Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks to the Economic Club of New York on Thursday.Jeenah Moon/Reuters
Do we want a closer relationship with the United States, or must we become more independent?
Is Canada’s high level of integration with the U.S. an asset or a liability?
Should we build a Fortress North America, or forge stronger trade, investment and defence ties with other partners?
These may sound like either-or questions. But in reality they aren’t mutually exclusive choices, or at least not necessarily. The ideal answer would be some degree of “yes” to all of the above.
That’s what Prime Minister Mark Carney appears to be aiming for. It’s what he implied on Thursday in a speech to the Economic Club of New York.
He called for “a new partnership” with the U.S. and talked about the “mutual strength” that comes from economic integration, while stressing the need for Canada “to increase our strategic autonomy” to avoid being taken advantage of “in a world where integration has been weaponized.”
He summed it up by saying that “Canada Strong will help make America great again.”
Opinion: Carney’s new nationalism is really the old nationalism resurrected
You can choose to read this as so much political sloganeering, or the tell of a politician who can’t pick a lane. But I don’t think that’s right. It misunderstands what the Carney government is trying to do and, more importantly, what needs to be done.
We share a continent with the world’s leading economy and top military power, and there’s no changing that. For the past century, it’s been mostly beneficial to Canada, with some downsides. The downsides and dangers have ramped up since the fall of 2024. But significant shared benefits remain, and depending on how U.S. politics evolves, there’s potential to keep them and even unlock others.
We need the Americans. We also need to develop the strength to stand independent of the Americans, even and especially when standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them. It’s not either-or. It’s both.
And as Ottawa pursues these twin paths, it has to be as diplomatic as possible about what it’s doing. To rework Teddy Roosevelt’s famous line, Canada needs to give itself a big stick, but speak softly about it – because the American stick will always be bigger.
An example of the dual-path straddle, and the need for diplomacy in describing it, occurred this week when Ottawa announced that it is entering into negotiations with Sweden’s Saab to acquire GlobalEye airborne early warning and control (AWE&C) aircraft.
This capability, basically a supercharged radar and control tower in the sky, is one the Canadian Armed Forces currently lack. The GlobalEye integrates a Canadian-made Bombardier Global 6500 long-range business jet with Saab’s suite of electronics. The United Arab Emirates flies the planes, Sweden and France have them on order, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is among the prospective customers.
Aside from the fact that GlobalEye appears to be the best choice for the mission – its main competitor, the American-made Boeing E-7 Wedgetail, was effectively cancelled last year by the Pentagon, then revived as a result of the war in Iran – it offers significant industrial benefits to Canada.
But when he announced the choice, Mr. Carney took the time to note that, though the Global 6500 is assembled in Canada, it includes 20-per-cent U.S. content.
Opinion: The Swedish deal, the defence bank and the West’s awakening from its long dream
Canada is on a short list of world leaders in aircraft manufacturing, but our industry is highly integrated with the rest of the world, and especially the U.S. When the Trump administration earlier this year threatened out of the blue to slap tariffs and other sanctions on Bombardier’s Canadian-made jets, the Montreal-based company pointed out that it employs more than 3,000 people in the U.S., and has 2,800 American suppliers.
And while a GlobalEye contract from Ottawa for an expected six planes would be a feather in Bombardier’s cap, it’s important to put it in perspective. Last year, Bombardier delivered 157 new business jets. It builds six jets every two weeks.
The company reports that more than 5,200 of its planes are in service worldwide. It also says that 95 per cent of production is exported. The U.S. represents more than half of the business jet market.
That’s the delicate straddle the Carney government and Canada have to try to land. In this industry and in others.
That’s going to be a challenge. Though it is objectively in the American interest to maintain and deepen free trade with Canada, because it strengthens manufacturing on both sides of the border through integrated supply chains, wider competition and a larger market, the Trump administration keeps signalling that it would prefer to break all of that up.
Achieving the win-win of greater Canadian economic independence, paired with the maintenance of mutually beneficial Canada-U.S. economic interdependence, won’t be easy. But it’s the right target.