Bono 'grateful' Canada elected Mark Carney: 'The world is in awe of you'

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You can count U2 frontman Bono among Prime Minister Mark Carney’s biggest fans. During an appearance on Global’s The Morning Show this week, the outspoken rock star said he was “grateful” for Canadians for “not electing a populist” leader.

“I was always a fan of your mosaic, your culture, your … kind of reason, but never more so than now,” he told hosts Jeff McArthur and Carolyn Mackenzie.

“The whole world is in awe of what you’ve done, and thank you for getting together, putting all your politics aside, and not electing a populist,” Bono said, praising Carney, who led the Liberal Party to victory last month.

The long-time advocate in the fight against HIV/AIDS and extreme poverty then took a swipe at Carney’s political rival, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.

“Actually competence turns out to be the rarest thing on the planet these days. A numerate, thoughtful leadership. So thank you,” he said, thanking Canadians for “coming together (and) showing the world how to do it … at this time in your political life.”

McArthur reminded Bono of how he said back in 2016 “the world could use a little more Canada,” to which the singer replied with a jab at U.S. President Donald Trump and his pledge to make the country the 51st state.

“Fifty-one reasons to love Canada, I say,” he said.

Nearly a decade ago, the Irish rocker urged Canada to boost its foreign aid, telling the Canadian Press in an interview that it was a “wonderful aspiration” for then-prime minister Justin Trudeau to consider allocating more money from the country’s GNI (gross national income) to help the developing world.

“I would ask the prime minister not to let go of it and I think for Canada to have it as a kind of light … have it as a kind of beacon of hope,” Bono said.

“Not just for the people whose lives depend on those Canadian dollars, but actually for Canada itself to have that place in the world.”

Bono said he thought Canadians would support sending money abroad as long as they felt their money was being spent wisely.

“I think that Canadians are, in a way, quite unromantic in their idealism. You know, they’re sort of quite practical and pragmatic. I like to think I am, too,” he said.

After then-Liberal prime minister Paul Martin broke a promise to boost foreign aid assistance during his short-lived tenure as Canada’s leader in the mid-2000s, Bono displayed his phone number on a screen during a show in Vancouver and urged the crowd to call him.

“Enough! Enough! Enough of despair! No more! So Paul Martin, I’m calling you!” Bono shouted into the microphone.

He later told the Canadian Press that it wasn’t “personal.”

“Paul Martin was, and is, a fantastic person and a very gifted leader — I’m sure he did the very best he could,” Bono said.

In that same 2016 interview, he said Canada stands out on an international stage “filled with a lunacy that we haven’t seen in years in terms of hard-left, hard-right uprisings against common sense.”

“You know, anti-immigrant sentiment, you know, awful jingoism,” Bono said.

“I mean, we’re seeing it all over Europe, we saw it with Brexit, we’re seeing it in America. In Canada, you don’t have any.”

Bono has long been an advocate for anti-poverty and anti-racism. In the mid-aughts, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer co-founded the ONE and RED charities. 

And for more than two decades, he has been vocal about urging the world’s strongest economies to meet the UN’s target of donating at least 0.7% to help alleviate poverty in poorer countries.

Last year, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reported that Canada ranked 7th among the world’s richest countries in foreign aid spending. But nearly a fifth of that money went to refugees and Ukrainians within Canada.

But he’s been accused in the past of avoiding paying taxes, a claim Bono dismissed in a 2014 interview with Sky News.

“We pay a fortune in tax. Just so people know, we pay a fortune in tax; and we’re happy to pay a fortune in tax, people should,” he said, according to The Guardian. “It’s just some smart people we have working for us trying to be sensible about the way we’re taxed. And that’s just one of our companies, by the way. There’s loads of companies.”

Bono has been on a press tour to promote his upcoming Apple TV+ documentary Bono: Stories of Surrender, which captures his one-man stage show he toured with after the release of his 2022 memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story.

Speaking at last week’s Ivor Novello awards, where he and his U2 bandmates received the Fellowship of the Ivors Academy, Bono criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas.

“Hamas, release the hostages, stop the war. Israel, be released from Benjamin Netanyahu and the far-right fundamentalists that twist your sacred texts,” he said.

In a separate chat with the Associated Press at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this month, the musician sounded off on countries falling out of love with the notion of embracing globalism saying “nationalism is not what we need.”

“I can tell you that a million children dying because their life support systems were pulled out of the wall, with glee, that’s not the America that I recognize or understand,” he said, adding that “the world has never been closer to a world war in my lifetime.”

But, turning to a page from his activist playbook, he says he is still hopeful.

“I believe there is integrity in the Americans. They will figure it out. Who was it who said: If you give Americans the facts, they will eventually make the right choice. Right now, they’re not getting the facts. Think of it: a 70% decline in HIV-AIDS, Republican-led, Democratically followed though. The greatest health intervention in the history of medicine to fight HIV-AIDS has been thrown away,” he said, referencing Trump’s cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

“It was nearly there,” Bono said. “To a space traveller, it’s like getting to Mars and going, ‘Nah, we’ll go back.’ It’s bewildering to me.”

mdaniell@postmedia.com

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