“In a time of rupture, Mark Carney is a voice, and a leader, worth paying attention to, not only for Canada’s future, but for the direction of the global order.”
Dr Deirdre Giblin, ICBA Chair and Director of Development and External Engagement at National College of Ireland, reflects on Prime Minister Mark Carney’s address to the World Economic Forum In Davos this week.
Deirdre also references this recent Irish Independent article, which remains highly relevant mid today’s shifting global political landscape. It explores the story of how Canada and Mark Carney supported Ireland through the financial crisis – a testament to the enduring partnership between our two nations.
“I tuned in to the World Economic Forum to listen to Mark Carney speaking at Davos this week and felt both unsettled and reassured. Unsettled, because he named a truth many sense but struggle to articulate: we are living through a rupture, not a transition. The fiction of a rules-based international order has frayed. Power is increasingly transactional and unconstrained. And “going along to get along” no longer buys safety.
I was reassured, even hopeful, because his message was not one of resignation.
I first met Mark Carney in 2015 in Dublin when he delivered a speech to honor the late Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and have encountered him a handful of times since. I was privileged to be part of the Taoiseach’s visit to Mark Carney in Ottawa in 2025. I have long admired his intellectual honesty and moral clarity.
In 2018, I contributed to an Irish Independent article written by Patrick Haughey about how Canada, and Mark Carney, stood with Ireland through its darkest economic hour. When Ireland had few friends, Canada was in our corner. What struck me about his Davos speech was how that same instinct now shapes his global vision: naming reality, refusing to live within a lie, and acting with integrity.
As Chair of the Ireland Canada Business Association, as Director of Development & External Engagement at National College of Ireland, and as a mother of two young adults questioning the world order, I see how urgently this honesty matters. Carney is clear: the old order is not coming back. His call for value-based realism, building strength at home, diversifying partnerships and forming coalitions that work, offers a credible third path for countries like Canada and Ireland.
The line that stayed with me most:
“The power of the less powerful starts with honesty.”
Hope, right now, is not passive. It is deliberate and can be difficult to muster.
In a time of rupture, Mark Carney is a voice, and a leader, worth paying attention to, not only for Canada’s future, but for the direction of the global order.