PM Carney vows that Canada Will never be for sale – ever.

Prime Minister Mark Carney held his own this week in his meeting with Donald Trump at the Whitehouse this week. The Trump-Carney meeting with the media present was held in the oval office surrounded by Trump’s usual suspects including Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. 

Carney kept his cool, talked just four times but made his points. After Trump stuck to his usual approach, such as demeaning “the artificial, ruler-drawn border with Canada”, Carney made his best statement of the meeting: “As you know from real estate, there are some places that are never for sale…The White House is one of them, Buckingham Palace another. Add Canada to the list. It’s not for sale. It won’t be for sale – ever,” Carney said.

This is the straight talk that we as a country never had from former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who so often resorted to meaningless, marshmallow talk. 

Seasoned observers called Carney the “only adult in the room” in the Whitehouse that day.
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Trump likes gold, his Trump tower in New York is festooned with it. So are his decorations of the Oval Office. His cabinet is peopled with billionaires—not a prerequisite requirement for quality governance.

As we all know, Trump is fixated on “deals”. Later this week he announced a very preliminary trade deal with Great Britain. Details are sketchy but the very fact that he is in the process of making a deal, may bode well for renewal of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement, USMCA, or as we like to call it, CUSMA, the Canada, U.S. Mexico agreement. 

Carney appears to be nudging Trump toward renegotiating the USMCA, which Trump signed during his first term in office. Having a framework for trade would be far better than putting up with Trump’s constantly changing and erratic tariff impositions.

Meanwhile Trump is still proving that he is a nasty piece of work. He is ending federal funding for PBS and MPBN, which is the closest thing in the USA to our Canadian public broadcaster, the CBC.

Trump is also threatening a 100 per cent tariff on foreign-made films, which could be devastating for the Canadian film industry mainly centred in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. Hollywood is effectively pricing itself out of feature filmmaking as many quality film producers turn to Canada and other non-American countries for talent, as well as less expensive locales to do their business.

Meanwhile Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre continues his efforts to soften his image since the April 28 election. Uncharacteristically he wished Carney good luck for his trip.

Poilievre has announced he has decided to run in a safe Alberta seat being vacated by Damien Kurek, an MP since 2019. In the general election Kurek won with 82 per cent of the vote. Carney has vowed there will be “no nonsense” from him in the calling of an early by-election in the riding.

Poilievre has declared his intention to continue as leader, and he received support at the first post-election caucus of the Conservatives, where former leader Andrew Scheer was chosen as Interim Leader heading into the next sitting of the House.

In the Parliamentary system, it is very rare for a government to do well without a strong, aggressive, but patriotic, Official Opposition. Other smaller parties are vital as well, but we trust that the Opposition Conservatives will soon resolve their problems and perform their duties well for the good of the country.