Mark Carney’s address to the European Parliament laid bare a familiar and costly delusion. Having moved Canada past Britain as another country purporting to straddle Europe and the United States, the Prime Minister revealed in Strasbourg his authoritarian, Davosian leftist biases more clearly than he has to Canadians. He flattered his audience by rewriting the history of WW2, asserting that freedom was won “thanks to the heroism of the European resistance.” This is rubbish. Europe was liberated (from Germany) by the Americans, British and Canadians. He neglected to mention that Canadian exports to the United States are ten times those to Europe, or that the United States accounts for more than a third of Canada’s economy. Both speaker and audience indulged a complete fantasy of reciprocal magnetic interest. It will not last long. For twenty years the American economy has grown more than twice as fast as the European Union’s. Europe is wallowing economically; its principal powers flounder while only Italy presently possesses a serious government. The romantic notion that the old European powers, having squandered their leadership in the world, can simply stand on one another’s shoulders and reclaim planetary primacy is a delusion.