This article originally appeared in the Financial Post.
By David Detomasi, April 23, 2026
Mark Carney has repeatedly said he wants Canada to be an energy superpower. He now heads a majority government. Will that get it done? Many energy industry observers seem optimistic but there are hurdles to clear and time is short.
Carney’s government is over a year into its mandate. Pronouncements have been made, MOUs signed, free trade agreements pursued. But little legislation has passed, and no actual energy projects started. Instead, the major political events have been byelection victories and floor-crossings by opposition MPs joining the Liberals’ big tent.
Tents can be stretched, but perhaps this one’s pegs have moved too far.
As prime minister, Justin Trudeau built his version of the Liberal tent on unapologetically progressive ground that effectively absorbed the NDP platform, making the NDP itself electorally irrelevant. Trudeau’s Liberals introduced industrial and personal carbon taxes, pushed the transition to electric vehicles, curtailed the free expression of energy companies and made regulation so cumbersome no foreign investor would touch Canada.
After Donald Trump returned for a second term, however, talk of nation-building, economic sovereignty and energy superpower-dom became not just feasible politically but even popular. Canadian energy was now a pillar of national strength and source of national pride and needed support, not restraint. Taxes were removed, EV mandates dropped, energy capacity promoted. The trend continues with the temporary summertime removal of the federal excise tax on gasoline and diesel. Such policies look suspiciously Conservative.
Looking back, it seems the strategy of Carney’s first year was to create conditions that made parliamentary defections and eventual majority status possible. Staying in power by embracing ideological reversals can be impressive political wizardry. Any party aspiring to form a majority government in a country as diverse as Canada needs some ideological fluidity. But can a party capable of such contortions as Carney’s Liberals have undergone be able to stiffen its spine when hard decisions have to be followed through on?
Such easy abandonment of the progressive environmental cause may suggest the animus against oil and gas were never that strong to begin with. That gives hope to those who favour responsible energy development. But it may also raise doubt about just how strong today’s pro-energy feelings are. Will Canada’s “energy superpower” ambitions survive another change in political winds?
Psychologists Jonathan Haidt and Stephen Pinker have researched how trends evolve over social media, particularly on controversial issues. Mobbing and band-wagoning are common, as people latch on to currently popular positions and, unmoved by logic and facts, attack their opponents mercilessly. That makes it hard to gauge actual public sentiment, still less the beliefs of elected representatives.
How deep is today’s professed enthusiasm for economic nation-building? Is it just anti-Trump chest-beating and flimsier than it seems? Will enthusiasm dissipate once Trump’s term ends or even if his power declines should Republicans do poorly in the November midterms?
No doubt much of the anti-carbon sentiment of the Trudeau years was political theatre. Yet there is clearly a core of Liberal true-believers — such as former environment minister Steven Guilbeault, who quit cabinet over the memorandum of understanding with Alberta — who remain firmly opposed to more carbon-based energy development. Carney’s current personal popularity likely will allow him to manage the carbon dissidents, but for how long?
The government only has so much time to get the energy superpower snowball rolling downhill. Fully realizing the vision will be the work of decades. Even with expedited reviews, Canada will be hard-pressed to bring about big increases in non-U.S. oil and gas exports in under five years. During that time, the effort will have to withstand both swings in public opinion sentiment and the fickleness of party loyalty.
For all the talk to signify more than just sound and fury, the clock is ticking. It’s go-time.
David Detomasi, a professor at the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University, is a contributor to the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
