The federal government’s latest “Canada is a nation of builders” ad is not policy. It’s tax-funded lip service — heavy on sentimentality, light on meaningful change.
This has become the defining habit of modern Liberal governance: pluck the heartstrings, open the purse strings, avoid the hard work.
And nothing exposes that habit more clearly than the ad’s proud proof point:
“In the 1950s, Canada built the St. Lawrence Seaway.”
That’s the example.
Not the 1990s.
Not the 2000s.
Not the last decade.
Seventy-five years ago.
The St. Lawrence Seaway was a remarkable achievement — but the fact that Ottawa reaches back three-quarters of a century to justify the claim that we are still builders is as sad as it is telling. A serious country with momentum doesn’t need to rely on mid-century accomplishments to validate itself. A confident government would have no trouble pointing to something built in the lifetime of the people it governs.
Imagine the cold comfort this offers to Canadians born in 2000 and after — a generation priced out of housing, buried in student debt, watching productivity stall while taxes and fees rise. They are told they live in a nation of builders, and the evidence offered predates their grandparents’ working lives. For them, this ad doesn’t inspire pride — it confirms stagnation.
For years, Canadians have been fed emotionally charged messaging about compassion, inclusion, reconciliation, and ambition — while the country quietly slips backward in its ability to deliver the basics to an exhausted population. Housing costs explode. Productivity flatlines. Small businesses suffocate under compliance burdens that multiply faster than customers. Healthcare worsens. Infrastructure ages. And Ottawa responds not with reform, but with another ad.
This campaign fits perfectly into that lineage.
It leans on warm imagery and borrowed pride, pointing to grand projects of the distant past, while sidestepping the uncomfortable truth: Canada today is not building — it is managing decline with better branding.
What’s missing is not vision. It’s backbone.
Real leadership would mean regulatory pushback — the unglamorous, politically risky work of dismantling the maze of rules, permits, fees, reporting requirements, and ideological checkboxes that choke off entrepreneurship. It would mean unapologetically defending the people who actually generate wealth: the tradespeople, shop owners, builders, operators, and risk-takers who form the real fabric of this country.
Instead, Ottawa governs from a cultural and economic distance — shaped largely by affluent Liberal leadership insulated from the consequences of its own policies. Policies that look compassionate in press releases, but land as punitive and naive in practice. Policies written by people who have never missed payroll, never faced a surprise inspection, never stared down a balance sheet and wondered whether to shut the doors.
This ad threatens to reinforce the worst perception Canadians already hold: that Ottawa mistakes feeling good for doing good, that it prefers symbolism over systems, and that it still lacks the wisdom — and the courage — to do the real work.
You cannot redistribute wealth that is not being created. You cannot promise everything to everyone while weakening the engine that pays for it. And you cannot call yourself a nation of builders while quietly dismantling the conditions required to build anything at all.
Canada doesn’t need another commercial. It needs a government willing to stop posturing — and start governing.
by Ben Brooks