That said, in Canadian politics these days, one of the primary tools used by Orwell’s all-powerful government of Oceania known simply as “The Party” – “doublethink” or the ability to hold two contradictory views at the same time – is on full display.
How else to explain the Canadian public’s acquiescence to Prime Minister Mark Carney calling China our greatest security threat in April 2025 and a strategic partner in January 2026?
To hold these two contradictory views simultaneously requires not only doublethink but the practical application of Orwell’s “memory hole” in 1984, the mechanism by which the Party systematically destroyed the historical evidence of its previous positions when they contradicted its new ones.
In this case, the historical evidence – barely a year old – is that of Canada’s foreign interference inquiry, which reported in January 2025 that China “is the most active perpetrator of foreign interference targeting Canada’s democratic institutions” and sees Canada as “a high-priority target.”
To believe that threat has abated, one has to believe that the admission of 49,000 Chinese-made EV vehicles into Canada annually will cause China to rethink, in the words of the foreign interference inquiry, targeting “members of Chinese Canadian diaspora communities for the purposes of repression, influence and forced return of … individuals to the People’s Republic of China.”
That it will no longer deploy “a wide range of tradecraft to carry out its activities, one of which is to use a person’s family and friends living in the PRC as leverage against them.”
And that China will cease using “its diplomatic missions, PRC international students, community organizations and private individuals, among others, to carry out its transnational repression activities” in addition to its standard operating procedures of industrial espionage and intellectual property theft.
In his now famous Davos speech, Carney justified such doublethink by proclaiming that Canada will, going forward, “actively take on the world as it is, not wait around for a world we wish to be.”
In reality, when it comes to China, Canada’s position is to actively ignore China as it is, in favour of a China we wish it to be.
As John Robson described it in an excellent National Post column last week titled, “In Mark Carney’s Canada, nothing matters”:
“Given firm evidence that Chinese Communists are subverting our elections, penetrating our institutions and intimidating our citizens, we do nothing whatsoever. The police don’t swoop. The promised foreign agent registry never materializes. Politicians don’t stop flying to Beijing. Exactly as if being conquered doesn’t matter.”
**
First, the Trudeau-Carney government decided to fill the ranks of the Canadian Forces with newcomers who do not necessarily share our values, history, traditions, and culture.
— Dei Civitas (@bill_c10) February 18, 2026
Then, the Trudeau-Carney government cut ties with the USA and strengthened ties with China, the country… https://t.co/wAdNkJKA5V
(Sidebar: see here.)
What difference does it make if we are invaded from our southern neighbours?
Do we expect things to be worse?
What could happen?
Our elections run unimpeded and without the hint of interference?
We stop killing our sick, elderly and veterans?
We're already chattel.
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