Canada is a great example of what happens to a society when it abandons its Christian heritage. Just as the globalists have killed globalism, so the progressives are killing progressivism. Once people see it in practice, they realise how dangerous and destructive it is.  But where do they turn? Some of the alternatives are chilling – witness the rise of Islam, the growing acceptance of the Green religion, the lure of fantasy socialism, and the appeal of the real Far Right. But there is a better alternative, the way of Christ.

Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada, made a ‘viral’ speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. According to the Guardian it was “the greatest political speech of recent times”. To other commentators, it was a “watershed”, a move away from “technocratic globalism”.  My X feed is full of people saying it was the light that the world needed and that Carney’s Canada has provided hope for the West. Others tell me that he is now the “leader of the free world”.  “He is also potentially the new leader of the Free World, a role model of honesty, intelligence, and visionary thinking. He understands the long arc of history,” one said.

I have heard and read the speech several times. It is well delivered, articulate, calm and intelligent. If you contrast his style with the ‘stream of consciousness’ rambling of President Trump it does come across, as many have suggested, that he is ‘the adult in the room’.    What has taken me a little by surprise is the extent to which so many Christians seem to agree and think that this may herald the end of an era, and the beginning of a new better one. But does the reality live up to the hype?

In January 2018 another Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, also delivered a speech at Davos. His was entitled ‘the Canadian opportunity’ and focused on gender equality, progressive trade and corporate responsibility. It was widely lauded and praised. But, as was feared at the time, it was all rhetoric and no action. Is Carney’s any different?

The Main Points of the Speech

Carney called the old-world order ‘a pleasant fiction’ – he admitted that the system he had perpetuated and served was false.“We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.” He went on to argue that it was only held together by American hegemony and that now this system no longer works and has been ruptured.

He spoke of a new order (something he had called a new world order in China) which would encompass values, such as respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the various states.He cited Vaclav Havel’s parable of the shopkeeper in the world taking down his communist sign ‘workers of the world unite’, and ‘living within a lie’.  He spoke of how we need to take our signs down – to no longer believe the lie.

He then went on to argue, “But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.“We largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.”

He warned about individual countries defending their own fuel, food and defence by building their own fortresses, and suggested that ‘middle powers’ need to work together to build something more ambitious.  The great powers, the US, Russia, China, could afford to go it alone – but the middle powers need to band together. In effect he was arguing that the US hegemony in the West was coming to an end.

He argued that Canada had seen this coming and was already adopting a policy that was both “principled and pragmatic” – including respect for human rights. In an interesting twist he quipped “we are no longer just relying on the strength of our values, but also the value of our strength”.That strength was to be military and economic. He told Davos that Canada had fast tracked one trillion dollars of investments in energy, AI and critical minerals. And had promised to double defence spending. Canada was supporting Ukraine, and standing with Greenland and Denmark.

And then he asked, for me, the key question, “What does it mean for middle powers to live the truth?”It means naming reality, acting consistently, building a new order of what we claim to believe in and reducing the leverage that enables coercion. He went on to present Canada as the example of “a pluralistic society that works” and a model of free speech, diversity and sustainability.

It was an impressive speech – at one level brutally honest and at another, hopefully inspirational … but … and you knew there would be a but! Let’s judge Mr Carney’s speech by his own standard and see if the ‘reality matches the rhetoric’. I will look at the Old Order, the values based New Order, the use of economic power for ideological coercion, and the main one – refusing to live by lies.

The Collapse of the Old Order

Carney is no outsider. Indeed, he was a key part of the old order. He worked for Goldman Sachs in Boston, London, New York, Tokyo, and Toronto before becoming in 2003 a deputy governor of the Bank of Canada. After various high posts in the Canadian financial system in 2013 he became the first non-British citizen to serve as governor of the Bank of England. After leaving the Bank of England, he took senior private and public roles focused on climate and finance, notably serving as the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance and holding leadership or board positions at Brookfield, Bloomberg, and other institutions. He then became party leader of the Canadian Liberal party before becoming prime minister. He is the perfect Davos man – the embodiment of the system he admitted has failed.

What media outlets failed to grasp was the enormity of what he was saying. The likes of the Guardian, the BBC, the New York Times etc have long taught the narrative that there was a real rules-based order until Donald Trump, the great disruptor came along. The irony is that Carney was arguing that that same old rules-based order was a fiction. Perhaps Trump has been the great exposer of that fiction? Many of us have been saying what Carney said for some time – but we were dismissed as populists, conspiracy theorists or fascists. But now that one of their own says it, suddenly it is an obvious truth!

Read More