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Carney’s Stuck in the Middle with EU
sourcePrime Minister of Canada Mark Carney is Nervous.
He was angry-nervous when he addressed Davos at the beginning of this year. He was polite-and-firm nervous when he was telling the idiot hegemon of America that he couldn’t, and would never, own Canada.
He brought a different nervous to his address to the European Parliament last week. It was more a rally-the-troops nervous, a nervousness that offers too much, too quickly. He came to Europe as a man in need, trying to protect his people. The Parliament welcomed him. As someone who hasn’t had a lot of good meetings lately, that was probably nice for him.
Mark Carney waits patiently while Trump bloviates about some nonsense.
It is reasonable for the Prime Minister of Canada to be nervous about America, almost unreasonable not to be. May of 2025 was when he had to tell Trump that Canada was not for sale. Carney is someone who famously has a bit of a temper (…and the pride of being a self made man…)
He had to pack that all that fury at the mistreatment and mockery of his country by the venal and stupid American president in the the last “ever” of his statement to a US president threatening his country that Canada would never be for sale.
Carney has more reasons to be nervous than most people realize; all is not well in Canada itself. Pierre Poilievre, the leader of Canada’s right wing is mostly off the board right now, and that leads many people to believe that Carney isn’t facing much domestic trouble.
But in fact, he faces a threat that is existential to the integrity of Canada itself, just when the rest of the world is going crazy as well, which makes it easy to miss the trouble out west in Canada, in a province of only four million people. For him, it’s other, less internationally known right wing crazies who are currently much more dangerous.
Mark Carney Has an Alberta Problem
Carney was born in the Northwest Territories, but he grew up in Edmonton, Alberta. He knows the place well, and he knows its politics. Alberta is so often called the Texas of Canada that’s all a lot of Americans know about it.
Alberta, like Texas, is a petro-land. They like to talk big talk about how they prop up their nation and do all the real work. They also, like Texas, like to talk about how maybe they’d be better off without the rest of liberal Canada dragging them down. And like Texas, it’s mostly big nonsense talk. But, again like Texas, they can be a bit crazy… the roads are long and straight, and you can start seeing things when you’ve been on them hour after hour after hour.
No one brings the high level Canadian Crazy quite like Alberta’s premier, Danielle Smith. She is a former right-wing media personality turned politician, which, I would like to remind Canada, is supposed to be our thing.
Jokers to the North
Smith recently came out against Albertan separation, after being kind of for it for a long time? She’s not very easy to understand. She’s also no where near the craziest, full-on dead-end right-winger in the fight about Alberta’s future in Canada. But as premier she is the responsible party in charge of forwarding the steps towards Albertan secession on the ballot, very soon.
On October 19, 2026, Albertans will vote on referenda that includes taking steps to leave Canada. This is not just because of Danielle Smith, but she is the face of Albertan Separatism, at least right now. She’s for it enough to work to put it on the ballot. Kind of, maybe. She’s also come out against Albertan secession, and I find her very confusing.
The movement has its crazies, but no Nigel Farage-like central figure. My guess is that even Alberta’s craziest couldn’t stomach a Nigel Farage. But they do have their own home-grown madmen, (and they are mostly men) and they have their do-or-die Maple MAGAs.
Mitch Sylvestre runs Stay Free Alberta, which got the signatures to put secession on the ballot in the first place. He is a piece of work all on his own.
Jason Lavigne hosts his own eponymous show. He describes himself as an independent journalist, entrepreneur, and homesteader. So, that tracks. Both have gone hard on independence, have MAGA-coded followings, and seem to have the Right Wing instinct that something is only lawless or crazy if damn liberuuls do it. There are more of these types in Alberta, but as an American I can’t dig too deep into Albertan crazy, and don’t feel like doing it anyway.
Alberta Crazy politics does look more funny than dangerous, especially to American eyes. But then, so did Donald Trump in 2015. Here’s a question I don’t know the answer to: If the referendum fails, but it’s close, or it fails along the way, what will Alberta Crazy say, and who will it say it to?
If an oil rich province of Canada cries out for liberation from Canada (In the form of a podcaster who knows one of Trump’s kids or some nonsense like that) will Donald Trump try to free Alberta from its savage capture by Ottawa, one way or another? Probably not, hopefully not. It seems unlikely. It doesn’t seem impossible.
Prime Minister of Canada Mark Carney is Nervous.
Amongst Friends
Carney’s recent speech to the European Parliament went well.
A man in his element with an audience who loves him.
At the beginning, an AFD right wing chud shouted USA repeatedly in the parliament as Carney took the stage. But other than that brief and weird moment, the room was his. He’s well known in Europe from his time as England’s top banker. He is respected and admired all around the EU, even in some of the more right leaning states. Europeans know how to appreciate a good banker.
He worked the room, giving a barnstomer of a speech. Carney opened talking about Vimey Ridge in WW1, and trees planted between France and Canada.
Anything, absolutely anything, that he could tie the EU to Canada, be it trade, values, history, (but mostly values) he tied together. I believe Carney would have reached for just about anything that could be seen to bind the EU and Canada together.
He talked about Canada’s fossil fuels, almost as if he could redirect them toward the energy hungry EU. But most of their output (that isn’t going to Canada’s unspeakable southern neighbor) is already promised and tooled to go out of BC and across the Pacific. Very little comes east, and even less is in the east naturally. He was suggesting something he couldn’t give, and they must have known it, but the room still loved him.
Still, despite the love from the EU, Mark Carney seems nervous to me.
Carney referred to hegemony only once at the EU Parliament, unlike his repeated references in Davos. He never mentioned America, or its president. He wanted to be with the Europeans, geography and law be damned. He wanted the coalition of middle powers he has envisioned to come alive and restrain the powerful crazy marching across the world. But he can’t be with the Europeans. Logistics and geography won’t allow it.
The hegemon himself hung in the Parliament’s air like a cursed ghost, afflicting not just Canada, but Europe and the world as well. (I imagine this is Trump’s favorite part; knowing everyone is thinking about him, reacting to him, making him a real boy.)
Carney’s speech was truly good, I liked it very much, as did much of Europe. It’s a good watch, if you like that kind of thing. He talked about values, in a way that he could back up, in many cases better than many of the nations in the room. Carney said, “This is about sovereignty. Our ability to live as we wish.” And in this he was completely right. The threats are to our rights, our sovereignty, our peace, our collective future itself – and our future on this planet. But in that august chamber, there is less ability than anyone would like to admit to determine our own futures, in either Canada or Europe.
In the spirit of the moment, perhaps even swept up in the moment, Ursula von der Leyen proposed associate membership to the EU as a status for Canada. But it’s more a synecdoche of the European support; “associate membership” is not a thing. It is something she has seemingly pulled out of her butt. If it was a real thing, that will come as an infuriating surprise in the southeast of Europe. After the work put in by counties like Montenegro, Moldova, and of course Ukraine, they’d probably like to know why they can’t be “associate members” and access the benefits that would theoretically have.
Like his oil moving west to east, it can only be small. But it does also reflect real values, a yearning to stand together in a dangerous world.
The EU loved his speech, his presence. They loved Carney, and the bygone world he represented where a good man could make a fine speech and maybe save the world a little.
“We share one ocean, one set of values, one way of seeing the world. And we will now build our shared future as well,” von der Leyen said of their Canadian guest.
Trump showing off a model of his arch like it’s his favorite toy to the leader of a real, grown up, country.
But that ocean is in practice a barrier to trade and support, and the mad hegemon sits below them, staring at Europe in particular, a Europe further away than Canada, but a place he wishes to dominate for reasons of race and race theory. This world is growing more fragile day by day, not just for the victims of the Trump admin, but for everyone, even the villains. The crops are uncertain under hotter skies. The rains are unpredictable; money itself is slowly losing meaning as the US continues to spiral into madness and treasuries debt.
The EU is nervous.
Perhaps we should all be a bit nervous.
The post Carney’s Stuck in the Middle with EU appeared first on emptywheel.