Good Sunday Morning!
Tomorrow Parliament will reopen after its rapid shutdown, one day early, on December 11. You may recall my last post from that day, as numerous bills were bundled together for unanimous consent. They passed through the House of Commons and headed for the Senate. All I was able to do was deny consent until – at least – it was added to the unanimous motion “noting the opposition of the member for Saanich-Gulf Islands.”
Since then, as we all know, the world is in turmoil. Iran’s brutal dictatorship is murdering its citizens, ICE agents continue a horrific assault on civilians in Minnesota, and Putin has launched more drones and missiles on poor Ukraine. On January 3, 2026, the US attacked Venezuela and kidnapped its president. Then on Trump’s preferred communications platform, operating without irony under the Orwellian label “Truth Social”, Trump declared himself “acting president of Venezuela”. Canada’s official reaction was muted, at best, calling on all nations to respect international law. Our prime minister embarked on a global tour of dictatorships to ink better deals for more investment in Canada, in the People’s Republic of China from January 13 to 17, 2026. And the next day, January 18, on to Qatar for more deals on energy, AI and military procurement. https://islandsocialtrends.ca/carney-opens-up-wide-range-of-economic-ties-with-qatar/
This trip brought Carney back to the region soon after his end of November visit to the UAE where he boasted of $70 billion headed for Canada, skirting the issue of the UAE’s alleged role in the current genocide in Darfur.
The prime minister’s world tour wrapped up with the World Economic Forum in Davos.
There is no question that Mark Carney’s speech there was a triumph. It was home turf for our banker prime minister. Carney was a member of the board of the World Economic Forum. Its annual gathering of the elite gets media attention and attracts many elected national leaders. I get lots of emails from people concerned the WEF is an evil globalist conspiracy. I get hostile letters from people who want to know if I am a member. Of course I am not. It is a private club for a wealthy elite. But I do not regard it as a threat. I explain to its critics that it has nothing to do with me or Canadian democracy. I see it the way I would a very expensive golf club behind locked gates. The weirdness of the WEF and its global status is that it is not a multilateral institution in any sense. Governments did not form it, nor are they members. It is a non-government advocacy group funded by transnational corporations. It is not affiliated with the United Nations or even with the World Trade Organization. Still, its annual meeting in the remote alpine village of Davos gets more attention than the September meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. It was in Davos that former Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced he was reducing pensions to Canadian seniors. Since then, Canada’s current Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has done a 180, making a campaign pledge that he would never go to the WEF. He has embraced full-on the conspiracy theories that the WEF is secretly running the world, without challenging for a nanosecond the essential foundations of the system celebrated in Davos; neoliberalism, colonialism or economic inequalities.
Given Carney’s background, his long relationships with his audience, personal and professional, it was the perfect place for Canada’s prime minister to shine, and shine he did.
I felt pride in knowing he had skillfully, with scalpel-like precision, nailed Donald Trump as an implacable bully. I wish he had used the term “democracies with shared values” instead of middle powers, but the point was made.
I have cut and pasted a nice series of links to Policy magazine, available without a paywall. I love Policy and am grateful that editor Lisa Van Dusen includes me as a contributing writer. The speech and many accolades follow, and once you skim through that, I want to include some fair, but less adulatory comments.
From Policy:
Verbatim post of the full text/video of the Davos speech, in which Mark Carney pronounces the end of the rules-based international order and urges the world’s middle powers to unite in a new system of “plurilateralism”. Here’s ‘The Old Order is Not Coming Back’: Mark Carney’s Speech to the World Economic Forum.
Policy Q&As with Contributing Writer and Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade Chair Sen. Peter Boehm. Here’s our post-Davos exchange: Policy Q&A: Sen. Peter Boehm on Mark Carney’s Davos Speech and the Evolving Global Order.
From former United Nations Ambassador and Policy Columnist Bob Rae, a sense of the both the substantive guts and global impact of Carney’s speech. “My former United Nations colleagues have been reaching out since he delivered the speech to applaud his leadership and vision,” writes Rae. Here’s Bob Rae with New Rules: Mark Carney Just Changed the Global Conversation.
From Policy columnist and former ambassador Jeremy Kinsman, we have a look at both the immediate context of Carney’s speech and its geopolitical implications. “In Davos, Carney is on home ice,” writes Kinsman. “They came to hear advice from one of their own who knows the score.” Here’s Jeremy Kinsman with Man with a Plan: Mark Carney’s Davos Speech.
In Davos Carney’s confidence and sharp intellect were on full display. But a closer look reveals the deeper flaws in the text. It is not a vision for a livable world. It is not inconsistent with the global growth model in which more fossil fuels, more defence spending and new shiny sectors like AI are all to the good.
This critique is from John Woodside in The National Observer.
In the days after Carney’s speech, I spoke with Genevieve Guenther, a climate change and rhetoric expert, who authored the 2024 book The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It.
Carney seemed to be claiming that he was marking a rupture in international geopolitics, and trying to set out a vision for a new future of multilateralism where Canada played a leading role, but no vision of future geopolitics is realistic without taking climate change into account,” she said.
Though the speech framed now as a time to be honest, for her, claiming Canada’s power relies on the supply of fossil fuels is fundamentally anti-science, anti-truth and anti-realistic “because what you’re essentially saying is either that the scientific findings that we already have too much fossil fuels to halt global heating is wrong or irrelevant, or you’re saying that you don’t care.”
I was also struck by these comments from central bankers who would be seen as his peers. I have been a fan of Christine Lagarde, now European Central Bank President, since I saw her in the remarkable film “The Inside Job”, a 2010 documentary on how the world financial disaster of 2008 developed in full view. It is available online these days and you can watch it for free on youtube.
It serves as a refresher course on the world in which Mark Carney cut his teeth. The film documents the rewards piled high for bankers and billionaires. The 2008 global financial crisis key villains, from Washington and Wall Street are documented, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs. And there were also those who saw it coming and tried to stop it. The Finance Minister from France, Christine Lagarde, is interviewed in the film recalling how she phoned the US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson (another Goldman Sachs alum) expressing alarm. He told her it was all “under control”. She was the first woman to be finance minister in any G7 country and then the first woman to head the IMF.
Her criticism of Carney’s speech is not harsh, but one of a colleague: Speaking at Davos a few days after Carney, she said, “I’m not exactly on the same page as Mark… I’m not sure that we should be talking about rupture… I think we should be talking about alternatives. We should be identifying, much more so than we have probably in the past, the weaknesses, the sore points, the dependencies, the autonomy…” Another woman breaking through the glass ceiling in that old boys’ club is Bulgarian economist Kristalina Georgieva, formerly CEO of the World Bank and now the International Monetary Fund’s director. She agreed with Lagarde that rupture was not the right word and argued that change was natural and has been happening for years, and it was time to embrace this because shocks would keep happening. “We are not in Kansas, anymore,” she said.
Watching Carney’s speech I wondered how long it would take for President Trump to react. I suppose as long as it took him to ask someone what “hegemon” meant.
On Thursday January 22 he posted this, predictably on Truth Social, and obviously he wrote it himself, what a stark contrast with the elegant use of the language in the speech Carney wrote himself!
“Please let this Letter serve to represent that the Board of Peace is withdrawing its invitation to you regarding Canada’s joining, what will be, the most prestigious Board of Leaders ever assembled, at any time,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
Trump launched his “board of peace” initiative at the World Economic Forum in Davos, claiming it would be “one of the most consequential bodies ever created in the history of the world”. The board, which will be chaired by Trump, was originally described as a temporary body to oversee the governance and reconstruction of Gaza.
Permanent members must help fund the board with a payment of $1bn each, according to Trump.
And now to a Trump threat, closer to home… Alberta!
The more Trump allies covet Alberta, the less popular separatism may get.
Independence leaders crave U.S. cabinet members’ support, but don’t want the province to join the States
Anyone want to help me write new lyrics? I keep thinking of The Sound of Music, “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” and how nicely it could be “How do you solve a problem like Alberta?” And does Danielle Smith not come to mind with a start like the original lyrics?
When I’m with her I’m confused
Out of focus and bemused
And I never know exactly where I am
Unpredictable as weather
She’s as flighty as a feather
She’s a darling, she’s a demon, she’s a lamb
She’ll outpester any pest
Drive a hornet from its nest
She could throw a whirling dervish out of whirl
She is gentle, she is wild
She’s a riddle, she’s a child
She’s a headache
She’s an angel
…She’s premier…
Okay it was “she’s a girl”, but Rodgers and Hammerstein were writing in 1959. Time for an update!
Apologies for digressing to the silly on a Sunday morning. My January community meetings are done. Thanks to all who joined me. I was asked a few times how I keep going and stay positive. Key honest answers? Love (thanks to John and Cate and Lily!), prayer and keeping my sense of humour. Even if no one else finds me amusing, I do keep myself laughing.
So off to Ottawa! Send in the clowns, there ought to be clowns.
Love,
Elizabeth