Prime Minister Mark Carney has faced two critical but unrelated challenges with performative techniques that have sparked understandable skepticism from the target audiences. In both cases—the urgent need to build infrastructure for transporting oil to tidewater and overseas markets, and the failure to counter the worst antisemitism since the Second World War—Carney has described the problem but failed to identify the underlying cause or take meaningful corrective action.
Pipelines and Energy Development
Soon after his election, in a complete reversal of decades of climate alarmism, Carney spoke about the urgent need to develop Canada's vast resources. More recently, there has been encouraging talk about building an oil pipeline to the West Coast, following a “grand bargain” memorandum of understanding with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. However, regulatory impediments remain, including the “no-pipeline” Impact Assessment Act, the northern B.C. tanker moratorium, the expensive Pathways carbon capture and storage boondoggle, high industrial carbon pricing, and fierce opposition from B.C. Premier David Eby and Nisga’a Lisims First Nation, whom Carney had verbally granted an effective veto. Last week, Ottawa delayed important changes to environmental reviews of major projects. Unless governments significantly de-risk the oil project, no private company will invest capital, given the cost ($30-40 billion or more), political and regulatory complications, and long-term oil-market uncertainty. No wonder many Albertans are skeptical.
Not only are greenhouse gas emissions from the oilsands too small (roughly 0.15 per cent of global emissions) to have a measurable impact on global temperature, but science and public opinion about climate change are moving away from the climate hysteria of the past three decades. Canada is increasingly isolated in its obsession. Rather than getting credit for its zeal, it is viewed with frustration by countries that need its oil and bemusement by countries moving heaven and Earth to develop and export their own fossil fuels.
Antisemitism and Community Concerns
As for antisemitism, although it has been escalating since Hamas’s brutal attack on October 7, 2023, Carney only addressed the issue last week, albeit not to Parliament or the nation but to a carefully chosen audience in a traditionally Liberal synagogue, which was given no opportunity to ask questions. He avoided the elephant in the room by declining either to identify the main sources of antisemitism—radical Islamism and the Decolonial Left—or to acknowledge the failure to vet immigrants for potential hostility to Canadian values.
Tellingly, the words “Zionism” and “Israel” did not cross Carney’s lips when speaking to a community whose Book of Psalms expresses thousands of years of longing for its spiritual homeland. Criticism of Israeli policy is entirely legitimate—Israel’s own citizens are some of its fiercest critics—provided it does not impose a higher standard on Israel than on any other country, a lower standard on its enemies, or collective punishment on Canadian Jews, who are not responsible for Israel’s actions. Anti-Zionist calls for eliminating the Israeli state cross a red line, and not only because they are transparently antisemitic.
Public Skepticism and Lack of Action
Carney’s initiative for dealing with antisemitism was the re-announcement of an Advisory Council on Rights, Equality and Inclusion. But the Jewish community doesn't need another study by a committee. In both cases, domestic and external realities have forced Carney’s hand. Canadians are reeling from economic difficulties, including United States tariffs, even as European and Asian countries plead for access to Canada's vast oil and gas resources. Canada’s reputation for fairness and safety is being sullied internationally because of hundreds of brutal acts of hostility and violence targeting the Jewish community, its institutions, and its businesses.
