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Canadian Prime Minister Mark
Carney has been described by many political observers as a “technocrat.” Canada
has had technocratic prime ministers before—leaders who manage rather than
inspire, who prefer balance sheets to moral clarity. But in living memory,
there has been no PM that has been as weak on human rights as Mark Carney. His
tenure has revealed a troubling truth—when confronted with the suffering of
persecuted peoples, Carney consistently chooses financial gain over the defence
of human dignity.
This is not a partisan critique,
it is a moral one. And the pattern has become impossible to ignore.
Carney presents himself as a
modern, rational, data‑driven leader. But beneath the polished language of
markets and macroeconomics lies an apparent worldview in which human rights are
treated as irritants—obstacles to be managed rather than principles to be
defended. He speaks fluently about GDP growth, supply chains, and investment
flows, yet stumbles when confronted with the basic question of whether human
beings deserve protection from mass atrocity.
This moral hollowness is not
theoretical. It is visible when he has been asked to respond to every major
human‑rights crisis of his premiership.
The Gaza
Genocide is Carney’s most damning failure
Carney’s refusal even to utter
the word genocide in relation to Israel’s 34‑month genocidal campaign in
Gaza is not political caution—it is a moral abdication. The term is not a
fringe accusation, nor is it controversial among experts. It has been applied
by dozens of respected global human‑rights authorities, including the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry;
Amnesty International; Human Rights Watch; Israeli human rights group B’Tselem;
Physicians for Human Rights Israel;
the International Federation of Human
Rights; and the International Association of Genocide
Scholars. Leading Israeli Holocaust scholars—Omer
Bartov, Amos Goldberg, Daniel Blatman, Raz Segal and Shmuel
Lederman—have likewise affirmed that Israel’s actions meet the
definition of genocide. When such a broad and authoritative chorus recognizes
the reality of genocide, a prime minister’s refusal to acknowledge it is not
prudence; it is a profound failure of moral responsibility.
This silence is not neutrality.
It is a deliberate political choice to avoid moral responsibility. Carney knows
that naming genocide carries obligations—legal, diplomatic, and ethical. He
knows that acknowledging genocide would require sanctions, embargoes, and a
fundamental shift in Canada’s relationship with Israel. And he knows that such
actions would disrupt trade, investment, geopolitical alliances, and domestic
political considerations for the Liberal Party he leads.
So rather than doing what is
right he chooses silence.
Worse still, he has refused to
impose sanctions on Israel—sanctions Canada deployed swiftly and forcefully
against Russia when it committed
the same crimes in Ukraine. The contrast is glaring. When Russia violated
international law, Canada responded with boycotts, sanctions, diplomatic
isolation, and moral outrage. When Israel committed the same crimes, the
Canadian government offered platitudes, evasions, and the language of
“concern.”
This hypocrisy reveals the core
of Carney’s worldview, Human rights matter only when they align with economic
or geopolitical interests. When they do not, they are quietly set aside.
Carney’s now‑infamous statement
condemning Israeli Minister Itamar Ben‑Gvir for the “abominable” treatment of kidnapped Sumud flotilla activists,
which was shared on social media, was revealing not for what it said, but for
what it ignored. By singling out one extremist minister, Carney sidestepped the
far more consequential truth. The atrocities in Gaza are not the work of one
man, but of an entire political and military apparatus, led by people who
consider Palestinians subhuman, that has inflicted decades of oppression,
occupation, brutality and death on the Palestinian people. This infrastructure
has inflicted More than 34 months of genocide in Gaza; a 20-year siege on Gaza
that has deliberately restricted food, medicine, and humanitarian aid; six
decades of a brutal occupation in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza;
nearly eight decades of ethnic cleansing across the territories controlled by
Israel; and a conservatively estimated 80,000—possibly as many as 680,000—Palestinians murdered in Gaza. By
condemning only Ben‑Gvir, Carney avoided confronting the full scale of state
violence, and in doing so revealed the limits of his moral courage, the
character flaws of his leadership, and the extent of his cowardice.
More
trade with China—another genocidal state
Carney’s weakness on human rights
is not confined to Israel. His pursuit of expanded trade with China—despite
Beijing’s ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs—shows
the same pattern of moral blindness.
The Chinese government has built a vast network of
concentration camps, indoctrination boarding schools that separate Uyghur
children from their families, forced-labour factories, and an all‑seeing
surveillance state designed to crush an entire people. The United States, the
United Kingdom, and several European governments have formally recognized these
atrocities as genocide, while Canada has not. And Carney’s response has been
one of astonishing moral indifference.
He treats China’s genocide as a
regrettable footnote rather than the absolute barrier to trade it should be. He
speaks in the antiseptic language of “market access,” “strategic partnerships,”
and “economic diversification,” while millions of Uyghurs are subjected to
forced labour, mass detention, sterilization campaigns, cultural erasure, and
the destruction of their religious identity. There is no moral universe in
which a genocide can be bracketed off as an inconvenient detail in a trade
negotiation. Yet that is precisely what Carney is doing—reducing one of the
gravest crimes known to humanity to a background concern that must not
interfere with Canada’s economic ambitions.
Under Carney, Ottawa has sought
deeper economic ties with Beijing. Human rights have not been a meaningful
point of negotiation. Forced labour has not been a red line. The genocide of
Uyghurs has not been a barrier.
The message is unmistakable:
profit is more important than people.
Appeasing
a Hindu supremacist regime
The Carney government’s efforts
to negotiate a comprehensive trade deal with India
is another example of his willingness to overlook atrocities for economic gain.
Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has embraced a racist, fascist, Hindu
supremacist ideology that has made persecution of Muslims, Dalits and
other Indian minority communities a matter of state policy.
Citizenship laws target Muslims. Lynchings of Muslims by Hindu extremists occur
with impunity. Journalists, academics, and activists face arrest for
criticizing the government. The Modi regime has dismantled democratic norms and
weaponized Hindu fundamentalism and nationalism as a tool of exclusion.
Yet Carney has pursued trade
negotiations with India without including human rights a factor in
negotiations. There has been no insistence on protections for Indo‑Muslims,
Dalits, Christians or other minorities. No pressure on Modi’s government to end
discriminatory policies. No moral leadership.
As South Africa’s Anglican
Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, “If
you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the
oppressor.” But it seems Carney hasn’t learned this lesson.
More
trade with authoritarian states
Carney’s eagerness to forge trade
deals with authoritarian regimes in the Persian Gulf and Saudi Arabia further
underscores his disregard for human rights. These states—Saudi Arabia, United
Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain—are among the least free societies in the world
when it comes to civil liberties. Laws ban criticism of the ruling families,
state policies, or Islam. Their governments use spyware and monitoring tools to
target dissidents and activists. Political parties are illegal, and national
legislatures have no real power. Millions of low-income workers face harsh
conditions under the kafala sponsorship
system. Activists and critics face arbitrary detention, lengthy
prison terms, and unfair trials. Women’s rights are suppressed, being LGBTQ2 is
criminalized, and independent journalism is silenced.
Yet Carney has treated these
governments as normal trading partners, never making human rights a major point
of negotiation. He speaks of Gulf autocracies as if they were simply emerging
markets rather than repressive states where human rights are an afterthought.
Canada, a nation that once prided itself on being a moral voice in global
affairs, has now silenced itself under Carney.
Carney
fails to defend Canadians’ Charter rights
Carney’s weakness on human rights
is not limited to foreign policy. It is visible at home in his refusal to
confront provincial governments that
abuse the Canadian Constitution’s notwithstanding clause to
violate the fundamental rights of Canadians. The clause was never intended as a
routine political tool. It was meant to be an extraordinary measure used
sparingly. But provinces have increasingly deployed it to override Charter rights
for political convenience to: suppress labour rights; restrict freedom of
expression; target vulnerable communities (Muslims in Quebec, the LGBTQ2
community in Alberta and Saskatchewan); and to pre‑empt judicial review of
legislation.
This trend represents the slow
normalization of constitutional vandalism.
And Carney has done nothing to stop it (nor did his predecessors).
Refusal
to use the power of “Disallowance”
The Constitution gives the
federal government a powerful tool: disallowance. Under
sections 55–57 of the Constitution Act, 1867, Ottawa can invalidate provincial
laws that violate national principles or constitutional norms. This power has
fallen into disuse, not because it is unconstitutional, but because federal
governments have lacked the political courage to use it when needed.
Carney’s refusal to even consider
disallowance to address Quebec’s Bill 21
“secularism” law or Alberta’s violation of LGBTQ2 rights
is not restraint it is dereliction. When provinces openly use the
notwithstanding clause to strip Canadians of Charter protections, the federal
government has both the authority and the responsibility to intervene. But the
federal government refuses
Political leaders who will not
protect the rights of their own citizens cannot be trusted to defend the rights
of persecuted peoples abroad.
Comparing
Trudeau and Carney
While this analysis focuses on
Carney and his government, similar criticisms can be levelled at his
predecessor Justin Trudeau. On Gaza, on Israel’s decades-long occupation, on
the misuse of the notwithstanding clause by provinces, Trudeau also failed to
show the moral courage required of a national leader. He avoided naming Israeli
atrocities for what they were. He refused to impose sanctions. He allowed
provinces to weaponize the notwithstanding clause without federal intervention.
On China, India, and the Gulf autocracies, Trudeau walked the same path Carney
is now sprinting down—prioritizing trade, investment, and geopolitical
convenience over human rights.
But there is one crucial
difference. One of Trudeau’s first and most admirable decisions as prime
minister was accepting thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing war and persecution
just after he was elected prime minister. That act did not make Trudeau an
angel on the other issues discussed here, but it demonstrated that he possessed
at least some moral compass when it came to defending humanity. Carney has
shown no such instinct. Where Trudeau jogged slowly down the path of moral
compromise, Carney is racing down that road headlong, unencumbered by even the
faintest hesitation about concerns for human rights.
Carney’s defenders often point to
his credentials: a former governor of the Bank of Canada, former governor of
the Bank of England, celebrated economist, respected financial thinker. But
these accomplishments reveal the core problem. Carney approaches politics like
a banker, not as a political leader representing all Canadians. He sees the
world through balance sheets, not moral obligations, and treats human rights as
negotiable, secondary, or inconvenient. He is a man who believes the market can
solve everything except the things that matter most.
When humanity becomes a variable
in an economic equation, it is always the first thing sacrificed.
Canada deserves a prime minister
who understands that human rights are not optional. They are not bargaining
chips to be traded away in back-room negotiations, nor are they secondary
considerations to be weighed against export markets, investment flows, or
geopolitical convenience.
Human rights are the moral
foundation of any society that claims to value dignity, equality, and justice.
In all the cases mentioned in this analysis Carney has responded not with the
instinct to protect the vulnerable but with the instinct to protect economic
interests
History teaches a simple lesson.
A leader who refuses to protect humanity cannot be trusted on anything else.
The measure of a prime minister is not the size of the economy he manages, but
the size of the moral obligations he is willing to shoulder. By that measure,
Carney has failed—and Canada must reckon with the consequences of a leader who
has forgotten that the first duty of public office—to defend human life, not
the bottom line.
© 2026
The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.
