Carney unveils Canada's path to leadership of the Free World

Mark Carney cannot be a stupid person. But after taking in his twenty minute pie-in-the-sky presser this morning, it’s obvious he thinks we’re stupid. According to Mark, Canada has for too long been too dependent on the USA for protection. Fair comment I suppose, although off the top of my head I can’t recall any case of an enemy wanting to attack us and being deterred by Uncle Sam’s umbrella. Further, now that Trump won the election, America is no longer an authentic, stable, democracy that its allies can count on. Fair comment, although the authenticity of US democracy has been dubious since long before Trump. Therefore, (and this is where Carney jumps the shark) it is up to Canada to step into Uncle Sam’s shoes and take over the leadership of the democratic world! He will do this by making common cause with “like-minded democracies who share our values.” According to Mark, those are mainly NATO countries in Europe. We will join up with their trillion Euro+ plan to re-arm Europe to confront Russia. Ya right! As of today, according to multiple Western sources, Russia is churning out more tanks and artillery shells than all NATO countries combined, including the US. Our main European allies, UK, France, and Germany, are all politically unstable. None of their governments are likely to survive their next elections. Even worse, Russia does this with a military budget less than a quarter of America’s let alone combined NATO. And even worse than that, although Carney and his speechwriters don’t seem to have noticed, the “shared values” don’t amount to much beyond hating on Russia and “standing with Israel” until the last Palestinian is either dead or in Egypt. So we’re about to embark on an orgy of spending we can’t begin to afford. We can only hope, for the sake of our fiscal solvency going forward, that Big Money Mark maintains the sacred Canadian political tradition of talking a whole lotta lollipops and rainbows, but delivering squat. But don’t get depressed. Although his leadership role in a new Canada-led world order is a chimera, Big Money Mark did show himself perhaps the most promising philosopher-king since Trudeau the Elder. Check out these pearls: Canada’s leadership will be judged not only by the strength of our values, but the value of our strength. If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. I can’t imagine he talks such rubbish when he’s chairing a board meeting at Brookfield!