Carney pushes EU ratification as Canada pivots from US dependence

Mark Carney has pressed Europe to complete its trade pact with Canada, casting deeper transatlantic ties as the answer to an era of US-driven economic turbulence. In an interview with the Financial Times, the Canadian prime minister called on the ten EU member states that have yet to ratify the bloc’s nine-year-old Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with Ottawa to do so, arguing that closer integration would leave both sides “more resilient, more independent” and more prosperous. The appeal arrives as Canada scrambles to reduce its heavy reliance on the United States, its dominant trading partner, after negotiations with the Trump administration collapsed and Washington imposed tariffs that Ottawa has matched in kind.

Carney is scheduled to address the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Thursday, a day after hosting an investor summit in Toronto that will draw Wall Street firms, Chinese companies, and delegations from Africa and the Gulf. The summit, modelled on Saudi Arabia’s Future Investment Initiative, is intended to kick-start $1 trillion in foreign investment into Canada over the next five years. Carney plans to pitch more than 150 projects spanning mining, energy, and artificial intelligence, and to sell Canada’s stability as a commercial partner at a moment when President Donald Trump is threatening allies with fresh tariffs and unsettling long-standing alliances.

The timing is deliberate. Trade relations between Washington and Ottawa have deteriorated sharply in recent weeks, with Trump mocking Carney and referring to Canada as a “51st state,” a remark that has stoked public anger across the US’s second-largest trading partner. Carney has previously framed the confrontation in stark terms. “You’re at war when you’re attacked, and we got attacked,” he said last month after the trade talks broke down. His broader strategy has been to court investment from China and India and to rally the world’s “middle powers” against what he described in a Davos speech this year as a US-dominated world order undergoing “rupture, not transition.”

Yet in the interview, Carney offered a more conciliatory tone toward Washington, insisting his overtures to Beijing and European capitals were not a deliberate stance against the United States. “We are about what we’re for, not what we’re against,” he said. “It’s not a reaction in any way, shape or form to what’s going on in the US.” He also brushed aside criticism of Ottawa’s courtship of China, noting that Washington itself is hosting President Xi Jinping for a state visit this month. “The US has deeper co-operation with China, far deeper co-operation with China than Canada does,” Carney said.

The push on Europe centres on the trade agreement struck in 2017, which has been applied provisionally but never fully ratified by ten of the EU’s 27 member states, largely over concerns that Canadian agricultural exports would hurt European farmers. Carney acknowledged the deal is “de facto in operation, even in those jurisdictions where they’re not ratified,” but argued the relationship could go far deeper if the holdouts signed on. “I would like to use this opportunity to encourage them to do so,” he said. “It is a positive initiative because it’s good for Europe, it’s good for Canada.”

The diplomatic offensive reflects a hard strategic reality. Canada sends roughly three-quarters of its exports to the United States, a dependency that trade wars have exposed as a structural vulnerability. Diversification toward Europe, Asia, and the Gulf is logical in principle, but the practical constraints are considerable. The EU is a large market, yet it is far smaller than the US for Canadian goods, and the CETA agreement has been in provisional operation for years without full ratification, limiting the political weight Ottawa can attach to it. The Toronto summit’s $1 trillion target is ambitious, and whether it translates into concrete commitments rather than declarations of interest remains to be seen.

The deeper question is whether Canada can genuinely rebalance its economic relationships in a world where the US remains both its largest market and its most unpredictable partner. Carney’s message to investors is that Canada offers something increasingly scarce: reliability. “We’re a country that honours its commitments,” he said. “We have the most precious commodity, which is trust.” That pitch may resonate with firms seeking shelter from volatility, but trust alone will not replace the sheer scale of the American market. The test of Carney’s strategy will be whether the promised investment materialises and whether Europe’s holdout states finally ratify a deal that has lingered for nearly a decade. For now, the prime minister is betting that in a world of rupture, the value of dependable partners rises.