In the past few months, I have not been alone in suggesting that the people responsible for reporting on President Donald Trump’s tariff threats should read his book about negotiation. If they merely read the second chapter of ‘Art of the Deal,’ there would be a lot less amazement, and a little more confident commentary.Now that Mark Carney has become the Liberal offering to lead Canada, does he have any books of his own to offer as a window on what he really thinks, that might matter to us, but didn’t come up in a leadership campaign during which little of him was revealed anyway?Why yes. In 2021, he published, ‘Values: Building a Better World for All.’Alerted by a recent Jordan Peterson column about it — itself almost book length — we looked at what Mr. Carney, actively advising the Liberal government as he was at the time he wrote ‘Values,‘ thought was… well, valuable.You’re not going to like this.Mr. Carney writes that during the COVID-19 crisis, governments got it right.“In developing a COVID policy framework for the common good, we can take the lessons from climate change… In that case, there is an overarching goal — environmental sustainability — that is set by society’s values of intergenerational equity and fairness. &c.”So all that compulsion, all that trust-the-experts, all the ‘we’ve got your back, we’re in this together’ that led to people spying on their neighbours… there’s a template here. What works for climate change worked for COVID-19 and will work for climate change again. In the hands of a statist technocrat, which Mr. Carney certainly is, there is a system of expert, top-down control the values of which are manifest when — but only if — Everybody Does Exactly What They Are Told. Dissent is unhelpful.Values based upon what Mr. Carney says then, are to be considered the heart of Canadian identity, things like ‘nature, community, diversity, solidarity, fairness, responsibility and compassion.’ And let’s not forget ‘sustainability.’Those are Canadian values?Since when?And what guidance did Mr. Carney take from them as he removed the head office of his Brookfield investment firm from Canada to a more tax-friendly and Trump-ian US environment? (Perhaps pliability and hypocrisy might be added to his list.)Meanwhile, whatever happened to Canadian values like equality before the law, and freedom — the freedom famously articulated by John Diefenbaker — to ‘speak without fear, free to worship God in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, free to choose those who govern my country.’It certainly wasn’t the template for the COVID-19 response; people who spoke fearlessly lost their jobs, churches were closed and if you opposed what you believed was wrong you risked not only job loss, but jail.This suggests that if you believe — as Mr. Carney says he does — that ‘preserving the planet’ is the foundational goal of government and that this nostrum must guide all personal and economic decision making — 'all' you'll note — this top down, we-know-best relationship between governor and governed would be an obvious best practice.Just like COVID-19, then.Listen to the experts and do as you’re told.So perhaps that’s why nobody on the Liberal/NDP side talks much about liberty and free speech, these days. And why would you, if in your religious zeal to fight carbon emissions you want to control where people set their thermostats, how much they drive, whether they drive at all, or whether it should even be legal to express an opinion about it. All of the above facilitated in due course by the development of Central Bank Digital Currencies, perhaps sooner than we think. (The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms will be releasing a study on CBDCs later this week. Watch the Western Standard for exclusive details.)Why would you tolerate free speech and liberty? Again, it’s just not helpful.Such apparently are Mr. Carney’s professed values. But, after ten years of Mr. Trudeau and the glimpse into his own soul that Mr. Carney provides in ‘Values,’ the inescapable conclusion is that the people who have infiltrated the Liberal Party of Canada and now possess its soul would like to define the country’s values in a way that turns most Canadians into peasants, while in a new feudalism they defer to a new elite defined for its moral excellence by its faith in fighting climate change.No thanks.But, when is that going to be the ballot question?Not this time, if Carney is allowed to define it. Watching him on Sunday, it was all old stuff about bribing the public with their own money — dental care, pharma care, support for children. And a sustainable world for them. In fact, I was having flashbacks to the 1980s, when people talked about how Canada’s values rested upon healthcare — nice if you can get it, of course — and the fact that it was a mosaic, not a slightly infra-dig melting pot like the US.But Mr. Poilievre, fie on him, ‘he would let the planet burn.’We know where that thinking leads. It is to the state of institutional weakness in which we now find ourselves.You know, it always puzzled me that all these years an impoverished Cuba — almost a slave state — could exist just 80 miles off the soaring wealth of America. In fact, rich Canadians vacationed in Cuba precisely because it was impoverished, and because therefore Cubans were grateful for anything they could get; on the strength of a pair jeans, you could have a good night out.But there was no mystery. Cuba just reflected the values of those in power. Cubans may not have liked living with Castro’s collective values that left them poor and powerless.But they got used to it. So did Canadians, as they took advantage.Listening to people like Mr. Carney, and appreciating his religious zeal to subordinate every decision that government and citizen alike can make to ‘fighting climate change,’ my fear is that a new poverty of spirit would under his leadership, soon overtake Canadians.The ‘values’ of Mr. Carney will not create a contented people. Instead Canadians will look at the growing prosperity to the south of us — first despairingly, then with resignation — as their country becomes a northern Cuba but without the old cars. No cars? Ah, that's because driving causes carbon and is therefore only for the rich and favoured…
