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It takes a special kind of hubris to stand in Davos, surrounded by the global elite, and lecture the world on the virtues of “living in truth.” Yet there was Prime Minister Mark Carney, channelling the dissident spirit of Václav Havel to chastise the international community for clinging to a “rules-based order” that no longer exists. Carney invoked Havel’s famous parable of the greengrocer — the shopkeeper who puts a sign in his window reading “Workers of the World, Unite!”, not because he believes it, but because “it has been done that way for years” and it buys him a quiet life.

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The irony was suffocating. If there is a greengrocer on the world stage today, it is Canada. And the manager of the shop, straightening the signs in the window while the shelves rot, is Mark Carney himself. Under the Liberal establishment, Canada has evolved into a masterclass in performative governance — a nation defined by polite fictions we display to conceal the brutal realities of our own decline. We are a country of signs that no one believes in, maintained by a governing gerontocracy to comfort themselves while the country crumbles for everyone........

© National Post