Éric Blais: Mark Carney rode three Ts to power. Now comes the hard part - Toronto Star

Pipelines, ports and new trading partners take years, and none of it will lower this month’s grocery bill or next month’s rent.

Prime Minister Mark Carney boards a government plane in Ottawa, Wed., Nov. 11, 2026.

Éric Blais is president of Headspace Marketing in Toronto and the author of "Normal Nation: How Normalcy Could Play in a Third Québec Referendum."

That was Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer on the night he learned he’d soon be dropping the “minority.” Once he recovered the use of full sentences, he explained why Democrats had won: they kept candidates on message with a simple formula built around three Cs — costs, chaos and corruption.

It worked, but those costs, chaos and corruption were Donald Trump’s. That is the point: attacks on an incumbent’s record win only while the incumbent still carries the blame. Democrats ran on a “culture of corruption” in 2006, took Congress, then the White House, and lost the House in 2010 once the costs were theirs. 

Schumer knows it, which is why he closed his victory speech warning that Democrats must now deliver. Trump can’t run in 2028, and a message aimed at him will soon be a speech without an audience.

Which brings me to Prime Minister Mark Carney. He, too, was elected on three words : Trudeau, Trump and technocrat.

The first T was a gift from the Conservatives. For three years, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s team diminished Prime Minister Justin Trudeau so thoroughly that they got what they wished for when he quit. Poilievre looked most like a prime minister when standing next to Trudeau, but when Carney arrived, the comparison reset.

The second T was Trump. The tariffs and the annexation talk turned the election into a question of who Canadians wanted across the table from him. Ontario Premier Doug Ford, aka Captain Canada, had already pulled on a “Canada is not for sale” cap and played the bad cop.

The good cop came with the third T: a technocrat. After a decade of Trudeau’s socks and selfies, and three years of Poilievre’s repetitive slogans, Carney offered the welcome contrast of a man who had actually run things. He also seemed impossible to rattle. 

But a brand built against an opponent lasts only as long as the opponent stays strong. It begins to fade when the opponent quits or is wounded by a Democratic tsunami.

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, speaks during a press conference at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in Washington, DC, on Nov. 4, 2026, a day after Democrats claimed a majority in the Senate following the U.S. midterm elections.

A new Abacus Data survey, conducted around the midterms, shows how much Carney leans on Trump. Fifty-seven per cent of Canadians approve of his government, but only 29 per cent approve of its handling of the cost of living, down nine points since September. On housing, it’s 31 per cent. And the best predictor of approval is how Canadians rate the government on the United States. Affordability, their biggest worry, doesn’t move the needle on its own.

Polls show the Trump effect on Carney’s approval. It peaked after Davos, slid through a quiet spring and summer, then jumped back when he walked away from trade talks in August.

That raises a question about the third T. A technocrat is what you hire for a crisis because he understands interest rates, trade and how to talk to world leaders. But voters will eventually need that competence to provide relief on grocery prices and rent.

In 2018, Bill Gates guessed that a $1 box of Rice-A-Roni cost five dollars. He wasn’t asking for votes. During his 1992 presidential campaign Bill Clinton was, and he won by telling voters, “I feel your pain.” A technocrat’s version is “I understand your pain.” Accurate, sincere and about as warm as a policy paper.

With his primary enemy seriously weakened, the PM has to deliver.