A friend suggested Ezra Levant look up a speech Mark Carney gave in 2019, something he was skeptical of but decided to check out anyway. It's accessible on the Bank of England's website.

The speech, delivered at the Jackson Hole central banking symposium in August 2019 while Carney was serving as Bank of England governor, is titled "The Growing Challenges for Monetary Policy in the Current International Monetary and Financial System."

Ezra read the full document over the weekend and walked through it on Monday's Rebel Roundup.

The argument Carney makes is straightforward: the United States dollar's dominance over global trade and finance is a problem that needs to be solved. The solution, he argues, is a multipolar global economy with a new international monetary and financial system at its centre.

"The most likely candidate for true reserve currency status," Carney writes, "the renminbi, has a long way to go before it's ready to assume the mantle. The initial building blocks are there already." He goes on to note that China has overtaken the U.S. as the world's leading trading nation and that the renminbi, the Chinese Communist Party's dollar, is already more common than sterling in oil futures benchmarks despite having no market share prior to 2018.

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Carney also proposes what he calls a Synthetic Hegemonic Currency — a blended basket of currencies designed to wean the world off the U.S. dollar. 

"If the share of trade invoiced in SHC were to rise," he writes, "the U.S. would have less potent spillovers through exchange rates." His conclusion calls for urgency in building "a system worthy of the diverse, multipolar global economy that is emerging."

"The entire purpose of this speech was to undermine the U.S. dollar's dominance," Ezra said, "by replacing it with either Chinese or a blend of third world currencies — for the purpose of making the world multipolar, not unipolar."

The timing of the discovery is notable, with the speech making the rounds on social media as China's state-run Global Times published an editorial this week titled "Canada Launches a Chinese-Style Counterattack" — praising Carney's retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. as proof that the international community is pushing back against American economic dominance.

"Washington probably never imagined that Ottawa would launch a Chinese-style counterattack," the editorial reads. It describes Canada's move as going "far beyond the scope of a North American trade dispute."

U.S. trade representative Jamieson Greer had already disparagingly compared Canada's retaliation to what China would do. China agreed — and called it a compliment.

"It raises the question," Ezra said, "who did Mark Carney meet with in Tuscany before coming over? He hasn't told us." Ezra said he does not believe the trade war is about protecting Quebec culture or Canadian content rules.

"This is about losers like Mark Carney and Doug Ford whipping up hatred against Donald Trump and harvesting that for political power," he said. "And I think China knows exactly what's going on."

The full 2019 speech is available on the Bank of England's website.