As someone from the US, I thought we were the leaders in choosing strange government figureheads, until Canada elected the head of a foreign bank as their's.
That speech reminds me of the conclusion the main character in the movie Antz settled on. Being forced to be a cog in the machine is awful and no one should accept it. Instead we should be happy to volunteer ourselves to be cogs in the machine.
Technically Carney was never the head of a foreign central bank; he was the head of a Commonwealth central bank. Canada and the UK do not consider each other to be foreign nations, as evidenced by their exchange of High Commissioners rather than Ambassadors.
It’s an allusion to him previously working as a Goldman sachs banker, Goldman sachs is lovingly referred to as a vampire squid, its tentacles are everywhere.
The King of England is not our head of state, the King of Canada is our head of state. It's an important distinction because the Canadian and British monarchies are legally distinct offices. Canada is not subordinate to Britain like it once was as a colony, and our succession laws, royal titles and even the powers of our monarch are all determined by our law and constitution - not British law.
Mark Carney is born and raised Canadian. Just because he has had an illustrious career internationally does not make him any less Canadian than someone who has lived here their entire lives.
He was here recently to read the speech from the throne and open his new government after the election. It was quite the event with a lot of pomp and circumstance. Very much welcome during these tumultuous times, and a nice reminder of our tradition and history that makes Canada what it is.
He only won because trump said he wanted to make Canada the 51st state and the opposition party didn’t pivot or adjust their campaign to Trump’s rhetoric.
- the NDP and the CPC were both led by deeply unpopular leaders: Jagmeet Singh the silk clad, Rolex-wearing self styled "man of the people" and Pierre Poilievre who is so dislikeable he routinely polls double digits below his party
- Trump threatening to collapse the Canadian economy and/or annex us by force
- Flat economic growth
- Carney's credentials on the economy being unparalleled in Canadian politics (see previous point)
- Voters tired of the far-left big government nanny state philosophy that was the hallmark of the Trudeau governments and Carney successfully presented himself as a centrist
Interestingly, Carney was appointed to the Bank of Canada by a Conservative PM and I'd argue he's got a similar appeal that Trump initially had, but for different reasons: Trump positioned himself as an outsider, and Carney is similarly not a career politician. By contrast his only real challenger (Poilievre) hasn't had a real job in his life and has been living on the taxpayer's dime his entire career.
I think voters in both the US and Canada are sick of slimy politicians.
(Edit: can't reply because rate limited, better go back to pointless discussions about JavaScript. My usage of "far left" should be understood as being relative to the Canadian political spectrum. Justin Trudeau was definitely a very left-leaning PM by any rational measure)
Trudeau outflanked the NDP if you recall the election vs Mulcair, who I liked. Singh for his part did not sound deviate much from Trudeau on social issues.
substitute "communist" for "far-left" and the point still stands. No government in Canada has ever, EVER been far-left unless your definition of "far-left" is welfare capitalism.
CPC was firmly in the lead for the elections before Trumps' attention to Canada and the Liberals jumping on this to frame PP as another Trump or someone who would yield to Trump, both couldn't be farther away from his actual policy stances, but in the age of social media (and I guess major government owned media that does its bidding) that doesn't matter.
That's not my recollection of the events. I think "showed us who he really was" is just the FUD spread by the Liberals. I have left leaning friends and their opinions of PP are totally disconnected from the reality of what he says and does, they are just repeating the talking points they get from their circle.
Nobody wants to debate actual policy and basically we ended up with a different conservative, Carney, whose actual policies are in my opinion iffy ans his performance the same. Scare tactics are easier than policy debate.
I mean… we elect leaders to represent us and protect our country. If the other guy looked like he was willing to give the country away, well, that means he wasn’t the best person for the job. Trump rhetoric just showed us how ready Pierre Pollievre was to lead us: aka, he wasn’t.
That speech reminds me of the conclusion the main character in the movie Antz settled on. Being forced to be a cog in the machine is awful and no one should accept it. Instead we should be happy to volunteer ourselves to be cogs in the machine.