Carney’s Last Resort

Carney is a serious man only when it comes to his own interests

Carney is a serious man only when it comes to his own interests, of course, such as shepherding his investments in Qatar, including the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. Not bad for a man who wants to destroy Canadian oil and gas extraction and delivery. He has implemented a “historic partnership” with an “ambitious agenda” with the EU, engaging in priorities that commit “Canadian taxpayers to a ‘new world order’ of climate action, digital IDs, “hate law” enactments, EV mandates, internet censorship, carbon taxes, decarbonization goals, and net zero policies.”

These are initiatives leading directly to a state of national receivership. Indeed, in a very real sense, we might say that the Carney/Liberal government is not only anti-Canadian but anti-civilization, threatening the rule of law, limits on state power, freedom of expression, freedom of inquiry, respect for human dignity, and fidelity to the principles of prosperity and private property, of which latter the sanctity of credit and financial independence are critical.

“A decade ago,” writes Michelle Stirling at Western Standard, “Mark Carney gave his 2015 speech to Lloyd’s of London…that analyst Steve Kopitz found was filled with factual errors. Since then, thanks to climate-addled banksters, as out of their depth of expertise as Greta Thunberg, along with the Net Zero ‘climate cartel,’ we have turned our country's economy and global finance upside down.” As of 2018, HSBC [Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation] refused to finance “new fossil fuel projects like Keystone XL or to cover financing shortfalls for Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Expansion,” thanks in part to Carney’s equally irresponsible and feckless successor as Governor of the Bank of Canada, former head of TD Canada Trust Tiff Macklem.

Canada’s economic outlook: “shocking,” “alarming,” and “stupefying” 

These pipelines and others, worth billions in investment, jobs, and revenue, “were blocked within the next couple of years by foreign and domestic-funded climate activists,” with the Bank’s approval or indifference. No wonder investment has fled the country. No wonder Canada is plunging over the fiscal precipice like a confederation version of Wile E. Coyote. Carney will be constrained to come up with some way to bail the country out of the bottomless crisis he is currently enabling. Massive cuts in social services and ever-more rocketing taxes are in the offing.

Budget Watchdog Jason Jacques regards Canada’s economic outlook as “shocking,” “alarming,” and “stupefying.” Significant foreign investment in Canada is close to non-existent, and the Liberal government appears to rely instead on using public funds to make necessary contributions to infrastructure. The government has not yet released an official budget, though it is making a fuss about changing its regular schedule. The increasing debt-to-GDP ratio is catastrophic, as is the deficit-to-debt correlation, and indeed, every quotient involving solvency—making Canada an “energy superpower,” reducing unsustainable levels of immigration, new trade relations with the U.S (which are going nowhere), building homes for young couples—is either meretricious or is a paradoxical sign of imminent collapse. “And no man can find site for his dwelling,” to quote Ezra Pound in Canto XLV.

Thus, each move or policy issue that Carney has ostensibly broached is empty of effect; that is, when it is not downright counter-productive or merely another flagrant lie, Carney’s stock in trade. The question that now poses itself involves Carney’s next step after cuts, taxes, false promises, and wildfire borrowing do not prevent economic implosion.

According to AI, in March 2013, the government of Cyprus, facing bankruptcy, proposed a “one-time tax on private bank accounts to fund a €15.8 billion financial bailout.” Facing public outrage, the banks were shut down, and a new solution was imposed whereby deposits above the insured level of €100,000 at the Bank of Cyprus and Laiki bank were to be drained of 47.5% of their savings.

As Russian oligarchs had invested billions in Cyprus, Russia offered financial aid in exchange for oil-digging rights. Clearly, the government's invasion of private funds comes with multiple consequences. Similarly, the CBC at the time reported on the Beijing-owned CNOOC, which attempted to acquire Canadian oil company Nexen Inc. The possibility of a foreign state bailing out a sovereign nation or offering to pump up its economy in exchange for access to resource rights is a ploy to be expected. And we know today that Carney’s government is establishing ever closer relations with Communist China as part of the “rupture” (Carney’s word) with the U.S. market. The political situation prompts a closer look.

We recall as well that during the financial crisis of 2021, the Argentinian tax authority conducted a significant raid on the fiscal giant HSBC in 2015, along with restricting withdrawals from private bank accounts to forestall bank runs. In fact, the government launched piratical operations against at least 70 financial organizations, including banks and currency exchange shops, to prevent capital flight and to bolster its faltering economy. Individual clients were out of luck, and small businesses were forced to close down.

Could such a thing happen in Canada? Did not Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, without a legal or judicial warrant, freeze the bank accounts of the 2022 Truckers Convoy and of many of those who donated to its cause?

As she wrote to condone her undemocratic tactics: “[T]he government is issuing an order with immediate effect, under the Emergencies Act, authorizing Canadian financial institutions to temporarily cease providing financial services where the institution suspects that an account is being used to further the illegal blockades and occupations.” As we know, the “blockades” were not blockades and they were certainly not illegal, although the government maneuver was both a financial blockade and an illegal action.

The answer, then, is that a government sortie against citizen bank accounts could definitely happen here, and I suspect there is a good chance this may well be Carney’s last resort to stabilize the economy, at least for a time. Canadians, suffering an abrupt loss of institutional confidence in the banking system, can see every reason to distrust their own government’s commitment to lawful conduct. Speaking personally, I cannot be sure that such an incursion is going to happen. But I am not taking any chances and have shifted the major portion of my bank account into my investment portfolio, retaining only what is necessary for domestic expenses with a cushion for emergencies. It is an expedient I would recommend to every Canadian who has the ability to do so.

Canada bears all the hallmarks of a repressive, oligopolist state that has been laboring, first under Pierre Trudeau, then his son Justin, and now the faux and disingenuous Carney, to permanently entrench itself as the raincloud we live under. It may bankrupt its citizens in order to present a paper-thin balance sheet to the world. This is one way a failed government attempts to meet an extremity of its own making.