Mark Carney responds with restraint to Donald Trump’s goading, quietly ending a week of foreign policy tension

Friday alone saw Trump minimize the contribution of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies to the war in Afghanistan, a conflict that saw 158 Canadian soldiers killed in action during 2001 to 2014 when the Canada’s military was deployed.

The president then sharpened his reaction to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent rapprochement with China, declaring on social media that Beijing will “eat” Canada as it deepens trade in some areas with the authoritarian regime the United States sees as an economic rival.

He also claimed Canada opposed extending his “Golden Dome” missile defence system to Greenland, as Trump claimed to be pursuing a deal to give the U.S. more control in the Danish territory he had threatened to seize from the allied nation through economic coercion. 

At the same time, following a week of criticism from Trump government officials over Carney’s marquee foreign policy speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland — an address that garnered reviews and commentary around the world — U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stepped directly into Canadian affairs with comments that appeared to endorse separatist sentiment in Alberta.

The prime minister personally responded to none of it on Friday. At the end of two days of meetings with his cabinet at the Quebec City citadel, Carney left without taking questions from reporters. The night before, he dismissed queries from reporters about any talks with Trump as “boring” and stepped into a waiting SUV.

His ministers and spokespeople responded in his stead, but stopped short Friday of forceful rebuttal of the day’s American statements.

On Trump’s Afghanistan statements — in which the president claimed NATO allies stayed away from the front lines — Carney’s office on  Friday praised the “courage, service and sacrifice of Canadians who worked in close coordination with the United States and our NATO allies” in Afghanistan.

“Their service and their sacrifice can never be diminished,” read the statement from spokesperson Laura Scaffidi, which echoed comments from Heritage Minister Marc Miller and Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne.

The defence minister, David McGuinty, and Veterans Affairs Minister Jill McKnight ignored questions about Trump’s comments as they left the cabinet meetings Friday.

In a written statement from his office Friday evening, McGuinty pushed back on Trump’s assertion. “There was no standing back. Only standing side by side, together on the front lines with our allies,” McGuinty’s statement said, adding that Canadian troops led NATO efforts in the “perilous” and demanding Kandahar province.

Earlier Friday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer blasted Trump’s Afghanistan comments, which he decried as “insulting and, frankly, appalling.”

Miller, the Canadian heritage minister, echoed his colleagues in defending Canadian “sacrifice” in Afghanistan.

At the same time, he played down the comments from Trump’s treasury secretary about how Albertans “want sovereignty,” suggesting it’s better to brush them aside.

“These guys talk a lot. It sounds like the locker room talk that I used to have with Americans when I played with them in hockey,” Miller said.

“You’ve got to shake that off, I think. It’s always coming. You’ve just got to deal with it.”

Speaking on a right wing American news network, Bessent said Friday that Alberta is getting blocked from building a new oil pipeline to the Pacific, and suggested they have a natural partner in the U.S. 

He went on to call Albertans “very independent people” before noting that “people are talking” about a possible independence vote in the province. 

“People want sovereignty. They want what the U.S. has got,” he said. 

The blizzard of outrage, caution and criticism capped off a stretch in which Carney delivered two addresses designed to frame the extraordinary — and, in his view, epoch-changing — moment. Having opened new relations with China after years of diplomatic chill, Carney gave his speech in Davos that described an emerging world order where great powers prey on smaller countries. He called on “middle powers” like Canada to work together based on shared interests and avoid buckling beneath the strength of unnamed larger countries.

Trump — who has already said he would like to annex Canada into the U.S. through “economic force” — then warned Carney to remember that his country “lives” because of American goodwill.

Then, having arrived in Quebec City to discuss and strategize with his cabinet ahead of the coming parliamentary session next week, Carney delivered a second address that championed national unity and a Canadian history he defined as exemplifying “coexistence” and partnership.

That included between French and English, as well as with generations of immigrants from around the world and Indigenous peoples.

The theme sparked objections in Quebec, where the separatist Parti Québécois is leading in the polls ahead of this year’s provincial election and is promising to hold an independence referendum. The party’s leader, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, accused Carney of rewriting history and claimed francophones were victims of “colonialism.”

At the same time, the Carney government is aware of separatist sentiment in Alberta, where an independence movement is pushing to gain enough signatures to trigger their own referendum in the province.

Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon dismissed Bessent’s foray into the situation as the “business” of American foreign policy. Champagne, the finance minister, similarly downplayed the comments.

But Solomon noted “it’s a difficult world” and said some players “are going to try to exacerbate” divisions.

“The job is to continue to invest in Canadians, to give them the opportunities, because this is the best place to live, to invest and to thrive — and that is the case that we’ve got to make economically, every day,” he said.

Since taking office last year, Carney has pledged to fast-track “national interest” projects, and signalled in a controversial November accord that his government could support Alberta’s preferred new pipeline if a massive carbon capture superproject — designed to remove greenhouse gas emissions from the extraction of oil — moves forward in the province. 

In a recent interview, Calgary Liberal MP Corey Hogan told the Star that independence sentiment was one factor that motivated the signing of the accord with Alberta. He also said there are elements inside the province’s separatist movement that want Alberta to become part of the United States.

Though he predicted Albertans would reject any referendum that occurs in the context of possible American annexation, “the very conversation can be dangerous and damaging,” he said.

“It can push away business. It can make risk and uncertainty the name of the game. It can split families. It can tear apart otherwise cordial relations within the province.” 

Moreover, Hogan said, “the risks to our sovereignty do not require a majority vote.” A referendum campaign alone can invite misinformation, he said, noting the prevalence of false conspiracy theories about “death panels” in Canadian health care. 

“How long would it take a narrative to come … for them to say ‘unfair election’ and start to put pressure on the U.S. government to go save those poor people who are being oppressed in Alberta?”