Michael Higgins: Is Mark Carney using Canada to make up for Brexit?

Mark Carney’s admiration for the European Union is so deep that he was accused of aiding and abetting Project Fear, the campaign to stop the U.K. exiting the massive economic bloc.

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As governor of the Bank of England, he failed to stop Brexit but as prime minister his Project Fear II against the U.S. has been far more successful and far more galvanizing. If Wall Street Journal is to be believed, Carney is now trying to integrate Canada into the European Union, a move that would surely entail a loss of sovereignty and independence far greater than anything we could surrender to America. The prime minister suggested on Sunday that the Journal’s reporting overstated what the government is seeking.

It is worth recounting why people in the U.K., who had endured decades of European Union oversight, voted to quit the European market: it was to regain their sovereignty and free themselves from the bureaucratic tyrants in Brussels.

Columnist Jesse Kline keeps you up to date with what’s happening in Israel and the effects of antisemitism on life here in Canada. Friday mornings.

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In 2016, after almost half a century of membership in some sort of European union, the U.K. voted by 52 per cent to 48 per cent to leave.

But the seeds of Euroscepticism in the U.K. can be traced back to 1988 and a speech then Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher gave in Bruges to the College of Europe.

She warned about the dangers of a “European conglomerate” with decisions “taken by an appointed bureaucracy” that suppressed nationhood.

“We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at European level, with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels,” said Thatcher.

Canada should heed her warning which is still pertinent today.

In the years that followed her speech, the EU got stronger with treaties that harmonized borders, security and regulations. Eurosceptic fears increased and were stoked — sometimes unfairly — by some media stories about overzealous EU rules (such as the EU banning “bendy” bananas.)

When U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron called a referendum on EU membership, Carney was running the Bank of England governor and was accused of overstepping his role in trying to keep the U.K. in the union.

In one memorable clash at a parliamentary committee, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg accused Carney of singing “a paean of praise” about the benefits of EU membership.

“Did the Bank of England consider whether it was in the public interest to risk its reputation for impartiality?” asked Rees-Mogg with a question that reflected deep unrest about Carney’s political interference in the referendum.

There were calls for Carney to resign when he was again accused of playing politics by warning that Brexit would cause a recession in Britain. Carney’s forecast was wrong and the U.K. never entered a recession because of Brexit, although a House of Commons report in 2020 commented on “slower economic growth.”

Ten years after that momentous referendum, Carney is making overtures to the EU on behalf of Canadians.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Carney is trying to negotiate Canada becoming an “associate member” of the EU even though that status doesn’t exist. When asked about the story, Carney said the government isn’t seeking membership, but rather a “unique alliance” with the EU. It isn’t clear what any of this means, exactly.

The day after Carney broke off trade talks with the U.S., the prime minister, in his speech about defending Canadian sovereignty, said, “This fall, we will begin discussions with the European Union — the world’s second-largest economy — to build a much stronger and deeper security and economic partnership.”

What does this “economic partnership” or “associate membership” look like? Maybe we’ll learn more when he addresses the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Thursday (but wouldn’t it be nice if he told Canadians first? Like in the Canadian Parliament?)

What we do know is that the EU has grown from six members in 1951 when it was the European Coal and Steel Community to the 27-member bloc it is today.

“Over time, it has become a supranational entity that resembles a federal state and is governed by a byzantine bureaucracy in Brussels. The EU claims to have brought about prosperity and stability in Europe, but those claims are increasingly at odds with reality,” said the U.S.-based Cato Institute at the time of the U.K. referendum.

Public opinion in the five largest EU member states — France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain — favour admitting Canada to the EU although Carney has stated, “That’s not the intent. That’s not the pathway we’re on.”

But as Carney pointed out in a statement at the weekend, Canada and the EU have recently signed various agreements to increase trade, economic security, the “digital transition,” as well as shared priorities on defence and security. We are pursuing “common interests” in our “growing role as a trusted partner to Europe,” said the prime minister.

Like it or not — and most people right now probably like it — we are being driven into the arms of an economic, political and bureaucratic behemoth by a prime minister who has shown himself besotted with the EU and not afraid to use Project Fear to achieve his ends.

The U.S. wants to swallow us, while Europe only wants to help us, appears to be the prime minister’s message as he points the way to a new Utopia.

But as Thatcher warned at Bruges so many years ago, “Utopia never comes, because we know we should not like it if it did.”

National Post

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