Prime Minister Mark Carney touts Canadian values in speech at global progress summit

TORONTO – Prime Minister Mark Carney says Canada needs to build new institutions and reimagine old ones as an antidote to the anxieties that people and governments are grappling with in the modern age.

Carney made the remarks in a speech Saturday that closed out the 2026 Global Progress Action Summit in Toronto, attended by ministers Anita Anand, Melanie Joly and François-Philippe Champagne, as well as current and former U.S. and European politicians including Pete Buttigieg and Magdalena Andersson.

Carney said the loss of control that people feel over the affordability crisis, immigration and artificial intelligence has fed a “politics of grievance” that is dividing people worldwide. 

These new challenges require new solutions, Carney said, touching on themes he discussed at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he argued the international rules-based order no longer works and middle-power counties must build new coalitions.

The prime minister quoted Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan, in saying that today’s “age of anxiety” was caused by “trying to do today’s job with yesterday’s tools.”

He said Canada doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but his government has made efforts to advance modern solutions, like seeking trade deals in Europe and beyond in the face of U.S. tariffs and creating the Build Canada Homes agency which aims to build thousands of homes on federally owned land.

Carney said the government’s approach includes a willingness to accept hard realities, like using all sources of energy, “including some gas,” while working towards cleaner, more affordable energy systems. 

He also highlighted the Liberals’ newly-announced sovereign wealth fund, which he said will fund nation-building projects while giving regular Canadians who invest a piece of the profits. 

“We have to take risks again,” Carney said. “Because in a crisis, fortune favors the bold.”

Carney said the current moment has been seized by politicians who seek to destroy and dismantle and progressives must answer by building. 

“We can’t match them by being timid imitations of them. We can’t answer them by pining for an old order that’s not going to return,” he said. “It can only be answered by positive action, by building that which comes next.”

The Global Progress Action Summit, which hosted former U.S. President Barack Obama in a private event on Friday, convenes progressive leaders and thinkers, according to think tanks Canada 2020 and the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which organized the event. 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 9, 2026.