Katie Surma, Inside Climate News

As Mark Carney urges value-based leadership, critics point to trade rules championed by Canada that undermine those ideals. 

When Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a pointed rebuke this week of Donald Trump and the global economic system Washington helped shape, he urged other nations to help build a new world order—one that, he said, “embodies our values, like respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and the territorial integrity of states.” 

The speech at the World Economic Forum drew a standing ovation in Davos and praise from diplomats and foreign policy analysts, who described it as a rare display of democratic leadership at a moment when the United States is retreating from multilateral institutions and norms it once championed.

But for a number of environmental advocates, trade critics and Indigenous leaders in the Global South, Carney’s critique ignores Canada’s own role in sustaining the structures he criticized. Chief among them are economic treaties that grant formidable rights to Canada’s influential mining sector and other multinational corporations.

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