If You're Not At The Table, You're On The Menu
Philippe Beaudoin · October 27, 2026
“If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”
These words, spoken by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney during his address at Davos, captured our imagination. We intuitively sense that there’s something true about them. When a handful of countries get together to talk, it’s hard to imagine they won’t make decisions that benefit themselves at the expense of others.
But today, Quebec Premier Paul Saint-Pierre Plamondon turned Carney’s own words back on him to express his frustration at not having a seat at the table during the Canada–European Union dinner. And my immediate reaction was that this wasn’t entirely honest on his part. That it was more an exercise in rhetoric than in intellectually honest reflection.
Why? What’s the difference between what Carney was saying and what Saint-Pierre Plamondon is saying?
Let’s consider where each proposition leads if we take it to its logical extreme. Following Carney’s logic, we get the United Nations. A forum where every country is invited and where a protocol ensures that everyone gets a chance to speak.
Following Saint-Pierre Plamondon’s logic, we get a form of chaos. A world where every voice that makes up another voice—a province within a country, a region within a province, a city, a neighborhood, perhaps even an individual—can demand a seat at the table on the grounds that failing to provide one would put them “on the menu.”
That’s simply not sustainable.
What Carney is saying is that he wants a forum where every country can feel it has the full and undivided attention of the others. When a country is absent from the table, none of the other voices can speak for it. It is “on the menu.” Potentially instrumentalized by the powers gathered around the table. Even the “good” countries cannot share precisely the same concerns and sensitivities as those that are absent.
What Saint-Pierre Plamondon is saying is different. He isn’t saying that nobody at the table is supposed to represent Quebec’s particular concerns and sensitivities. He’s saying he doesn’t trust Carney to do it well.
What we’re talking about here is governance, perhaps even democracy. But when we use those words, we obscure two simpler concepts they contain. Concepts that anyone can understand because we experience them in everyday life:
- Do we genuinely feel heard by our peers?
- Do we genuinely feel heard by our representatives?
The first is Carney’s question. And he answers it, rightly: “No, not if we’re not even at the table.”
The second is the question Saint-Pierre Plamondon conflates with the first. And that conflation risks breeding resentment among people. Anger that could turn into demands for “a seat at the table of nations,” when perhaps we should instead be asking the underlying question: why don’t we feel heard by the people whose mandate is to represent us at that table?