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Gordie Howe, Meet John Maynard Keynes

Gordie Howe, Meet John Maynard Keynes

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The Gordie Howe International Bridge risks becoming an enduring symbol of Canada-U.S. relations, but for all the wrong reasons. 

The news last week that Canada and the US had reached a deal that would open the bridge to cross border traffic dripped in irony.  A bridge named after the hockey legend whose elbows inspired Canada’s rallying cry against Donald Trump opening only after Ottawa accommodated Washington’s bully tactics.

The Gordie Howe Bridge set to officially open on July 27, 2026

But the agreement is also a window into how Mark Carney governs.

Trump blocked a completed bridge that Canada financed even if Ottawa had every factual, legal and moral argument on its side.  And it was Washington that went into the corners with its elbows up and Canada that turtled.

The bridge is now scheduled to open on July 27. According to media reports, the settlement gives Washington new influence over significant toll decisions while directing half of the bridge’s future net profits to a 15-year regional economic development fund.

Under the original arrangement, Canada expected to recover its investment through toll revenues before Michigan shared in the profits. The new agreement pushes that recovery much farther into the future, although Ottawa has yet to disclose by how much.

That matters because time is the hidden currency of politics.

Economist John Maynard Keynes famously observed that “in the long run, we are all dead.” The Gordie Howe agreement suggests Ottawa has adopted much the same philosophy: Solve today’s problem; leave tomorrow’s consequences to someone else.

Carney has shown that he thinks like an economist and governs like a central banker.

That does not make him apolitical. Quite the opposite. He is deeply political — his approval ratings are evidence of this. But he approaches politics as a continuing exercise in trade-offs, optimization and risk management where the future is discounted and the immediate objective is the priority.

Central bankers operate much the same way. They calm markets, restore confidence, contain shocks and prevent today’s instability from becoming tomorrow’s panic.

But a country is not a balance sheet. Sovereignty, credibility and strategic leverage cannot always be assigned a present value and traded for short-term stability.

Observing Mark Carney increasingly suggests that he treats red lines not as principles to defend, but as obstacles to clear.

Consider the Digital Services Tax. Trump halted trade negotiations. Ottawa quickly rescinded a policy years in the making to restart them. The government openly described the reversal as the price of advancing broader negotiations with Washington.

Last week, Carney became the first Canadian prime minister in 26 years to visit Saudi Arabia, reversing a long period of political distance from a regime whose human rights record remains appalling. His explanation had the polished efficiency of a central bank communiqué: “Engagement is not endorsement.” Lecturing governments from afar, he added, is ineffective.

Each decision can be defended on its own merits. Taken together, Carney’s governing doctrine appears to be this:  Address today’s problem; leave the consequences to tomorrow.

Carney often says Canada must deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.

That may sound like steely-eyed realism, but realism without anchoring principles is not statecraft. It becomes serial accommodation.

Every concession changes the world as it is. Reward coercion today and coercion becomes more likely tomorrow. Treat every red line as provisional and adversaries learn that Canadian resistance has a price, and enough pressure will reveal it.

That may be the lasting significance of the Gordie Howe bridge agreement.

“Elbows Up” promised that Canada would absorb short-term pain to protect its long-term independence. Carney appears ready to reverse that bargain.

He secures immediate relief by transferring the cost, the precedent and the lost leverage into the future.

The bridge will open. Traffic will move.

The government will declare the crisis resolved and celebrate Canada-U.S. trade.

But a bridge can carry more than vehicles. This one carries a warning.

Mark Carney governs as though the future can always absorb one more political compromise.

Keynes may have been right, after all, in the long run, we will indeed all be dead.  But that will be cold comfort for future generations.

When Applause Comes Before Principles

When Applause Comes Before Principles

Prime Minister Mark Carney and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre responded to the U.S. capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in markedly different tones.

Mr. Carney welcomed the operation, then called for respect for international law, sovereignty and democratic self-determination. Mr. Poilievre offered unqualified praise for President Donald Trump.

The distinction matters. But so does what unites the two responses.

Both reflect a dangerous and increasingly familiar tendency: the normalization of behaviour that weakens the normative guardrails meant to constrain the conduct of states and governments.

In Mr. Carney’s case, applause for the capture and rendition of a foreign head of state came first, followed by pious invocations of the rules-based international order. In Mr. Poilievre’s, enthusiasm displaced restraint entirely.

The difference is real. The common ground is more troubling.

When breaches of international norms are greeted with approval and only later qualified with caveats, the caveats lose their force. Ordering matters. Principles invoked after the fact rarely survive first contact with power.

For Canada, it is against that backdrop that the U.S. operation in Venezuela must be assessed.

In the hours following Nicolás Maduro’s capture, President Trump and members of his administration framed the action as justice in motion — a law-enforcement operation designed to bring a fugitive to account, not the overthrow of a head of state.

The language was familiar and reassuring, drawing on two enduring elements of American political mythology: the belief that the United States is uniquely entrusted with the defence of law and liberty, and the conviction that American power carries moral purpose beyond its borders.

The mask slipped almost immediately.

Within hours of the capture, President Trump indicated that the United States was already working with Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, describing conversations in which she offered to “do whatever you need,” and adding pointedly that she “doesn’t really have a choice.”

In the same exchange with reporters, Trump dismissed Venezuela’s leading democratic opposition figure, María Corina Machado, as lacking the support or respect required to govern.

Soon after, the president dispensed with even the pretence of moral justification, openly acknowledging that American involvement in Venezuela was about oil.

What had been framed as justice delivered in defence of law and liberty was revealed instead as the pursuit of strategic and economic advantage.

The transactional character of this moment — and the lesson it carries for Canada — is underscored by the conditions under which Venezuela’s democratic opposition must now operate.

María Corina Machado, an internationally recognized advocate for democratic change and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, publicly praised President Trump following her award.

Yet within hours of Maduro’s capture, Machado and her movement were summarily dismissed by the same president whose favour they had carefully sought. The speed and ease with which that dismissal occurred is instructive.

That is the deeper lesson for Canada. In a transactional order, fealty buys access, not assurance. Praise secures attention, not commitment. When power is exercised without restraint, yesterday’s ally can become today’s adversary, and yesterday’s cause can be readily abandoned.

For Canada and for our partners across the Western alliance, this latest act of imperial power, predicated on the thinnest of rationales, must be viewed with alarm.

What is at stake is the continued erosion of the institutional, political and moral guardrails that have underpinned the international order

As former foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy warned, silence in the face of norm-breaking does not preserve stability. It invites vulnerability. Canada’s former ambassador to Venezuela made the same point: abandoning rules-based action has consequences.

Deference may secure short-term, transactional returns. It offers no protection over the longer term. A world in which justice, freedom and democracy become infinitely adaptable justifications rather than bedrock principles is one in which sovereignty is more exposed, not more secure.

For Canada, vigilance does not mean panic or posturing. It means resisting the temptation to applaud first and qualify later — and recognizing that the defence of institutional, legal and moral norms may be the only real bulwark against the erosion of our own sovereignty.