Mark Carney may have a winking problem: Why PM's not-so subtle habit is risky on the world stage

National Post

2 days ago

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Some people wink at what they say themselves. Carney just as often winks at what other people say, and not to the speaker, but to their audience.
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Prest's view is that Carney's winks in Trump's presence are typical of his style, in that they operate on three levels. This offers a theoretical framework for how to understand Carney winks in general, what they mean, and who they are for, he said.
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At one level, Carney is communicating with Trump, in public, quietly listening to him. At a higher level he is communicating with Macron about Trump, in a sort of privacy, signalling an internal reaction to Trump's words that Carney has decided not to vocalize. At the highest level he is communicating with the all-seeing public on the other side of the camera lens, indicating his comfort in playing all these etiquette games at the same time.
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'It's a high-wire act,' said Prest. 'If it goes badly, it could go very badly.'
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He needs to be careful that the wink includes the public, not excludes it. 'The subtext always has to bring the public along,' Prest said. They need to know what Carney is trying to communicate, that he is confidently in control, and they also have to believe him. Otherwise it's just a cocky facial tic.
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Some winks are simple, obvious. Some winks need to be accounted for more deeply. Winks are almost always ambiguous, but sometimes they mean something important. Criminal court judges have faced this problem more than most. For example, in a 2017 murder case against a Richmond Hill, Ont., man accused of beating his roommate to death, a judge had to decide whether to let a witness testify about the meaning of a wink, and was troubled by its uncertain air of 'innuendo.'
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A friend of the victim had told police he had seen bruising on the victim's ribs a couple of weeks before the killing, so he asked what happened. The victim explained he fell down the stairs, or off his bike, but then he winked, and when the friend asked what that meant, the victim said 'Kenny's got a hard punch,' referring to the accused.
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The key problem, the judge said, was that it was not clear the victim winked and spoke at the exact same time, such that the wink directly contradicted the claim of falling down the stairs, and implied that the truth was Kenny punched him. It wasn't clear 'whether the wink and the comment were part of a single, ongoing transaction.'
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That jury never heard the wink story, and eventually found the accused guilty of manslaughter, not murder.
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Winks have been admitted as criminal evidence, however, such as in the 2017 Montreal case of the undercover police agent who testified about getting a '101 course' in robbery of shopping mall jewellery stores from the suspected culprit that was so convincing, so finely detailed, that the undercover officer asked whether the suspect had actually ever robbed the target store he was describing, in the Carrefour Laval.
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The accused laughed, winked, and said 'no,' which the undercover took as 'an implicit admission that the accused had indeed robbed the store in the past.'
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So sometimes a wink can mean the opposite of what was just said, that I did not fall off my bike, that I did rob this jewellery store. What I have just said is not true, wink wink. You'll just have to trust me, and I know you will.
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For a national leader's voting public, that strategy works until it doesn't, Prest said. Carney is in something of a honeymoon phase, and his current winking spree coincides with surging approval numbers in his first months as prime minister. He can wink and trust that he will be understood in good faith. But that can change.