Intermingling of business and corporate affairs makes governing country as “CEO” impossible

After the federal government’s speech from the throne in May 2025, Bloc Québecois leader Yves-Francois Blanchet accused Prime Minister Mark Carney of seeking to centralize power and act as Canada’s CEO. But it’s unclear that running a country like a CEO is even possible. After all, a country is simply not the same as a company. Writing about similar rhetoric from right-wing US politicians in the early years of the first Trump administration, Prof. Henry Mintzberg wrote in the Harvard Business Review that a growing intermingling of government and corporate affairs is an impediment. “The relationship between business and government, a separation of powers no less vital than that within government itself, has become so confounded that it threatens American democracy.”