Canada’s Mark Carney: A Second-String PM … or Governor?
Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney, was the backup, second-string goalie at Harvard. It got him into the school, if nothing else, though he makes more than he should out of having worn the jersey bearing #1. It seems to have set a pattern for the man.
He remains a mouthy WEF globalist who is the head of a second-rate minor country, one that is literally coming apart under his leadership. And even though hockey is the prime sport in Canada, they just lost the gold to the United States, a result that may be a metaphor for everything else happening between the two nations. Carney hates the real #1 and carries on with his false pretensions. His not-so-original plan is to exercise Canada’s “middle power” as a mediator between great nations competing on the world stage, like the U.S. and China.
Canada, in reality, never was much of a unified nation; rather, it was a string of uncoordinated provinces stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. That’s why internal trade barriers between Canadian provinces are higher than those between many countries. So much for “Free Trade”! As Oren Cass and Daniel Kishi put it in an essay at Commonplace, “no matter how loudly Davos applauds or how warmly a favorable press receives him, Carney doesn’t have the cards. He has geography. And that geography still governs the fundamentals of the Canadian economy.”
Exactly no one wanted a real Canadian nation when it was founded, least of all separatist Quebec, which is Francophile and has already had two closely contested referendums about independence. Western Canada, particularly oil-rich Alberta, now appears to be playing the same secessionist game. Eastern Canada is desperately poor and remote, and almost the entire population lives within just 50 miles of the U.S. border. In fact, 90 percent of the country’s population lives within 100 miles of their southern neighbor.
Canadians refer to this as “sleeping next to the elephant.”
The story of the Ontario fur trade still dominates the national ethos, running it as their Hudson Bay colony with the help of the UK, whose King is still Canada’s Head of State, even in the year 2026. Hudson’s Bay Company, founded in 1670, was Canada’s oldest-existing company until its bankruptcy last year reduced it to a second-rate Macy’s, as Canada’s moribund economy forced it to finally shutter its 80 retail stores. The Canadians are not only loyalists to Britain with a so-called “mosaic” culture lacking any unifying theme apart from always having been anti-American. Consider: Where did the Americans who would not fight our War of Independence go? Our draft card burners? And the movie stars who suffer Trump Derangement Syndrome? Canada absorbed them all.
It is important to remember: Carney replaced Justin Trudeau after the latter had a hard-fought budget battle with his finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, who was also trying to replace him. It’s a long story, but the bottom line is that Carney, a double central bank-head globalist (he ran the Bank of England as an anti-Brexiteer), can’t balance the Canadian books, especially not with the threat of separatism.
It is just a matter of time before Canada gets sold for parts. The U.S. can’t afford to let any of those parts go to its geopolitical rivals (though we might want to pass over Quebec). We can’t tolerate a turn (or “strategic partnership”) toward China to thwart American power, either. Canadian sovereignty is a mirage. Carney’s moralizing amounts to nothing. He is no Czech dissident standing up to the Soviets, after all. Canada is alone and powerless, and it is starting a second “lost decade” of economic mismanagement.
Canada is, as Trump likes to remind us, a “freeloader.” Indeed, this is nothing new. They still decline to pay their 2 percent NATO dues, a bill that is long overdue. They fail to uphold their end of the bargain with NORAD, which defends them. They take and then try to take more with their unfair trade practices and barriers, and do so with cultural and economic lies about why they can’t let big, evil America into their protected northland. Canadian dairy, timber, steel, and maple syrup must all be protected.
The growth rate in Canada is currently just 1.4 percent, and the mortgage market is about to implode. Trudeau added 1.5 million immigrants and kept the GDP essentially flat (in real terms, it was negative after inflation). Canadian debt per capita even exceeds that of the U.S. Their social spending is out of control, but the real problem is that the continued spiral in this vein is politically unstoppable. Canadians are nice people, but strangely, they just put up with it.
Canada’s free trade agreement with the U.S. (the USMCA signed in 2018) is up for renegotiation in a few months. Canada can’t afford for that to be undone; the whole country would evaporate if that happened. At that point, 51st statehood would become the only and best solution for them. Truthfully, 14th statehood would have been a better solution back in 1789, when it was first offered.
Here is Canada’s paradox: the prime minister’s bluster is all bark and no bite. Canada is on a precipice. There is a huge disconnect between official rhetoric and lived reality. There are severe headwinds for sure, but more seriously, a structural crisis is evident in stagnancy, lack of economic growth, crushing financial burdens, and zero accountability.
The tax load on Canadians amounts to an affordability crisis. The economy has been defined for more than a decade by a persistent productivity problem. There is little business investment. Brain drain is real, as the best and brightest are leaving the country.
All the trends are pushing Canada toward an inflection point. The cliff approaches, promising a long descent that seems irreversible. Everything points to a future of failure for the Canadians. Do they think Trump and America don’t see this?
A globalist prime minister who was a second-string goalie can threaten the United States all he wants, but neither he nor his nation can pull off a miracle—on or off the ice. So maybe it’s time for Canada to fold ’em and get a new strategy.
https://chroniclesmagazine.org/web/canadas-mark-carney-a-second-string-pm-or-governor