Prime Minister Mark Carney waves holding a coin as he speaks to guests at the Black History Month event at the Museum of History in Gatineau, Que., last Wednesday.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
In preparation for the Olympics, the United States sent its most important ambassador to Italy to drum up goodwill – Snoop Dogg.
He carried the torch. He curled. He was bouncing around Milan like a mobile jewellery store.
Selling American cultural propaganda in Europe is impossible right now, but Snoop almost managed it. He’s that delightful.
Who’s here selling Canada?
The athletes, I guess. But that only works if they win in some remarkable way and it turns into a point of global interest and then it gets political. In Canada’s secret dreams, someone from Moncton wins at luge and then gets up on the podium with a Mexican and a Greenlander and they all raise their fists in solidarity, but it might be an unrealistic ask.
Celebrities? I haven’t seen any yet. Being an out-of-the-closet Hollywood Canadian is great when you’ve got a signature breakfast sandwich at Tim Hortons, but not anywhere someone from the White House might run in to you. What would your publicist think?
Rapper Snoop Dogg, acting as honorary coach of Team USA, has been an almost ubiquitous presence at these Winter Olympics, moving from the curling rink to the hockey arena and seemingly everywhere in between.Richard Heathcote/Getty Images
We have a couple of minor politicians here or planning to be here. Sports Minister Adam van Koeverden is doing the rounds. He’s a gold medalist, but that was a long time ago. No non-Canadian, however well-informed, could pick him out of a one-man line-up.
Outside of a strictly sporting context, Canada is culturally invisible at the Olympics. That was fine two years ago. Preferable, even. Nobody wants to take the spotlight off the athletes – that was the wisdom.
It doesn’t work any more. If the athletes want the spotlight entirely to themselves, I suggest they brush up on their international diplomacy. Whether they want to be or not, they are all travelling representatives of a country under a sort of siege.
In those circumstances, Canada doesn’t need more bronze medals. It needs to create global heat. Because when they’re coming for us, you don’t want people from Brazil and Japan going, “Who?”
You want them saying, “Not Canada, that country I know a little about and think I love based on its many charming appearances on the world stage.”
If sales is the job, only one Canadian has shown themselves both willing and able recently – Mark Carney.
Secretary of State for Sport Adam van Koeverden, seen here on on Parliament Hill in Ottawa last month, has been doing the rounds in Milan Cortina.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
As best I can tell, this guy lives on a plane, like that weird billionaire in Contact. Since he got the top job, it seems like he’s visited every major world capital except Ottawa.
But will he be in Milan? No plans to do so, according to the Prime Minister’s Office on Sunday. He’s leaving that one to the B-team.
This isn’t an own goal. That would imply you were in the game. The better way to describe it is that you slept in and missed the team bus.
I wouldn’t claim to know how to do the man’s job. Someone who’s hacked his way from the Northwest Territories to the big desks he’s been behind is obviously a born killer. But given the the person-behind-the-person nature of most of those positions, Canada may be having trouble calibrating the symbology of his new position.
Canada needs people cutting backroom deals, but we don’t need every single national rep hiding in there. Someone has to come out and front the nation.
Carney wants to create a new global order of former also-rans. Great idea. So where is he? Plenty of other VIPs are here cooling their heels waiting for the slopestyle to start. Does he plan to do this all on the phone?
Not that he’s necessarily the guy you want to be talking to but JD Vance was sitting a couple of rows down and over from me the other day. I could’ve had a conversation with him. I would have had to shout, and the Secret Service would probably have shot me, but it could have been done.
U.S. Vice-President JD Vance, right, talks to American boxer and influencer Jake Paul while attending the women's preliminary round hockey match between the USA and Finland at the Milano Rho Ice Hockey Arena in Milan on Saturday.ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP/Getty Images
The opening ceremony – there’s a missed opportunity for the ages. Vance was booed as a proxy for the U.S. After Davos, where he spoke up on behalf of all the trembling ditherers on this continent, the Italian crowd might’ve carried Carney out onto the field and stuck him up on Andrea Bocelli’s shoulders.
I get that no politician wants to make himself the focus of attention at a Games. Even Justin Trudeau, a man who would the crash the stage at a grade-school science fair, followed that rule.
But now we have new rules, or no rules. How you see it depends on whether or not you figure to lose your job in the near future.
The new rule is attention equals power. That’s why everybody wants to be seen at the big party. Because if you aren’t there, everyone who is thinks you must not matter. Or, worse, doesn’t think about you at all.
It is a bedrock of Canadian identity that we don’t feel the need to be seen, and certainly wouldn’t like to be said to care. That’s a great thing about us, but it’s a luxury of peacetime.
That luxury has disappeared for those who want to be in positions of cultural leadership. If you’re not going to show up on behalf of this country, then don’t apply for the job.
All the joyful collaborators in pop culture will say or do anything to keep the U.S. keen. That makes it more crucial for the few who can’t be bent to be seen out in public not bending.
Carney should be here. He should be everywhere here. He should be seen palling around with other leaders, and being modest and self-effacing with Canadian athletes. He should be seen yukking it up with Vance and slapping him so hard on the back that he coughs.
Mostly, the Prime Minister of Canada should be out there projecting confidence and vigour in what is the most confident and vigorous environment on the planet.
He can also do that at a trade meeting in Delhi, and no one who isn’t Canadian will care. When he does it here, it makes an impression that is sticky.
Even if the thought makes you shudder, it builds Canadian strength at a time when we are confronting our vulnerability.