Carney puts Trump comments down to negotiations, denies early election...

Plus some interesting takes on what the PM has been up to and what the China deal really means.

At a Monday news conference to announce his Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit, essentially a revamped and increased GST credit, was asked about Trump’s comments. For the most part he put them down to negotiating tactics and dismissed the idea that he’s going to be too bothered by them.

Trump and Carney have been in a war of words since the PM’s speech in Davos last week and of course the president spent the weekend posting up a storm about Canada, China and leaving ice hockey alone.

Those issues were the first thing Carney was asked about by reporters.

Beyond putting Trump’s words down to negotiations, he did defend the honour of Canada’s troops and our fallen in Afghanistan.

For whatever reason, I didn’t take Trump’s comments on that issue, which I only heard in passing as directed at Canada. Perhaps that’s because I remember Canada and the United States complaining that some other countries were holding back.

I recall the French ambassador paying me a visit as on Parliament Hill as part of his media rounds to stress that France was not holding back in Afghanistan. This would have been around 2007 or 2008 when Canada was in the thick of it in Kandahar.

Not pissing off your biggest client…

Mark McQueen is an interesting fellow who writes a Substack you consider subscribing to. He’s a business executive, a finance guy and years ago worked in Brian Mulroney’s PMO.

He also writes the occasional column for the Toronto Star but don’t hold that against him.

Over the weekend he penned a piece titled, “Ye reap what ye sow.” It’s a thoughtful piece looking at how decades bad policy decisions have put us in the position we’re in politically and economically and how Carney’s moves last week won’t help us.

It’s not trade with China that’s the problem…

Sandra Watson Parcels is a Canadian completing her PhD in the Department of Defence Studies at Kings College London. I spotted her tweet, her X, whatever you want to call it and decided I had to share it here.

It’s a very wise take on what Carney is doing re: China and why it is a mistake.

Trade isn’t the problem, the strategic partnership is the problem.

Carney’s proposed “strategic partnership” with China represents a fundamental misreading of the current security environment. This isn’t about trade protectionism; it’s about recognising asymmetric competition that’s been underway for decades.

At Davos, Carney framed this as a trade diversification issue without acknowledging that China has been the primary revisionist actor actively eroding the liberal international order (LIO) That omission is telling.

China’s soft power strategy (economic coercion, elite capture, infrastructure dependencies) has systematically undermined this order while Western states pursued engagement policies based on false assumptions of convergence.

The Biden admin and allies finally began countermeasures: reshoring critical supply chains, technology controls, alliance reinforcement. But they’re playing catch-up against decades of Chinese strategic positioning. Time asymmetry matters in great power competition.

Trump’s more confrontational approach, whatever its flaws, reflects the urgency of this moment. The window for preserving Western strategic advantage is narrowing. US hegemonic stability, for all its imperfections, underwrites Canadian security and prosperity.

Carney’s positioning reads like reactive spite rather than strategic calculation. Alienating your primary security guarantor over a trade dispute isn’t statecraft. It’s dangerous and short-sighted, conflating economic opportunity with strategic alignment.

To be clear: selective economic engagement with China, with robust safeguards (tech transfer controls, critical infrastructure exclusions, supply chain resilience) is rational policy. A “strategic partnership”? That’s something entirely different.

The question isn’t whether Canada trades with China. It’s whether we understand the difference between transactional commerce and strategic partnership with a revisionist power.

Carney says he doesn’t want an early election…

As I wrote in my column in the Toronto Sun, with all the moves Carney is making it certainly makes it look like he wants a spring election. He was asked about that three times on Monday and had trouble giving a straight answer.

Which is why I say don’t believe him, he still wants to go to the polls and get that majority.