Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke to DW on Friday after talks in Montreal with European Union leaders seeking to hammer out details of a new, closer partnership between Canada and the EU. Amid difficult negotiations with US President Donald Trump, representing Canada's biggest trading partner, Carney said that he and his compatriots had come to realize the country was too dependent on the economic powerhouse to the south. "The lesson we've taken, Canadians as a whole, is we're overdependent on the United States.
Too closely connected to the United States. And we need to build our strength here at home and diversify and deepen our partnerships with like-minded countries internationally," Carney said. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video An EU delegation led by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa held talks with Carney and other Canadian officials in Montreal on Friday.
They're discussing the plans floated by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to forge what she called an "associate membership" — a status that does not yet exist for any other country — even as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz's government resists creating this label. Carney seemed to speak in its favor. "Well, I think the advantage of what we're doing is that a few things are absolutely clear, irrespective of the exact terminology that's used.
President von der Leyen uses associated membership. We use associated membership," he told DW's Katharina Kroll at Port of Montreal Tower. It means the closest possible partnership without being a full member of the European Union, because Canada is not in Europe geographically and therefore cannot have accession." Carney said.
Asked if he was looking to create a "new transatlantic bloc without the US," Carney said it was more about diversifying and deepening Canada's other partnerships than excluding by far its largest trading partner. "We're both partners of the United States, obviously close partners, alliance partners in NATO. And there are many, many opportunities for cooperation with the United States," he said.
"But in many cases, there'll be much deeper cooperation for Canada between Canada and Europe than Canada and the United States." He mentioned both existing areas of cooperation like the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), calling it "one of the most successful free trade agreements in the world," and also pointed to research cooperation and programs like Horizon Europe and Erasmus+ enabling student exchanges. But Carney also pointed to areas where the two sides could seek to expand cooperation, naming areas like space technologies, artificial intelligence and critical minerals. Despite his well-documented difficulties with Donald Trump — perhaps most crudely exemplified by Trump's attempts to unilaterally rename Lake Ontario, or his posting AI videos imagining him as an ice hockey player beating Carney up in a fight — Carney said US-Canadian ties were too deep to be derailed by any governments or prime ministers or presidents.
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