Carney's UK trip was a sham, Canadian business needs relief, a stellar podcast...

I had originally defended Mark Carney's trip, then I saw his full agenda.

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The question isn’t about how many trips Mark Carney has taken or how much they have cost, it is all about what, if anything he has accomplished. To be frank, I want my PM out of the country meeting with other world leaders, chatting them up about new deals and bringing home the bacon - or better yet the ability of Canadian farmers to sell bacon at better prices.

This trip though was a sham for Carney to hang out with other left leaning leaders at a partisan political event - it was never about building up Canada.

We see Carney meeting with British PM Keir Starmer, again. We see him meeting with Australian PM Anthony Albanese, Spanish Pedro Sánchez, Iceland’s Kristrún Frostadóttir but we don’t see any deliverables. At a news conference touting all his great work, Carney was asked about all the business leaders he was meeting with and his answer, see below, was a struggle for him to say anything of substance.

A hat tip to CBC Watcher on X for the video.

I’m sure he is meeting with some serious people, but not being able to say anything about these meetings, when asked twice is weak. As even he acknowledges, these aren’t talks with investors for specific projects yet, he says they aren’t near that point, these are very high level discussions.

If we are being honest, he isn’t able to say much because he just had a networking breakfast with some business folks on the margins of his trip to attend a summit of left-wing leaders - the Global Progress Action Summit - a project of a Democrat think tank out of Washington.

More on that in a moment.

But first a word from our sponsor…

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Business calls for tax relief more broadly…

It’s not just the beer industry call for tax relief ahead of the budget. Canada has become an increasingly uncompetitive business environment - just look at TC Energy spending more than $8 billion stateside and very little here due to our regulatory environment.

We chase away business, we don’t attract it.

So in addition to the beer escalator tax - which also hits wine and spirits and has to go - we have increased special taxes on banks. We still have an industrial carbon tax, we have the clean fuel standard, which is another carbon tax by a different name and we have regulation after regulation that adds costs and makes investing in Canada less attractive.

“We live in a world where capital is becoming increasingly sparse; there’s a lot of competition for capital out there,” said Theo Argitis, senior vice-president of policy at the Business Council of Canada.

The message from the Business Council, make Canada an attractive place to invest again and the economy, and government revenues, will grow.

Carney’s trip was sham…

Last week, the PMO said that Carney was travelling to the UK “to strengthen partnerships and build new opportunities for Canadian workers.” The whole news release made it sound like that was the focus and then at the end added this bit on, “Prime Minister Carney will also attend the Global Progress Action Summit.”

It turns out, the Global Progress Action Summit took up all of his day Friday, he had a brief breakfast meeting with some business folks on Saturday, went to the Women’s Ruby World Cup to cheer on Canada in the final and came home on Sunday.

For those that don’t know, the Global Progress Action Summit is a project of the Center for American Progress - a Democrat think tank in Washington - that actively campaigns against Donald Trump every day.

Sure, it’s portrayed as progressive leaders convening to discuss global issues, but it is really a partisan club for left-wing politicians and yet we the taxpayer are picking up the whole cost.

There is so much wrong with this once the whole trip is looked at. It was billed as one thing, turned out to be something else entirely and that something else is pretty foolish for Canada at the moment.

Our PM, in the middle of supposedly trying to get a better trade deal with Donald Trump is going to a conference organized by one of the main organizations that try to stop his agenda. The Elbows Up crowd who seem only concerned with sticking it to Trump and the Americans will see this as a great move, anyone considering it from a point of diplomacy will see it as questionable at best.

No wonder there haven’t been any serious talks between Ottawa and Washington in the last month or so.

Two urban warfare experts on the podcast…

One of the cool things about my job is the range of people I get to speak to, including many experts. Last Friday I had the chance to talk for an hour with two leading military experts about the issue the whole world is talking about - the war in the Middle East.

Richard Kemp is a retired British army officer, John Spencer is a retired American officer and both of them debunk the idea that Israel is engaged in genocide or is targeting civilians in Gaza. In fact, using evidence, they argue the opposite.

It’s a great episode of the Full Comment Podcast in my view, give it a listen.

Here are the official show notes…

It’s now thinkable that Carney and co. don’t want Israel to win

No military in history has been as careful as Israel to minimize civilian casualties in war. And no country has been criticized for it like Israel has — including by Canada. That’s the assessment of guests Richard Kemp and John Spencer, former military men and two of the highest authorities on urban warfare. They explain to Brian the groundbreaking lengths the IDF goes to in Gaza to mitigate harm, and wholeheartedly reject claims against Israel by Prime Minister Mark Carney and his confederates in the U.K., France and Australia who last week recognized a Palestinian state. The antagonism of Canada and co. suggests they don’t really want Israel to succeed, helping Hamas to prolong the war. The West, they say, has “blood on its hands.” (Recorded September 26, 2025)