The Muse

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at Davos on January 20 may mark a turning point in our collective understanding of international relations and power structures alike. 

However, the contents and lessons of Carney’s speech ring too little, too late. While, for many across the Western world, this signifies what the prime minister describes as the end of the “rules-based international order,” the final straw for Western countries is telling. 

Carney’s speech will likely go down in history. While I understand the importance, gravitas, and eloquence of Carney’s speech—and even conditionally agree with most of it—there is a large, looming elephant in the room. The world order he describes has not “ruptured”—it never existed to begin with. 

“What does it mean for middle powers to ‘live the truth?’ First it means naming reality. Stop invoking ‘rules-based international order’ as though it still functions as advertised,” said Carney towards the end of his speech. 

His wording is important here: “as though it still functions as advertised” implies that the old international system used to function as advertised, based on shared principles. 

Carney said that we must rebuild our international order upon the mutual cooperation of middle powers, implying there is something to be rebuilt. There is not. There is nothing to go back to. 

This is my issue with Carney’s speech. It is impossible to decry the facade of the liberal international order while also implying that it can be rebuilt or reformed. 

We are only now speaking up against the “recent” shift because it threatens our economy. 

We are only now speaking up because it threatens our allies. 

We are only now speaking up because the victims look like us, because the victims will be us if we do not speak up. 

Carney’s use of Vaclav Havel’s analogy of the shopkeepers under Soviet rule is clever. It implicitly denounces any alternative form of governance than neoliberal capitalism (he is speaking at the World Economic Forum, after all), and it cutely places the so-called “middle powers in the shoes of the powerless and oppressed. 

But we did not just happen into the situation we find ourselves in, and we were certainly not oppressed into it. 

Why did we not speak out when the United States destabilized Latin America and the Middle East through foreign intervention? 

Were we oppressed into helping the United States kill millions of people in the War on Terror? 

Were we oppressed into shipping arms to Saudi Arabia and Israel, making us complicit in genocide in Yemen and Gaza? I think not. 

We have upheld the collective illusion of rules-based international order so long as it served our interests. As long as we benefited from it, the system was functioning as intended. 

Carney admitted this, listing the benefits of American hegemony: trade, stability, security. Those benefits did not magically appear just because agreements were signed—they were killed for.

Here we find the hypocrisy of the liberal world order: economic coercion and threats to Western countries’ sovereignty are unacceptable, yet the atrocities mentioned above have been met with silence. 

For too long we have treated the United States as our hitman. Sometimes we supplied the ammo. Other times we drove the getaway car. What we are experiencing now is a perverted form of blowback. 

I am sure many international relations experts and political junkies alike watched Carney’s speech, mouths agape. For the first time since the liberal world order began, we saw a Western world leader reveal its hypocrisy to Canada and the world.

Carney’s analysis is an important first step, but it is incomplete. While he recognizes the problem with the liberal world order, his solution is simply more liberalism—mutual cooperation, free trade agreements, and the formation of international organizations—hollow, empty liberal institutions.

They are exactly what got us here. Carney’s solutions clearly have not met his analysis. 

Carney is right—we should not mourn nor feel nostalgic towards the old world order. However, that does not mean we should not reflect on it; if we do not learn about the reality of our role in international history, then we will be doomed to repeat it. 

The world order we once thought existed can never be brought back, because it never did exist, not even for a second.

The Online News Act, also known as Bill C-18, received royal assent in 2023. It was intended to strengthen the financial sustainability of Canadian news media. However, it has caused far more harm than good to the press in this country, and it is time for Bill C-18 to be repealed.

The idea behind the legislation was that tech companies and social media websites took money away from Canadian news organizations by allowing users to share links to their  websites. Therefore, to make these companies ‘pay their fair share,’ the federal government gave platform owners two options: negotiate with Canadian media outlets, individually or collectively, or negotiate with government on their behalf. 

Tech companies responded harshly to this legislation. Google initially said it would not display content from Canadian news media before eventually backing down. However, Meta—which owns Instagram and Facebook—banned Canadian news media on its platforms, blocking the accounts of the CBC, NTV, VOCM, CTV, The Telegram, The Independent, CHMR, The Muse and preventing users from sharing links to their websites.

This ban has significantly hindered Canadians’ access to news. 

Many Canadians, particularly Canadian youth, consume the news by clicking on an article link posted by a mutual on a social media platform or by watching a reel posted by the CBC while doomscrolling. 

Not everyone has cable anymore to watch the nightly news, and how many people listen to the radio in the car instead of hooking up their playlist to Bluetooth? Removing the ability to consume news on social media prevents many Canadians from becoming informed on current affairs. 

Now, you would be right to ask, “Since only two platforms banned Canadian news, can’t you just consume it on other platforms?” 

However, according to Environics Research, as of 2025, 67 per cent of Canadians use Facebook and 41 per cent use Instagram, the two platforms that currently ban Canadian news. This number is much higher than platforms that do not ban it, with TikTok at 18 per cent and X, formerly known as Twitter, at 17 per cent.

The Meta ban only exists because of Bill C-18, and almost three years since its passage, Meta has shown no sign of wavering from its decision. 

Informed citizens are extremely valuable to a country. Bill C-18 impedes the ability of Canadians who aren’t news junkies, visiting news websites daily, from becoming informed. This was evident the same year the bill was passed, when devastating wildfires affected much of the country; however, Canadians were not permitted to share news links with wildfire updates on Meta social media platforms, putting lives in danger. 

As conspiracy theories and misinformation run rampant on the country’s most active social media platforms, the absence of trusted news organizations to provide users with factual information is extremely worrying.

To keep us safe and informed, it’s time to repeal the Online News Act and allow Canadian news on the country’s most popular social media platforms.

Got opinions? Send us letters or opinion pieces to editor@themuse.ca.

Last week, Prime Minister Carney travelled to Beijing to meet with Chinese leaders including President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang, and secured a new “strategic partnership” between Canada and China.

This marks a notable turning point in relations between the two countries, as the previous decade had seen a souring of diplomatic ties between Ottawa and the Chinese government during Justin Trudeau’s tenure as Prime Minister.

This new partnership comes in the face of increasing instability and uncertainty in Canada’s relationship with the United States, as President Trump and his administration have not only targeted Canada with tariffs and restrictive trade policy, but have also made unsettling claims about making Canada the 51st State.

Under the second Trump administration, Canadian opinion of the United States is at a historic low, and a majority of Canadians support diversifying Canada’s trading partners.

When it comes to relations with China in particular, there has been a staggering turnaround in Canadian public opinion. A recent Ipsos poll found that 54 percent of Canadians support “closer trade ties and economic agreements with China,” compared to data from 2020 in which eight out of ten Canadians wanted less reliance on the Chinese market.

However, the stark change in how the Canadian public feels about Chinese relations is much less surprising when considered in the context of a seemingly rogue United States, which has not only been unreliable and unpredictable on trade, but has also been reckless in their foreign policy more broadly, including the latest row over Greenland and threats to several Latin American countries. 

There is a reckoning that needs to happen regarding the failure of Canada’s decades long policy of economic and security integration with the United States, and how this policy has left us vulnerable and dependent as a nation.

But as the past cannot be changed, it is critical we instead use this unprecedented geopolitical climate to start fostering more independence and self-sufficiency in our economy at home, while also diversifying and expanding our partnerships abroad.

In this vein, Prime Minister Carney’s announcement of a new strategic partnership with China is a welcome one. 

First of all, China is a massive market for Canadian exporters, in particular our farmers and fishing industry, and both of these sectors will benefit from the new partnership.

Chinese tariffs on Canadian canola seed are expected to fall to 15% from 85%, and “Canadian canola meal, lobsters, crabs, and peas will not be subject to relevant anti-discrimination tariffs from March 1, 2026, until at least the end of this year.”

Secondly, China is one of the premier nations in technological development, and greater access to their technology at lower import costs can help fuel Canada’s economic growth.

This deal specifically allows for 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles to enter the Canadian market at a tariff rate of 6.1%, a significant reduction from the previous 100% rate.

While some, including Canadian auto unions, are concerned that this will negatively affect Canada’s auto industry, and indeed these concerns are valid, this partnership also outlines the intention for Chinese EV companies to eventually manufacture their vehicles in Canada, which would create jobs here at home.

Chinese EVs are also renowned as some of the best in the industry, and having access to those vehicles at a low import cost can be beneficial for consumers.

Finally, in my view, the most consequential aspect of this new strategic partnership is not what’s in the initial deal itself, but the broader significance of closer diplomatic and trading relations between Canada and China.

In the face of an emerging “new world order,” as Carney illustrated quite powerfully in his recent speech at the World Economic Forum, it is paramount that Canada pursue strategic relationships with nations such as China in order to both manage geopolitical risk, and to decrease our dependence on the United States.

Having a varied and diverse portfolio of trading partners, as well as increasing our self-sufficiency at home, is the key to maintaining and sharpening our sovereignty.

We may have our disagreements with China, but working with them on areas of mutual alignment is the responsible and pragmatic thing to do.