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Mr. Carney’s Narrow Path

Mr. Carney’s Narrow Path

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Mark Carney’s Davos speech drew a standing ovation from an audience of heads of state, business leaders, and global elites. It was an ambitious speech: carefully constructed, intellectually confident, and rhetorically effective. But it was also revealing of the tensions and contradictions embedded in Mr. Carney’s own worldview.

Mark Carney addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos

From the outset, he framed his argument around a blunt premise: that responsible leaders must see the world as it is, not as they would like it to be. And yet, it is precisely here that the tension begins. Because seeing the world clearly does not inevitably lead to a single conclusion or a unitary vision.

Mark Carney’s speech laid out a stark vision of the post-war world order: The rules-based international order is fraying; rivalry among great powers is intensifying; multilateral institutions on which middle powers have long relied are weakening. Drawing on Václav Havel’s sign in the window metaphor, he condemned the rituals and false assurances of a system that many states continue to praise publicly while privately acknowledging that it no longer functions as advertised.

The diagnosis itself is neither false nor naïve. Few serious observers would argue today that the postwar international order was a model of enlightened governance or moral consistency. It was unequal, often hypocritical, and applied unevenly. But it did possess a critical virtue: it maintained a strategic balance.

For the West, this imperfect order long served as a practical framework for defending values deemed fundamental — the primacy of law, restraint in the use of force, predictability in trade, and the legitimacy of common institutions. These values were not always respected but violating them carried costs.

It is precisely this system of constraints and counterweights that Donald Trump is helping dismantle. Not by exposing the system’s hypocrisy but by openly rejecting its limits, norms, and guardrails. By replacing the language of rules with the language of raw power, he is shattering a tacit pact that, for all its flaws, has continued to govern international behaviour for the last 80 years.

This is where Mr. Carney’s analysis becomes more problematic.

By dismissing the rules-based order as a “fiction” and urging states to stop “living a lie,” he risks conflating a legitimate critique of state hypocrisy with the abandonment of the fragile equilibrium that hypocrisy itself helped sustain. Under the banner of realism, he calls for a rapid reconfiguration of alliances, an enhanced reliance on bilateral and plurilateral deals, a sharp expansion of military capacity and an assertive pursuit of strategic autonomy.

Each of these moves can be defended on its own. Taken together, however, they point toward a more openly transactional world — precisely the outcome Mr. Carney claims to want to avoid.

The contrast with several European leaders is instructive. The pragmatism of Emmanuel Macron or Friedrich Merz is shaped by a far more immediate reality: Russian nuclear missiles aimed at their capitals and a hot war being fought on their doorstep. They, too, see the world as it is — not as they would like it to be. But confronted with direct existential risks, they draw a different conclusion: not to discard the rules-based order, but to reinforce it and adapt it to the new circumstances precisely because its erosion carries costs they cannot afford to ignore.

Mr. Carney’s realism is also shaped by Canada’s own historical experience —  that of a country that has not seen a foreign war fought on its territory for more than two centuries. That distance confers analytical freedom, but it also creates a blind spot. What may appear from Ottawa as clear-eyed realism can look elsewhere like an unacceptable strategic gamble.

This is the narrow path Mr. Carney must now navigate.

In rejecting nostalgia and preaching realism, he must take care not to become Donald Trump’s unwitting partner in dismantling the postwar international order, contributing through technocratic adaptation to what Trump pursues through disruption and contempt.

Threading this needle will require prudence and the recognition that certain fictions, however imperfect, have at times prevented far more brutal realities from taking hold.

Mark Carney’s Coalition Numbers Don’t Add Up

Mark Carney’s Coalition Numbers Don’t Add Up

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It was often said of former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that her greatest political asset was her ability to count. To count votes, certainly — but more importantly, to count what allows a coalition to endure over time: sensitivities, idiosyncrasies, and invisible red lines.

Mark Carney holds a PhD in economics. He knows how to count. Yet, eight months after his government’s election, it remains unclear whether he has mastered the kind of political arithmetic required to govern a minority government in a federation as diverse as Canada’s.

Since his election last April, Carney and his government have embarked on a sweeping overhaul of major federal policies, marked by limited consultation and transparency.

Virtually nothing has been spared: international trade, internal trade, environmental policy, national defence, climate policy, immigration. All of it has been pursued under the cover of a political consensus that hangs by a single thread — Donald Trump.

While decisiveness is essential when governments face challenges requiring immediate responses, strategic restraint are just as crucial when the issues at stake are structural in nature.

Unfortunately, restraint has been largely absent. Between visits to Paris, London, Doha and Beijing, Mr. Carney has appeared intent not only on rebuilding the foundations of Canada’s major public policies, but also on reshaping the Liberal Party’s governing coalition.

For decades — from Pierre Trudeau to Justin Trudeau — the backbone of that coalition has been formed by Atlantic Canada, Quebec, and Ontario (particularly the GTA and its suburbs).

Since his election, however, Mark Carney has devoted disproportionate attention to the grievances of Alberta and Saskatchewan while relegating to the sidelines Quebec’s concerns over pipeline development and carbon emission reductions and Ontario’s interests in the health of its automotive sector.

The issue is not whether Alberta and Saskatchewan have legitimate claims tied to the development of their natural resources. They unquestionably do. What is striking is the contrast between the urgency with which those claims are addressed and the relative indifference shown toward the concerns of other provinces that remain central to the Liberal Party’s traditional electoral coalition.

On paper, the Carney government appears to have gained stability since the election. In Parliament, it has survived its first major political tests, including confidence votes on the Speech from the Throne and its budget. Before the holidays, two Conservative MPs — one from Nova Scotia and one from the Greater Toronto Area — crossed the floor to sit as Liberals.

On the ground, however, the picture may be quite different. The Liberals and Conservatives remain neck and neck in the polls. And while it is still too early to speak of entrenched trends, early signs of erosion are already visible in the Liberals’ traditional strongholds.

This is true in Quebec, where Liberal support has declined by roughly five points since the election; in Ontario, where the drop approaches six points; and in Atlantic Canada, where the decline exceeds five points since April. Notably, Liberal support has remained essentially unchanged in the Prairies and in Alberta.

A closer look at the electoral map helps clarify the magnitude of the political risk facing Mr. Carney and his government.

In the last election, the Liberals lost seven ridings in Alberta and Saskatchewan by margins of a few thousand votes. By contrast, they won 26 seats in Ontario and Quebec by margins of less than 5,000 votes. Even a marginal weakening of Liberal support in Ontario, Quebec, or Atlantic Canada would be enough to shift dozens of seats into Conservative or Bloc Québécois hands.

The chart below illustrates the asymmetric electoral reality facing the Liberal Party: while close losses in the West are relatively few, dozens of seats in Ontario and Quebec rest on razor-thin margins.

Mark Carney and the Liberals returned to power in the shadow of Donald Trump. They benefited from voter anxiety and a reflex of solidarity among Canadians confronted with American political chaos. That consent was real — but it was circumstantial. It did not constitute a mandate to upend the country’s industrial, economic, and political foundations.

In a federation, knowing how to count is not simply a matter of tallying seats or securing markets. It requires acknowledging and accounting for what may not be immediately visible: diverse values, regional diffrerences and sensitivities, and thresholds of acceptability.

Mark Carney is a smart man. What he lacks is the lived political experience — and the humility that comes with it — needed to understand how electoral coalitions are built, and how they unravel. Canadian political history is clear: coalitions do not always collapse with a crash. More often, they erode — slowly. And when the numbers no longer add up, it is usually too late to start counting again.