Mark Carney Took the Stand the Rest of the World Must Now Take

At the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Carney’s speech was a pointed, stinging rebuke of Donald Trump and his jingoistic foreign policy. He referred to Trump as a “hegemon” and called for a break in existing U.S.-Canadian relations. “This bargain no longer works,” he declared.

This speech is historic, as it represents the most open, direct rebuke of and break with Trump and the United States by former allies to date. Carney mentioned the writings of Václav Havel, which explored how corrupt systems that clearly no longer work sustain themselves through fear, compliance in advance, and people refusing to contradict what is clearly a lie. However, the system (communism, in Havel’s analogy) crumbles when the first person refuses to go along with the lie and suffers no consequences as a result. In essence, Carney is doing exactly what you need to do to break the bystander effect.

Trump responded to Carney’s temerity with his typical petulance. He stated on Truth Social that Canada was no longer invited to the “Board of Peace” he created, many of whose members are horrid dictatorships like Belarus, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, and Egypt. None of the U.N.’s other Security Council members have signed on, and it is doubtful that Canada was that interested in being a part of such an organization, either.