OTTAWA – Prime Minister Mark Carney said Thursday he spoke with U.S. President Donald Trump about efforts to protect the Arctic ahead of their attendance at the NATO summit in Turkey in two weeks.
Carney said the U.S. president called him Wednesday for a “long discussion” that involved other senior officials, including U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Carney said he and Trump also spoke about NATO, Iran and the broader situation in the Middle East. He declined to offer details but said the discussion touched on “both current and structural” issues.
“It was a very constructive conversation, those things we’re working on together. I think those are best left until they come to fruition,” Carney said.
The prime minister made the comments to reporters during a rare press conference at the National Press Theatre in Ottawa to mark the end of the spring parliamentary sitting.
Asked about past U.S. claims that Canada is a free rider in NATO, the prime minister said the country is “pulling its weight” in the alliance.
“There’s more to do, without question, but we have moved to meet the two per cent target,” he said.
“We have a track to getting overall four per cent by the end of this decade.”
In March, NATO published estimates that suggest Canada met its alliance defence spending target of two per cent of GDP for the first time over the past year.
The prime minister also said Canada is moving ahead on major military purchasing decisions, including the selection of a preferred contractor for the navy’s new submarine fleet.
During a press conference in the same room later Thursday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Carney should have raised U.S. tariffs and the renewal of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement with Trump. Carney said he did not talk trade with Trump.
“The aluminum, steel, auto and lumber workers are desperate for their jobs and their paycheques, and Mr. Carney has a long conversation with the president and doesn’t even bring it up?” he said. “What could be a greater priority to this country?”
Poilievre said Carney has made a “phenomenal amount of concessions” to the United States “while getting nothing in return,” citing the termination of the digital services tax and some counter-tariffs and Ottawa acquiescing to U.S. calls for higher defence spending.
“Many of those things needed to happen, but why not bring them to the negotiating table and get something in return? Instead, he’s got double the tariffs on aluminum and steel and triple on lumber,” Poilievre said.
Representatives of Canada, the United States and Mexico are scheduled to have a virtual call on July 1 as the three nations prepare for a formal review of the continental free-trade pact.
Canada enters the discussions with no indications that Trump’s tariffs on key Canadian sectors are about to be lifted. U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra told CTV News this week the countries are not close to a deal.
Carney also said Canada must be prepared since a resolution of the trade dispute could happen quickly, even if nothing appears to be moving now.
“What I have seen with the president is that you’re not close to making a deal, then you make a deal,” Carney said Thursday.
“We could have signed a bad deal a year ago. We’re not going to sign a bad deal. It has to be a real deal.”
Carney and Trump spoke to each other earlier this month at the G7 summit in France, but did not have a formal meeting.
The two will meet again when NATO countries gather in Ankara on July 7 and 8.
The summit could be a tense one. Trump has been sharply critical of the alliance and has become more aggressive since he launched his war on Iran.
During a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte on Wednesday in Washington, Trump said the alliance wasn’t “too nice to us,” citing its decision to stay out of the Iran war.
Hegseth also recently scolded NATO member states, accusing them of failing to “show a credible path” to meeting the alliance commitment of spending five per cent of GDP on defence by 2035. He did not publicly single out any one country.
“Some of NATO’s largest economies, some of the richest countries — allies that are happiest to go on about the rules-based international order and middle powers banding together — still seem to think the era of free riding is here,” Hegseth said at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels on June 18.
In the lead-up to the summit, Carney has urged other Western nations to join a multilateral defence bank to help fund the defence sector’s growth.
Carney and Prime Minister of Luxembourg Luc Frieden published a joint op-ed in the Financial Times newspaper this week encouraging allies to “rally around a defence bank” that would pool capital to help the sector with financing.
Money put into the defence bank would count toward NATO’s five per cent target.
A report by Politico on Thursday said the U.K. is expected to resist calls to join the bank, which could be launched at the NATO summit.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 25, 2206.
— With files from Dylan Robertson
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