Carney Backed a War. Then the Polls Came In.

When the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran in late February 2026, Prime Minister Mark Carney issued a joint statement with Defence Minister Anand from Mumbai. The language was unambiguous. Canada did not merely call for restraint or urge dialogue. It explicitly endorsed American military action.

That single sentence — "Canada supports the United States acting" — drew immediate condemnation. A Liberal MP publicly broke with Carney. Former Liberal Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy compared it unfavourably to Canada's refusal to join the Iraq War in 2003. Former diplomats called it an abandonment of international law. The Hill Times reported that legal experts questioned whether endorsing unilateral strikes without UN authorization violated Canada's long-standing multilateralist commitments.

Then the polling arrived. A Canadian Polling survey found Canadians deeply concerned about the war and the prospect of deeper entanglement. Within days, Carney's office issued a revised statement. Gone was the explicit endorsement of U.S. action. In its place: calls for de-escalation, protection of civilians, and criticism that the strikes were carried out "without engaging the United Nations or consulting with allies, including Canada."

This is not a nuanced evolution of position. This is a Prime Minister who endorsed a war on Friday and criticized the conduct of that same war by Tuesday — after tracking the polling in between. The original statement remains on the PMO website. Both statements are sourced below.

Carney ran on "principled pragmatism" and positioned Canada as a rules-based multilateralist counterweight to Trump's America. His first major foreign policy test produced a statement of support for unilateral U.S. military action — then a reversal driven not by new facts, but by domestic political pressure.

Canada's Federal Budget Watchdog Is Gone. Carney Let It Happen.

Jason Jacques, the interim Parliamentary Budget Officer, saw his term expire this week. The Carney government did not renew it. There is no replacement. As of now, the office that exists specifically to provide Canadians with independent analysis of federal spending — the same office that scrutinizes every budget, every spending promise, every deficit projection — cannot take on new work or publish new findings.

The timing is notable. Jacques' office was the most credible thorn in Carney's fiscal side. It was the PBO that warned Carney's deficit path was "not sustainable." It was the PBO that revealed the federal government's healthcare program for asylum seekers would cost Canadian taxpayers $1.5 billion per year — a figure the government did not volunteer. And it was this same office that the OECD, in a report released just as Jacques' term was expiring, ranked as the best parliamentary budget office in the world.

A government that had nothing to hide would have moved urgently to fill this vacancy. Instead, the position lapsed. The office is now effectively paralyzed. The fiscal watchdog that told Canadians what their government's spending actually costs — independently, without political interference — has been quietly neutralized at the exact moment the Carney government is projecting a $78.3 billion deficit, the third-largest in Canadian history outside of pandemic years.

This is not a bureaucratic oversight. The PBO appointment is not complex. It requires a decision. That decision was not made. The office that held Carney accountable on spending is now dark — and Carney's government is the reason why.

The Record Continues

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