Monday, March 10, 2025

Part I

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Canada’s New Prime Minister: Mark Carney Will Take Over in Place of Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister of Canada

Well, Canada is about to get a new prime minister as of action taken within the party election yesterday. Mark Carney, a fifty-nine-year-old banker, is becoming the head of Canada’s Liberal Party and thus he is going to become the next prime minister. Now all kinds of interesting aspects to this, including the fact that he has never been elected to public office and he does not hold his seat in parliament.

This is a first in Canadian politics, but Canadian politics is in a new era and at least a lot of it has to do not with developments in Canada, but developments across its southern border in the United States of America. There is a lot for us to consider here. There’s a lot of history. There are a lot of worldview issues that are brought right into this consideration.

So let’s just consider Canada for a moment. Canada has a population of about 40 million people right across America’s northern border. It has been a peaceful border now for about 200 or more years, and that has turned out to be really, really crucial in terms of the development of both countries. The United States of America was a country before Canada in one sense, even though Canada was established as a frontier and was indeed known as New France as a French settlement as far back as the early 16th century, 1534. Now just remember that Martin Luther’s Here I stand moment was in 1517. So we are talking about a very interesting period of history.

When you think about American history, before there was a United States of America, there were rival empires trying to establish their own imperial settlements in North America, in what became the United States. You had French territory, you had Spanish territory, you had British territory. Eventually, of course you have 1776 and the American Revolution and America’s national history began.

Canada became a part of the British Empire officially in 1763 in the Treaty of Paris that came at the conclusion of the seven years war. Now, before that you had Quebec overwhelmingly French in culture, but the rest of Canada basically came together over a process of years. The province of Canada is what it became under the British. The Act of Union in 1840 brought it into something far closer to its modern shape to that part of British Canada. You would add New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Later you would add Newfoundland and Labrador. That would be in 1949. Eventually you would get Canada as they know it today with 10 provinces and three territories.

Now, exactly what is the national status of Canada? It is a nation. It is a nation among other nations. It has a status, historically a dominion status with the British crown and the monarch of Great Britain continues to be the head of state. And so when you talk about a form of government, Canada is a parliamentary democracy. More on that in just a moment. It is also a constitutional monarchy.

The latter issue is still with some controversy there in Canada, although Canada in the main is very proud of its historic ties to Great Britain. And when you look at the difference between Canada and the United States, you’re looking at two nations sharing North America, sharing for the most part a common language, sharing to a great extent a common history. But also developing very different histories and national characters and trajectories over the course of the last two centuries and more.

Now, over time, the population of the United States came to dwarf the population of Canada and there are all kinds of reasons for that. At least a part of it has to do with the location of Canada so far north in terms of the western hemisphere. And so the further north you go, the more sparse the population becomes. I had the opportunity to hear former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney give a speech one time in which he said his nation has a completely uncomplicated politics except for the big complication of having the vast majority of its citizens living within a hundred miles of the American border. At least he had a sense of humor about it.

But you’re looking now at a decided lack of a sense of humor between the United States and Canada, largely due to comments made by an arguments at least insinuated by US President Donald J. Trump. And given his Trumpian way of communicating and of making points and deal-making, it’s hard to know exactly what Donald Trump wants out of Canada. And of course a large part of this conversation has to be about tariffs and we’ll be talking more about that in coming days.

But it’s not just a trade war, it’s not just tariffs. It is a matter of national identity. The current Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau who is leaving office after just under 10 years in that office, he is warning that the very future of Canada is on the line given the ambitions of the American president, sometimes speaking of Canada as America’s 51st state, at least in terms of his intentionality. He has sometimes referred dismissively and condescendingly to the Canadian Prime Minister as Governor Trudeau.

Now when you look at this, I simply want to state that there are some cultural moral worldview issues we do need to keep in mind. We’re going to look at the complications of the politics there in Canada, but let me just say that Conservatives in the United States, and I’ll speak specifically of Conservative Christians, but speaking of conservatism in the United States, it would not be encouraged or supported by some kind of union with Canada, some kind of absorption of Canada into the United States as something like a 51st state. That is politically implausible. Let’s just state it. It’s politically impossible. In my view, it’s reckless language, but there is no doubt that President Trump has some legitimate concerns and legitimate goals he’s trying to meet. 

But I would argue that for the future of the president and his own party, it would be very unwise to make any serious argument about union with Canada. The reason for that has to do with the trajectories of Canada and the United States in terms of say, reference in the world picture. And by that I mean to say that in many ways Canada is very close to Europe in a way that the United States is not. Canada is culturally integrated with much of Europe and lately, by the way, especially in Canada’s west with much of Asia, but in particular with much of Europe. And in terms of the morality and the politics and the cultural issues, let’s just say Canada in the main is far more liberal than the United States. And even though Canada also has more blue provinces and red provinces, the fact is that Canada is overwhelmingly more liberal than the United States. And even those who are considered Conservatives, and that includes the Conservative Party in Canada, on most social issues are far to the left of say Republicans and Conservatives in the United States.

And that’s to say that if there were to be some kind of absorption, now Canadians would be offended even by the word. But I’m going to make the argument in order to say I don’t want to see it happen. But when you talk about the absorption of Canada, you talk about also the absorption of an awful lot of voters, and I’ll just say it might be the last time there would be a Republican president if indeed there were to be some kind of union between the United States and Canada. That would move the United States to the left far more than it would move Canada to the right.

Just to give some particulars, in Canada and with its Charter of Rights, you look at abortion legalized in that country at least by the authorization of a committee going back to 1969. Since 1988, abortion is basically legal throughout Canada throughout the length of a pregnancy. Now, the services and the length of time during a pregnancy, those services may be available, may vary by location in Canada, but at least in terms of the law, there’s nothing preventing abortion all the way through a pregnancy.

Legalized same-sex marriage has been in that country coast to coast since 2005. And of course I’ve often discussed the fact that in Canada you have assisted suicide, which they call physician assisted death. That was greatly extended and I think tragically so in 2021 when the authorization for assisted suicide was extended not just to those who had a grievous illness with a death immediately foreseen, but rather just for someone who was diagnosed with a grievous illness.

And there’s the proposal there moving pretty fast to extend that also to the diagnosis of a qualified mental illness. That would not take place until 2027 and that’s also under court challenge. But the culture of death is very much present in this legislation in Canada and in the expanding practices I’ve discussed of assisted suicide there. Now there are Conservatives in Canada, there are genuine Conservatives in Canada. There are Christians and Christian Conservatives in Canada, but the two major parties are both significantly to the left of their American counterparts.

Okay, now I mentioned there’s some really interesting things about the development of the new prime minister, the new Liberal Party head there in Canada. The election that took place yesterday was the result of a party election. So you’re talking about something like a hundred thousand votes. 40 million Canadians, they didn’t have a choice in this. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and in a parliamentary democracy, a majority of those in a party, the party that has the majority in parliament can, by its own rules, elect a leader and that leader becomes the prime minister.

The political plausibility in a parliamentary democracy is that whatever party gains control of parliament is able to name its leader as prime minister, that means as head of government. And that also means that in a parliamentary democracy, the way a parliamentary majority works, remember there is no executive branch in this sense, the prime minister’s an extension of parliament.

If your party has a parliamentary majority, at least conceivably, you can’t lose a vote. If you do lose a vote, that’s probably a sign of a weakness, not only in the prime ministerial role but in the political party of the prime minister. But nonetheless, that’s exactly what happened in Canada. Justin Trudeau, whose father Pierre Elliott Trudeau was prime minister there in Canada, also a very liberal prime minister, and he was in office 1968 to 1979, 1980 to 1984. Pierre Trudeau, very liberal. His son, Justin Trudeau, who became Prime Minister in 2015 now goes out 2025 after, as I said, just under 10 years in that role. Justin Trudeau very liberal across the board and quite telegenic, quite popular until all of a sudden he wasn’t. And Canadian politics turned against him and apparently against the Liberal Party. 

But the Conservative Party which had been polling something like 20 points ahead, is going to be facing very stiff opposition now because in many ways the fall in popularity of the Liberal Party in Canada may have been more a catastrophic fall in the popularity of its Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Now that there is a change in Prime Minister, all of that may be a new political picture.

Now, as I said, something new here has happened in the Canadian experience. You have a prime minister who hasn’t ever been elected to office and he doesn’t hold a seat in parliament, and that’s really implausible. And so the likelihood is that even before this week is out, the new prime minister may call for national elections. It was going to have to happen early in the fall anyway. And so he may call that early in order frankly, to try to win a seat for himself in order to have the plausibility as prime minister of not only being the prime minister of the nation, but also being a member of parliament.

But when that election takes place, it is expected now that the Liberal Party under Mr. Carney will be facing the Conservative Party under Pierre Poilievre. And Mr. Poilievre had been gaining in the polls and he has seen as more of a nontraditional figure there in Canada by his political style. His political style has sometimes been compared to that of President Trump himself. He has said that if elected he would of course represent Canada’s interest.

But Canada by temperament also is different than the United States and quite frankly sees itself as quite different than the United States. It’s see politics in the United States as incredibly boisterous and Canadian politics tends to operate, at least by its own self-understanding, more from a center, which by the way is often what is experienced in parliamentary democracies. And you’re able to basically take the far left and the far right and excise them. And so you do end up, at least in theory, with something that’s more center left or center right.

But as I say, you have to define the center left and the center right in Canada both in more liberal terms than in the United States. But the bellicose language being used by the American president has created a real spark of Canadian patriotism and that patriotism may lead to a decrease in the popularity of the Conservative Party and its leader, Mr. Poilievre, and now the Liberal Party and its new leader Mark Carney.

But Mark Carney also has just an incredibly interesting background. He was a central banker. The fifty-nine-year-old had served as Governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. He was the first non-British Governor of the Bank of England. Those are two major national banks, central banks of two of our closest allies. And so in this case, you’re looking at a central banker, he’s never held elective office. He’s now going to be the prime minister, the head of his party, leading his party into elections. That’s a situation, let me just say that would be just about, and I probably don’t even have to say just about inconceivable in the United States of America.

The head of our central bank, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, just in case you weren’t up on this is Jerome Powell. And most if not all of the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank here in the United States, they have all been economists, they’ve all been technocrats, at least when it comes to the economic sciences. And they’ve been deliberately under politicized. And so the head of the Fed here in the United States, that’s not supposed to be an overly partisan or political role. The same thing, by the way, is true the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. So that raises some interesting questions about when exactly Mr. Carney, the just-about-to-be Prime Minister of Canada became quite the political figure. But at least in one sense, being Prime Minister of Canada is going to be the first directly political job the new Prime Minister is going to have had.

That’s a very interesting background. And I’ll just say when you look at the kinds of traits, attributes, background, the patterns of thinking that would be common for a central banker, it’s not easy to translate that into being a head of government, whether that be a president or a prime minister. So that could be very interesting, but boy, did he win.

He won with 85.9% of the vote. In a parliamentary system that’s overwhelming. That means that within his party, within those in his party qualified to vote in the leadership election, it was a massive sign of support for Mark Carney as the head of the Liberal Party. Upon winning the vote, Mr. Carney spoke of the fact he’s ready to go up against the American president; “He’s attacking Canadian workers, families, and businesses. We can’t let him succeed.” The Prime Minister-about-to-be said, “This won’t be business as usual. We will have to do things we haven’t imagined before at speeds we didn’t think possible.”

That’s not exactly a detailed platform, but nonetheless, it does establish the mood the soon-to-be Prime Minister is seeking to set. In his acceptance speech, speaking of the conflict with the American president, he said, “We didn’t ask for this fight, but Canadians are always ready when someone else drops the gloves.” So watch out.

Part II

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President Trump is Raising Legitimate Concerns About Canada – But as Legitimate as Those Concerns Are, Americans Should Be Thankful for Our Neighbors to the North

Before leaving Canada, let me just say that Americans should be incredibly thankful that Canada is our northern neighbor. When you look at other parts of the world and you recognize how difficult those border relationships can be and how much enmity, how much conflict, how much even warfare has often broken out over these borders, we just need to be very, very thankful that the United States of America has oceans to the east and the west and friendly nations to both the north and the south.

That is one of the rarest of all situations in modern history, and we have much to share with our Canadian friends, and of course we are both part of the Anglosphere. We share a common tradition even though we have two different nations developing two different traditions. There are very legitimate issues that President Trump is raising in terms of our relationship with Canada. How all of this gets worked out in weeks and months to come, that’s likely to be very contentious. But at least at this point, President Trump can know he has accomplished to one thing in Canada. He has led to a very different political trajectory for Canada’s parliamentary democracy than you would have thought just a matter of weeks ago.

Part III

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Crime, Punishment, and a Firing Squad: The Demand of Justice Falls on Murderer in South Carolina

Okay, coming back to the United States, a headline over the weekend, and it’s really interesting, I was waiting to see how the media would deal with this development, and that was the first execution of a condemned prisoner in the United States by firing squad in over a decade. And that would make the news and it did make the news. In this case, the condemned prisoner was Brad Sigmon, a sixty-seven-year-old in South Carolina who was found guilty of attempting to kidnap his former girlfriend. And in the process he beat to death, and it’s just horribly gruesome, he beat to death his former girlfriend’s parents there in their own home.

It was a horrifying double murder and attempted kidnapping. He was found guilty and eventually he was condemned to die. He was given the death penalty and eventually his execution date came. The governor of South Carolina, Henry McMaster, did not offer clemency and the United States Supreme Court did not take his case on appeal. And so everything moved forward. Now in South Carolina, death by firing squad is not only unusual, it’s never happened before, and it was the choice in this case of the condemned man, and it is because we are told through his attorney that he had real concerns about the process of lethal injection.

Just looking at this, you recognize South Carolina has the electric chair, it has legal systems whereby it can bring about the death penalty by lethal injection. There are problems, of course, without going into detail with both of those. He chose a firing squad presumably so that the process would be over very quickly. Now, this is a horrible thing to talk about, but we’re talking about two absolutely horrifying murders and we’re talking about the fact that our legal system has to come to terms with the moral importance and the issue of crime and punishment when you do, as a society, face this kind of crime.

And of course, I often remind us, this is where the Scripture takes us all the way back to the Noahic Covenant in Genesis 9, which makes clear that when a human being intentionally takes the life of another human being, he forfeits his own life in the process. And you’ll recall that God, in decreeing this and setting this down in the covenant he made with Noah, made very clear it is precisely because human beings are made in his image. And so intentional murder is a direct attack upon the Imago Dei, upon the image of God. And that’s an attack upon God himself, the creator who made human beings in his image.

And you’ll recall that as you’re looking at the history of different civilizations, you’re looking at different ways of applying the death penalty. And by the way, I think most of us will look at history and say the death penalty was far more widely applied than would’ve been right or mandated certainly by Scripture. But when you look at intentional murder, you’re looking at exactly what God named in that covenant he made with Noah. And by the way, that’s pre-political. That’s not to say he did it just for a nation, one nation at one time. This is pre-political. This is Genesis. This is before the development of government.

Now it is interesting that in the coverage that was offered by the New York Times, interesting, it’s on page A section 14, so it’s in the news section, page 14. And I was waiting to see that because it tells us that the New York Times decided to put 13 pages of news before this. One section of the article says this; “Mr. Sigmon is the first inmate in South Carolina history to be killed in such a manner. Polls show that a majority of Americans favor the death penalty, but many view the firing squad as an archaic form of justice.”

Well, I’ll say this, the firing squad is honest. It doesn’t hide what is taking place. It is not a smooth or easy thing to talk about. It is an act of violence undertaken in the name of justice by the state. And that’s exactly what the state, the government has the responsibility to do. It is a horrifying responsibility. It’s a responsibility that needs very clear checks and balances in the due process of law. It is a necessary responsibility, however, and if any agent, any government simply forfeits that responsibility, well, I would argue the entire system of justice is subverted, at least to some extent.

Very interesting. In this article, a statement was made as read by Mr. Sigon’s lawyer. He made this statement: “Nowhere does God in the New Testament Give Man the Authority to Kill Another Man.” Well, the problem with that is that it’s not true. In Romans 13, the Apostle Paul… Let me just remind you, the book of Romans is in the New Testament, Mr. Attorney. In Romans 1, Paul speaks of the power of the sword being given to the government and for a reason. And one of the reasons is to instill fear as well as to execute justice. And so the Apostle Paul underlines the fact that the power of the sword is wielded by the government. That is the power of the death penalty is a legitimate power.

Speaking of the ruler, Paul says, he does not hold the power of the sword in vain. And so I’ll admit, I thought it was kind of interesting to see that kind of statement made about the New Testament, any kind of statement made about the New Testament in an article like this published in the New York Times, but there it was. And in this case, the lawyer was no doubt trying to make his case, but in this case, he trampled all over the New Testament evidence.

One final thought about the death penalty. We do not want it to be in any sense dishonest. We need to understand what the government is doing when it puts one of its citizens, or by its laws, it put someone to death for this kind of capital offense. That is a very serious thing. It needs to be discussed in a serious manner. It needs to weigh heavy on us, but we also need to have, weighing very heavily upon us, the cost of not administering justice. Just because something’s right, doesn’t mean that it’s easy or for that matter, easy to talk about.

Well, I want to close by saying that this week you can count on the fact there’s going to be a lot coming at us, and it’s not you. You’re right. The impression is that the headlines are coming faster and more furiously, and that’s not wrong. That is actually true. And a lot of it has to do with the energy with which President Trump has entered his second term.

But it also has to do with the energy of issues swirling all about us in the world. And we’ll be following these things and thinking to think together about how we should think about these things.