Carney is moving fast and fixing things

The motto of Facebook used to be "move fast and break things".  But really, folks -- that sounds cute but it doesn't actually work out very well, as XKCD says (above) and as Elon has now found out.

In Canada, PM Mark Carney is moving fast and fixing things - in the last two weeks, the Carney government has announced a new student jobs program, the One Canadian Economy bills, improvements to citizenship by descent, the Strong Borders Act, middle-class tax cut, GST relief for new home buyers, and provincial agreements to build more homes.

Monday Carney announced a generational investment in Canada:

We will invest in new submarines, aircraft, ships, armed vehicles, artillery, radar, and drones — equipment that for too long, Canada has let age and deteriorate.

And we’ll rebuild with Canadian steel, Canadian aluminum, and Canadian workers. pic.twitter.com/wg0iFIf60b

— Mark Carney (@MarkJCarney) June 9, 2025

"Mark my words, we're making history"

“Say it loud, Carney’s here….” 👇👇👇🇨🇦#canada #markcarney @MarkJCarney @liberal_party #NeverPoilievre pic.twitter.com/Zt06nfcosk

— Bev 🇨🇦 (@Garnet_2203) June 9, 2025

And here is a roundup of the commentary on Carney's speech:

Declaring that Canada is too dependent on the United States for its defense, Prime Minister Mark Carney on Monday committed to having his country meet NATO’s spending target this year, seven years ahead of schedule.

[image or embed]

— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) June 9, 2025 at 8:30 PM

Mark Carney revives tough talk about America and warns ‘a new imperialism threatens’

[image or embed]

— Toronto Star (@thestar.com) June 9, 2025 at 4:28 PM

Tondra MacCharles / Toronto Star (gift link)

Mark Carney revives tough talk about America and warns ‘a new imperialism threatens’
A Canadian government official told the Star that it is “difficult to say whether or not we’ll get to a deal before the G7.”
...Carney did not use words like “grift” or “hustle” but he also did not mince words when it came to describing the U.S. as abandoning its role as a powerful leader on the world stage in favour of flexing its market muscle.
The sharper rhetoric comes at a time when the prime minister and his officials are scrambling to strike a new “economic and security” agreement with President Donald Trump before next week’s G7 leaders’ summit. Canada’s stated goal is to get Trump to lift tariffs the U.S. president levied on Canada and other global trading partners...
...Carney justified Ottawa’s accelerated military spending as he outlined a “darker, more competitive world” and an “age of disorder” that he said requires Canada to better defend this country and diversify its security and economic partners.
After the Second World War, Carney said, Canada grew more distant from Britain and aligned itself more closely with the U.S., a rapprochement that intensified after the fall of the Soviet Union established the U.S. as the leading world power.
“Its gravitational pull on Canada, always strong, became virtually irresistible and made the U.S. our closest ally and dominant trading partner,” said Carney. “But now the United States is beginning to monetize its hegemony: charging for access to its markets and reducing its relative contribution to our collective security.”
At the same time, Carney said, global “trade routes, allegiances, energy systems, and even intelligence itself are being rewired.”
“Rising great powers are now in strategic competition with America. A new imperialism threatens,” he said, adding at other points in the speech that threats from Russia, China, non-state actors and terrorist organizations are on the rise.
“Middle powers compete for interests and attention, knowing that if they are not at the table, they’re on the menu.”
Carney will host the leaders of the largest western democratic economies, the so-called Group of Seven, next week in Kananaskis, Alta. Trump has said he’ll attend.
Carney has also invited a range of “middle powers” too. Leaders of Ukraine, India, Brazil, South Africa, and Australia are coming. Newly-elected South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, have confirmed in the last two days they will attend.
The Star has learned Carney has also invited Saudi Arabia Crown prince and prime minister, Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of the Saudi kingdom once tied to the order to kill a journalist, whom Trump met last month. The Saudi prince has not formally yet responded to the invitation, an official confirmed to the Star.
...Roy Norton, a former Canadian diplomat who spent years in the U.S. and is now a professor at the University of Waterloo, said in an interview the prime minister’s comments Monday reflect that “Carney understands how all this is evolving. He understands that Trump is not going to change, that we do have to act dramatically, seriously, to strengthen our position globally, that the dependence is unhealthy in the current context, as in, Trump is not going to give us a break.”
“We’ve heard from the U.S. ambassador that we’re just supposed to arrive at a deal, but some measure of tariffs will remain. So they breached the existing deal that he (Trump) signed and instituted tariffs that we consider to be illegal. And we’re supposed to make concessions to arrive effectively at a new deal, with no indication that there’s any reciprocality in terms of willingness on their part to negotiate any of our concerns and accommodate us. And most importantly,” Norton added, “no indication that there will be a pledge to not do this again.”...

“Carney laid out a path to not just making Canada safer, but freeing us from our national malaise. He is killing Canada’s crisis of chronic caution, and in doing so, he is setting this country up to be the best version of itself, at a time when we’ve never needed this more” pic.twitter.com/3iwRn7ocx1

— Evan Scrimshaw (@EScrimshaw) June 9, 2025

Evan Scrimshaw / Scrimshaw Unscripted

Carney, 2%, And The Death Of Cautious Canada
On The Defence Announcement
... I’m extremely happy about this announcement, not because of what it is but what it represents.
One of the problems since Chretien has been a lack of ambition in this country. Trudeau was a departure from that in a couple of ways - the childcare, Pharmacare, and dental care proposals did represent ambition, undeniably - but we came out of the 20th Century with a massive budget surplus and we’ve mostly spent that room on tax cuts. ..
We are an eminently cautious country, the kind of place that looks for ways to get to no. We saw in the pandemic that when there is a will to achieve something we do it. Suddenly the barriers to progress go away the second there’s some pressure. When we want to get things done, we can do it, but we too often focus on the reasons not to - the shareholders and interest groups that don’t want change always matter more. God forbid we change zoning laws, lest we offend the existing residents. God forbid we even have a conversation about wholesale tax reform in this country again, even though we absolutely could use a holistic look at whether there’s more efficient ways to raise the revenues we need.
We see it in our corporate culture, our bureaucracy, and hell even our sports teams...
...As a country we play not to lose, instead of playing to win. We are the prevent defence of countries, parking the bus to avoid screwing up too much. In benign times, it can work. But we have found rocky waters, and caution isn’t enough.
We need to be bold and ambitious on both domestic policy and international affairs. We need boosted defence capacity that renders us less reliant on the Americans, so that it gives us more leverage when negotiating the economic partnership.
...Mark Carney laid out a path to not just making Canada safer, but freeing us from our national malaise. He is killing Canada’s crisis of chronic caution, and in doing so, he is setting this country up to finally be the best version of itself, at a time when we’ve never needed this more.

Cole Bennett / Cole.notcole

Canada Commits to 2% NATO Defence Target Amid Rising Global Tensions
... this is not just about warfighting it’s about rebuilding a full-spectrum military capable of defending Canada’s sovereignty, assisting our allies, and responding to a range of threats at home and abroad.
This decision comes amid an increasingly unstable world order. Russia has moved troops near NATO borders, and many defence analysts warn that Vladimir Putin may test NATO's resolve in Eastern Europe in the near future. Meanwhile, China continues to monitor and surveil Canada’s Arctic, where melting ice is opening up new, potentially contested shipping lanes. The Arctic is poised to become one of the most geopolitically valuable regions on Earth and Canada can no longer afford to be underprepared.
Add to that the ongoing instability in the Middle East and the uncertain future of U.S. leadership, with President Trump repeatedly pressuring allies like Canada to spend more on defence and threatening tariffs and trade retaliation when they don’t.
Mark Carney’s announcement may not silence Trump completely, but it sends a clear message: Canada is stepping up....

Wesley Wark’s National Security and Intelligence Newsletter

At a Hinge moment
Or, speeding cash out the door to build a stronger Canada
I received a somewhat mysterious message from DND on Sunday afternoon inviting me to attend a briefing on defence and security on Monday. Last minute buggers, I thought. Little did I know. The truth began to dawn on me on Monday morning. This was to be a biggee, led off by a speech by the Prime Minister at the Munk School of Global Affairs....
The PM’s speech had an underlying theme: to prove that Canada is no longer a passenger, a free-rider, when it comes to defence and security. He spun a nice phrase: that Canada will have to move from boasting about the strength of our values, to stressing the “value of our strength.”
...There will be a new orientation to Canadian defence policy driven by concerns about the direction of US politics under Donald Trump. At one point in his speech the PM decried the ways in which the US is “monetarizing” its position as a global hegemon, while drawing away from commitments to collective security. He even warned about a “new imperialism” stalking the world....
...This new Canadian defence orientation is aspirational for the moment, but is likely to set quickly. It involves deepening partnerships with democracies and like-minded partners. It involves some loosening of the bonds of the Canada-US security relationship as the US fits less and less well into the world of democracies and the like-minded. It will involve a reinforcement of our Euro-Atlantic strategic focus, not least in the context of the developments in the Russian war against Ukraine, now in its third year. Canada’s involvement in NATO will be a big part of our new strategic posture, with a Canadian contribution to Arctic security seen as a new and fundamental NATO role. The PM signalled that whatever the new NATO goalposts will be on future defence spending, determined at the NATO summit at the end of June, Canada is in.
We will get a further sense of all this with the “immediate design” of a new Defence policy, drawing on the recent experience of our allies and partners, including Ukraine. Whether this will be a stand-alone, or be folded into the promised national security strategy, along with a foreign policy review, remains to be seen. Either way it is an important step, especially if it can be used to foster greater public awareness of the “hinge” moment Canada confronts.
There are two big unknowns ahead. One is the question of the extent to which defence modernization and huge spends in the defence sector can actually boost the broader Canadian economy. The PM acknowledges that it will be “challenging” to protect Canadians while growing the Canadian economy to become, as he has pledged, the strongest G7 economy. But these are the “imperatives” of a more dangerous world.
The other unknown is whether Canadians will answer the call. Will Canadian industry, and not just the old guard defence contractors, be able to take full advantage of these new opportunities for a Canada-first defence manufacturing approach? Will a new generation of young Canadians look to the military for a fulfilling career. Will there be a space in the new military for “digital warriors,” as the UK Strategic Defence Review describes them?
Will we turn in unison to confront the dangers to Canada? That may be the biggest unknown of all...

And the United States is now realizing Canada is going our own way without them:

Washington no longer portrays prominence on the world stage.... apnews.com/article/cana...  Canada plans to hit NATO spending target early and reduce reliance on US defense, Carney says

[image or embed]

— skippyoz (@skippyoz.bsky.social) June 9, 2025 at 3:02 PM

The US is now “monetizing hegemony”. —PM Carney That is perhaps the most precise description of the current situation I’ve heard from a leader of any country, including the EU in six months. Brave and true.

— ChristopherE (@christopher664023.bsky.social) June 9, 2025 at 4:12 PM

What’s the difference between the US and Canada? Canada elected a Carney, and the US elected a clown.

— Steve Hofstetter (@stevehofstetter.bsky.social) June 4, 2025 at 4:40 PM