Values | Chaos: Discovering Mark Carney and Canada’s Role in a Ruptured World

Literary / Arts

Values | Chaos: Discovering Mark Carney and Canada’s Role in a Ruptured World

Walter Hughes, Ottawa, ON

Volume 41  Issue 7, 8, & 9 | Posted: October 6, 2026

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Doug Roche is a former journalist, parliamentarian, senator, Ambassador for Disarmament, and Chairman of the Middle Powers Initiative to eliminate nuclear weapons. He writes with authority when discussing Canada’s role in promoting peace in the world, which is a central concern in Values | Chaos, his book on Mark Carney’s first year as Prime Minister of Canada. There are other, more domestic issues that he also touches in this collection of dispatches that the wrote for The Hill Times. However, the breakdown of the rule of law and the rupture of relations between states, with more wars raging now than at any time since WW2, have created an international chaos more challenging than any previous prime minister has had to face.

Roche was giddy with excitement with the selection of Carney as Liberal Party leader, which starts this collection. Here was a mature adult, an economist with education and experience and Value(s), referring to the tome that Carney wrote during COVID on the business case for ending global warming. Roche wrote these assessments bi-weekly to appreciate what the prime minister is doing to enhance the security of Canadians and, just as importantly, what he is not doing.

Over the course of the year, Roche passes through his admiration and confidence in Mark Carney to surprise and curiosity at some early decisions, questioning our joining Trump’s Star Wars. He expressed disappointment in Carney’s enlarging the defence budget, although he admitted that Canada’s North was currently defenceless. Roche was shocked that Carney supported the American and Israeli attack on Iran, the first one, as this was against international law. Roche began to offer advice to the P.M. through the pages of The Hill Times and then criticism of Carney’s turnaround on environmental policy concerning both building pipelines and eliminating the budget for planting trees.

At various times, Roche makes excuses for the P.M.’s choices, for example, the tensions within Canada and the threats of separation. Moreover, Roche is struck by ‘the power of the political machinery which encases his office …. precedents, regulations, advisers, allied governments, the party and not least the caucus….’ Yet, he also notes that Carney has equals on the international stage with whom he can work – the diplomatic ‘American’ Pope Leo and leaders of middle powers. At home, he has the support of Canadian citizens, at least in this moment of a trade war with our biggest economic partner, ruled by ‘the predatory Trump. Roche ends his book with a now more experienced assessment of Mark Carney, and Roche still has hope.

   

Walter Hughes, Ottawa, ON