Conrad Black: Mark Carney puts it all on the line - National Post

Copy URL Facebook Linked In X (Twitter) Loading account options Sign In Manage Account Close account menu Manage Account Sign Out Loading subscription options Subscribefor $0.50/week Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks to journalists outside his office the day after the Liberal's won three byelections, in Ottawa September 1, 2026. Photo by Blair Gable/Postmedia (Blair Gable / Photo by Blair Gable / Postmedia) By Conrad Black September 5, 2026 at 10:00 a.m. Last Updated: September 5, 2026 at 10:01 a.m. Prime Minister Mark Carney continues to benefit from the Canadian resentment of overbearing American trade policy and its dislike of President Trump, and Trump has been widely criticized in the United States for escalating this absurd trade war. Canada is rightly seen as a friendly country against which the United States has no significant grievances, now that Canada is addressing its defence budget. But there is a sharp disagreement between the two governments over whether the Carney account of the United States changing the terms of the agreement at the last minute is accurate.

If the United States acted deviously and layered in new material conditions just before the agreement was to be signed, domestic American opinion would condemn that. The Canadian prime minister was, in that event, clearly justified in ending the negotiations and withdrawing his negotiators. If as the Americans claim, no such event occurred, then Carney‘s popularity, based on the righteousness of fair dealing and the naturally refreshing pleasure of punching Uncle Sam on the nose as he apparently deserves, will be severely undermined. As the official Canadian opposition has recognized, it would be dispositive to make public the final offers. It is a clear point and both sides cannot be right: either the Americans tried to pull a fast one at five minutes to midnight, or Carney saw a chance for a political win and decided to reject the American offer, claim American bad faith, and instead of continuing to negotiate, took such umbrage that he went straight to (trade) war.

Canadians are right to give their leader the benefit of the doubt, but the prime minister has a heavy duty to remove the doubt. As long as his word is disputed, the issue has not been resolved. The very capable Wall Street Journal expert for all of the U.S.A.’s neighbours in the Americas, Mary Anastasia O’Grady, who knows Canada well and worked here for a time, has on this issue been critical of Trump, to whom she is often well disposed. Even though she dismissed the present government of Canada as “sniveling lefties,” a rather harsh wigging, though not entirely undeserved, she held that Trump had done the Canadian government a great favour and that Carney should be grateful for Trump’s boost in Carney’s tribal popularity in the face of perceived American bullying. More unambiguous Trump media supporters such as Laura Ingraham of Fox News, who also knows and likes Canada, told her viewers that “Canada is imploding” and that Carney is solely responsible for this dispute. The Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has made a number of bitchy comments about Canada’s GDP one thirteenth of that of the U.S., “going to war with a submarine from the Edmonton Mall.” This, like Ontario premier Doug Ford’s invitation to President Trump to “kiss” his fundament, is gratuitous. But it is not obvious why Carney chose to end the negotiations rather than simply saying the current terms were unacceptable, but that the discussions should continue.

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I counted new measures worth $137 billion over the next five years. We can argue their merits, but they are being paid for with borrowed money

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