A Canadian Crossroad: New World Order Versus Old World Values

by Larry McCloskey (May 2026)

Contemporary Canadian politics reflect our complacent mindset wherein nothing much matters because nothing much happens in our vast northern nothingness. I’m being a bit facetious. Canada is truly blessed with abundant resources, and is spared most of the difficulties other countries have to face on a daily basis. And yet, our relative inconsequence on the world stage doesn’t prevent us from exercising an assumed prerogative to slag places of great consequence—most notably the United States—with impunity.

For all the pretence of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s ‘elbows up’ campaign, both our economy and relevance to the world, is down. During Justin Trudeau’s ten-year tenor of progressive terror, the American economy grew by 20% while Canada achieved a total ten year marker of 1%. Since the Liberal party baton was handed to Carney, his big plans, amplified by compliant media, have resulted in continued negative outcomes without scrutiny.

There is also that matter regarding how Canada is viewed by those of consequence. On progressive, globalist issues unrelated to Canada’s self-interest, Trudeau often declared we, that is he, would lead the world. Billions spent, no outcomes achieved, little worldwide notice, and absolutely no leadership recognition even from the Davos crowd. Carney at least got notice at Davos for his ‘new world order’ speech. Carney confidently declared our special relationship with the United States to be over—that would be with the biggest economy, greatest military and longest shared border in the world—while knowing Canada has lost a trillion investment dollars in the last ten years. Globalists and Trump haters titillate at the prospect of ending American economic hegemony for a shared, if vague, notion of Utopian new world order. If only.

For better or worse—and the evidence is overwhelmingly better—we are tethered to, protected by, and prosperous because of an American-led old world order that in large part created the conditions that made possible what Canada is today. In 2025, fully 71.1% of Canadian exports flowed to the United States, and, they in turn supplied 60% of our imports. These percentages account for 3.6 billion dollars in daily import and export trade, or 1.3 trillion US dollars each year. This trade volume cannot be replicated buying Chinese EV’s and selling China canola seed—Canada’s current plan. China, our second largest export trading partner, comes in at a measly 4.6% total.

Even if you are willing to overlook Chinese surveillance, corruption and election interference in Canada—which if so, is efficacious of corruption—finding new trade partners, including giving away a couple provinces, can never replicate the percentage of trade that currently exists with the United States. That is, it cannot be done without penury, stagflation, economic run, and bankruptcy. And if our level of trade was a big problem during these post-war decades of prosperity, why has concern only come to light during Carney’s new world order debacle?

Ironically, Canada’s groundswell of American antipathy—a sort of Trudeauesque post-nationalism nation’s new nationalism—could bring to fruition the economic ruin and threat to Canadian sovereignty that Carney was elected to protect. Trump’s 51^st state comments tanked conservative Pierre Poilievre in the federal Canadian election, but for all Trump’s bluster and braggadocio ways, the last thing the Republican party would want is 40 million New Democrat voters. Trump’s comments were unwarranted, unwelcome, completely inappropriate—particularly during an election—but it is our reaction to Trumps’ comments that has impaled us. Unfortunately, Carney has found the trick formula—he was elected as a negative response to Trump, and has gone up in the polls after taking a decidedly negative, anti-American stance on all substantive issues. The problem is, a policy of opposition to all things Trump is a self-inflicted wound, and decidedly not in Canada’s interest. Resolving trade issues is a problem needing to be solved; sticking it to Americans can only exacerbate the existing problem. One of the great fallacies of modern life is to assume an existing problem cannot get worse.

As for trade, sure, lets expand, seek other trade partners, and be tough in negotiations  with the United states—as long as these efforts serve Canada’s best interests. But something has fundamentally changed in Canada. Discussions have shifted from dispassionate self-interest into a habitual anti-American, virtue-signalling, knee-jerk response. The implications are huge and immediate. Carney talks globalist blarney, and real numbers attesting to economic demise fall on deaf ears. Canadians are metaphorically singing, ‘row, row, row your boat gently down the stream’, and we have named the stream after that great river in Egypt, denial.

Countries world-wide are clamouring for access to the American market, and we indignantly wring our collective hands at having to endure another minute of American arrogance. We have our pride after all, ignoring that pride is the most egregious of the seven deadly sins. Our opposition to all things American, otherwise known as Trump hating, should not be the issue that defines national self-interest. Another point of the obvious that has been lost in the current dialogue: liking Trump is also not required for making dispassionate decisions about national self-interest. Liking and disliking are equally irrelevant, and yet have determined the outcome of elections.

This past week in Canadian politics is instructive for how we arrived into this sorry state. The federal National Democratic Party, NDP, had a leadership convention. The leftist NDP has traditionally been Canada’s third party, fancying itself as Canada’s conscience. And in fact, for decades the NDP pushed Canada on social issues, most notably, decades ago, on health care legislation. In recent years, they welded power far beyond their number of legislative numbers by propping up a minority Liberal government; they being the great enablers of the Trudeau fiasco.

Much like American Democrats, the Canadian Liberal party has shifted left-ward in recent years. (Parenthetically, leftists in Canada and the United States tend to deny this obvious left-ward shift for reasons that escape me. Even Bill Maher, who built a career lampooning politicians, left and right, has recently been accused of becoming a loathsome creature of the right to which he has responded: I’ve stayed the same, but the policy landscape shifted leftward leaving me behind). In doing so, the Liberal Party out-flanked the NDP for leftist turf, and as seems to be the way of left-leaning parties when confronted with evidence of leftist dysfunction, they double down and deny.

The NDP convention last week was notable for its revelation of the bizarre. The convention was a metaphor for modern thinking— all ideological pretence and completely absent of non-ideological content. Obsession over identity politics was exposed to be in the category of you can’t make this stuff up. The in-fighting was not about creating positive change; rather it displayed identity politics at its petulant and histrionic worst. Debates raged in performative art fashion over privilege— privilege being that thing we were all supposed to get rid of—due to perceived entitlement by virtue of membership in designated tribes whose hierarchical pecking order has yet to be worked out. It was a slugfest, blood sport contest over who gets what privilege, all contested in the name, but not substance, of equity. Oxymoron seems fitting descriptive, exposing that the ruination of many concepts exists in its unregulated execution. As a result, the NDP cannot make a case, cannot even pretend to make a case for being elected, let alone run the country except into the ground.

Same, with slightly less histrionics, regarding the Liberal’s newly minted, most undemocratic seat majority by opportunistic default. With four Conservative members of parliament shamelessly crossing the floor to the Liberal party, Liberals now hold an illiberal majority. No by-election as a result of floor crossings, no accountability to voters, no media scrutiny, no issue in Canada. No democracy in sight.

Mark Carney was chosen to lead Canada into economic recovery because of some vague idea that a background in economics will somehow negate his ideological views and make his unworkable economic intentions work. And how do Canadians square the circle of Carney’s record with his recent vague elbow’s up declarations? They don’t. We believe what we are told. No amount of separation between Carney’s economic promise and lack of delivery on said promises has any negative consequence to Carney or his party. Even the revelation of Carney’s personal assets—a disclosure required by those entering into political office—failed to move Canadians into realizing that his rhetoric about Canada’s economic potential has no substance. Of his 567 declared personal investment holdings, only three are in Canada, with fully 88% held in the United States. Carney clearly does not believe the economic future belongs to Canada. And being in a position to ensure it is not, one has to concede he is right.

And yet, Carney was able to resurrect the inept Liberals because of the very tangible reality of President Donald Trump. Canadians believed, and astonishingly, still believe that Carney is the answer to Trump, to Canadian prosperity, to Canada’s place in the world among emerging global utopias.

Astonishingly and depressingly, the political currency that sells today—Donald Trump being the notable exception— is being nice and saying nice things. If niceness doesn’t transfer into nice outcomes, Canadian politicians are able to nicely escape the consequences of their un-nice promises, with more niceness. After ruining Canada’s economy, and arguably moral fibre, Justin Trudeau is hanging with Katy Perry in fashionable locations like Davos and California. Must be nice.

For Canadians who think today’s Canada rocks the world, notice how often mention of Canada comes up in conversation or in the news when travelling in other countries. This is not a knock on Canada, but our confident repudiation of all things American despite continued dependence we can hardly admit to, is proof of low to no confidence.

During the Second World War—Europe’s war, not ours—Canada stepped up and punched above its weight, achieving far beyond our obligation as a commonwealth country. Interestingly, we were more subservient to Britain than we have ever been to the United States. But the greatest generation did not lack confidence; they were adults asking where they could serve rather than petulant children demanding to be served. Case in point: at the end of the Second World War, Canada had the fourth largest airforce and third largest navy in the world. Parenthetically, my dad enlisted in the navy in 1939, age 18, was severely injured during a convoy crossing, was urged to take an honourable discharge, but instead came back to active service, often in great pain, after one year of rehabilitation. This drive to suffer in service came out of a deep sense of duty that no longer exists, and is hardly understood. Dad’s story of service and duty was not something he told us about as we grew up; instead, by piecing together bits of information from various sources, we were able to pull this narrative from him towards the end of his life. Dad would not recognize Canada today; the greatest generation would not appreciate a nation that thinks itself great without matching deeds.

Canadians are known to be nice. This stereotype fits nicely. It is nice to be nice, but not only. There are times when nice has to be replaced by a steely-eyed uncompromising determination, truculence, toughness. Trump is not nice. But in taking down Russian and Chinese allies Venezuela, Iran, and likely Cuba— with deep implications for Canada, democracy and civilization—one has to re-evaluate the currency of niceness versus truculence. Rather than living up to our NATO obligation of 2% defence spending, Canada has traditionally taken a pass. Why sweat defence when the Americans will defend us for free? When the Russia-Ukraine war broke out, Canadian Liberal Minister Melanie Joly famously responded to a question about our contribution to world conflict with, “we are good at convening meetings.”

Rather than being known for being nice, perhaps we can aim to be known for living up to what we value and believe in. Not the niceness of ideology, but the difficult path of doing what is right in a world where much is wrong; that is, as Churchill once quipped, exceeding our best effort towards doing “what is required.”

In recent years, Obama, Bono and the Canadian government have promoted versions of, “the world needs more Canada.” These endorsements have been used to promote ideological issues, so high on the nice-o-meter, but lacking substance for any notion of what is required in the world. What the world needs—that is, what it notices and gravitates to—is relevance mitigating difficult world issues—war, terrorism, energy, mass migration, and the like. For the world to need more Canada, the world would first have to be aware of our existence.

Perhaps, it is not whether the world needs more Canada; perhaps, Canada needs greater share of the world’s problems and responsibility for what we can do in service to what is required. Political posturing—a Liberal party performative-art constant—is not what is required. Palestinians are never going to get a two-state solution unless they forego Hamas’ constitutional commitment to obliterate the state of Israel; the Middle-East is never going achieve peace with Iran’s support of terror and pursuit of nuclear weapons that they would surely use; Canada is never going to dissuade China from human rights abuses by buying Chinese EV’s; Venezuelan people were never going be prosperous without ousting President Maduro; Iranians are never going to be free under the thumb of a brutal theocracy (evidenced by 40,000 or so murdered in recent months); Canada is never going to be healthy, wealthy and wise by being nice.

To prevent niceness from metastasizing into its opposite, it has to follow upon doing the hard stuff, of actually leading the world by way of commitment and example, without a preening pretence of leadership, as is the Liberal party way. When the ruin of Carney has come to fruition, I hope Canada has learned what is required, forgoing new world order future ambitions for being a contributing player in the messy world of today. Then, and only then, will anyone be able to say with sincerity and integrity, the world needs more Canada.