Mark Carney’s answer to almost every problem is a new arm’s-length body. Housing gets an agency. Procurement gets an agency. Major projects get an office. Investment gets a Crown corporation. It is sold as “speed” and “doing things differently.”
But on November 9, the Auditor General of Canada published a scorecard on the Crown corporations Ottawa already runs, and it reads like a warning label. During the first full fiscal year of the Carney government, the federal government got worse at the most basic job it has with these bodies: appointing the people who are supposed to watch them.
The Numbers From the Auditor General
The Office of the Auditor General’s Commentary on the 2025–2026 Financial Audits looked at the 41 parent Crown corporations whose books it audits. Its finding on governance was blunt: “Board appointment delays became more widespread and long-standing.”
In 2025–26, 36 of those 41 Crown corporations, or 88 per cent, had delays in filling vacant board seats or seats whose terms had expired. The year before, it was 33 of 41.
It gets worse. According to the full commentary (PDF), 13 Crown corporations had at least one director whose term had been expired for a year or more. The year before, that number was five. Five terms had been expired for at least four years.
Only five of the 41 had no appointment delays at all, down from eight.
A Board That Could Not Legally Meet
This is not a paperwork quibble. The Auditor General explains that a board “oversees the Crown corporation and holds management accountable for its performance,” and that “delays in appointments can weaken oversight and, in some cases, prevent boards from making necessary decisions.”
The office gave a real example. From June to November 2025, the International Development Research Centre “did not have enough appointed governors to meet the statutory quorum of 7 governors required for valid proceedings and decision making.”
For roughly five months of Carney’s first year, a federal Crown corporation could not legally make decisions because the government had not appointed enough people to its board. For most Crown corporations, the responsible minister appoints directors with the approval of cabinet. Nobody else is to blame for empty chairs.
Late Plans, Weak Controls
Board seats are not the only thing Ottawa is slow to sign off on. A Crown corporation’s corporate plan sets out its priorities, budgets and, where applicable, its borrowing for the next five years, and it needs government approval.
Of the 35 Crown corporations that prepare corporate plans, 66 per cent did not have an approved plan at the start of the fiscal year. That is an improvement on 77 per cent the year before, but the Auditor General still concluded that “most corporate plans were still not approved on time,” and about one third were approved more than three months late or not at all.
Without an approved plan, a Crown corporation generally keeps operating under its old one and “cannot implement changes or undertake activities that are not consistent with that plan.”
The deeper problems are long-standing, and they predate Carney. Looking back over special examinations completed between 2016 and 2026, the Auditor General found that 39 of 40 parent Crown corporations had at least one weakness in risk management, 31 of 40 had weaknesses affecting their board’s ability to oversee management, and 23 of 40 had weaknesses in measuring and reporting performance. The office noted that board effectiveness “was further constrained by delays in appointments of members by the government.”
Carney did not create that mess. But he inherited it, saw it, and decided the solution was to build more.
More Agencies, Same Ottawa
In a Globe and Mail analysis of Budget 2026, the government’s approach is described plainly: it “appears to prefer creating new special agencies and Crown corporations rather than utilizing existing departments and the public service to deliver them.” The column lists new special agencies for major projects, procurement, affordable housing and financial crimes, new Crown corporations for procurement and investing, and a merger of the Business Development Bank of Canada and Export Development Canada.
The verdict: in the name of speed, these bodies “make an already complex government machinery more complicated and costly, as they duplicate existing departments and impose friction rather than efficiency.”
There is also the money. The same analysis notes that average annual borrowing requirements from 2026-27 to 2029-30 are forecast at over $156 billion a year, more than two and a half times the average deficit of about $59 billion, because so much of the agenda is financed through loans, advances and investments to Crown corporations and other arm’s-length entities. Those don’t show up in the deficit. They do show up in debt-service costs, which the column says reach $78 billion by 2029-30.
So more taxpayer money is being pushed out to arm’s-length bodies, kept off the headline deficit, while the government is failing to staff the boards that are supposed to guard that money.
Why It Matters
Crown corporations are supposed to be held at arm’s length so they can be run professionally, with independent boards holding management to account. That model only works if the boards exist. When seats sit empty for years and plans are signed off months late, the arm’s length becomes a blind spot.
Carney campaigned as the competent manager who would fix how Ottawa works. The Auditor General’s numbers say that in his first full year, the share of Crown corporations waiting on board appointments went up, and the number with directors overdue by a year or more more than doubled. Before he launches another agency or Crown corporation, he should prove he can govern the ones he already has.
Fill the boards. Approve the plans on time. Then talk about building more.
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