Oh no, Canada. The maple smoke has floated up from the Liberal party’s headquarters, and the bad news is out: our new Prime Minister is Mark Carney, banker, Davos darling, and ruthless climate radical.
It’s not even Canadians’ fault this time. Trudeau, admittedly, was. But Carney is a Liberal party pick, which sounds reasonable until you learn that the Liberal party didn’t require its members to hold Canadian citizenship – or even be an adult – to cast a ballot to replace Trudeau as leader. The vote took place online, and while around 400,000 people registered as party members, a glitch-ridden verification process meant only around 160,000 were cleared to vote.
It’s pretty clear that Prime Minister Carney is a single-issue man. Net zero, to him, is worth almost any sacrifice
That’s right: 160,000 persons of unknown citizenship just chose the leader of Canada, a country of 40 million. What could possibly go wrong?
The right thing at this point is to call an election. Liberal insiders are already dropping hints that one may be on the way. Sadly, if it happens, it’s because the Liberals think the best time to go for a majority is now, while they’ve got Canadians running scared of Trump, and most importantly, before Canadians find out who Carney really is.
If there’s one thing the Liberal party does well, it’s clinging, limpet-like, to power. A richly earned non-confidence vote was headed their way in January, thanks to their incompetent handling of tariff threats from the US. So they prorogued Parliament to buy themselves time to regroup.
They paid lip service to US demands for resolution of the fentanyl crisis (which developed under their watch). But back in Canada, they talked out of the other side of their mouths, accusing America of bad faith and speaking contemptuously of its leadership. Even as they sabotaged relations, they swaggered around patting each other on the back for ‘standing up to Trump.’
As Mr Sunny Ways hands over the keys to Mr Climate Doom, the Liberals clearly hope that instead of looking at their truly horrible record over the past ten years, Canadians, quavering in terror of the bombastic New Yorker next door, will plead with their home-grown oppressors to stay on and save them. This seems to be the playbook: stoke national fears, prolong the crisis, and campaign against Trump instead of the Conservatives.
Mark Carney is an expert on stoking fears. As head of the Bank of England, he was famously dubbed ‘the high priest of Project Fear’ by Jacob Rees-Mogg for his doomsaying ahead of Brexit. Canadians should be aware that fear is possibly the most-used wrench in their new prime minister’s toolbox.
In 2020, Carney was invited by Trudeau to help Canada cope with Covid. Somehow, Canada got stuck with one of the most draconian Covid regimes in the world – a regime sustained only by a climate of, you guessed it: fear. Could it have been central banker Carney who had the bright idea to debank protestors and invoke the Emergencies Act? Trudeau – who as prime minister said he didn’t think about monetary policy – seems unlikely to have come up with this strategy on his own.
Its ruthlessness was worthy of the author of Value(s): Building a Better World for All, Carney’s magnum opus. Consider this little nugget: ‘Firms that align their business models with the transition to a net-zero carbon economy will be rewarded handsomely; those that fail to adapt will cease to exist.’ Or, in plain English: I’ll grind your bones to make my bread.
In his acceptance speech on Sunday, Carney claimed that Trump is out to ‘destroy our way of life.’ But Carney is the climate alarmist. He’s the one who wants to change our way of life, or so he says in Value(s). ‘Carney’s Brave New World,’ writes Peter Foster in his 2021 review, ‘will be one of severely constrained choice, less flying, less meat, more inconvenience and more poverty: “Assets will be stranded, used gasoline powered cars will be unsaleable, inefficient properties will be unrentable.”’
Honestly, Canada? That sounds miserable. And how does Carney think he’s going to get us to go for this setup? Easy: he’ll force the private sector to boss us all into it. Do-it-yourself totalitarianism, Peter Foster calls it.
Carney has already had a trial run. In 2021, he founded the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), a group of banks and financial institutions. Called a ‘climate cartel’ by the US House Judiciary Committee, GFANZ is accused of leveraging financial interests to bully companies into making public confessions of their carbon output and committing to net-zero emissions targets and other ESG policies.
Now, GFANZ is being investigated by the US House Judiciary Committee for allegedly violating antitrust laws. Carney is out of it now; he resigned on January 15 and skipped town. He’d found another outlet for his talents – governing Canada.
It’s pretty clear that Prime Minister Carney is a single-issue man. Net zero, to him, is worth almost any sacrifice; the human cost doesn’t appear to weigh heavily in his calculations. He may pretend otherwise to win an election. But if, heaven forbid, he gets a majority, then it’ll be time for Canadians to be afraid – of becoming Mark Carney’s petri dish.
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