Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney—once again—assiduously worked to insult America and President Donald Trump while suggesting Canada’s future lies not in continued partnership with the United States but with the European Union.
In so doing, Carney continues to ignore the obvious realities of geography, trade and a military alliance between his country and the US.
In an address to the nation—a phenomenon highly uncommon in Canadian politics and among Canadian prime ministers—Carney warmly celebrated the War of 1812 as some kind of glowing moment of sovereignty and as he played show and tell with a figurine of Gen. Isaac Brock, one of the principal strategists of that conflict.
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Carney mentioned that “Canadian” actor Mike Myers—who went to the US to fulfill his personal dreams—had given the figure to him as a source of inspiration.
“Brock was a hero who fought and gave his life for our forebearers in the War of 1812, before Canada even existed on paper, it had a shape in Brock's imagination. Faced with the threat of an American invasion, Brock built alliances across our land and inspired what would eventually become Canada,” Carney said.
Then Carney picked up on a talking point that he has been using quite regularly of late, that of “abandon hope, all ye who enter Canada.”
“There are some who say there's no need for a comprehensive plan. They believe we should wait it out in the hope that the United States will return to normal, that the good old days will come back. But hope isn't a plan, and nostalgia is not a strategy, and the days that young Canadians have known all their lives haven't been that good,” Carney said.
The personal hypocrisy at play here is enormous: Carney has 530 of his personal investments in US companies and only THREE in Canadian companies. Whenever Carney travels to promote Canadian trade outside of the US, Brookfield Asset Management, the company that Carney led as CEO, is never far behind in securing deals.
Carney can never decide whether Trump is a great man of history or an existential threat to Canada. In visits to the Oval Office, Carney sycophantically called Trump both “transformative” and "transformational" as a president. This performance came right after Carney won the last Canadian federal election with his “elbows up” rhetoric that suggested Canada was facing economic destruction if it continued its close relationship with the US.
Clearly, Carney is acting and speaking in desperation because he has failed to deliver on his promise to deliver a comprehensive trade agreement with Trump and he knows that Canada is dangerously close to being excluded from the current US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) on free trade.
This is why Carney plays with toy soldiers in a nationally televised address and muses about Canadian membership in the EU, an organization that parasitically represents a continent separated from Canada by the great divide of the Atlantic Ocean. Moreover, the EU is a relatively small trading partner with Canada when compared to the US and really has no interest in broadening that relationship.
Whereas, Canada’s present and future clearly lies within North America. Canada and the US remain each other’s largest trading partners. We are joined by simple geography and still maintain the longest undefended border in the world. Canada is not merely linked to the US military through membership in NATO but in our joint operation of NORAD.
Canada and the US also have a mutual defense pact that ensures one nation will defend the other in the event of a third-party attack. The Canadian Armed Forces train with all branches of the US military on a weekly basis; this writer spent considerable time with my American counterparts as a public affairs officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force.
Carney’s urgent address to Canadians was neither new nor interesting. He used the same text at the recent Liberal Party convention in Montreal, where he also warned against Canadians getting too hopeful. His highly controversial speech at the World Economic Forum convention in Davos last January—that prompted a strong rebuke from Trump—was also a verbal assault against the US and Trump, suggesting the president was creating a maverick and reckless foreign policy road for Americans.
“Here's the current situation. The world, as I said earlier, is more dangerous and divided. The US has fundamentally changed its approach to trade, raising its tariffs to levels last seen during the Great Depression. Many of our former strengths, based on our close ties to America, have become our weaknesses, weaknesses that we must correct. Workers in our industries most affected by US tariffs in autos, in steel, in lumber, are under threat,” Carney said on Monday.
Here’s the reality, Mr. Carney. Canadians are damn lucky to have a neighbor like the United States because we share a love for freedom and prosperity. We have fought together in world wars and in maintaining peace. Canada lived under the American nuclear umbrella throughout the Cold War and remains a part of fortress North America today.
This prime minister has utterly failed to deliver on any of his election promises, save those of introducing censorship and surveillance legislation. Canada’s future remains safe and secure with the US but highly uncertain and potentially disastrous with Mark Carney.
