Recently, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen opened the door to Canada becoming the European Union’s first “associate member.” Carney welcomed the idea before the European Parliament and proposed what he called an “Alliance for the Future.” What exactly would becoming an “associate member” of the European Union mean for Canada, and why is our prime minister embracing the concept internationally before Parliament has had an opportunity to examine what Canadians might be committing themselves to?Canadian prime ministers and cabinets possess considerable authority over foreign affairs. But democracy should involve more than determining how much a government can legally do without first asking Parliament.Carney’s own attendance in Parliament raises the same question. By early July, the House had sat for 137 days since the April 2025 election. Carney attended Question Period on only 36 of them, meaning he was absent about 74% of the time. His office defended that record by pointing to his international responsibilities and noting that cabinet ministers answer questions in his absence. But Question Period exists for a reason. Canada does not elect a president. Our executive government is supposed to remain accountable to the elected House of Commons, and the Prime Minister leads that government. He selects his ministers, assigns their responsibilities, and can remove them. Cabinet ministers may answer questions, but collective responsibility requires them to publicly defend the government’s decisions. They do not provide an independent substitute for questioning the person who determines the government’s overall direction. When the Prime Minister is absent from Question Period three-quarters of the time, Canadians lose regular access to the person with the greatest political authority in the government..Now consider Alberta.Carney’s actions do not give Alberta the legal right to declare independence tomorrow. The Supreme Court made clear in its Quebec Secession Reference that a province cannot leave Canada unilaterally. But the Court also said something equally important: a clear majority voting for secession on a clear question creates a constitutional obligation for the other participants in Confederation to negotiate. So the question is not whether Alberta can simply ignore the Constitution. It cannot. Nor can our Prime Minister.The more interesting question is political. If Ottawa is prepared to use the full reach of executive authority to pursue fundamental changes without first seeking meaningful parliamentary approval, why should anyone be surprised when provinces begin examining the full reach of their own constitutional powers?There is a broader principle involved here: the concentration of decision-making power. That brings me to socialism.Its appeal is easy to understand. It promises greater equality, security, and protection from hardship. It appeals to empathy. Someone has too little, someone else has more, so government steps in to address this apparent ‘inequality’ without ever reviewing how that inequality came about..Consider, for example, the word ‘free.’ It is misleading. Free healthcare still requires doctors, nurses, hospitals, and equipment, all of which cost money. So who actually pays for it? The taxpayer. The cost has not disappeared. Rather than coming directly out of your pocket, it comes out of the pockets of everyone who pays taxes.Socialism is a movement away from individual economic choice and private control of property toward collective decision-making enforced through the state, usually in the name of greater equality. In Marxist theory, socialism is the transition toward communism, whose promised end state is a classless society. But human beings are not interchangeable. We differ in ability, ambition, interests, circumstances, and choices. Remove one basis for inequality, and others remain. A genuinely classless society therefore requires not merely removing privilege but continually suppressing differences in outcomes.I see the same fundamental flaw in every variety of socialism, yet its appeal is obvious. It begins with empathy rather than coercion: someone is suffering, someone else has more, and government promises to make things fairer. Typically, it does so by focusing on emotion, especially empathy, rather than logic and reason. At its worst, that appeal becomes a powerful political tool, persuading people to surrender personal freedoms in exchange for a utopian image that will likely never be attainable.The deeper issue is power..The more decisions society transfers from individuals to the collective, the more somebody must decide what the collective wants, what is considered fair, who should pay, and how much. Those decisions must ultimately be enforced through taxation, regulation, and law.My concern is more basic.Whether it is a king, a prime minister, a bureaucracy, or some international institution, I am suspicious whenever a small number of people acquire increasing power to make decisions for everyone else.I would rather be left alone to see where life takes me.So far, Carney has not thrown away Canada’s rule book. But he is testing how much can be done within it through executive authority rather than parliamentary scrutiny. Those who stretch conventions should not be surprised when others begin asking how far they can stretch them too.That is how the script gets flipped.
