Carney's Brilliant, Bitter Speech

A heartbreaking snapshot of what Canada could be vs what it now is

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a speech that people are calling “unmissable,” “forceful,” and a “manifesto of free people.”

Carney’s speech was rhetorically brilliant. It was intelligent, pointed, and organized. It manifested a level of awareness we haven’t seen from a Canadian politician in living memory. There were literary allusions, appeals to history, and a stirring call for Canada to liberate itself from a “rules-based international order.” There were glitzy new terms like “value-based realism” and “variable geometry.” There were almost-plausible aphorisms, like “We actively take on the world as it is, not wait around for a world we wish to be.” Weighed against the metrics of pathos, ethos, and logos, it was a flawless specimen.

It was also completely and utterly empty. I mean it. None of it meant absolutely anything. It was an exquisitely decorated, 26-bedroom, multi-story with ocean views, castle in the sky.

Let’s start with Carney’s attempt to proximate Canada as some kind of moral leader on the global stage. Carney stated:

“We aim to be both principled and pragmatic. Principled in our commitment to fundamental values, sovereignty, territorial integrity, the prohibition of the use of force except when consistent with the UN Charter and respect for human rights.”

You see that? We’re a “principled nation,” committed to “fundamental values.” What principles? What fundamental values? Great questions. Er, um — we don’t have any. A fact Carney makes clear a few sentences later: “Canada is a pluralistic society that works.” Pluralism is, by definition, opposed to the possession of fundamental principles and values; being that it is, in theory, an equal committment to ALL fundamental principles and values.

Never mind that even on the basis of pluralism’s own definition, Carney fails. The claim is made, in geriatric activist-speak, “Our public square is loud, diverse and free.” But remember that time the public square assembled in Ottawa to decry the desecration of Canadian’s basic rights and freedoms? Remember when Carney himself derided the event as an “occupation,” “sedition,” and a form of “anarchy” and endorsed military action against them? Remember that time Carney’s hand-picked Minister of Justice introduced a bill directly attacking the public square? Remember that time when Jason Jacques, interim parliamentary budget officer, was fired for calling the Liberal budget for what it was — “unsustainable,” “shocking” and “stupefying”?

Whatever else pluralism is doing, it certainly isn’t “working.” Canada herself exists as an enduring word and testament to the devastating application of pluralism on the ground. We endorse humans being ripped apart in the womb, advocate for the chemical castration of children, refuse to punish criminals, and proudly boast euthanasia as the 5th leading cause of death in our country.

Carney’s speech seemed to be an attempt to gaslight the world into believing Canada has some kind of established moral basis from which to ethically conduct international business. It does not. Canada, and Carney, don’t have “values.” What we actually have are a bank of Davos-approved jargon that sounds wonderfully innovative on stage and utterly meaningless everywhere else. What we actually have are platitudinal takes on various globally charged conflicts (Ukraine, Venezuela, tarrifs, Greenland and Denmark, Trump, etc.).

None of these takes flow down from principle. They flow from observance of the status quo.

For all his rhetoric on the dangers of compliance, Carney is the living embodiment of the cowardly greengrocer. In the same speech, he boasts that “[Canada] has concluded new strategic partnerships with China and Qatar.” Apparently our “rapid diversification plan” involves partnering with explicit communists and Islamic emirates. Despite Carney’s apparent “respect for human rights,” he is apparently willing to set aside such peccadilloes. This, apparently, is what he means by “acting consistently.”

The US, for all its foibles, is the closest the world has to a moral compass. Relative to the rest of the world, it is fast on its way to becoming the last earthly bastion of law and order. No one who witnessed Charlie Kirk’s national funeral can deny that in America, there still exists the memory of an aroma of life (2 Cor. 2:16). This, I would argue, explains the root of global hostility towards the States. America, with its Bible belt, second amendment, and free speech is a rebuke to the abortive virtues of the WTO, the UN, the COP, the EU, and whatever other supranational acronyms exist in festering collective.

This is why they must be silenced. This is why Carney’s speech resonated so deeply. It resonated with all the rats who don’t want their dark dealings exposed to the light. It resonated because it capitalized on the simmering resent possessed by aggrieved nations all over the world; resent that their own godless systems have turned out as unproductive and inhumane as they have. All that vitriol needs a scapegoat. America is that goat.

Canada is where she is due to years of neglect by elected officials — most recently by Liberals, but going back decades. We refused to extract minerals, we refused to build pipelines, we refused to build oil refineries. We alienated Western Canada. We invited displacement-levels of immigration. We ensnared buildable land in environmental gridlock. We ransacked taxpayers to fund a parasitic national bureaucracy. We arrested pastors and patriots. We condemned graffiti on mosques and looked the other way when dozens of churches were burned to the ground. We did all of that. Our current status, as a rapidly-decaying “middle power,” exists because of our own cowardice and mismanagement.

The truly tragic part of all of this is that there was, in Carney’s speech, a vestige of what Canada could be in the right hands; of what Canada could be on return to actual, transcendant principles. There was a grit, a resolve . . . a kind of malnourished solidarity.

Should Carney’s “new world order” materialize, however, Canada will be just one more vassal state for China to milk.

May God, even in judgement, remember mercy.

“Has a nation changed its gods, even when they are not gods? But My people have changed their greatness for that which does not help them. Be full of wonder at this, O heavens. Shake with fear and waste away,” says the Lord. “For My people have done two sinful things: They have turned away from Me, the well of living waters. And they have cut out of the rock wells for water for themselves. They are broken wells that cannot hold water.”