How Mark Carney’s speeches have become political earthquakes | Ted Widmer

The quiet-spoken Canadian prime minister has spoken unutterable truths Is it perhaps a sign of the times that Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, has become a thrilling orator? A sober banker, he speaks calmly, without many vocal inflections. We expect Canadians to be somewhat flat; even a little boring, and yet Carney has already delivered two remarkable speeches in 2026, and the year is far from over. The first, at Davos, described a “rupture in the world order”, and “the end of a pleasant fiction”. By that, he meant that the world could no longer depend on the United States to lead t