President’s Corner: The Prime Minister Takes Manhattan

A man with gray hair wearing glasses, a blue suit, and a red striped tie stands in front of a Canadian flag against a dark background.

During a press conference at the United Nations on September 23, Prime Minister Mark Carney mounted an impassioned, thoughtful and unmistakeably Canadian defence of the United Nations. Recalling an exchange with Canada’s Ambassador to the UN, Bob Rae, and quoting lyrics from Leonard Cohen’s Anthem, he stated:

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in

It is unclear which is rarer these days, defending institutions or quoting music lyrics at press conferences. Here was a defiant defence of institutions. Noting that “nostalgia is not a strategy”, there was also a refreshingly pragmatic approach underpinning the Prime Minister’s support. Implicit was the fact that we start with the institutions we have and proceed from there, knowing they are not perfect, but needing them to be serviceable. The Prime Minister held out hope that, despite the sometimes interminable bureaucracy, some good would result – that’s how the light gets in. All in all, at a time when the United Nation’s seems to be lacking light and praise, the Prime Minister’s remarks contrasted markedly with that of some other world leaders both inside and outside the UN General Assembly.

The UN might also have been relieved that the Prime Minister, who had worked at the UN as the Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance since 2019, did not quote from elsewhere in the Cohen canon:

They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom

For tryin’ to change the system from within

I’m coming now, I’m coming to reward them

First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin