Mark Carney’s CEO summit serves Trump’s billionairist, militarist, ecocidal agenda. Any effort to frame it as challenging the US president should be ridiculed.
On September 14 and 15 Carney will host what the Globe and Mail recently labelled “the largest gathering of top business leaders ever to assemble in the country.” Liberal Party supporters want to frame it as a reaction to Trump’s economic sabotage, but Carney’s investment summit largely promotes the US president’s project. As the prime minister himself stated when addressing a similar type of corporate crowd in New York three months ago, “Canada Strong will help make America great again.”
US capital will be well represented in Toronto. Top Wall Street players Blackstone and Blackrock are headliners at Carney’s privatization summit. The chairman and CEO of Blackstone, Steve Schwarzman, was a leading donor to Trump’s super PAC and chaired Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum.
More than two dozen countries are expected to be represented at the summit. None of the invitees, however, appear to be from US geopolitical competitors (China, Russia, Iran, etc.).
At a policy level, the summit aligns with the Donald’s outlook. The get-together will focus on profit-making opportunities in privatization, fossil fuel extraction, military contracts and AI data centres. A just released pre-summit TD economics report headlined “Triggering a Canadian Investment Supercycle”, focuses on fossil fuels and militarism. According to Canada’s second largest bank, 34% of the potential $1.5 trillion in “investment” opportunities are in tar sands and other energy infrastructure largely designed to extract more fossil fuels. After energy, the second biggest profit-making hub is in arms production. The war economy is cited as possibly responsible for 27% of the desired investment super cycle. So over 60% of the hoped-for capitalist boom is in two sectors that should be either greatly reduced or entirely phased out. (According to TD, the rest is AI at 15%, resources 13% and transportation 11%.)
To unleash the investment super cycle, TD calls (surprise, surprise) to cut taxes on the wealthy and streamline rules restricting corporations. While some of these proposals are unlikely to be officially broached at the investment summit, they have been part of Carney’s policy agenda.
Trump is also an advocate of reducing taxes on the rich. His administration has far more ultra wealthy individuals in it than any previous US government. As Public Citizen recently reported, 57 Trump officials are worth at least $100 million.
While not quite as extreme, the former banker led Carney administration is stacked with multimillionaire former corporate executives. For example, Carney’s ambassador to the US and a point person in organizing the investment summit, Mark Wiseman, is a highly wealthy former Blackrock executive.
Carney left Brookfield Asset Management with several million dollars in stock options and a slew of conflicts as Thursday’s Toronto Star highlighted in “Conflict screen excludes Mark Carney from eight more government decisions”. As a result of his Brookfield stocks, the prime minister is precluded from involvement in many decisions that could directly benefit his significant wealth. The government has publicly identified 103 companies that could potentially present conflicts and the screen has reportedly been invoked 25 times since Carney became PM. Democracy Watch co-founder Duff Conacher noted, “Prime Minister Carney has as many financial conflicts as Trump.”
Carney has far more in common with the US president than commonly recognized. The upcoming CEO Summit will highlights it.
For those seeking a radical break from the Carney/Trump billionairist, militarist, ecocidal agenda various social movement organizations are organizing multiple counter forums before and during the CEO summit. On September 14 Capitalism can’t be fixed, Leadnow, Revolutionary Communist Party, Council of Canadians and others are promoting a mass protest. Join the carnival against capitalism. It will be a decidedly anti-Trumpian affair.
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