the new name for Canadian Heritage.

Carney has been talking a about making Canada an “energy superpower” in both traditional energy and emerging technologies. He has even said he is open to building more traditional pipelines if there is a national consensus they are needed. That meant when cabinet met Wednesday morning of this past week reporters were waiting for Guilbeault, asking him his view of the prospect of new pipelines.

And it wasn’t just the rookies. Veterans of the last Trudeau government were making the most egregious gaffes.

Cabinet ministers are usually careful when commenting on issues that are not part of their portfolio. Not Guilbeault. He began rattling off answers as though he was still the environment minister, not only contradicting the prime minister, but making the job of new Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Tim Hodgson more complicated and igniting a fight with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.

But Guilbeault was not the only one making gaffes. Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand, another veteran of the Trudeau Government with a reputation as skilful operator in a number of portfolios, got caught in the controversy over whether Israel is purposely starving Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, saying that Israel is “using food as a political tool” without citing Hamas as the instigator of the current escalation in the conflict. Housing Minister Gregor Robertson, already controversial based on his record as Vancouver mayor, missed an opportunity to agree that housing prices need to come down by deflecting to an answer about building supply.

However, the biggest mistake was not that of an individual minister but of Carney and whoever on his still-threadbare staff is helping him run the government. At the end of the meeting, Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne was dispatched to tell reporters that the new Liberal government would not present a formal budget to Parliament in 2025. The best that could be done would be a fiscal update this fall.

Champagne said the government had a plan that would immediately pass a tax cut for Canadians this spring as promised in the election campaign. Then, in the throne speech set to be delivered by King Charles on May 27, the government will lay out its priorities, including a middle-class tax cut, followed by the economic statement in the fall.

That tells us a few things. One is that the throne speech will be more of a political and geopolitical statement than a governing agenda. It also tells us that while Carney said he had a plan for revamping and rebuilding the Canadian economy, what he has is a number of ideas but isn’t sure how they will all fit together and what all of it is going to cost.

Party platforms are often cast aside once an election is over. The Liberal one from the recent election promises $130 billion in new spending and tax cuts. But now we will have to wait until sometime this fall to get an idea of what the government wants to do and what it will cost when it presents its fall economic update.

That may be all this government can deliver. But a budget would be better.

Policy Columnist Don Newman is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a lifetime member and a past president of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery.