January 24, 2026
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HERE'S MY TAKE
I’ve played with the format a bit this week, offering my own usual “Ray’s Take” on Prime Minister Carney’s speech to the World Economic Forum, but then replacing the rest of the usual fare with a “Rob’s Take” by Rob Wildeboer. Rob is a lawyer, the chairman of major autoparts supply company Martinrea, and someone I’ve counted as a professional colleague and friend for many years. He is a significant contributor to Canadian public life, including by serving as a director on the Cardus board. He writes about last week’s Federal Court of Appeal decision on the federal government’s unconstitutional use of the Emergencies Act.
Full disclosure: Some Cardus colleagues and I worked alongside Rob and others to raise funds to support the litigation being discussed. His reflections on the decision sent in an email uniquely combine personal and professional perspectives, which I found very valuable. I am grateful to him for allowing me to share those thoughts with Insights readers.
Prime Minister Mark Carney's speech to the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Tuesday received rave media reviews as one of the most significant moments of his leadership. And I agree—to a point. It certainly sets the table for future action. In the end, the action will matter more than the words. But for the moment, yes, the rhetoric was good.
Media reports indicate Mr. Carney wrote the speech himself. His appeals to Greek mythology and his use of arguments from Václav Havel, the dissident playwright who helped lead the 1989 Czechoslovakian Velvet Revolution and became Czechoslovakia’s first post-communist president, made for powerful rhetoric. But that did not stop Mr. Carney from being direct and straightforward about the crumbling of the international rules-based order. “This bargain no longer works,” he said. “Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.” He was honest about the power imbalance between countries. “Great powers can afford, for now, to go it alone,” he added. “They have the market size, the military capacity, and the leverage to dictate terms. Middle powers do not.”
From that sober analysis of the way the world is, not the way we might wish it to be, Mr. Carney appealed for middle powers to work together strategically to resist the “divide and conquer” strategies of the world’s hegemonic powers. He noted that “middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.” And within that context, he made the Canadian case. “Canada has what the world wants,” he declared. “We are an energy superpower. We hold vast reserves of critical minerals. We have the most educated population in the world. Our pension funds are amongst the world’s largest and most sophisticated investors. In other words, we have capital, talent … we also have a government with immense fiscal capacity to act decisively. And we have the values to which many others aspire.”
Before considering the reaction to the speech, it’s useful to name the context in which the prime minister delivered it.
The response to Mr. Carney’s WEF speech was mostly positive, both in the domestic and global press. However, it was not universally applauded.
The highest-profile criticism came from Mr. Trump, who delivered his own WEF speech from the same podium on Wednesday. He responded to Mr. Carney by saying, “I watched their prime minister yesterday. He wasn't so grateful. They should be grateful to us. Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements." Mr. Trump later uninvited Mr. Carney to his Board of Peace.
It's important to separate our personal dislike or admiration of Mr. Trump in considering his words. When it comes to Canada-US trade and security issues, it would be naïve to think that if someone not named Trump were president—even if that person were a Democrat—that the clock would simply be rolled back to restore the pre-Trump Canada-US relationship. “We know the old order is not coming back,” Carney rightfully warned his audience. “We shouldn't mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.”
There are those who think Mr. Trump is playing four-dimensional chess and that his bombastic words are just part of his negotiating strategy. They point to the fact that just hours after his WEF speech, the US president announced that he and NATO General Secretary Mark Rutte had agreed to a framework for a “future deal” on Arctic security, which would solve Mr. Trump’s Greenland ambitions and make his threatened new tariffs unnecessary. Details of the framework aren’t publicly available and it appears Denmark wasn’t a direct party in the talks. So, it’s tough to assess the extent to which this agreement is something that was always possible through NATO channels (making Mr. Trump’s recent Greenland fixation and disruption unnecessary) or whether it is truly a restructuring of allies’ commitments, granting the United States the security sovereignty its president claims it needs.
In the wake of these developments, some allied countries do seem to be coalescing around the idea that they coordinate their responses to the United States instead of holding various “one-off” negotiations. The Australians were quite public in suggesting that they agreed with Mr. Carney’s message on that score, and it appears they are not alone.
Back at home, even Mr. Carney’s partisan critics mainly conceded it was a good speech, but then proceeded to criticize the prime minister primarily on three grounds.
These concerns have their merits, though I would try to balance them somewhat. The WEF is the forum where all sides are paying attention and arguably is the most effective place in which Mr. Carney can deliver his message in a way that would be heard by those who needed to hear it. That’s also why Mr. Trump showed up. When it comes to the China question, I focused my January 12 Insights on our 2026 geopolitical quandary arguing that “in a world of imperfect choices, with the great powers being China, Russia, or the United States, my choice is to align with the United States 11 times out of 10.” But I don’t think that last week’s Canadian agreement with China invalidates that argument. Just three months ago, the United States entered a similar trade agreement with China. I’m not a fan of the regime in Beijing but I understand that when the American president quite openly says that his country will stop buying Canadian products, we need to find other markets. Part of me hopes that Canada’s short-term deal with China is actually a way of gaining leverage in future negotiations with the Americans—giving Canada a chip it can bargain away in cutting a better deal with the United States. But that’s just wishful speculation on my part. I suppose it could be what Mr. Carney had in mind when he talked about “classic risk management” at the WEF.
Regardless of the polarized opinions on the Carney and Trump WEF speeches, their words were consequential. In a debate with some friends who saw Mr. Carney’s speech as Canada coming under increasing Chinese influence to replace American influence, my bottom line was this: Mr. Carney’s WEF speech was important. As speeches go, the prime minister advanced Canada's interests. I give him full marks for that. But it was just a speech. I don’t expect a speech to solve all of the adjacent issues, nor do I read into the speech a pronouncement on all things mentioned that are not the main point. Ultimately, I will judge the other matters by subsequent actions and agreements, not words from a podium. Even important speeches remain just speeches.
HERE'S ROB'S TAKE
Freedom is Worth Fighting For
By Rob Wildeboer
Freedom is so valuable that we must pursue and fight for it. In a broken world, it is not natural for us to be free.
Aside from political freedom, though, is a more fundamental spiritual freedom. So, I will say at the outset that I believe, to be truly free, we have to be in Jesus Christ. If we are free in Jesus, we are “free indeed”, as scripture says. And every year, I can attend the Free Indeed conference at Hope Bible Church and appreciate that spiritual freedom all the more.
But in the sense of political freedom, I’m heartened to see that this week, Canada is a freer country than it was last week. That’s all thanks to a decision by the Federal Court of Appeal that confirmed it was indeed unconstitutional and unreasonable for the federal government to use the Emergencies Act in order to end a disruptive truckers’ protest in Ottawa known as the Freedom Convoy in 2022.
There is, of course, a backstory to all this. That backstory begins with a baseline: Canada is a democracy. That means, notionally, we are free. There are many constraints on that freedom, most of which are justified. Freedom of speech doesn’t cover hate speech, for example. We are free to do many things, and we have freedom from many things. In Canada, we are free from government overreach into our lives.
Governments’ responses to COVID-19 are among the most critical parts of the backstory. Federal and provincial governments imposed many lockdown protocols, which limited, of course, individual and collective freedom. There has already been heavy debate about how appropriate those measures were. But that is a separate discussion.
During the lockdowns, essential businesses and services remained open. For some reason, at least in Ontario, essential services included liquor stores, but not churches. The movement of goods by truckers was generally permitted. In our auto parts business, truckers continued to ship products, including across the border with the United States. Without being able to do so, the industry would have ground to a halt. Many saw truckers as heroes during the pandemic. And I certainly admire many of them.
At some point, fuelled by frustrations over pandemic rules and regulations that made no sense to them, several convoys of truckers converged on Ottawa, and a few other places, in protest. They set up across from Parliament and stretched into the surrounding area, including the major intersection where Cardus’s Ottawa office is located. They shut down the street, effectively making it impossible for traffic to get through there. For a while, truckers blasted their horns, which is as irritating a sound as I have ever heard (though it’s still not quite as bad as nails on a blackboard–but it’s pretty close). That lasted until a smart citizen or two went to court and got an injunction. The horn blowing then stopped.
I witnessed the blockades firsthand. We had a meeting in Ottawa with Cardus, and I stayed in the Westin, which is close to a blockaded intersection. Going to and leaving the office, I walked through a group of about 20 truckers who were polite and quiet. They displayed plenty of F*** Trudeau signs, which I thought were pretty colourfully displayed, if unimaginative.
In any case, the truckers refused to disband. Ottawa Police would not intervene. There was public outcry against the truckers, as well as public support.
The convoy became a public issue for the federal government.
On a mid-February Monday, the government of then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau decided to invoke the powers of the Emergencies Act, which had replaced the older War Measures Act in the 1980s. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau had invoked the War Measures Act in 1970 in response to what was called the October crisis: the terrorist Front de libération du Québec (or Quebec Liberation Front) had kidnapped British trade commissioner James Cross and Quebec provincial cabinet minister Pierre Laporte, murdering the latter. Invoking the War Measures Act to deal with the crisis, resulting in mass arrests and warrantless searches by police, was huge overkill, in my view. I was just 10 at the time. I still remember my dad, who was as tough as nails, crying. He had been in Holland when the Germans invaded and suspended freedoms for the Dutch for five years. Dad was horrified at the thought of Canadians not appreciating the value of freedom and how serious the personal violations of the War Measures Act were.
So, for a few truckers (which, I admit, reflects my bias on this issue), the federal government declared a national emergency and undertook a sweeping suspension of individual rights. In my view, this was ridiculous.
In any case, the truckers were removed, quite peaceably as it turns out, and the emergency declaration was repealed by Wednesday of the same week. Amazing.
A few tidbits to note: The decision to invoke the powers of the Emergencies Act had immediate effect, but still needed Parliamentary approval within seven days. I suspect that would have been difficult for the government to secure, which is one reason the government didn’t maintain its special powers for long. The prime minister likely knew his government had overstepped. After all, by using the act, the government had taken the extraordinary measure of freezing bank accounts of truckers and their supporters. The Emergencies Act had very broad powers and led to broad suspension of individual freedoms.
I was personally engaged in the whole story of the truckers and opposition to the Emergencies Act, in a small but, in my view, important way.
Firstly, I believe truckers have a right to protest peacefully. Martinrea, the company where I serve as chair of the board, dealt with truckers demonstrating in Windsor, Ontario. A group of truckers protested the lockdowns by closing down the bridge connecting Windsor to the Detroit area, bringing the shipment of auto parts to a halt and shutting down our industry. We had a crisis. The province and federal government did nothing, seemingly paralyzed. This was ridiculous, in my view. Martinrea is part of the Auto Parts Manufacturers Association (APMA). Flavio Volpe is the president. Fred di Tosto was chair at the time, though he is Martinrea’s president today. Deciding to do something ourselves, we went to court and won an injunction to remove the truckers. We got the injunction on a Thursday, and the truckers had to disband by noon on Friday. They did. The police would enforce the injunction. This is all to illustrate that we knew how to deal with protest in a legal way. No Emergencies Act was required.
Secondly, I believe the Emergencies Act violated our freedoms of association and of speech. It was using a sledgehammer to hit a finishing nail. Police could have dealt with the truckers in Ottawa through a court injunction. There were plenty of ways to deal with the issue. But the government decided, I think out of ideology or an attempt to inflate its popularity, to show how tough it was. Perhaps the prime minister just wanted to show he was as tough as his dad was.
So, Canadians took the government to court over the use of the Emergencies Act, arguing the government had violated constitutional rights and overstepped its bounds. I joined others in funding a court challenge, in this case by the Canadian Constitution Foundation.
Many thought this challenge was unnecessary or would fail. After all, the government’s declared emergency lasted for under two days and was quickly withdrawn. Why the fuss?
Well, governments in a democracy need to remember that they work on behalf of the people, not the other way around. Governments are limited in how much they can suspend freedoms.
And we won the case. Twice. We won at federal court, much to the surprise of many. The federal government appealed, and then we won at the Federal Court of Appeal. In a very long and well-reasoned judgment, the court of appeal unanimously ruled the use of the Emergencies Act was unreasonable and unconstitutional.
This is a wonderful result for freedom. The government may challenge the matter and take it to the Supreme Court of Canada, but I think that would be silly. I am not sure that Prime Minister Mark Carney, would see this as prudent. We shall see.
I believe in freedom of speech. I believe in freedom of religion. I believe in freedom of association. I will fight for them in the courts. I would fight for them militarily also, if it came to that. I’m proud that Cardus also defends freedoms and helps us think more clearly about them. I have also been involved in numerous constitutional litigation cases with the (now defunct) Equipping Christians for the Public Square organization, the Association of Reformed Political Action, and the Christian Legal Fellowship. If we don’t fight for our own freedom, who is going to fight for us?
So, yes, I believe that our country is just a little bit freer this week, thanks to two court rulings that only came about because citizens stood up to a government that had overstepped its bounds. And I’m feeling good about it!
Thanks for being part of the Insights community. As always, feel free to provide feedback—“iron sharpens iron.” Also, don’t be too shy to tell your colleagues and friends about this newsletter if you think they might enjoy reading it. Have a great week and see you again next Saturday.