Good morning. On Parliament’s first day back, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s economic agenda is meeting the twin pressures of a slowing economy and mounting political scrutiny. That’s in focus today, along with a look at what’s cushioning households from a real estate slump.

Data: Top Bay Street executives are receiving notifications that their personal information may have been accessed during a recent breach at Canada’s investment industry regulator.

Investing: Centurion Apartment REIT, a private Canadian real estate fund, has started slowing investors from cashing out, fuelling fears that others could soon follow.

Real Estate: Canada’s housing market is showing increasing signs of a turnaround with sales rising for the fifth straight month in August.

• Today: Canadian new motor vehicle sales for July are estimated to rise 6.5 per cent from last year, with analysts pointing to stronger inventories and some buyers moving early ahead of tariff-driven price hikes.
• Tomorrow: Statscan’s monthly inflation report is expected to show the overall cost of goods and services edged higher in August.
• Wednesday: But if the underlying pace of inflation is still closer to 3 per cent, the Bank of Canada may be more inclined to hold its key rate steady. Economists and investors are widely expecting a cut.
• The U.S. Federal Reserve is poised to make its first cut later that day, largely because job growth has stalled. (You’d think rate cuts would kick off a dividend boom, but as David Berman notes, most of that rally has already come and gone. )
• Thursday: With inflation stubbornly sticky in Britain, the Bank of England is expected to sit tight.
• A light earnings week includes FedEx, an economic bellwether that cut its outlook in March as tariffs took hold and the U.S. ended its de minimis exemption.

Carney is under pressure to turn early promises into action, push his agenda through economic strain, and fill the gaps left by last week’s first wave of announcements.

The new pressures

The world has changed since Parliament’s short spring sitting. Canada’s GDP shrank in the second quarter, unemployment has climbed to 7.1 per cent, and recession fears are mounting. Those pressures will come into focus tomorrow with an inflation report expected to show consumer prices still rising at an uncomfortable pace, and again on Wednesday when the Bank of Canada delivers a rate decision under the risk of stagflation – rising prices colliding with a weakening jobs market. Carney, who campaigned on confronting Donald Trump’s tariffs, now faces a more direct political question: whether Canadians can keep their jobs. “These are tough times,” he told his caucus last week. If employment sticks as a weak spot across Canada, they’re about to get tougher.

• Editorial: The moment that the Liberals must meet

A test of Carney’s agenda

The government’s minority is secure in the Commons, Globe columnist Campbell Clark writes, but Carney’s political capital is not. He came to office on promises as sweeping as the challenges before him, raising expectations with emergency legislation in the spring and vowing speed on major projects. His agenda was framed against a U.S. government dismantling trade arrangements that underpin the Canadian economy, alongside pressure to boost defence spending, demands to lift domestic output, and the search for new partners. He presented these as parts of a single project: building a Canada resilient to Trump’s tariffs and positioned in a fractured global order.

• Clark: Parliament returns with Carney’s agenda at stake

Those economic pressures will now play out in Parliament, where Carney confronts Pierre Poilievre across the aisle for the first time. Poilievre is already accusing him of falling short on projects that have years-long timelines. “It has taken him six months to write a list of five projects to send for further review to a new government office that is not even fully staffed,” Poilievre wrote last week on social media. That line of attack could land with growing force if Canada’s economy continues to buckle under the strain of the trade war.

The projects already in motion

Ottawa’s first wave of designations last week gave national-interest status to projects already advancing, Adam Radwanski notes. They include an LNG export expansion in B.C., a new nuclear reactor in Ontario, a port expansion in Montreal, and copper mines in Saskatchewan and northern B.C. Most were well under way — construction begun in Ontario, new shipments already leaving B.C., permits close in Quebec — with only one mine still facing uncertainty at the provincial level.

• Radwanksi: What Carney’s underwhelming list of approval-ready national projects tells us

His government also extended the “build big, build now” push to projects still in the balance, referring the Pathways carbon capture plan in Alberta’s oil sands to the Major Projects Office. Billed by Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson as a “nation-building project,” it would cut emissions by 22 megatonnes a year and, in Ottawa’s view, clear the path for a future oil pipeline if it wins provincial and Indigenous support.

• Read more: Ottawa working toward pipeline, oil sands growth with carbon capture project

What’s missing

Some of the more politically combustible issues — transmission lines, pipelines and housing — were not squarely addressed in the first wave of announcements. The Canadian Energy Regulator projects interprovincial grid capacity must expand nearly 30 per cent by 2035 to balance supply and demand, and Ontario has stressed the urgency of new lines for long-term prosperity. Pipelines remain tied to progress on the Pathways carbon capture project in Alberta’s oil sands. Yesterday, Carney addressed one missing piece of the puzzle with the launch of Build Canada Homes, a new federal agency backed by $13-billion in capital and led by former Toronto deputy mayor Ana Bailão.

• Carney allots $13-billion to build affordable housing under Build Canada Homes