Carney Pitches Canada as 'Strong' as EU Ties Deepen and US Trade Talks Stay Frozen

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has framed Canada as a country moving quickly past its long-standing reliance on the United States, capping a week in which he embraced the prospect of becoming the European Union's first associate member.

Speaking in Ottawa on Friday to Liberal lawmakers ahead of a new parliamentary session, Carney said Canada and Europe had "launched a process for a new alliance." It was his first public appearance since returning from Strasbourg the previous evening.

He described the latest US tariffs as a "miscalculation" and said the decision last month to suspend trade talks with Washington was the right one. "Amidst this global rupture, we must move forward," he said.

A day after telling the European Parliament that Canada and Europe needed greater resilience so that no country could control their markets, impair their sovereignty or dictate their choices, Carney pointed to Canada's fiscal position as another source of strength. The former head of the central banks of both Canada and England appeared to draw a contrast with the United States, where government borrowing costs remain significantly higher than Canada's.

"We're now seeing financial markets starting to change the pricing ... to separate the strong from the weak," he said. "We are the strong. We are Canada strong."

The remarks closed a seven-day stretch in which Carney hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, convened major global investors in Toronto, met new UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham in Liverpool and addressed the European Parliament. In Strasbourg, he called for a far deeper alliance spanning energy, critical minerals, defence, artificial intelligence, research and other strategic sectors where, he said, Canada can no longer afford to depend on a single country. The next major step is a Canada-EU summit in Montreal on Oct. 29-30.

President Donald Trump has imposed tariffs on Canadian goods, repeatedly talked about making Canada the 51st state and threatened additional economic measures. Trade negotiations collapsed last month and remain suspended.

Carney also promoted a business tax break announced at this week's Canada Investment Summit, which is expected to cut the effective tax rate on new investment to 6.4%, less than half the US rate. "We didn't need a big beautiful bill. We needed a targeted initiative," he said, drawing laughter with an apparent jab at Trump's signature tax-and-spending law.

He also appeared to mimic Trump while boasting that a major clean-energy project would produce the equivalent of "18 Hoover Dams," repeating the phrase as he twice used the president's familiar accordion-like hand gesture. The government announced nearly half a trillion dollars in investment commitments around the summit.

"In the last seven days, we have stood shoulder to shoulder with an ally, we've catalyzed record investment into our country, we've deepened our ties with Europe," Carney said. "It's a lot, but that was the warm-up."