A prominent conservative figure in American politics and the mastermind behind Project 2025 — the infamous policy blueprint that proposed a drastic overhaul of the U.S. government — will speak to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s cabinet behind closed doors Thursday.
Carney and his ministers are in the Greater Toronto Area for two days of meetings ahead of the fall parliamentary sitting. According to the list of guest speakers, the Liberal team is hearing from Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank that has shaped Republican administrations since the 1980s.
It’s the group that spearheaded Project 2025, a 900-page manifesto meant to usher in a new ultra-conservative administration supported by more than 100 like-minded organizations.
Leading up to the 2024 presidential election, Roberts said his country was in the midst of a “second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Project 2025 is built on four main promises: restore the family as the centrepiece of American life; dismantle the administrative state; defend the nation’s sovereignty and borders; and secure God-given individual rights to enjoy liberty.
Some of its most controversial elements include firing thousands of permanent civil servants and replacing them with hired loyalists, abolishing the Department of Education and withdrawing the abortion pill mifepristone from the market.
It also states that “married men and women are the ideal, natural family structure because all children have a right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them.”
It’s been criticized as “an authoritarian playbook” and a “far-right assault on America” by policy institute The Centre for American Progress.
What is Project 2025? A quick explanation
The document was written before U.S. President Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination. Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 during the campaign, but has since welcomed several of its authors to his staff.
Some of Trump’s policies to date have echoed Project 2025’s goals, including gutting government departments, cracking down on immigration and using his office to target his enemies.
Roberts is speaking to Carney’s cabinet during a session dubbed “establishing a new economic and security relationship with the U.S.” They will also hear from Kevin Rudd, Australia’s ambassador to the U.S., during the session.
The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said Roberts is speaking to cabinet about trade issues because he knows the Trump administration’s playbook.
Roberts’s book Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America includes a foreword written by U.S. Vice-President JD Vance
The PMO added it would be beneficial for cabinet to hear Roberts’s perspective and understand the White House’s priorities as the government prepares for the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) review next year.
Carney’s cabinet is also hearing from pollster Jean-Marc Léger on the mood of the country, Scotiabank’s Jean-François Perrault for an economic outlook and private sector leaders, including an artificial intelligence-focused venture capital firm.
