The current liberal government is far more conservative leaning than the previous one. They're pushing very authoritarian bills, and effectively going along with much of the US's 'stuff', while attempting to spin a pro-Canada message for public support -- like the gov and our media lauding the push to diversify our energy supply by building small nuclear reactors... but glossing over that they require US-provided fuel to run (so we're literally increasing reliance on US stuff, while the US is busy using that dependence to attack us economically). On the authoritarian bills, there's stuff like making it so that law enforcement doesn't need a warrant to get customer information from private companies, and making display of certain symbols/flags a crime. The folks I know who follow this stuff, basically agree that it's all a bit tepid at the moment, but that it's still better than it would've been under our 'official' conservative party, as those guys wanted to straight up do a DOGE-north (and likely still do).

I'd frame it as Canada is still moving along with the Tech-bro agenda from the US at present, though we're less in to the Christian Nationalist / overtly racist stuff. For example, the coming budget is expected to have items related to OpenBanking/Digital Currencies, which are ideas primarily pushed by tech kleptocrats (there're obvious reasons they fumble to name specific, quantifiable benefits of those systems for consumers -- and it's because the benefit is pretty much all for big tech).

The party that had a more progressive slant last time around, the NDP, got trounced -- deservedly, as they hadn't really put out anything to persuade voters, and essentially told people to vote liberal if it meant defeating the cons. Our green party, who were even more progressive in policies (and often had big, interesting policy ideas), committed suicide years ago due to their adherence to their party-negative approach to DEI -- they literally elected a black lesbian jewish pro-palestinian lawyer lady as their leader, and she destroyed what little support the party had. Eg. she spent all the campaign finances trying to win a liberal-stronghold riding for herself in Toronto; she demanded full control of all social media accounts for the party, which she was given, but then she proceeded to go to news agencies and comment about how the party wasn't publicly supporting her on social media... the media she controlled... because the party was racist. That sort of thing.

So, as to what they're thinking, I don't think they view the US as a potential threat to the same extent as the public. And I don't think they're progressive in the old sense of the world, but they're still progressive relative to our southern neighbours. But I mean, that's a really low bar at the moment.

Any idea what the government is thinking? I thought it was progressive...

This should be the world anthem for the 21st century