The system’s power comes not from truth, but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it was true

[Dragonasaurus]

edited to note that should be ‘were’ not ‘was’ in the title!

That’s a quote from Mark Carney’s (excellent) Davos speech. He was talking about geopolitics in its broadest sense, and invoking a description of how both communism, and international rules (which restricted some countries more than others) survived so long. He also said more than once that we need to ‘call it what it is’.

So close Mr Carney! Why are you still unable to recognise how your analysis relates to the belief in gender identity. If only he could get his head around that!

My suspicion is that he knows very well that it's bollocks, but also that it's a big political mess he can't afford.

First one nails it!

Also he has an NB daughter who he sent to GIDS at the Tavistock before it shut down.

Sorry, I can't take Carney seriously. He's Continuity Trudeau without the (albeit fast fading) pretty boy looks and history of Blackface.
There's been no clean break from radical trans ideology, leeching off the US for their defence, open borders, enthusiasm for China, woke crap like the disproven mass indigenous burial sights, full steam to globalisation.
All Carney is saying is he can't trust the US as a reliable friendly partner, so he'll practice his woke globalism with other "third powers".
Just what is so wonderful about this?

1984Now, I really dislike the woke element, but there is no doubt that indigenous people were treated badly and that should be recognised. On a geopolitical level, remember that Canada has wargamed a US invasion and been unable to find a way to defend itself for more than a week. The same is clearly true of most other countries - ask Taiwan or Ukraine. The only way for smaller countries to be safe from bigger neighbours is through defensive alliances. I think that’s a no brainier - you don’t?

Yes I agree he’s quite bust atm!

I also think on the GI agenda, he is heavily influenced by his teenage (?) daughter, which has no place in national policy

And killing off citizens who dare to be poor or depressed or ill.

The MAID program gives me actual nightmares. It is beyond a horror show.

Totally agree with your excellent analysis. We also need the likes of Carney, the Democrats in the US etc to accept the part they played in creating this mess. Their willingness to lie to the electorate on this issue was a major part of the reason Trump could position himself as a truth-teller. Sadly, I’m not sure they ever will and the world will go on being the way it is.

Absolutely. You just have to look at who is doing the dying.

It's not rich old white guys...

And a lot of UK politicians seem eager to have the same thing.

How do you know this?

I think we're in an age of rival ideologies facing each other off and one in which both sides are prepared to use force and/or violence to achieve their aims.

It is relatively common knowledge, afaik. The daughter wrote about it, I believe; it was then reported in other places.

I believe it was one of the Canadian women who was offered MAID instead of treatment for her cancer (which she subsequently had treated successfully, with crowdfunding, in the US), who said that you cannot ethically offer government-sponsored suicide if your healthcare system is in any way broken. Because of course it is more efficient to euthanise people with complicated medical needs than it is to address those needs.

This is an important point, which I hope UK politicians take more seriously than Canada has

Nothing wonderful about Carney. Would you like to say that the Republic of Ireland leaches off the UK for its defence, btw? For context, the UK protects the Republic's air and sea space and the country is reliant upon the UK for defence (which they don't talk about too much).
If you wouldn't like to traduce RoI why are you traducing Canada?
NB Globalisation does little to benefit women.

It's par for the course for leaders to have a backstory, the question is does their position on one area totally discredit their position on all others? That's a tricky question, I'm not sure about it.

Countries and their leaders are very good at talking the talk of freedom and rights and so on while committing war crimes in their own back yard - UK history provides many examples. Does that invalidate everything they say, or are there broad principles that are valid, even when spoken by the imperfect and the hypocritical?

For the record, since it has been brought up, I am glad that countries like Canada have given the possibility of being offered release from suffering when gets too much to bear. I am hoping for the offer of the same possibility if/when I reach that stage.
I believe that possibility should be available for everybody if they so choose, old rich white guys included - suffering is no respecter of class race or sex.

I agree. I just wish that they didn’t offer it in response to, eg, requests from a disabled mother for more aid so that she could better care for her children. There is so much overreach in the Canadian MAID program that I genuinely fear for my family who live there.

I agree that overreach is bad.

Where I disagree with you, @MarieDeGournay (and in general you and I agree on most topics) is "suffering is no respecter of class, race or sex "

On the contrary, suffering falls disproportionately on the poor, the poorly educated, the first nations population and women.

For me, offering to euthanise those populations rather than putting in measures to alleviate the pressures and suffering for them is financial pragmatism masquerading as compassion.

Unless it's a free choice in a society with good healthcare and pain management available, as well as social care, it's a system that can too easily end up killing people who ought to have a decent quality of life.

I'm saying that it's all very well, and maybe understandable with MAGA next door, to distance from America in the post liberal world we're heading into, but if your defence has always been shoestring while you've chosen to totally rely on the US, you're in no position to claim you have the solution with a new third way.
Can anyone genuinely see Canada hitting 3% of GDP long term for defence, let alone 5%, the bare minimum needed to be free of the US?
Thatcher hit 6% in the 80s, and these are the sums needed if Canada is going to peel away from America.
Then again, collapsing all those DEI initiatives that Trudeau has installed would be a good start to finding the cash.
If Carney thinks the future is some sort of alliance of Western nations excluding the US, larger reliance on China, while maintaining open borders net zero intersectional max cultural globalism, I think this will fail.
Ireland is not a good comparison, they're neutral (not even in NATO), so their low defence spending springs from this. But like Canada, have always benefited from the Americans de facto vowing to protect them, and of course us.
This isn't automatic anymore.
Let's here Carney attack the Chinese as much as the Americans.
Then I'll believe he really wants a genuine third way.

100% this.

ETA - Canada thinks it is/has all of these things. It does not.

Some general thoughts:

While Carney was an adviser of the Trudeau government, I am not inclined to place too much blame for that shit show on him. Trudeau was a moron, and by all accounts ran a PMO that was at the same time authoritarian and sloppy. Carney seems a lot more willing to change direction where required and be pragmatic - time will tell if it's a substantive change but by all accounts he doesn't accept sloppy work from MPs or the civil service.

I also wouldn't necessarily draw conclusions from the fact that he sent his daughter to the Tavistock, at the time that likely would have been what people like GPs and all those in his social circle were reccomending without much exposure to contrary thoughts. I suspect from the form some of his responses to questions have taken that he's followed the debate on this in the UK as it's developed. I have no idea what his personal conclusions about it are but I expect he could outline some of the major points.

Since he's taken office he's been pretty laser focused on economic issues, and has barely mentioned most of the controversial social issues. The economy is undoubtedly the first thing that vast majority of Canadians are really concerned about, the second being immigration, and with a close third being national security issues given Trump's rhetoric, which may not actually be as significant but many people are worried about it.

As far as the big social issues and in particular GI, they are only going to be divisive from Carney's POV, he could not win no matter what he does or says. There is a very long way to go in Canada to get to where the UK is and it may require some significant work in the civil service and within institutions like the CBC, and there is already constitutional protections and god knows how tat will be dealt with. It's instructive I think that even when the Conservatives looked like they would win, they stayed very far away from the trans debate.

Most of Carney's moral authority is being used up, I think, on the immigration issue, because while the vast majority of Canadians think it needs to be addressed there is that contingent within the Liberal Party who see it as a betrayal - he seems to be throwing them the bone of the gun registry, maybe because even though it is stupid he thinks it can only do limited damage. He's even being fairly quiet on indigenous issues.

Some of these things are going to have to be addressed, indigenous issues probably most urgently, and I think GI will become urgent in Canada as the lawsuits and medical issues begin to grow. I would not be shocked to see those as second term questions for Carney. What might be an indicator sooner is what he does about the CBC and civil service, internally. He's trying to rebuild the CBC which has been financially decimated, but will he clean house or try and enforce some real journalistic standards is what I am curious about in the next two years. As far as GI, I hope he will be sensible but by no means confident.

The indigenous issue in Canada goes way beyond their "suffering being recognised." I really wish people in the UK and Europeans would start to understand why it's so divisive if they are going to talk about it. Instead they still point to things like the news reports of hundreds of children's bodies discovered, none of which has materialised, every excavation has turned up no bodies at all.

Beyond that serious issues now with land rights, fisheries, lack of all enforcement by DFO and loss of licenses of non Native fishers, sale of cannabis outside of reserves, continues massive payouts, and gun and drug running across the border, churches being burned down including some of the oldest Native church congregations in Canada...

It's a big mess and with the land issues, they will come to a head sooner rather than later because it has real potential to crash land ownership across the country.