Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke purposefully at Davos this past week about adopting a more nationalistic policy for Canada. Less persuasive was his call for a league of so-called middle powers to combine to influence the superpowers to set up what he called, in the current tedious jargon, ”a rules-based international order.” He is vaguely addressing, without recognizing directly, the...
Before Mark Carney spoke in Davos, French President Emmanuel Macron was on the same stage lamenting that the world is shifting to a place without rules, where the strongest dominate, pleading for a return to global co-operation. After Mr. Carney’s speech, U.S. President Donald Trump talked about dominating other countries, claiming he forced Mr. Macron to double French drug prices...
The phrase "rules-based international order" became popular among Canadian leaders starting in 2017. It is not exactly poetry, but it was meant to mean something — shorthand for the web of multilateral acronyms (the UN, the WTO, the IMF, NATO, the G7, the G20, NAFTA, among others) that arose in the wake of the Second World War, all of it...
There is a consensus both abroad and in Canada that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s January 20 speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos was highly successful in resetting the conversation on geopolitics and trade in the face of Donald Trump’s aggressive policies and rhetoric. But if Carney became a global geopolitical sensation after his Davos address, two days later...
The War of the Greenlandic Accession appears to have ended before it began, the President of the United States having supposedly negotiated a deal on the island’s future with the Secretary-General of NATO, a deal that a) no one can describe in any detail, b) neither of them has any mandate to negotiate and c) appears to amount to a...
My goodness, how the world — or at least the anti-Trump part of it — has fallen in love with Mark Carney’s Davos speech. A fairly typical example: in the New York Times, columnist David French hails what he calls the “Carney Doctrine” and says his speech “might be the most important address of Trump’s second term so far.”
Mark Carney’s now-legendary speech at the World Economic Forum inspired thousands of Canadians, impressed his fellow world leaders, and triggered an entirely predictable temper tantrum from Donald Trump. But maybe the most impressive thing it did was shut Pierre Poilievre up for a couple of days.
Power & Politics' Political Pulse Panel breaks down duelling speeches at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week.
Prime Minister Mark Carney gave a great campaign speech Thursday. The only thing missing was the election. Might a snap federal vote be coming? Probably not, but it must be tempting for the Liberals. One symptom is obvious. They’re already road-testing their campaign pitch. At the start of a cabinet retreat in Quebec City, Carney gave a long pep talk...
The cognitive decline of former U.S. president Joe Biden was undeniable, minutes into his 2024 debate with Donald Trump. He looked confused, bewildered, and couldn’t complete a thought. The people around Mr. Biden had clearly been aware that he was losing his faculties, which is why, for months prior, he had largely been hidden from public view. But that decision...
Jamil Jivani, the Conservative MP, and American Vice-President JD Vance are close friends. A Black guy from Toronto and a white guy from Appalachia, they bonded at Yale Law School where, as Mr. Jivani recalls, they felt like “fish out of water” at elitist wine-and-cheese liberal gatherings. At Mr. Vance’s 2014 wedding, Mr. Jivani read a Bible passage. He helped...
At the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney gave an address that will go down in history as one of the most important and impactful ever delivered by a Canadian leader to the world. At Quebec City’s historic Citadelle on Thursday, he followed it up with a speech to Canadians which, for both its timing...
“The international rules-based order is dead; long live the international rules-based order.” Article content Those weren’t the words used by Prime Minister Mark Carney in his historic speech to Davos this week, but they might as well have been. The Canadian leader climbed onto the stage at the yearly conclave of financiers and political leaders (and David Beckham) to declare...
It was a tale of two speeches. Prime Minister Mark Carney quoted Greek historian Thucydides, cited Czech democratic hero Václav Havel and outlined how the old systems of the liberal order were over.
Prime Minister Mark Carney sought to insulate himself from criticism in a speech to the World Economic Forum this week, that was praised for being cleared eyed about the shifting world order, but that also signalled a shift away from an era of principled foreign policy.
Prime Minister Mark Carney chose the Davos World Economic Forum as the moment to deliver a speech that will now define the response of the world to the erratic excesses of the “hegemons” — the big powers who guided the establishment of the United Nations in 1945 and all the other key elements of the “rules-based order” we have been...
Louis XIV, the Sun King. What if, in the ruins of the liberal international order, the world is spiraling back, not to the fascist 1930’s, not to the gunboat imperialism of the late 19th century, but all the way back to the rule of warrior princes and their predatory cliques in early modern Europe? That’s where two American political scientists...
Well, that got their attention. Since the Prime Minister’s visit to China, the American media – and social media – have been filled with expressions of shock and amazement. For critics of Donald Trump, it was payback for his bullying and abusive treatment of America’s nearest neighbour and historic ally. For the President’s supporters, it was a sign of Canadian...
Prime Minister Mark Carney gave a good speech at the World Economic Forum, but the PM himself said in May that Canadians will judge his leadership “by their experience at the grocery store, when they are paying their electricity bill, when they or their children are looking for a place to live.”
One of the most sage voices on social media in these nebulous days is that of Polish academic Slawomir Debski. To those lamenting that NATO is dead as a result of Donald Trump’s intrigues over Greenland, and the imposition of tariffs on allies that deployed troops to Greenland, he pointed out that the alliance has survived worse. He cited the...
For months, Mark Carney’s critics have dismissed him as bloodless; a central banker fluent in basis points but deaf to the anxieties of the average Canadian; a technocrat who lives in spreadsheets rather than the hearts of voters. But on Tuesday, on the world stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Carney demonstrated that what his opposition views as...
Mark Carney’s stark warnings are by now central to his politics. In April, he told Canadians the old relationship was over. For many months, he has been saying that the world is in a period of “rupture, not transition.” On Tuesday, he pointed to the danger of a new world of rapacious great powers and called for middle powers to...
For all of its great prime ministers, Canada has never had one who was known for their ability to deliver stirring speeches, much less ones with global import and impact. In a remarkable 16-minute-long speech delivered in front of the world’s most powerful political and business leaders in Davos, Mark Carney just changed that. It will almost certainly go down...
While you were sleeping – and when he should have been – the President of the United States posted an image of a doctored map of the U.S. that included Greenland, Venezuela and Canada. It was the type of thing that your great uncle, having just discovered AI, posts while sitting in his underwear at 1 a.m., after his wife...
In Davos on Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered the most important foreign policy speech by a Canadian politician since Lester Pearson proposed the first United Nations Peacekeeping force at the UN in November of 1956. Seventy years ago, Pearson proposed a formula for bringing the Suez crisis between Egypt, France and Great Britain to an end. It won him...
Whatever you think of the wisdom of Mark Carney’s trade deal with China, it’s not a big vote of confidence for the future of Canada’s auto industry. At least, not the auto industry we have known. It was a move to jump-start trade with the world’s second-largest economy, opening the big Chinese market to Canadian canola, peas and seafood. Yet...
Back when I was in law school there were two second-year classes taught by a beloved professor that basically every student wanted to get into. One focused on international armed conflict and the other focused on maritime law. The international armed conflict class came with a much heavier reading list, so along with a few friends of mine, we opted...
If there was any doubt that U.S. President Donald Trump is operating outside all norms of law and common sense, he put it to rest this week with a letter to the prime minister of Norway. “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation...
Canada will be marking the first anniversary of Donald Trump’s second inauguration, like many other nations, wondering where this country fits in the president’s wildly escalating ambitions on the world stage. Trump’s threats to take over Greenland are forcing Canada to consider sending troops to the Arctic island, while Prime Minister Mark Carney is simultaneously weighing what it will mean...
QUEBEC POLLS IN RECENT years—decades, even—have consistently shown that if a referendum on sovereignty were held today, a clear majority of voters would vote against it.
In Davos on Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney made a triumphant return to the Glastonbury of his people. After two decades of belonging to the global financial élite that gathers to solve the problems of the world (and sometimes has) in the Swiss Alps once a year, Carney returned to the World Economic Forum as a member of that most...
Steve Bannon is in the ratings business these days, so he can say outrageous things with impunity. On his influential War Room podcast last week, he talked about Prime Minister Mark Carney’s “kowtowing” visit to China and said: “Let me be blunt, you are playing with fire. You will rue the day you did that. President (Donald) Trump is not...
Memo to Canada’s Official Opposition: it’s not 2024 anymore. It’s understandable why the Conservatives can’t drag themselves away from the world of 13 months ago. It was a great time for them as they counted down the days until they’d stride back into power over the bloody corpse of the Liberal party. Or so it seemed at the time...
NATO is facing one of its gravest internal crises since its founding, and Canada is facing its own moment of truth. President Donald Trump’s demand that Denmark hand over Greenland to the United States goes far beyond his late-night posts on Truth Social. It is a deadly serious attempt by the alliance’s dominant power to carve up the territory of...
Prime Minister Mark Carney said he is “concerned” about the escalation. It was a calm word for this particular bout of Donald Trump’s insanity. The President of the United States insists he will take Greenland from Denmark – and the European Union – and now says that he will use heavy tariffs to try to coerce allies into handing over...
The 2026 edition of Davos that begins Monday will be notable for the 11th-hour exit of its founder, Klaus Schwab, and the subsequent, dominance-marking presence of President Donald Trump and the largest U.S. delegation to ever attend the World Economic Forum. The Swiss must be praying that Trump doesn’t decide that its luxury goods industries, exclusive resorts and prime geographical...
As Donald Trump prepares to invade Davos as a possible prelude to invading Greenland, the world is reeling from a 2026 already fraught with previously unimaginable headlines. This escalated Trumpian assault on reality — complete with a tariff-coercion twist — has produced a range of responses, including from Canada. In his meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang on January 15th...
Canadian Declaration of Resistance in Defence of Sovereignty, Democracy, and Human Rights 1. We commit to defending the territorial integrity and democracy of our country, Canada, and to face any and all economic, physical or other attack from countries or forces pursuing aggressive aims, or threats to pursue such attack, with determination and devotion to our country. This commitment includes...
Before the House of Commons holiday break, it seemed as though it was just a matter of time before Mark Carney’s Liberals would slip into a majority in the House of Commons. Now, as MPs prepare to return to their seats on January 26th, as Pierre Poilievre braces for the hurdle of his end-of-January leadership review in Calgary, and as...
U.S. President Donald Trump’s Venezuelan adventure has generated a great deal of ink about the so-called Donroe doctrine. Commentators are eager to impose some form of coherence on a wide-ranging and often contradictory series of foreign-policy actions. But the subject resists.
The violent cavalcade of events in Iran is starting to reveal the new range of aggressive-responsive policy options that U.S. President Donald Trump has developed to replace the obsolete concept of most of his recent predecessors. For 80 years from 1941 the basic framework was defined by Franklin D. Roosevelt in two addresses he gave at the beginning and end...
