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Category: Chairman’s Desk

The arts are not relics we preserve out of nostalgia, Mr. Chalamet

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When you read this, the Academy Awards will either be hours away or already behind us.

And the man who is arguably Hollywood’s biggest star, Timothée Chalamet, will either be celebrating a historic night, becoming one of the youngest actors ever to win Best Actor, or quietly reflecting on how, in the span of a few ill-chosen words, he may have fumbled the ball at the one-yard line.

For readers who may have missed the online furor, let me briefly explain.

Chalamet sparked a major backlash last week when he appeared to dismiss ballet and opera as relics; art forms sustained largely out of obligation rather than vitality.

“I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera, or, you know, things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive,’” he said during a CNN and Variety town hall event.

The pushback was both swift and widespread.

Arts commentators rushed in to agree or disagree with his premise. Social media erupted, with critics eager to knock a celebrity down a peg. Opera and ballet companies around the world seized the moment for some clever marketing, offering discounted tickets with promo codes like “TIMOTHEE.” Here at home, the Canadian Opera Company leaned into the moment with videos of young opera fans explaining why the art form continues to matter.

In short, the comment struck a nerve for many.

It certainly did for me.

I’m of the “an attack on one is an attack on all” camp when it comes to the arts. As Chancellor of OCAD University and a longtime supporter of Canada’s cultural institutions, including currently serving on the board of the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, I have spent decades around artists and arts organizations. And what every leader in the sector will tell you right now is simple: these are difficult times.

Public funding and private donations are under pressure. Artificial intelligence is beginning to disrupt entire creative industries, raising profound questions about authorship, ownership and the future of artistic labour. And audiences themselves are being pulled in a thousand different directions.

Yet despite these pressures, the sector continues to punch far above its weight economically. According to research by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Canada’s arts and culture industries contributed roughly $65 billion to the national economy in 2024, about two per cent of GDP. Even more striking, the sector has been growing at nearly twice the pace of the broader economy, outpacing industries such as oil and gas, retail and manufacturing.

But economics only tell part of the story. There are much deeper reasons we need the arts now more than ever.

We are living in an era of intensifying division, geopolitical, ideological and cultural. Conflict across the globe is hardening identities and flattening our ability to see one another as fully human.

The 19th century novelist, Stendhal, once wrote that politics in a work of art is like a pistol shot in a concert, something simply impossible to ignore. Gore Vidal turned that metaphor on its head, observing that in modern times “the pistol shots are the concert, while the work of art becomes the discordant interruption.”

It is a comment that feels increasingly accurate. And the interruption remains precisely what we’re in need of today.

Art interrupts the narratives that turn neighbours into enemies. It complicates the simple stories that conflict depends upon. It reminds us that behind every label, political, national, ideological, there is a human being.

In a world increasingly organized around outrage, speed and tribal certainty, the arts do something radical: they slow us down. They invite empathy. They expand the imagination. They humanize.

Which is precisely why they are worth defending, in all their forms.

So, while Sunday night will produce its usual stories of triumph and heartbreak for actors like Chalamet, the world will keep turning, and we will continue to need that interruption.

At the same time, we will do well to remember the small controversy he stirred and the larger truth it reminds us of. The arts are not relics we preserve out of nostalgia. They are tools we rely on to remain human.

King Charles should relinquish his throne

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When I first came upon the now infamous photo of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, slumped in the back of a car, a line from Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” immediately came to mind: “Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face. It cannot be concealed.”

But that hasn’t stopped Andrew and the House of Windsor from trying.

Late last year, I argued that the Royals had failed to follow one of the most fundamental rules of crisis management: get to the endgame fast.

What does that mean? It means that at the first sign of serious trouble, you move immediately to the action that you know will ultimately have to be taken.

In Andrew’s case, once it became publicly known that he had maintained a long-standing relationship with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, decisive steps should have been taken immediately: remove him as a working royal, strip him of his titles, sever all taxpayer-subsidized accommodation and benefits. Instead, we witnessed hesitation and half measures. And the final necessary step, removing him from the line of succession, has yet to happen.

When you fail to move decisively, the damage does not arrive in a single catastrophic blow. It is, in fact, worse. It comes in slow, corrosive drips over time that undermine the entire institution.

Last week, police arrested Mountbatten-Windsor on charges of misconduct in public office over allegations that he shared confidential government reports with Epstein while serving as a U.K. trade envoy in 2010.

Heaven only knows what is yet to come. This can no longer be branded as an isolated, “rotten apple” issue. It is an institutional crisis.

The gravest danger in any episode of elite misconduct, whether in government, business or a constitutional monarchy, is not simply the wrongdoing itself. It is the possibility that the wrongdoing reflected a permissive culture, enabled by silence or wilful blindness.

When that possibility arises, disciplining the individual is no longer sufficient. The scrutiny climbs the ladder. It cuts its way upward to the figure who embodies or leads the institution. And whenever questions of “who knew what, and when?” begin to surface, as they now have around the House of Windsor, you are in a perilous place.

There are flashing arrows pointing toward the only remaining stabilizing move: the King should step aside and allow Prince William to assume the throne.

This is what endgame looks like. It is what remains after years of incrementalism and reluctance. Because the failure to act early leaves only more dramatic action later. And make no mistake: dramatic action is now required.

For decades, the personal popularity of Queen Elizabeth II shielded the monarchy from deeper structural vulnerabilities. Her presence acted as a stabilizing force that transcended criticism.

That buffer is gone. Now, amid cost-of-living pressures across the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, public patience is much thinner.

But that’s not all. The Epstein affair is no routine scandal. It is emblematic of a broader public revulsion toward elite impunity and the perception that the powerful operate by different rules. Of the many horrific allegations that emerged from the Epstein investigations, remarkably only three individuals have faced criminal consequences: Epstein himself, now dead; his principal accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, serving a 20-year sentence; and now Andrew.

Notably, Andrew’s charges are not yet related to the alleged sexual assault of Virginia Giuffre, but on allegations of misconduct in public office. As Sam Sifton of The New York Times observes, it has the feel of prosecuting Al Capone for tax evasion.

All this matters because when accountability appears partial or indirect, public suspicion does not dissipate, it intensifies.

Which brings us back to the institution itself.

How sorry would it be for a man who has waited his entire adult life to serve his people as King to have to conclude that the only way to save the very monarchy he loves so much is with his own departure.

How monumental would be a decision at once so historic and yet so deeply personal for not only him but for the House of Windsor itself.

Some will insist that a monarch’s duty is to remain. But the higher expression of duty may well be sacrifice. To relinquish the throne not out of weakness, but out of stewardship and a genuine understanding of the course of history. To allow William and Catherine to inherit not a diminished institution fighting for credibility, but one renewed through decisive leadership.

To have any chance of becoming prime minister, Pierre Poilievre needs to say Donald Trump’s name

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Silence is a decision.

And this is, effectively, where Pierre Poilievre now finds himself on the issue of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Among some Conservative party faithful, there has been a quiet hope, wishful thinking actually, that this issue would cease to be the dominant one. That crime and affordability would re-emerge as ballot-box drivers. That the Trump circus would recede to the periphery.

But as the orange menace’s latest actions, from absurd demands over ownership of the Gordie Howe International Bridge (despite Canada’s $6.4-billion investment and existing joint arrangements with Michigan) to fresh threats on tearing up CUSMA, Trump’s hold over our politics is not going anywhere, anytime soon.

Poilievre has done a lot right in recent months. He’s worked hard to consolidate his leadership. He has started to adjust his tone. But he has not yet found the right approach to communicating about Trump.

Then again, you will never find the right approach if you start from the wrong premise. That premise is this: What is the least conceivable amount that can be said, directly, about Trump?

This kind of restraint has been lurking in the background at least since the last federal campaign and was certainly present at the Conservative party Convention last month in Calgary, where Trump’s name was scarcely uttered.

The logic is understandable. The idea is that saying too much, or saying anything too critical, risks alienating a slice of the conservative base that views Trump sympathetically.

But two things can be true. Yes, a sharper tone on Trump could irritate some loyalists. But it is also an inescapable fact that you cannot win a general election in Canada while tiptoeing around the single biggest external force shaping Canadians’ sense of economic and security risk.

That is the crossroads.

And silence, at this stage, is not strategic ambiguity or even, in my view, a remotely viable option for Poilievre. You cannot credibly speak to the consequences of a problem if you do not name its source.

The good news for Poilievre is this: he has the political capital to say what needs to be said. He has just secured an overwhelming mandate at his party’s convention. No small feat, especially for an opposition leader who lost an election many believed would or could be won. But the numbers don’t lie. He won a decisive victory (almost 90 per cent) at his leadership review. His base is consolidated. His authority is established.

He now has political capital which exists to be spent.

And the most valuable way to spend it now is not by soothing those already committed, but by persuading those still unconvinced. That means saying things that may unsettle parts of your coalition in order to signal seriousness to the broader electorate.

Is that a risk? Sure.

But it is a far greater risk to remain largely silent while Trump continues to dominate Canada’s economic and geopolitical horizon.

More importantly, this is not just about positioning for the next election. It is about demonstrating governing readiness. Canadians are not merely asking who can criticize the government; they are asking who can manage volatility south of the border without flinching.

Leadership in this moment requires more than oblique references to “uncertainty” or “external pressures.” It requires acknowledging that Trump is not a peripheral irritant but a structural factor in Canada’s future, on trade, security, energy and beyond. It demands saying his name.

As long as Trump remains central to Canada’s anxiety, Poilievre must show that he understands the scale of the challenge and that he is prepared to confront it plainly.

Silence, after all, is not neutrality. It is a choice.

How Canada should operate in a TACO world

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In politics, you can rarely put your faith in absolutes. Especially maxims coined by Wall Street traders. But this one has merit. After an extensive analysis, Bloomberg Economics recently showed that U.S. President Donald Trump only follows through on his tariff threats a mere quarter of the time.

So. Make that almost always chickens out.

No surprise, we’ve seen a market correction. The bluster has been priced in. Unlike this time last year, Trump’s outlandish pronouncements no longer carry the same power to send markets into freefall or plunge nation-states into panic.

And Trump’s Truth Social tantrum against Canada last weekend was a case in point. He threatened to slap a 100 per cent tariff on Canadian goods coming into the United States if Canada “makes a deal with China.”

National crisis? Emergency press conference? Hardly. Prime Minister Mark Carney barely gave the threat the time of day. Instead, Canada–U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc calmly issued a statement, did some quiet behind-the-scenes work to clarify that no free trade agreement with China was in the works, and, almost on cue, the threat appeared to evaporate.

In the subsequent days, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is about as mediagenic as a Madame Tussauds wax figure, has issued similar declarations, warning Carney not to “pick a fight” with Trump. But such behaviour is now table stakes.

So, the question then becomes: how does Canada operate in a TACO world? Crucially, how do we leverage what we know about Trump into the upcoming CUSMA negotiations?

Answering those questions requires a clarification. The critical point about TACO isn’t that Trump never follows through. He didn’t chicken out of his mass deportation strategy. He didn’t chicken out of steel and aluminum tariffs against Canada, nor from the Venezuela raid.

The point is that at least half of what he says is pure, unmitigated spectacle. And deliberately so.

He weaponizes that spectacle as a negotiating strategy. As CBC’s Andrew Chang explains, it begins with “maximalist threat — like, 100 per cent tariffs — then, he lets the threat simmer to create negotiating leverage. He then pulls the tariff threat back — with delays or decreases.”

The path forward, therefore, rests on (to steal a line from the prime minister’s excellent Davos speech) our ability to “name reality.” Especially reality that is eminently predictable.

It’s not a question of if Trump will threaten to tear up CUSMA for leverage in the coming weeks and months; it is when. And this isn’t just a problem for the PM. Every premier, every union leader, every CEO needs to be prepared. If the next threat triggers a collective sky-is-falling mentality, we will all suffer. This is coming. We may not like it. But this is the reality we’re in.

Overreacting to Trump’s provocations, especially in the media and political commentary, only amplifies his perceived influence. Canada’s task is not to stop them, but to ensure they no longer dictate our behaviour.

Amid the daily churn and chaos of the Trump administration, there are few moments that invite a pat on the back. These are, by any measure, grave times. But if you don’t acknowledge progress where it appears, you risk forgetting what worked.

There may have been some predictable noise in the media, but as a country, Canada did not overreact to these latest threats.

That is something worth noting and celebrating. More importantly, it offers a template for what comes next.

The coming CUSMA negotiations will be long and bruising. Trump may posture like a bully, but Canada has shown that when his threats are met without panic, they often retreat.

If that makes him a chicken, it’s only because we’ve learned not to run.

Canada needs to keep its eye on Marco Rubio

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U.S. President Donald Trump’s Venezuelan adventure has generated a great deal of ink about the so-called Donroe doctrine. Commentators are eager to impose some form of coherence on a wide-ranging and often contradictory series of foreign-policy actions. But the subject resists.

The rhetoric of isolationism clashes with the covert action of a Delta Force raid to capture a foreign leader on foreign soil. The label of “president of peace” is not exactly consistent with gangster statecraft that threatens to acquire Greenland by any means necessary. Nor does it sit comfortably alongside the gutting of the State Department and foreign aid, the casual lobbing of tariffs, and what has become the habitual mistreatment of NATO allies.

Ideology is not, and never was, the way to understand the deeply transactional behaviour of Trump and the MAGA movement. The better lens is personality. And there is no personality more ascendant in MAGA politics today than Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Rubio was reportedly the most vocal proponent of the Maduro raid and now finds himself more front and centre in the MAGA media ecosystem than ever. Having the spotlight is always a dangerous thing with this president. But Rubio offsets that risk with a well-practiced grovelling to Trump’s “genius” at every conceivable opportunity — something that, as Dexter Filkins’s excellent profile in The New Yorker reveals, is entirely consistent with Rubio’s past behaviour. Filkins quotes a Miami political figure who puts it bluntly: “The one constant in Marco Rubio’s career is that he has betrayed every mentor and every principle he’s ever had in order to claim power for himself.”

An individual comfortable with logical contradiction, willing to go wherever the winds appear to be blowing, seems to be table stakes for membership in Trump’s cabinet. But it isn’t just Rubio’s flexibility on principle that has drawn attention. It is his ability to translate an unfocused and ever-changing foreign-policy posture, one driven largely by grievance, greed, and corruption, into something that sounds coherent and palatable to the American public.

Maddening as it may be, Canada needs to keep its eye on Rubio, on this court intrigue, and on where he is steering U.S. policy. It is never too early for a prediction of this magnitude: in my view, Rubio will be the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 2028.

At this stage, the logic is simple. Rubio is not just, as Filkins notes, “at least in theory, the most powerful American diplomat since Henry Kissinger” (not a particularly flattering comparison), he is also head and shoulders the most effective communicator in the administration.

More importantly, his politics are a growth proposition. As Trump 2.0 approaches its one-year anniversary on Jan. 20, the reality is that Trump is a deeply unpopular second-term president. His favourability ratings are in the gutter, and his promise to “make America affordable again” does not, on the evidence, appear to be materializing, despite all the strong-arming of economists and nation-states alike.

Many assume Trump’s vice-president will be the natural successor. But the fact is JD Vance cannot grow the MAGA coalition or attract voters from the centre. He can only consolidate its most extreme elements.

Rubio, by contrast, may alienate some of the same far-right voters that Vance satisfies, but he can attract more centrist Americans, and he brings with him the added benefit of locking down Florida.

While he has played the loyal soldier and publicly stated that he would back Vance should the vice-president seek the nomination, a great deal can change between now and 2028. Momentum for Rubio’s candidacy will only accelerate if Republicans suffer a decisive defeat in the midterm elections this fall — a result that would intensify the party’s search for a figure who can expand the coalition.

Ultimately, Rubio’s rise is an indication of wag-the-dog foreign policy. It is a tried-and-tested political calculus, long a presidential playbook: when you are unpopular at home, you go abroad.

For Canada, that means more chaos ahead, more supply-chain disruptions, more conflicts, deeper NATO fractures, the works.

Marco Rubio will be the man tasked with stickhandling it all. And my bet is that he will also be the man Canada will be dealing with once his boss’s term draws to an end.