Sometimes life hands you adversity and you rise to meet it. Other times, prosperity lands in your lap and you still manage to stumble. I’ve seen both kinds of people. And I think there are two kinds of entities too: the ones that dig in and adapt, and the ones that fold when the weather turns rough. That’s where Canada is right now, perched between adversity and opportunity, deciding which kind of country we’re going to be.
The word resilience gets tossed around so much it risks becoming meaningless. But when you strip it back, it’s about survival and adaptation. Sometimes resilience is innate. Sometimes it’s learned the hard way. More often, it’s a messy blend of grit, stubbornness, and sheer Canadian weather-hardened willpower. You live in a place where the prairies freeze you one week and drown you the next, where distances stretch for days, and when the neighbour to the south can’t stop thinking about tariffs you learn to pivot.
That was the tone Prime Minister Mark Carney struck today at Mitsubishi Heavy in Ontario, flanked by ministers and industry leaders. His government unveiled what amounts to a pivot plan for a country stuck between a ruptured global trade system and a domestic economy that still needs housing, jobs, and stability. I don’t love every piece of it, but I know this: it’s a hell of a lot better than drifting with no plan at all.
Here’s the broad strokes of what was announced, minus the jargon.
- Major Projects Office to fast-track big national projects.
- Build Canada Homes, a new entity aimed at doubling housing construction over the next decade, using Canadian lumber, Canadian workers, Canadian tech.
- A defence industrial strategy this fall, tying huge military spending to Canadian jobs. Negotiations with the EU for defence and security partnerships start this month.
- A $5 billion Strategic Response Fund to help industries retool, pivot to new markets, and boost competitiveness.
- Workforce retraining for 50,000 Canadians, expanded EI (up to 65 weeks), and a jobs-matching platform built with Indeed, ZipRecruiter, and eCampus Ontario.
- A Buy Canadian procurement policy — shifting government from “best efforts” to a clear obligation to source from Canadian suppliers. Exceptions only with ministerial sign-off.
- Liquidity relief: BDC loans raised from $2M to $5M, new facilities for large enterprises, longer terms and lower interest.
- Agriculture and seafood supports: $370M for biofuels, higher canola loan limits, help for beef and lobster sectors hit by tariffs, expanded SME support programs.
- EV mandate pause: the 2026 target suspended, with a 60-day review to “recalibrate.”
That’s a mouthful. But taken together, it’s a government saying: the old global order is gone, the new one is punishing us, and we need to get serious about building at home while diversifying abroad.
I know there will be people furious about the EV pause. I get it. I want us to lead on climate too. But let’s remember, Carney has been criticized for being too focused on climate in his career. The man who built his global reputation on climate finance isn’t suddenly tossing his principles in the recycling bin. What he’s doing is what many of us have had to do in our own lives: taking a breath, recalibrating, buying time to pivot.
Think of it like losing your footing on ice. Do you cling to the plan of walking straight ahead, or do you adjust to keep from landing on your back? Sometimes resilience is about the detour, not the direct line.
I keep circling back to the children’s story of the Little Engine That Could because as you may know I love good fairy tail or storybook. A tiny train staring up at a daunting hill, muttering “I think I can.” Canada has done that before. Building a transcontinental railway across mountains and muskeg. Retooling our factories for a world war. Housing hundreds of thousands of veterans in record time. Constructing the St. Lawrence Seaway to unlock trade. None of those feats were easy. All of them required resilience.
Today, the hill is steeper tariffs, disrupted supply chains, and industries caught in the crossfire of U.S. protectionism. Our auto, steel, aluminum, and lumber sectors once thrived on cross-border integration. Now that dependency is a vulnerability. Add in a housing crisis, climate urgency, and an anxious workforce, and you’ve got a test of national resilience every bit as tough as the old ones.
What struck me today is that even the industries most affected, auto manufacturers, steel, lumber, canola, aren’t howling. They’re not cheering every line of the plan, but they’re acknowledging the pivot. The AutoManufacturers Association called it good news. The Global Automakers said members were “pleased” with the EV mandate pause, something they’d been asking for. They’re not pretending it’s perfect. They’re saying it’s realistic.
That’s where resilience comes in again. It’s not about loving every turn in the track. It’s about keeping the train moving. Today I even tried to listen to Pierre Poilievre’s press conference afterward, because I make a point of hearing the other side. But it’s always the same: ranting and raving with no indication of how he’d actually solve any of this. He pounds the podium about food prices, about job losses, about housing forecasts, but never once offers a concrete plan. I genuinely try to be objective, to hear him out, and I can’t bear it. Because it’s nothing. Absolutely nothing. Empty sound bites wrapped in outrage.
So, I’m not blindly celebrating this. There are trade-offs. Climate advocates have reason to worry. Business skeptics will ask where the money’s coming from. Free-traders will grumble about Buy Canadian. And some Canadians will shrug, because resilience is harder to measure than GDP growth or inflation drops. But here’s the truth: resilience is what you do when the old order collapses. It’s what you summon when you’re the little guy, facing bad weather and long odds. It’s what this country has always done, and it’s what this government is at least trying to frame, not as weakness, but as determination.
Canada doesn’t get to pick the weather, economic or otherwise. But we do get to decide whether we’re the little engine that could, or the one that stalls at the first steep hill. And let’s be blunt: if we choose to stall, nobody’s coming to give us a push.
I know which one I’m betting on.
Nancy's Notes 