Conrad Black: Carney continues on a path of mindless globalism

National Post

31-05-2025

It was a gracious gesture for King Charles III and Queen Camilla to come to Ottawa for 24 hours to open Parliament and symbolize Canada's close relations with the United Kingdom and other senior Commonwealth nations, but the speech from the throne was so general, we might have reserved the distinction of Their Majesties' presence for a more substantive policymaking occasion. There was a pledge to make housing more affordable many years after what should have been the starting date for such a policy before millions of otherwise welcome immigrants were admitted to the country, furthering an acute housing shortage among Canadians of modest income. It was also good to hear the King state, on behalf of the federal government, the determination to protect and advance the rights of all Canadians. It would have been useful and pleasing to know if this included a departure from the federal government's policy of passivity toward Quebec's suppression of the English language in that province.
Article content
Article content
One specific point in the throne speech that was particularly welcome was the reference to the federal government's determination to eliminate internal trade barriers. If anything useful may ultimately be judged to have come from the current controversy with the United States, it is that U.S. President Donald Trump highlighted the exorbitant cost of some agricultural products as a result of the supplementary payments consumers are forced to make to certain farmers in this country. As I have written here often before, if it is considered public policy to supplement the incomes of these farmers, it should be done directly and not by overcharging the entire Canadian public for important categories of food. In the same category is the government's implicit promise to contribute more to our own national defence. This has long and justifiably been a sore point with the United States, which effectively has guaranteed Canada's national security since President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared at Queens university in 1938 that he would not 'stand idly by' if Canada were attacked. Canada has a distinguished military history of only going to war for good causes and never out of national greed, fighting bravely and almost always with volunteers and always on the winning side. We are not freeloaders, but we have been freeloaders in NATO for 30 years and there appears to be a consensus that this should stop.
Article content
Article content
The King's remarks began with the now practically obligatory reference to being on land 'unceded' by Algonquin and Anishinaabeg peoples — an experience, the King advised, that reminds us of our 'shared history as a nation.' The King has thus been delicately dragooned into the quagmire of the official relationship of Canada with its Indigenous peoples. The federal Parliament may indeed stand on land unceded by the Algonquins and Anishinaabeg, but this should not be allowed to imply that Canada, prior to the arrival of the British and the French in the 16th and 17th centuries, was populated and occupied, in the sense of being ruled and governed, by the Native peoples.
Article content
Article content
The Native peoples were in almost all cases nomadic and relatively sparse in numbers. The inference has been incited that those who have immigrated, mainly from Europe to Canada, over the last 450 years invaded someone else's country. I yield to few in my desire to make the country's policy toward Indigenous peoples more just and productive, but when the Europeans arrived, Canada was unsettled, and in no sense an organized political entity. It was chronically underpopulated, and those who lived within our present borders were talented and skilful tribes and clans sharing what was essentially a Stone Age civilization frequently engaged in internecine violence. Let us by all means pay them homage and embrace them as fellow Canadians, but not in a manner that could be construed as undermining the right of the rest of us to be here and negating the fact that our forebears brought Canada swiftly up to the most advanced conditions of contemporary civilization.