I’m back with Jason James to discuss an explosive wrongful dismissal claim that I believe may get to the heart of Mark Carney’s pivot to Beijing — and to a larger question now facing Canada.
Who is this government really listening to?
The case involves Raquel Garbers, a senior Canadian defence policy specialist and military figure who, according to reporting on her legal claim, helped shape Canada’s Arctic and NORAD defence policy — the very architecture that binds Canadian and American security together against the real strategic threats facing North America.
Those threats are easy to identify. They are China and Russia.
But in Ottawa today, that obvious reality has become politically inconvenient.
Garbers published an op-ed in The Hill Times warning that anti-American rhetoric from Canada was not strategic, not mature, and not in the national interest. In substance, she argued that Washington’s push to rebuild its industrial base, harden its alliances, and prepare for conflict in the Indo-Pacific or Arctic should not be treated as a hostile act against Canada. It should be understood as part of a larger Western response to authoritarian powers — especially China — that have spent years undermining democracies through trade, technology, espionage, political warfare, and economic leverage.
Her warning was simple: Canada should stop shooting itself in the foot by treating America as the enemy.
A few months later, she was out of her job.
Garbers is now suing the Government of Canada, alleging wrongful dismissal. Her legal team argues she was punished for expressing a legitimate national security view — one that, in any serious Western democracy, should be part of open debate. If her claim is proven, the implications are enormous.
Because this is not just a workplace dispute.
It goes directly to the question Jason and I have been examining for months: why is the Carney government moving away from Washington while reopening the door to Beijing?
During the election, Mark Carney rode the “elbows up” message, portraying himself as the leader who could stand up to Donald Trump and defend Canada from American pressure. But since taking office, that rhetoric has started to look less like patriotic realism and more like strategic misdirection. While Ottawa talks tough about Washington, it has also moved toward “re-engagement” with China — even as China remains the central hostile-state threat identified by Western intelligence agencies, allies, and dissidents.
That is why the Garbers case matters. If a senior Canadian defence official can be removed after warning that anti-American rhetoric benefits China and Russia, what message does that send across Ottawa? What does it tell other bureaucrats, analysts, military planners, and intelligence professionals who may privately know that Canada’s current direction is dangerous?
Her lawyer has suggested there is now a chill across the bureaucracy. That people are watching what happened to Garbers and asking whether they too could be punished for saying plainly that Canada’s alliance with the United States is not optional. It is the foundation of our defence, our economy, our continental security, and our ability to survive in a world being reshaped by Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, and transnational criminal networks.
Jason and I also discuss how this fits into the broader Carney problem: Chinese electric vehicles, industrial policy, fentanyl-linked trade and money laundering networks, elite business interests tied to China, and the strange fantasy that Canada can somehow detach itself from the United States and drift into a new strategic relationship with Beijing.
As Jason bluntly puts it, any Canadian leader that truly believes the northern half of North America and China can be partners, is either stupid or corrupt.
Canada shares a continent, an air defence system, an economy, and a future with the United States. That does not mean Canada must agree with every American president. It does mean that any prime minister who treats Washington as the enemy while courting Beijing is playing a dangerous game.
The Garbers claim may be one of the first legal windows into that game.
