"The speech reads well but it's fundamentally empty when it comes to anything but rhetoric."

"But it's got the right vibes for the moment and will be praised as a work of genius when it doesn't get us anywhere beyond the absolutely obvious."

"The middle power stuff has been in every Canadian foreign policy ideas speech since the 1940s."

"Principled and pragmatic means literally nothing."

Yi Zhu, assistant professor, International Law faculty, Leiden University, Netherlands

Research associate, University of B.C. Centre for Constitutional Law and Legal Studies

 

"The 'rules-based order' described by Carney is certainly fading. It's especially been fading in our own country, where our rules and laws are no longer applicable. Our government itself has been hoping that 'compliance will buy safety'. For more than two years, Canada has complied with Islamists occupying our streets using violence and hateful profanities, yet escaping our own laws. Carney's words were as applicable internationally as they are right here at home: people participate in rituals they privately know are wrong -- by living a lie."

"Thousands of Canadians shamelessly participated in pro-Hamas marches despite knowing it's a terrorist group that murdered 1,200 people on October 7. Meanwhile, our government stood by and did nothing to protect the Jewish community, supporting Carney's belief at Davos that 'the strong can do what they can and the weak must suffer what they must'."

"Carney touts Canada's virtues of pluralism and coexistence, but our once celebrated mosaic of multiculturalism -- a national pride -- has corroded. Seventy percent of religious-based hate crimes target the Jewish community, yet our government has looked the other way. Carney was right in Davos when he said that 'The system's power comes not from its truth, but from everyone's willingness to perform as if it were true."

"Antisemitism is emanating from our power structures, which are permitting this false truth to persist. To apply Carney's words at Davos in a language he understands: 'We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition'. For more than 150 years, the Jewish community has been a part of the Canadian mosaic, in every aspect of professional life. Over these past two years, extreme episodes of violence, harassment and calls for 'intifada revolution' have led us to a rupture and possibly a transition to another economy."

Avi Abraham Benlolo, chairman, founder, CEO, The Abraham Global Peace Initiative 

 

"If you want a close look at the 'new world order' Prime Minister Mark Carney casually mentioned during the lavish tributes he was paying his hosts in Beijing last week, you would do well to begin by considering the components of a new high-speed Russian drone that was shot down by Ukraine's air defence division a few days ago."

"...The downed bomb was of a new long-range type, the Geran-5. It's the latest model in a line of the Iranian Shahed unmanned aerial vehicles manufactured at the Albatross Corporation's giant Yelabuga drone factory in the special economic zone in Russian Tartarstan."

Terry Glavin, National Post 

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney praised the strengths of the middle powers in his special address at Davos 2026.  Image: World Economic Forum / Ciaran McCrickard

 

The Russian barrages launched by Moscow against cities across Ukraine in the past three weeks have hit highrise apartment buildings, energy infrastructure, and water and sewer systems in Dnipro, Odesa, Kharliv and Zaporzhia. In Kyiv, close to 3,000 multi-storey residential buildings are without heating and roughly 600,000 people have evacuated the city since the blitz began on New Year's Day. There  is no electricity for 60 percent of Kyiv at a time of daytime temperatures around -10C. 

 

The Geran-5 drone is distinguished as a replica of the Iranian Karrar UAV, reaching speeds of 600 km/hr with a range up to 1,000 kilometres, carrying a 90-kilogram warhead. Ukraine's military intelligence analysis of the drone's components identify the downed Geran-5 drone powered by a Chinese turbojet engine manufactured by Telefly Telecommunications in Shanzhen, Guangdong. Several of the components of the drone  were provided by Chinese companies but its electronics systems, i.e.: satellite navigation, telemetry and guidance mechanisms, were produced by US. and German manufacturers.

 

Processors, transceivers and amplifiers were manufactured by Texas Instruments in Dallas, while the drone's clock generators were manufactured by CTS Corp. an aerospace and defence industry supplier in Indiana. Monolithic Power Systems in Kirkland, Washington produced the special converter in the drone's flight controller unit. The German semiconductor manufacturer Infineon Technologies in Neubiberg outside Munich provided the transistor in the drone's power distribution unit.  

Prime Minister Mark Carney meets with President of China Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China on Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. Photo by Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

 

Interestingly reflective of the old rules-based order and its global sanctions meant to protect the innocent from their attackers, giving way to the newly adapted "realism" reflecting Prime Minister Carney's new foreign policy in tandem with Canada's allies such as France, Spain, Ireland and Great Britain. Or as Carney put it "We take the world as it is, not as we wish it to be", which gave him free reign to travel to Beijing as a trade supplicant, bowing to one of the Great Power bullies he so eloquently lashed out at during his Davos delivery.

 

In rejecting Canada's largest trade partner and North American neighbour with its shared border, democratic ideals, history and culture of normalcy now that the primary Great Power is temporarily captained by a megalomaniacal bully, this latest Liberal prime minister of Canada has abased himself, detached Canada from its plinth as a principled, human-rights-defending nation to consolidate a trade 'bargain' with the world's production power in the 'realism' of 'globalization', citing a 'strategic partnership' with a hegemon that uses trade coercion no less than does U.S. President Trump. 

 

Carney and Canada by extension is not alone in his sanctimonious hypocrisy given the evidence that Mr. Trump's envoys, friends and family members are absorbed in the potential for vastly remunerative co-venture options with Moscow's sanctioned oligarchs regarding a revived Nord Stream pipeline, Arctic oil extraction, rare-earth minerals, Siberian nickel deposits and Sea of Okhotsk natural gas wells. And since Mark Carney jubilantly felt himself on a roll, getting one over on the uncertainty of U.S. trade, he continued his jetting, on to Qatar.

Prime Minister Mark Carney takes part in a welcoming ceremony with Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani at Amiri Diwan in Doha, Qatar on Sunday, Jan. 18, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

 

That would be the terrorist haven where the multi-millionaire leaders of Hamas live in luxury in Doha as protected, honoured guests. Qatar, known as the money faucet for the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. Qatar, which has invested billions in American universities as well as their Canadian counterparts, to exert its 'soft' Islamist credentials, particularly in funding the pro-Palestinian marches that have roiled the streets of Canada's cities for over two years. Qatar, whose terrorist bona fides have been laid out by government and private intelligence agencies; realities that are inconsequential to Carney's jet-setting search for new trade partners for Canada.   

"Carney was effectively wagging his finger at the United States in the highest [or lowest] tradition of its allies who graciously sheltered under the protective wing of American military power while attempting to collegialize all alliance decisions on the basis that the United States was a great mastiff which would do the work and take the risks while its European and Canadian allies held the leash and gave the instructions."

"The 'rules-based international order' was always a fraud. It was a stability based almost entirely on the deterrent and enforcement capacity that the United States possessed because of its great military and economic power."

"The idea of a group of 'middle powers' grouping together to assert themselves is a complete fantasy. Superpowers don't care about middle powers as long as other superpowers don't invade them."

Conrad Black, National Post