Canada and Europe should ally to protect their markets, democracies and rule of law in a world dominated by the US and China, Prime Minister Mark Carney said yesterday, after an EU proposal to make Canada an ‘associate member.’
The Canadian prime minister received warm applause for his speech to the European Parliament, delivered hours after US President Donald Trump threatened trade sanctions in response to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s proposal to create a new status for the EU-Canada relationship.
Carney did not adopt the term ‘associate member’ used a day earlier by von der Leyen, but said he appreciated ‘the ambition’ that her suggestion conveyed.
“Europe and Canada are each strong. Europe and Canada are even stronger together,” Carney said.
He was not seeking to form a ‘third bloc’ to act as ‘a great-power rival’ to Washington and Beijing ‘only with better manners,’ Carney said in a line that drew laughs.
“We do not seek power to dominate others. On the contrary, we are pursuing resilience, so that no one can control our open markets, impair our sovereignty, threaten our territorial integrity, or undermine our freedoms, our democracies, our rule of law.”
He told reporters after the speech that it would be up to the EU how it proposed to describe any future relationship, and that the substance of any agreement would be more important than the name given to it.
Trump threatened late on Wednesday to take action against the EU if it moved forward with von der Leyen’s proposal to make Canada an ‘associate member’ of the bloc.
“If they do that, if I think it’s at all a hostile act, I will put very serious tariffs or stop trading with Europe on many things,” Trump told reporters en route to an event in North Carolina, calling the proposal ‘laughable.’
“If it’s a good intention, that’s fine. If it’s a bad intention, we’ll put very heavy tariffs on Europe,” he added.
&uuid=(email))