Why this little‑known Trump tactic is PM Carney’s favourite play
Wednesday, September 9, 2026
When the prime minister and B.C.’s premier met in Vancouver last May, I was outside with a big inflatable prop to call out new pipelines and fracked gas expansion in front of the media. Prime Minister Carney’s motorcade pulled up. On his short walk from the car inside, I had a split second to call out to him, to make just one comment or question. But my brain froze. Not from fear or anxiety, but from the sheer number of things I wanted to say. Nothing came out.
This article is first in a series from our Flood the Zone publication, which identifies ways community-building can combat a dangerous media tactic.
Carney’s first year has seen a flurry of announcements: a hypothetical new pipeline one day, a bill to fast-track megaprojects the next, an attack on migrant and refugee rights a week later, followed by a new harmful industrial project granted a special permit. I’m overwhelmed. A lot of us are feeling this way. All this is happening in the context of an ongoing cost-of-living crisis, livestreamed genocide and war, and worsening social and economic inequities.
It’s a lot to keep up with. That’s the point. Throwing a constant onslaught of policies and decisions at us is a strategy politicians use to overwhelm, forcing us to struggle to keep up and discern what’s important. This is an intentional tactic to keep us constantly on the back foot — dubbed “flooding the zone” by infamous advisor to the Trump administration Steve Bannon. Carney himself noted how much he’s learned from Trump about the effectiveness of flooding the zone.
How “Calm” Carney manufactures his public image
A leader engaged in cold, calculated pursuit of status quo industrial development is not the way many of us perceived Carney when he burst onto the political scene in the lead-up to the last federal election. Carney quickly garnered and thrived on a reputation around his calmness, rationality and knowledge. He was seen as naturally “prime ministerial,” and a foil to the erratic conservative populism of Pierre Pollievre.
Yet there is nothing rational about claiming your commitment to fight climate change is “absolute” while in the same video bragging about increasing oil production in a “sustainable” way. There’s nothing rational about using taxpayer money to fund a new tar sands pipeline to the West Coast when no oil company would build it. It isn’t rational to make massive cuts to environmental protections and regulations, described by former Liberal cabinet minister Stephen Guilbeault as worse than the rollbacks of former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Carney’s decisions are deeply ideological political choices, cloaked in a veneer of rationality. By framing pipelines, liquified natural gas (LNG) expansion and weakened environmental laws as a rational and necessary response to economic insecurity, the prime minister is abandoning climate responsibility and any meaningful climate justice.
“Flooding the zone,” as described by its originator, Trump advisor Steve Bannon, is a tactic to rapidly-fire announcements so people lose focus, get exhausted, and cannot figure out what is actually true.
Learn more in our latest publication.
