Western Standard - HANNAFORD： Carney talks big in Davos, delivers little at home

00:00:00.000 Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show

00:00:21.280 of the Western Standard. It is Thursday, January the 29th. Just over a week ago, Prime Minister

00:00:27.140 Mark Carney delivered a widely acclaimed keynote speech at Davos, Switzerland, to the World Economic

00:00:33.720 Forum, and he declared the Old World Order dead and committed Canada to be leading a new one.

00:00:41.360 Technically, as a speechwriter from the old days for a Canadian Prime Minister, I must say that his

00:00:46.840 remarks were well prepared and delivered. But is his analysis correct? And is the strategy that he's

00:00:54.900 proposing for Canada capable of restoring the country's status in the world. Joining us now

00:01:01.140 is David Knight-Legg, a strategic advisor to the Alberta government, energy, and financial services

00:01:08.180 firms. And he is no stranger to the Western Standard. Good to have you back, David.

00:01:13.440 Great to be here. Great to see you again, Nigel.

00:01:16.600 And likewise, David, like everybody else who listened to Mr. Carney's speech at Davos,

00:01:20.780 I was impressed with the remarks as a piece of prose. Aristotle applauds from the grave,

00:01:27.060 and perhaps Thucydides too. And yet I had that feeling there's something off here that I'm missing.

00:01:32.720 I'm being conned. And as I thought about it, it occurred to me that Mr. Carney is lamenting

00:01:37.860 something that is the international rules-based order that never really was. He even says so in a kind

00:01:45.880 way later. So when he remarks that we knew the story of the international rules-based order was

00:01:52.040 partially false, so his basic takeaway was that Trump, we didn't actually name, had ended this

00:01:58.600 apocryphal international rules-based order. And the new reality was a multipolar world in which the

00:02:04.960 big powers did what they wanted. To me, that sounds very much like the world before the Second World War.

00:02:10.000 So first question, isn't Mr. Carney's multipolar world actually just business as usual?

00:02:17.160 Yeah, of course it is. Yeah. I think the appeal of his speech took two or three different

00:02:25.280 vectors. And I think, you know, it was appealing. The thing that's surprising about the speech is it

00:02:34.740 was a speech that would be given by a well-informed spectator. It was a speech of a political science

00:02:41.100 professor, a law professor. In an odd way, it wasn't a speech that struck me as being given by

00:02:47.340 a world leader. And in some ways, I think people find that refreshing. It was long on description.

00:02:54.800 You've noted it quoted Aristotle Thucydides, hero of mine, Vaslav Havel. I think deeply misquoted

00:03:03.060 Vaslav Havel. But as a piece of art, it was compelling because it described very effectively

00:03:10.040 the state of the world to some extent. I think what is odd for a world leader like Mark Carney

00:03:16.340 is that it did not draw any clear prescriptions, courses of action, and to the extent that it would

00:03:23.240 have his actual actions over the last nine months have been completely contrary to the theory of

00:03:31.420 the speech. And that's what's deeply problematic about it. The speech is excellent, but it's almost

00:03:38.260 like listening to somebody that's a good cover band. You can recognize the song. You like it. But it's not

00:03:46.600 the person who wrote it. It's not what was intended by the person who wrote it. And it's being delivered

00:03:52.200 by somebody who in many ways represents, to my mind, the opposite of Vaslav Havel. Mark Carney wrote an

00:03:59.880 op-ed in the middle of the Freedom Convoy calling Canadian citizens seditious. That was carefully

00:04:05.560 chosen language by somebody that knows better. It was followed through on as a matter of sedition. And

00:04:12.680 that his theory of the case, which he wrote in the op-ed, was then shown to be deeply problematic for civil

00:04:20.360 rights for freedom, totally totalitarian in every way. The exact opposite of what someone like Václav Havel

00:04:27.400 would have thought was appropriate for people that were obviously political dissenters of mandates that

00:04:35.720 ended up being very quickly thrown out for being unscientific. These were the people, these were the

00:04:40.600 shopkeepers that had tossed the sign out of the window, decided to stand up against totalitarian overreach in

00:04:46.280 their country. And the first person to oppose them and demand that the politically correct

00:04:52.760 totalitarian framing of COVID be enforced by a police state was Mark Carney, who just gave a speech

00:05:01.000 quoting Václav Havel.

00:05:02.200 So I'd like to come back to Václav Havel in a minute, but for those people who actually did listen to

00:05:13.320 this speech, Mr. Carney did appear to offer a path forward, a path between what he would say submission and

00:05:23.160 isolation. And it all sounds good, but it was supposed to be a coalition of middle power countries coming

00:05:31.400 together to do what they could, given the polarity of China, the United States, and Russia. But this kind of

00:05:43.240 middle power alliance sounds a bit like the deer are forming a coalition against the wolves.

00:05:51.640 Is that what you're getting at when you say that it's a bit delusional?

00:05:56.920 Yeah, look, I think Canada has the greatest opportunity economically in the planet because

00:06:02.440 we're only, you know, 45, 50 million people. We have 77 to 80 percent of our trade depends entirely on

00:06:11.160 the United States. The next largest trade block we have is about 10 percent, which is all of the EU and

00:06:18.200 the UK together. And after that, China is around 4 percent. And then you've got, you know, single digit

00:06:25.560 percentages around the world. So far, since Mark Carney was elected, we've had virtually no serious progress on the most

00:06:34.520 important trading relationship that we have. So you can give a speech citing Thucydides, and this is what

00:06:40.920 you'd expect of a law professor, political science professor, is an excellent speech for somebody who's

00:06:45.960 a spectator. It was a terrible speech for somebody who's got to renegotiate Kuzma in the summer. It was a terrible

00:06:52.600 speech in multiple levels. First of all, it was the wrong speech to give because it drew a false moral

00:06:58.680 equivalence between great powers as if China and the United States are the same sort of problem

00:07:04.200 because they're hegemons. That's deeply reckless for anybody who sailed out. It's especially reckless 1.00

00:07:10.440 for the leader of Canada. We have a series of actions that are being taken by his government

00:07:16.680 that are deeply counterproductive right now in the relationship that we have with the United States.

00:07:21.560 They're counterproductive on the three things that matter most, energy,

00:07:25.480 national security, and economic security and trade. So again, a speech is very important,

00:07:33.400 but the person who gives the speech is as important as the speech when the purpose of the speech is to

00:07:39.640 outline or compel action. And what had happened with this speech is this speech had followed very

00:07:46.840 quickly after a series of concessions were made to the world's most totalitarian state, China.

00:07:53.480 China in a juxtaposition with the relationship with the United States, very intentionally drawn

00:08:02.040 by the prime minister and recklessly so. So I think that the problem with the speech is not the quality

00:08:07.560 of the speech. The delivery of the speech was exceptional. Aspects of the speech were very appealing

00:08:13.160 in that it described the current moment in the way that a great political science professor would

00:08:18.840 describe it. But for Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, to have given that speech in light of

00:08:25.720 the deep confusion around his interpretation of what the shopkeeper with the sign in the window

00:08:31.880 in Václav Havel's book, Power of the Powerless was intended to address. Mark Carney himself represented

00:08:40.440 in his op-ed against the Freedom Convoy, complete totalitarianism in the name of natural political

00:08:45.720 dissent. In the current moment, that Václav Havel comment is all about the political correctness that

00:08:53.560 is dominant in a place like Davos and has been dominant in the rhetoric and the positioning that

00:08:59.960 Mark Carney has had on green issues and finance and things like GFANS. So it's very awkward for someone

00:09:06.360 like Mark Carney to be the one giving a Václav Havel quote. The Thucydides quote on strength

00:09:13.560 is fascinating, but Thucydides, but he seemed to draw an unusual parallel. Thucydides' arguments on

00:09:19.960 strength weren't Nietzschean. Thucydides' arguments and strengths were descriptive, and they were

00:09:25.000 descriptive in a way that was compelling courage in the face of challenges. And what I've seen in the

00:09:30.520 Carney government is so far, and I'm hoping that this will change, especially in the next few weeks,

00:09:37.000 and I hope quickly, there has to be a new level of honesty in this government on the cause of our

00:09:45.080 economic decline and our problem with trade. The rapid rise in the decline of Canadian cities and the

00:09:52.360 rapid rise in violent crimes across Canada, the rapid rise in physician-assisted suicides,

00:10:01.000 the 50,000 kids that have died out of fentanyl and opioid overdoses in the last decade of this,

00:10:08.120 you know, complete nihilism with respect to drugs and the drug trade, the rapid growth of criminal and

00:10:15.960 terrorist syndicates across the country. Donald Trump is not to be blamed for any of this. This has

00:10:21.640 happened under a government that's adopted deeply progressive flawed ideas about what to do in the

00:10:28.200 face of crime. They've created more debt in, I think it's the first seven years of their government

00:10:35.720 than all of their governments put together, and Mark Carney's just delivered the worst, you know,

00:10:40.920 peacetime deficit or the worst non-emergency deficit in the history of the country. So you've got

00:10:48.280 extraordinary debt, you've got the worst performing GDP per capita performance in all 40 OECD nations,

00:10:55.800 the worst performance in GDP growth in the G7 for the last 10 years. You've got extraordinary

00:11:03.080 problems with crime, you've got the worst results in the public service in spite of the fact that in

00:11:08.920 the last 10 years they've bloated the public service more than 45% and made it 75% more expensive. There's

00:11:15.240 almost no metric right now that you can point to that you could say the problem that Canada faces is

00:11:21.480 Donald Trump. Almost every single one of these metrics that are affecting our quality of life,

00:11:27.160 our national security, the ability of people to feel safe walking in our cities, you know,

00:11:34.040 the rise in anti-Semitic crime. It just goes on and on and on. This has to do with a series of failed

00:11:38.840 policy ideas and failed presumptive ideological ideas that Mark Carney has been in the forefront of

00:11:45.240 in his party and that his party is responsible for. And what they discovered when they ran the last

00:11:50.920 election is that people, especially the older demographics that depend on mainstream media that

00:11:58.360 is funded by the government, will see their lives and see their opportunities through the lens of the

00:12:04.360 framing that the government's given. And what was convenient was to say, you know, there's this scary

00:12:09.320 person running the United States and we're going to stand up to them. And I think there's a certain

00:12:14.920 amount of sort of political real politic and strategic nous in the way that they ran that election.

00:12:22.360 But I also think that that's bordered very quickly on complete cynicism. And the fundamental problem

00:12:28.440 with Mark Carney's speech is not that it wasn't an excellent speech or that it was descriptively

00:12:32.680 accurate of the moment we live in. It's that the person giving it doesn't represent remotely

00:12:38.840 the ideals behind what Vasilevavel was speaking about. And as a result, it struck me very much

00:12:44.040 like the elbows up thing, tactically effective, but deeply cynical.

00:12:47.320 So what is the game? Is he a true ideologue? There are things that he has been associated with

00:12:59.080 that would make you think that he was a green prime minister and that was all that mattered. We have 0.96

00:13:03.640 to save the planet when there are so many arguments that if the planet has to be saved,

00:13:07.560 it isn't going to be Canada doing it. Is he just getting electric cars from China so that we can

00:13:16.840 have lower emissions? Or is there something more deeply cynical? Is he trying to make Canada a

00:13:21.880 different kind of intentionally? Trying to make Canada a different kind of place?

00:13:27.720 Look, I don't want to believe that of anybody that gives a lot of their time and energy and

00:13:33.880 effort to public service. I think that at the end of the day, they must want to create a better world for

00:13:41.800 our kids to inherit. I mean, I think that's the point and that's the purpose of most people that

00:13:47.000 engage. I think that what happens is the first order sort of instincts of anyone in politics is

00:13:54.200 to win elections, hold the power so that you can then exercise it in the manner in which you think

00:14:00.040 can secure the future for our kids and create a better society. I think one of the things that I was

00:14:05.080 hopeful about with Prime Minister Carney is that when he ran for the election, coming from outside

00:14:12.200 the country as he did, I was actually hopeful that that was a strength and that he would see that

00:14:17.160 certain things about his party's ideological positioning, particularly with respect to energy

00:14:21.240 and energy security, had gone way beyond any sort of rational rapprochement between the environment, 0.82

00:14:28.360 energy and economy, and it had become completely dogmatic in ways that were just ridiculous. The

00:14:34.520 C-48, C-69 represents that. But he got rid of the carbon tax, he got rid of the capital gains tax,

00:14:40.040 some of the things that were deeply harming the economy. And so my hope was, and it still is,

00:14:47.480 obviously, because he is the Prime Minister, that he has great people around him that are giving him

00:14:53.480 good advice that the mistake that he made by calling the Freedom Convoy seditious,

00:15:01.320 the enormous mistakes they've made by maintaining C-69 and C-48, which are just poking the bear in

00:15:11.000 Alberta in terms of the new run for independence. You know, these are things that I am hoping that he

00:15:17.320 will see his way through to something that's far more centrist and far more representative where most

00:15:22.600 Canadians are at. I thought the speech was excellent. Most of my friends have sent me notes saying,

00:15:27.960 we really like your speech, congratulations, you've got a great Prime Minister. So you have,

00:15:33.000 it's hard for me to say, I think the speech was morally confused. And that it's like, you know,

00:15:39.400 a cover band covering a song that I like, you know, I love hearing anybody give Vaislavelle's Power of the

00:15:45.080 Powerless airtime. And I think there's something deeply moving about his language. And I think there's

00:15:50.760 a lot about his language that's pertinent to the current moment, especially if you think about

00:15:55.240 these unbelievable places like Iran and Russia and China under socialist Marxist or Islamo-Marxist

00:16:05.480 Catalitarian regimes. You hope that there's more Vaislavelle and Thucydides and some of those comments 0.98

00:16:13.160 going on. But what I hope in the case of Mark Carney is that he looks at the opportunity right now to

00:16:19.000 change Canada, to upgrade Canada's current political approach and policy approaches to a freer economy,

00:16:27.480 where we can go back to being one of the most prosperous nations instead of the least prosperous.

00:16:31.320 Well, but that takes us back to the very public choice that he made to go and embrace China.

00:16:36.760 I mean, with his earlier experience through Brookfield with China, no doubt he knows his 0.99

00:16:45.480 ways around the corridors where the decisions are made. But I find, just speaking for myself here,

00:16:52.680 the idea of dumping the United States, even if you don't like Mr. Trump, who won't be there in three

00:17:00.520 years' time, to embrace a nation with the ideals and practices of the People's Republic of China,

00:17:09.080 I find that quite abhorrent. We have a bad history with China. That makes me suspicious of what Mr. 0.75

00:17:19.400 Carney's goals really are. And you're making the case that we should give him a chance, I think. And

00:17:26.200 I think we've given him a year. Why are you not as cynical as I am, David?

00:17:33.720 Well, look, I think there's... I don't think you're cynical, Nigel, first of all.

00:17:39.960 A lot of people do.

00:17:41.720 Well, I think you're hopeful. And I think one of the things that you're very good at is pointing

00:17:47.000 out what you think is not working. And I think that's the appropriate role of a good journalist,

00:17:52.280 is to sort of find whatever you think the gaps are between what's being said and what's actually

00:17:58.280 being done. And I think that's the biggest challenge for the Carney administration in Canada right now.

00:18:04.440 I think that Canada needs to do business with China. China's a very important trading partner,

00:18:10.680 but it's only 4% of our export GDP. The United States is 77%. The issue is not whether or not Mark

00:18:18.520 Carney has a conversation with China about their tariffs on canola. That was a conversation that

00:18:25.080 needed to happen. The issue is the craven way in which Canada seems to naively bend the knee to China 0.88

00:18:34.120 so easily and so often and in so many ways. The open border with respect to Chinese triads in the Port of

00:18:42.120 Vancouver and the fentanyl trade is disgusting. And it's something that has been allowed to

00:18:47.880 metastasize. It's one of the worst cancers in Canadian society, and yet it's somehow swept under

00:18:53.320 the rug and not talked about very openly. We have 50,000 kids that are dead because of the fentanyl and

00:18:59.800 opioid crisis in this country. And when this was raised by the Americans as part of their concern on

00:19:05.480 the border, it was poo-pooed by our media. It was treated as a pretext. And instead of us just

00:19:11.960 acknowledging, we have a huge crisis and it's a moral crisis. So 50,000 young lives are gone in

00:19:18.120 this country. Where do you read about this? You know, I find it absolutely extraordinary that we

00:19:23.160 have something, death at that scale with a known supply chain that we seem completely incapable of

00:19:30.520 actually changing our laws to deal with. It's well known across Vancouver that the Mexican cartels and 0.67

00:19:35.800 the Chinese triads are in bed with each other. The Chinese look after laundering and they look 1.00

00:19:40.120 after the port and the cartels do whatever they want. The embarrassment to me of this issue being

00:19:45.480 raised and having our leadership scoff at the idea that we were potentially a fentanyl problem when they

00:19:51.720 knew it was all the southern border. And yet the amount of fentanyl that they said that we had found

00:19:57.000 crossing the border was less than the amount sitting on one shelf in one super lab that gets busted with

00:20:02.600 the help of the FBI six months later. I mean, it's just, it's extraordinarily embarrassing when you

00:20:08.200 look at the crisis, the different pillars of crisis, the relationship between China and the United States.

00:20:15.240 I was stunned when Meng Wanzhou was taken by Canada and put under house arrest at one of her

00:20:21.720 three mansions in Vancouver and they illegally took hostage two of our diplomats. The fact that their

00:20:27.880 ambassador wasn't sent packing the next day was extraordinary to me. The Chinese see Canada is

00:20:33.320 incredibly weak and pliable and I don't know why. And I know there's a lot of good work done. There's an

00:20:37.240 incredible young journalist, Sam Cooper, who does exceptional work on, on the Canada's overall security

00:20:45.160 issues, but he is, he is very, yeah, we know Sam. Yeah. And there's others that have done that too,

00:20:50.440 but I think he's, he's exceptional. And, and so I think that for Canada to do any kind of business

00:20:56.360 with China, we've got to not be seen as weak and naive. And unfortunately I think we are seeing that

00:21:01.320 way. And I think we're seeing that way with respect to their secret police stations. We're seeing that way

00:21:05.320 with respect to the way that they have been able to override any kind of common sense on some of the

00:21:10.200 people that are put out for parliament. And you know, CSIS has talked about this. So that's in the

00:21:16.840 background. I understand why you would say you're cynical. I think that as a nation, we've got to be

00:21:22.600 able to do deals with all countries. I'm a free trade maximalist. You know, I think Canada should be

00:21:28.600 working very hard at creating global market infrastructure. I think that for instance, when China,

00:21:35.240 when the U S took over Venezuela and I wrote an op-ed on this, defending it is illegal,

00:21:40.040 uh, that what they did was legal when they were in addition to Maduro. Um, uh, you know,

00:21:46.280 China lost around 550,000 barrels a day from that, uh, incident from Venezuela, Venezuela on heavy crude.

00:21:54.280 Um, Alberta can actually provide all of that. If we reinstate the Northern gateway, uh, we could provide

00:22:02.040 all of that back to China. It would be a $16 billion a year trade for us. It would give us

00:22:08.040 additional leverage in China. We go as 15% more of our output, uh, going in the direction of a, uh,

00:22:14.600 another, uh, superpower other than the United States. It would give us diplomatic leverage in China that

00:22:20.600 actually matters to the Chinese. And it would have been something that I would have loved to have seen

00:22:25.160 come out of the China conversation. So I don't want to be hypocritical in saying there are things that I

00:22:30.280 would love to see us do deals with China. And I think the Americans would have expect us to do

00:22:34.440 that. Uh, the president Trump was asked about this in Seattle. I'm glad they're doing deals to China.

00:22:38.840 Uh, you know, people are realists and Canada needs to be realistic, but I didn't see us do a massive

00:22:44.600 energy deal with China. I saw us allow, uh, EVs into our country. The problem with EVs, by the way,

00:22:50.280 for those who think that the Americans are, are simply trying to be economic bullies, EVs are like, uh,

00:22:56.680 iPhones on wheels. You know, they, they are extraordinary data collection machines. Um,

00:23:03.160 all of the BYD EVs have been kicked out of one country in particular because of the security risks

00:23:09.080 in the metadata that gets transferred back to China. Uh, there's a lot that I think Canada has

00:23:14.200 just been on a vacation from history and the, and the hand is therefore naive about China. And the

00:23:19.480 reason for that is because we're completely protected by the United States from the geopolitical

00:23:25.080 realities that they take on. And so I would, I would love to see us just understand what the

00:23:33.880 Americans have told us several times, which is they're integrating energy security with military,

00:23:40.680 national security, with trade security. And Canada continues to make a series of steps that I think

00:23:47.080 are just naive to the point of reckless with respect to all three. And so we've got to finish our

00:23:54.760 F-35 purchase instead of holding it up for yet another after 20 years, you know, internal, you know,

00:24:03.560 uh, evil gazing around what we're going to do on this. I think we have to expand NORA to include naval

00:24:08.760 security in AUKUS. I think we have to integrate what we're doing in the Arctic with what the Americans

00:24:14.200 are going to be doing with Greenland. I think we have to get on with, with a proper trade negotiation

00:24:19.000 that acknowledges some of the risks that the Americans want us to address. And I think we have

00:24:23.960 to get rid of this decade long experiment with green alarmism and get on with just building Canada's

00:24:32.200 global energy infrastructure. And if we don't, we're going to start to see the country fragment.

00:24:37.560 Well, I think that's what a lot of people are, are speculating about right now. And for all the

00:24:42.520 reasons you've given, we're almost out of time. Let me just ask you this. Uh, I believe you're traveling

00:24:47.640 in your own business trip to the Middle East. Where are you today?

00:24:51.320 Yeah. Middle East right now. I'm in Abu Dhabi right now.

00:24:54.120 Yeah. Uh, how are you finding it?

00:24:56.280 That's incredible. It's, uh, you know, uh, the, the Emirates were a dream, uh, back in the fifties and

00:25:04.600 they, they made it into an extraordinary reality. Uh, there are, there are several countries in the UAE.

00:25:11.160 Dubai is very well known. Abu Dhabi is the largest and the, and the energy rich, uh, nation. Um,

00:25:19.160 you know, Alberta, Alberta could easily be the wealthiest, uh, uh, nation in the world actually

00:25:25.560 with 5 million people and more, more oil than Russia, China, the United States put together

00:25:31.320 and as much gas as Qatar. And this is what I think, uh, Prime Minister Carney has got to be

00:25:36.760 very careful about right now. You can't continue to tie the hands of one of the world's largest

00:25:45.000 energy superpowers, Alberta, behind their back out of some dated idea of what, uh, Eastern-based

00:25:51.960 federalism looks like much longer before you're going to start to just create strains that will crack.

00:25:56.200 The first thing we should do is, what we do is build something in Calgary that's taller than the

00:26:01.240 Brookfield building. That's what I, that's what we say. Well, the Burj Khalifa here is, uh, you know, 0.94

00:26:09.480 Dubai built the Burj Khalifa actually as a tribute to, uh, to the gentleman from Abu Dhabi who built the

00:26:15.800 Emirates. And, uh, uh, you know, it's extraordinary to see what that, what that level of vision can

00:26:21.320 create. And that, that's what I hope for Canada. It's what I hope for Alberta. Um, and I, I think that

00:26:27.560 Mark Carney has a lot of potential. I was one of the very few, I liked the, like you, the, the speech,

00:26:34.680 the way that I like a song, but I, I thought that it was being played by a cover band, not somebody

00:26:40.120 that can speak for Vasslav Havel after writing about sedition when it came to Canadian dissent on COVID.

00:26:47.320 David, we'll leave it there. And thank you for that. When you get back, if you want to find it,

00:26:53.240 finding a 57 Buick, so you don't give all your personal information to the Chinese, you'll join a 0.99

00:26:59.160 few. All right, ladies and, ladies and gentlemen, thank you, David. For not for the Western Standard,

00:27:05.960 I'm Nigel Hannaford.

Western Standard - February 03, 2026

HANNAFORD： Carney talks big in Davos, delivers little at home

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