Prime Minister Mark Carney is about to find out who Canada’s allies are as he navigates the fraught and noisy relationship with United States President Donald Trump.
That’s not obvious these days. In fact, the absence of allies has spoken louder.
But Carney set his sights high, meeting French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer in London, both fellow NATO and G7 partners who’ve met with Trump in the past two weeks, and sitting down with King Charles at Buckingham Palace.
That follows conversations with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and an intense weekend of briefings. “Strong, reliable partners,” Carney posted on X, are now more important than ever.
Carney added on X that “Canada is Ukraine’s steadfast ally. We will make sure Ukraine has the military support it needs to defend itself” — setting an early contrast with Trump’s push on Ukraine to cut a deal with Russia.
Zelenskyy offered more details, saying Carney agreed with the need to take a harder line on Russia, by stepping up pressure against Russia’s banking sector, and that “Canada is interested in military-industrial and defense cooperation” with Ukraine.
Ukraine needs friends. So does Canada.
Jody Thomas, a former federal national security and intelligence adviser under Justin Trudeau, said in an interview it is a fragile time for multilateralism, and Carney’s trip is going “to try and establish Canada as a credible player in what is left and continues to exist to the multilateral world.”
“I’m not sure we’ll get the statements of allyship publicly,” said Thomas. “We’ll certainly get photo ops, and we’ll get confirmation that countries want to work with Canada, and I think they’ll do that absent reference to the U.S., frankly.”
A senior government official, providing a background briefing to reporters on the plane, said “the trip will speak for itself in showing that Canada has very solid friends and allies,” whether or not there are any declarations backing Canada against Trump’s merger threats.
Carney said Friday Canada doesn’t need others to stand up for its sovereignty.
Still the official said the message of friendship “subtle or otherwise” is important. Canada is, he said, “a very good friend of the United States, but we all know what is going on there, and it is evident that we can do more with other countries, not just the United States.”
Carney may not reach agreement for how to mount an international response to Trump’s tariffs nevertheless.
“I think it’s fair to say that all countries that are subject to the tariffs that have been put on by the United States are calibrating their responses, talking to each other, seeing what is in their own country’s national interests, and in some cases that may be that may lead to coordinated responses,” the official said.
After Carney marked his 60th birthday joining St. Patrick’s Day partiers in Montreal, and meeting with Quebec Premier François Legault, Carney posted on X that in a crisis, it’s important to work together and “focus on the things we can control.”
Legault stressed that Carney must protect Quebec’s supply-managed agriculture sector, and reduce temporary immigration. Then Carney was to wing his way across the Atlantic, before planning to return via the Arctic with a stop in Iqaluit.
In a statement, the Prime Minister’s Office said the goal of the trip is “to strengthen two of our closest and longest-standing economic and security partnerships, and to reaffirm Canada’s Arctic security and sovereignty.”
Yet in a significant move before pivoting to Europe, Carney ordered a review of Canada’s long-controversial plan to buy 88 American F-35 fighter planes from Lockheed Martin, a signal to the U.S. that he may use big government procurement contracts in the trade war. (Ottawa has already signed a $19-billion deal to buy the first 16 jets, and two are due for 2027 delivery.)
If the U.S. noticed, it wasn’t clear.
On Sunday morning American political TV shows, Trump and his officials continued to justify his tariff plan, with the first levies — 25 per cent steel and aluminum tariffs taking effect last week — and more global tariff pain to come on April 2.
Upon taking office on Friday, Carney said he will seek to put the U.S. relationship on a more businesslike footing. Ambassador Kirsten Hillman, a Trudeau appointee who for now remains Canada’s envoy in Washington, said on Sunday she hoped everyone would follow suit.
“Canadians need to recognize that the way in which this administration communicates in public is quite animated. That’s a diplomatic word for it,” she told CBC interviewer Rosemary Barton.
“And we should not react to every interview Trump gives,” Hillman said. “We can’t control President Trump’s behaviour. We can control our behaviour and we can enter into these discussions and enter into this relationship from a position of confidence and strength” knowing our own value, she said.
“And I do think that’s an important posture: strong, businesslike, clear and really advocating for the practicalities of where we’re at.”
Thomas, a former deputy defence minister who sits on the independent Canada-U.S. advisory council named by Trudeau, said Carney’s trip will have another purpose, as Carney seeks to give allies “confidence that we will meet our commitments.”
“And he’s been very serious so far that we are going to meet our (NATO spending) security commitments. And so this is his chance to reassure and confirm.”
Carney pledged in his leadership campaign to reach the NATO defence spending target of two per cent of GDP by 2030, two years ahead of the Trudeau government’s target. Right now, Canada is a laggard, with NATO figures showing it spent 1.37 per cent of GDP, or roughly $41 billion, on defence in 2024.
Carney, Thomas said, is “well known to the leaders he’s going to meet in Europe”: He led the Bank of England during Britain’s exit from the European Union, and previously the Bank of Canada during the 2008-09 financial crisis, and is a past UN special envoy on climate action and finance.
Lawrence Herman, an international trade law expert and senior fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute, said Carney “is doing the right thing” in travelling to Europe and the U.K. as his first foreign trip.
“The worst would be to be seen as a kind of supplicant by meeting with Trump, whose continued insults of Canada are demeaning and totally unacceptable.”
Given Trump’s breach of and disdain for international agreements, including the WTO and NATO, Herman said, “it’s highly symbolic for Carney to meet first with European leaders that are experiencing the same concerns over American aggressiveness as Canada. There are many common interests here. It sends the right signal.”
Herman added that on a more concrete level, “ Canada and Europe (including the U.K.) should explore increased trade linkages and new defense arrangements among themselves as the Americans back away from their trans-Atlantic and North American obligations.”
He added Carney should “stress the importance” of getting the Canada-European Union free trade agreement “fully implemented, moving beyond its provisional application.” Negotiations for the agreement were settled in 2014, but 10 countries, including G7 allies France and Italy, haven’t yet ratified it. “Getting the agreement fully into operations is in both sides’ mutual long-term interest, given Trump’s shattering of trade relations.”
Carney, an advocate of using artificial intelligence in innovation and in government services, has also put AI on the agenda with Macron and Starmer.
