Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada, made a 'viral’ speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. According to the Guardian it was "the greatest political speech of recent times". To other commentators, it was a "watershed", a move away from "technocratic globalism".
My X feed is full of people saying it was the light that the world needed and that Carney’s Canada has provided hope for the West. Others tell me that he is now the "leader of the free world".
“He is also potentially the new leader of the Free World, a role model of honesty, intelligence, and visionary thinking. He understands the long arc of history," one said.
I have heard and read the speech several times. It is well delivered, articulate, calm and intelligent. If you contrast his style with the ‘stream of consciousness’ rambling of President Trump it does come across, as many have suggested, that he is ‘the adult in the room'.
What has taken me a little by surprise is the extent to which so many Christians seem to agree and think that this may herald the end of an era, and the beginning of a new better one. But does the reality live up to the hype?
In January 2018 another Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, also delivered a speech at Davos. His was entitled ‘the Canadian opportunity’ and focused on gender equality, progressive trade and corporate responsibility. It was widely lauded and praised and like Carney’s speech, got a standing ovation. But, as was feared at the time, it was all rhetoric and no action. Is Carney’s any different?
The Main Points of the Speech
Carney called the old-world order ‘a pleasant fiction’ - he admitted that the system he had perpetuated and served was false.
“We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.”
He went on to argue that it was only held together by American hegemony and that now this system no longer works and has been ruptured.
He spoke of a new order (something he had called a new world order in China) which would encompass values, such as respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the various states.
He cited Vaclav Havel’s parable of the shopkeeper in the world taking down his communist sign ‘workers of the world unite’, and 'living within a lie'. He spoke of how we need to take our signs down – to no longer believe the lie.
He then went on to argue, "But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.
“We largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.”
He warned about individual countries defending their own fuel, food and defence by building their own fortresses, and suggested that ‘middle powers’ need to work together to build something more ambitious. The great powers, the US, Russia, China, could afford to go it alone – but the middle powers need to band together. In effect he was arguing that the US hegemony in the West was coming to an end.
He argued that Canada had seen this coming and was already adopting a policy that was both "principled and pragmatic" – including respect for human rights.
In an interesting twist he quipped “we are no longer just relying on the strength of our values, but also the value of our strength”.
That strength was to be military and economic. He told Davos that Canada had fast tracked one trillion dollars of investments in energy, AI and critical minerals. And had promised to double defence spending.
Canada was supporting Ukraine, and standing with Greenland and Denmark.
And then he asked, for me, the key question, "What does it mean for middle powers to live the truth?”
It means naming reality, acting consistently, building a new order of what we claim to believe in and reducing the leverage that enables coercion.
He went on to present Canada as the example of "a pluralistic society that works" and a model of free speech, diversity and sustainability.
It was an impressive speech – at one level brutally honest and at another, hopefully inspirational ... but ... and you knew there would be a but! Let’s judge Mr Carney’s speech by his own standard and see if the ‘reality matches the rhetoric’. I will look at the Old Order, the values based New Order, the use of economic power for ideological coercion, and the main one – refusing to live by lies.
The Collapse of the Old Order
Carney is no outsider. Indeed, he was a key part of the old order. He worked for Goldman Sachs in Boston, London, New York, Tokyo, and Toronto before becoming in 2003 a deputy governor of the Bank of Canada. After various high posts in the Canadian financial system in 2013 he became the first non-British citizen to serve as governor of the Bank of England. After leaving the Bank of England, he took senior private and public roles focused on climate and finance, notably serving as the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance and holding leadership or board positions at Brookfield, Bloomberg, and other institutions. He then became party leader of the Canadian Liberal party before becoming prime minister. He is the perfect Davos man – the embodiment of the system he admitted has failed.
What media outlets failed to grasp was the enormity of what he was saying. The likes of the Guardian, the BBC, the New York Times etc have long taught the narrative that there was a real rules-based order until Donald Trump, the great disruptor came along. The irony is that Carney was arguing that that same old rules-based order was a fiction. Perhaps Trump has been the great exposer of that fiction? Many of us have been saying what Carney said for some time – but we were dismissed as populists, conspiracy theorists or fascists. But now that one of their own says it, suddenly it is an obvious truth!
As the commentator Konstantin Kisin tweeted, “Davos is basically all the people who have created the problems, denied their existence and then called us names for pointing them out ... explaining what the problems are and how we desperately need to fix them.”
Without blinking an eyelid, the courtiers who were praising the emperor’s new clothes are now embracing the ‘nowhere man’ who says that the emperor has no clothes!
The Values of the New Order
In his visit to China where he signed a new deal with the CCP, Carney had spoken of a ‘new world order’. Clearly in the context he is including China as part of that New World Order. In signing a deal with Qatar – which included defence - he was also including the world’s biggest sponsor, along with Iran, of Islamist terrorism. It is hard to square this with Carney’s insistence that the New World Order would be based on human rights.
Carney attacked the US but gave China a free pass. Right on cue the representative from China addressed the delegates with some delightful Orwellian Newspeak – a real example of reality not matching the rhetoric. He described China as itself the defender of the rules-based international order. Not a word of correction from Mr Carney. When you only selectively ‘speak truth to power’ you are in reality playing the power game. Pragmatism triumphs over principle.
A year ago, Carney had described China as Canada’s biggest security threat. Now it is a ‘strategic partner’. Does the reality match the rhetoric? Carney says he stands with Ukraine, but then signs a deal with the country that is helping bankroll and equip Russia to destroy Ukraine. It seems that in the New World Order you can deal with the devil himself, as long as he gives you enough money to keep you in power.
Speaking of money, what most of the commentators have left out is Carney’s own financial interests in this New World Order. Carney was the Chair of Brookfield Asset Management. Brookfield is an investment company which a couple of months ago announced a $20 billion investment in Qatar (as well as the $23 billion it has invested in China) for helping with AI. Canada’s new deal with Qatar includes AI. Carney continues to have stock options and deferred share units in Brookfield to the tune of $6.8 million. The media quite rightly question the American president when he makes political decisions which seem to benefit his personal companies and wealth. The same standard should apply to the Canadian prime minister. At the very least there is a conflict of interest.
Incidentally Canada’s new deal with Qatar includes co-operating in defence technologies. How does helping an authoritarian anti-democratic government, who are also the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism, fit in with the human rights ‘values’ of Carney’s New World Order?
The Use of Economic Power for Ideological Coercion
Part of Carney’s concern was the view that the world had now changed so that economic power was being used for ideological coercion. Rather than being a profound insight it was either an admission of ignorance or one of the most hypocritical statements you will ever witness. I tend to think it was the latter given that as a former Goldman Sachs chairman of the Bank of England, Carney, as an intelligent man must have known it has been ever thus.
He himself was a strong advocate of the EU, whose main tool to enforce its ideology is economic coercion - just ask Hungary. Likewise, China doesn’t build roads and railways in Africa out of altruism. And the Western governments that offered charity to poorer nations were not doing so unconditionally. There are numerous instances of Western dominated groups offering aid on the condition that Western ‘values’ such as abortion and sexual ideology were part of the package.
Speaking of economic power, Canada is not the powerhouse that Carney portrayed. More than 75% of its trade is with the US and it desperately needs a trade deal with America. Canada is an economy which is run on a growing national debt and where most of the economic growth comes from one province, Alberta. Carney spoke of sustainability. In its current form Canada is not sustainable. The bubble of national debt will one day burst - unless they sell it all to China.
Meanwhile there is an enormous danger that Canada will become so economically tied to China that it will be unable to resist China’s political demands e.g. over Taiwan. Again, it was notable that while Carney spoke of the right of Greenlanders and Danes to determine their own future, he said nothing about the Taiwanese.
I am reminded of the Who’s ever great song "Won’t Get Fooled Again". Meet the new order. Same as the old order.
Refusing to Live by Lies
In a speech which is based on honesty and truth you would expect that the truth would be told, even if it is just in generalised terms or therapeutic memes. But Carney did not speak the truth in several instances. For example, he claimed that “We are fast-tracking a trillion dollars of investment in energy, AI, critical minerals, new trade corridors and beyond.” But it does not appear that there is a trillion dollars of investment to be fast tracked! According to the Canadian Parliamentary Budget Office’s 2025 review the figure is nearer $165 billion. If that's the case, then $1 trillion is just wishful thinking. Treating fantasy wishes as economic reality is hardly a model for the honesty that Carney is talking about. Imagine if I went to him as a banker and said that I want to buy a $10 million dollar house, but I only have a salary that allows for $1 million and then tell him that I am aiming to have $10 million. I suspect my mortgage is not going to get approved!
What about Canada as the example of ‘a pluralistic society that works'? A model of free speech, diversity and sustainability? It’s difficult to know where to begin on this one. How about asking the Canadian truckers who were arrested and had their bank assets frozen because they were protesting against vaccine mandates in 2022? Or the fact that over 5% of deaths in Canada – some 16,000 people – occur because of government-approved euthanasia. If you are poor, sick, lonely or disabled, then Canadian ‘values’ encourage you to take your own life.
Canada is a country where live births are declining at the same time as abortions have increased to over 100,000. Its population is declining and its fertility rate is 1.25 children per year – the sustainability rate is 2.1. Canada is therefore not sustainable. Canadian values allow 45 men who self-identify as women to be in women’s prisons – including those convicted of violence and rape against women.
Canada is a great example of what happens to a society when it abandons its Christian heritage. Just as the globalists have killed globalism, so the progressives are killing progressivism. Once people see it in practice, they realise how dangerous and destructive it is. But where do they turn? Some of the alternatives are chilling – witness the rise of Islam, the growing acceptance of the Green religion, the lure of fantasy socialism, and the appeal of the real Far Right. But there is a better alternative, the way of Christ.
A Christian Perspective
Rod Dreher has an insightful book, Live not by Lies, which is helpful for Christians as we seek to navigate these troubled cultural waters. He examines how therapeutic culture, identity politics, and technology enable a "totalitarian temptation" that demands ideological allegiance over truth. The new alliance of Canada with China, Qatar and soon the EU is an example not of freedom loving liberal democracies based on Christian values, but rather all four are different types of authoritarianism. If you want to choose this world's empires then you can choose the Communist model (China), the Islamist model (Qatar), the TB (technocratic/bureaucratic) model (the EU) or the progressive model (Canada). They are really all just different shades of grey (or red). What they all have in common is the centralisation of power, an elite class, state-controlled economies, constrained freedoms (including freedom of speech), and dreams of empire.
Is the American empire then the answer? America is different in some respects – it is clearly influenced by the TB and Progressive models. Islam is on the rise in the US but is still not a primary influence (except on the rise in anti-semitism in US campuses and Qatar’s $100 billion investment in those same universities). Communism was irrelevant but the rise of Mamdani and the ignorance of most young Americans about communism is a concern. America’s great saving grace at the moment is its unerring constitutional commitment to freedom of speech. It is still possible to speak the truth. Yet the American empire, though still the strongest in the world, is waning. It is in danger of being an empire based solely on wealth and real estate, not Christian values. An empire led by a man who at best comes across as a self-obsessed narcissistic bully.
I am reminded of Revelation 17 and 18 where the fall of Babylon is celebrated. Babylon was a place where every evil was committed and where "the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries" (Revelation 17:3). Yet in one hour she was brought to ruin!
Is there hope? Yes, but it is not in Carney’s Brave New World. China, the EU, Iran and Canada. It is not in the American empire. These are all destined to fall. Maybe God will raise up new hope in Africa, South America, Asia or Australia ... but these too will ultimately fall. But there is another kingdom - one that is not of this world but is for this world. That is the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. That is the only hope for all our nations and all our people. By 2030 it is estimated that China will be the largest Christian nation in the world. It is estimated that more than two thirds of the mosques in Iran have closed and more than a million Iranian Muslims have become Christians. In the EU there has been a resurgence of interest in Christianity – especially among young people. There is even hope for Canada because while the death embrace of progressivism has killed off most of the mainstream denominations, there are new green shoots of biblical Christianity springing up.
No, our hope is not in Carney’s empty and hypocritical rhetoric. Our hope is in Christ and his Word. He shall reign for ever and ever - whatever the passing fads of this world. Hallelujah!
David Robertson is the former minister of St Peters Free Church in Dundee and a former Moderator of the Free Church of Scotland. He is currently the minister of Scots Kirk Presbyterian Church in Newcastle, New South Wales, and blogs at The Wee Flea.
