Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks during a media availability on the sidelines of the the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
Prime Minister Mark Carney over the past year has prepared for the unlikely risk that President Donald Trump might order military action against Canada, a news report says.
The New York Times, citing an interview with Mr. Carney, said he had described the probability of such action as “extreme tail risk.” It’s a term used in finance and risk management, and refers to a very rare event that would cause enormous damage but is so unlikely that people tend to ignore or underestimate it.
The Times reported Wednesday that Mr. Carney, after being pressed on whether he took Mr. Trump’s threats to make Canada a 51st state seriously, “suggested that he had carefully examined the possibility of a U.S.-led military invasion,” but declined to discuss in detail what that involved.
The Globe reported in January that the Canadian Armed Forces have modelled a hypothetical U.S. military invasion of Canada and the country’s potential response, which includes tactics similar to those employed against Russia and later U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan. It attributed this to senior government sources.
This is believed to be the first time in a century that the Forces had created a model of an American assault on this country, a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and a partner with the U.S. in continental air defence.
A military model is a conceptual and theoretical framework, not a military plan, which is an actionable and step-by-step directive for executing operations.
The Times noted Mr. Carney was a former central banker “who approaches the world by meticulously assessing worst-case scenarios and drafting responses.”
The Prime Minister explained in the interview that what he did was perform risk management. “That’s not a base case,” he said of the possibility of U.S. military action against Canada. “But it would be irresponsible not to” prepare.
Audrey Champoux, deputy director of communications in the Prime Minister’s Office, said the PMO had nothing to add to Mr. Carney’s reported comments.
Mr. Carney‘s decision to discuss these preparations for the unlikely prospect of military attack by the United States – while speaking to a U.S. newspaper in New York – comes as he is locked in a costly trade war with Mr. Trump that is hurting consumers and businesses on both sides of the shared border.
Mr. Trump, who told journalists in 2025 he would be willing to use “economic force” to coax Canada into political union with the U.S., has repeatedly referred to this country as the “51st state” and to Mr. Carney as “governor.”
The U.S. President has previously challenged NATO allies with repeated calls for the U.S. to acquire Greenland and threats to impose tariffs on European countries who oppose the takeover.
After Mr. Trump launched a January military strike on Venezuela to remove leader Nicolás Maduro, whom he brought to the U.S. to face charges, he warned of further interventions in Colombia, Cuba and Mexico and repeated his desire to take control of Greenland. The U.S. State Department also publicly declared that the Western Hemisphere, which stretches from the Arctic to the bottom of South America, is “our hemisphere.”
As The Globe reported in January, the two senior government officials said Canadian military planners are modelling a U.S. invasion from the south, expecting American forces to overcome Canada’s strategic positions on land and at sea within a week and possibly as quickly as two days.
Canada does not have the number of military personnel or the sophisticated equipment needed to fend off a conventional American attack, they said. So, the military envisions unconventional warfare in which small groups of irregular military or armed civilians would resort to ambushes, sabotage, drone warfare or hit-and-run tactics.
One of the officials said the model includes tactics used by the Afghan mujahedeen in their hit-and-run attacks on Russian soldiers during the 1979-1989 Soviet-Afghan War. These were the same tactics employed by the Taliban in their 20-year war against the U.S. and allied forces that included Canada.
With files from Robert Fife and Gavin John