Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech to World Economic Forum

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Prime Minister Mark Carney gave a forceful speech Tuesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on the “new world order” and how middle powers like Canada can benefit by working together.

Link is the full transcript and video of the English parts of Carney’s speech. There is a French part in the beginning, not sure if these English portion which follows already translated or skipped.

Interesting point: some names are omitted, and one proper noun in particular only mentioned once.

Some quotes:

In 1978, the Czech dissident Václav Havel, later president, wrote an essay called “The Power of the Powerless,” and in it he asked a simple question: how did the communist system sustain itself?

And his answer began with a greengrocer.

Every morning, the shopkeeper places a sign in his window: “Workers of the world unite.” He doesn’t believe in it. No one does. But he places the sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists — not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.

Havel called this living within a lie. The system’s power comes not from its truth, but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true. And its fragility comes from the same source. When even one person stops performing, when the greengrocer removes his sign, the illusion begins to crack.

Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.

On Arctic sovereignty, we stand firmly with Greenland and Denmark and fully support their unique right to determine Greenland’s future.

Our view is the middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.

But I’d also say that great powers can afford, for now, to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity, and the leverage to dictate terms. Middle powers do not. But when we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what’s offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating.

This is not sovereignty. It’s the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.

We are taking a sign out of the window.

We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy, but we believe that from the fracture we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just. This is the task of the middle powers, the countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and the most to gain from genuine cooperation.

Ping @286437714 - would love to hear your thoughts on this speech if you have spare time. What is the WEF really, and why is he addressing middle powers at an econ event? Or am I being naive and states are run by economic forces more so than political? How did alliances work before the idealism we have currently, or is there no parallels at all because the world was never this interconnected before?

I remember very little of my Thucydides from decades ago; mostly that bad times are coming at the end of an Empire kinda vibe.

Following up: Carney's Davos speech strikes a chord in Mexico -- Mexican lawmakers reflect on prime minister's words ahead of Canadian trade mission, CUSMA negotiations CBC

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum

Carney’s speech was “in tune with the current times" and "That was a very good speech by Carney, from Prime Minister Carney, I don’t know if you heard it.”

Federal Deputy Dolores Padierna Luna

“I believe that Canada and Mexico need to speak more, always more deeply, and provide mutual support,” said Padierna, who is the vice-coordinator for the Morena caucus in the Chamber of Deputies. [...]

Padierna Luna said it was “insulting” and “offensive” for U.S. President Donald Trump to publish images on social media with the U.S. flag covering Canadian territory and to refer to Canada as the 51st state.

“So, we have to say, no. To confront this like Carney did … with his impressive speech, as a lesson for the whole world,” she said.

“Canada and Mexico need to unite to defend our sovereignty.”