For someone from the tropics who covered the 2023 World Economic Forum (WEF), which President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. attended, Davos is not just about the cold, but the shock that comes with it.

Davos is not just a place; it is a ritual, a yearly pilgrimage to the Swiss mountains where the powerful gather to discuss the fragility of the world while being protected from its actual fragility by armed guards.

I stayed in Zurich and traveled to Davos each day, which sounds glamorous until you do it and realize you are essentially commuting to Olympus. Zurich, well, is where life happens.

Zurich is clean, orderly, and quietly smug, not aggressively smug, mind you, just the kind of smugness that comes from trains that arrive exactly when they say they will. People in Zurich look like they never had to bargain for anything in their lives, not even their self-esteem.

And yet, Davos seduces. The world’s financiers, political leaders, lobbyists, and professional moralists gather there. Every handshake has the possibility of affecting a currency, a policy, or a headline.

But the closer you get to Davos, the more you notice something faintly absurd: the most powerful people on earth choose to meet in a place that is physically hostile to human beings. There is irony in there somewhere.

Now fast-forward to today’s Davos drama.

Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney gave a speech that made headlines, pointing out that, no thanks to Donald Trump, the US-led rules-based global order has ruptured.

He maintained that middle powers like Canada can no longer assume that compliance will shield them from major power aggression. It is, by Davos standards, fighting talk.

Of course, Trump responded with a line so imperial it almost sounded like satire: “Canada lives because of the United States.”

And Carney, touted by some as the new champion of the free world, had to answer back with gravitas: “Canada doesn’t live because of the United States. Canada thrives because we are Canadian.”

But here is where the Contrarian in me, and in at least one Filipino-Canadian I talked with, begins to stir.

Trump, after all, will always be Trump — making threats, stirring crises, then conveniently discovering “restraint” once the room erupts.

He has been loudly toying with annexation — Greenland, Canada, maybe half the Arctic if the mood strikes, only to backpedal when called out as a bully. That’s Trumpism: Make noise, test the room, then walk it back while insisting you have won.

When Carney’s Davos remarks drew applause, Trump did what he often does when annoyed. He turned to pettiness, withdrawing an invitation for Canada to join the “Board of Peace,” as if peace were a VIP lounge and Carney had violated the dress code.

Carney’s response was also political theater, and I don’t say that as an insult. Theater is part of leadership, like Marcos saying on Thursday the equivalent of “I’m not yet dead” after being rushed to a hospital on Wednesday night.

Yes, leaders are expected to project steadiness even when the world is wobbling. Still, immigrants, whether those in Canada or the embattled ones in the US, measure speeches the way poor people measure promises: against tomorrow morning.

Canadian Filipinos live in a country that is orderly but not cheap, safe but not simple, secure but increasingly expensive, a country where the snow is free but housing isn’t.

So while the world applauds Carney’s newfound moral clarity, some Filipinos listen with immigrant realism. They want to know: Will this newfound strength translate to policy?

Will sovereignty be defended the same way in trade negotiations? Will dignity be preserved when the economy starts to hurt? Will Canada’s leaders hold their ground when tariffs bite, when exports drop, when industries scream, and when American pressure stops being rhetorical and becomes financial?

That, in essence, is Contrarian instinct — not to dismiss what is popular, but to ask what is true beneath it. So yes, the world can applaud Carney’s defiance, but we have heard speeches like this before. Now show us what happens next.