COOPER: Is it Europe's anti-democratic tendencies that attracts Mark Carney?

The picture of Mark Carney with French President Emmanuel Macron showed him with his left hand draped around Macron’s left shoulder, his right held by both Macron’s. The wattage of their collective smiles could light up a coal mine. Clearly, they are best buds.Carney had the same grin on his face when he met the King. The monarch, however, had an ironic smile when looking down his nose at his former servant, the governor of the Bank of England. Carney did crack a joke: “bit of a disaster today, sir. My Order of Canada pin broke.” Poor Mark. Charles then quipped: “do you want mine?”Granted, one does not grip and grin with H.M. the King, but Carney is clearly at ease with European monarchs and presidents..In Paris Carney claimed to be there “to ensure that France and the whole of Europe works enthusiastically with Canada.” He then pronounced Canada to be “the most European of non-European countries.” He may even have meant it, since unlike nearly every other political leader, he has not visited President Trump as his first order of business.But beyond delivering what he thought was a snub to the American president, whatever did his unusual and coded words to Macron mean?A clue may be found in a recent Abacus poll that indicated 46%, nearly half of all Canadians, thought that joining the European Union would be a good idea. About half that number thought that joining the US would be preferable. Canadians don’t seem to like Canada much anymore. For Liberals, that’s an opportunity!.Perhaps Carney was just reflecting the short-term response of his fellow citizens who seem to prefer the quiet and oppressive conventions of EU politics to the disruptions initiated by the Trump administration. This would certainly make sense to the quintessential Davos Man who, like his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, maintains friendly ties to China. But what would it mean for ordinary Canadians, as the NDP used to say?A hint was delivered in the response of the Europeans to the remarks that Vice-President J.D. Vance delivered a couple of weeks ago at the Munich Security Conference.Remember the context. The new American Secretary of Defence, Pete Hegseth, had a few days earlier criticized the major European countries (that would include France and Britain) for free riding on the United States for their defence. That is certainly one “European” characteristic Canada shares with them.The vice-president seconded Hegseth’s remarks and added that the greatest threat to the continent was not Russia or China, but “from within.” In particular, the European governing elites had grown afraid of their voters and had neglected their voters’ concerns. By shutting down dissenting voices, Vance said, Europeans were no longer defenders of democracy. Today they seem to prefer what Tocqueville called “soft tyranny.”Many Canadian observers have noticed how Carney has shielded himself from any but the bought-and-paid-for legacy media. And even with them he showed he doesn’t like questioning voices. Hence his testy and thin-skinned objection to a perfectly reasonable question from a Globe and Mail reporter about his potential conflicts of interest.As evidence of other threats to European democracy, Vance pointed to a Brit who was arrested, charged, and convicted for praying silently outside an abortion clinic. For good measure, he added that the British government had betrayed Brexit voters by inviting into the country such a large and dubious collection of immigrants. Does that sound familiar?In Munich, the delegates sat in stunned silence. After Vance ended his talk, they could speak of nothing else, and not in a nice way.What Vance’s talk signalled as loudly as the president’s remarks about Canada is that the long-standing consensus was exhausted. In the past the U.S. defended Europe’s eastern frontiers and ignored European internal affairs. Vance reversed this: European internal affairs were the problem, not external threats.The establishment Germans were especially apoplectic. Boris Pistorius, the German defence minister, said Vance’s remarks were “unacceptable.” He did not say they were untrue. The Germans were in the midst of a general election. Not surprisingly, the traditional parties, the Social Democrats and the Christian Democratic Union, saw Vance’s speech as an endorsement of a decidedly non-traditional party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), conventionally denounced as “far right” and ostracized by the legacy German media. Although Vance did not meet with the outgoing Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, he did find time to meet with the AfD leader, Alice Weidel, a lesbian married to a Sri Lankan woman, Sarah Bossard. This is the leadership of the German “far right?”.There were a lot of other things Vance didn’t say about the Europeans that might help explain why Carney finds them so attractive. For example, Vance said nothing about the EU’s plan, brought to light only last January, to take down the Hungarian economy because their Prime Minister, Victor Orbán, had regularly violated the expected submission to the demands of the Brussels’ bureaucracy. Does this bear a family resemblance to Ottawa’s efforts to dismantle the Alberta economy?Nor did Vance mention the ancient history of the Austrian Peoples’ Party, forbidden by Brussels to form a coalition with the Freedom Party a quarter century ago or an even earlier command by the EU when Denmark refused to endorse the Maastricht Treaty. The Danes were told to keep going back to the polls until they voted the right way. Then they wouldn’t have to vote any more. Or there were the massive fines imposed by the EU on the Poles a few years ago because Brussels did not agree with the Law and Justice party that was intent on firing several former Communist judges. In short, bureaucratic repression of political actions they don’t like has a longer history in modern Europe than the repression of the truckers’ convoy by their Canadian counterparts.So, it’s not just immigration and its consequences for housing affordability or energy and environmental policy that sets Carney apart from most Canadians. By pretending that we are all wannabe Europeans, Carney is also letting us know he would like ignore democracy if it results in incorrect outcomes. Just like they do in Europe.