Carney Changes His Tune

Good conversation with President @realDonaldTrump on the future of Canada-U.S. trade. This builds on our recent constructive discussions on the outlines of a mutually beneficial trade deal that would create jobs for our workers, boost affordability for families, and fully respect Canada’s languages, culture, and sovereignty. Our teams will now be working in the coming weeks to deliver that outcome.

— Mark Carney (@MarkJCarney) November 1, 2026

There's been little mention anywhere of Mark Carney's abrupt about-face on negotiating with the US over trade. As of Friday, as I noted in yesterday's post, he told Politico that "if his government could not successfully negotiate a suitable trade pact with the Trump administration, he was prepared to wait for a new American president to close the deal". As of yestrerday, it was "never mind".

Actually, there had been signs that something was in the works. As of October 26:

A trade agreement between the United States and Canada would be reached "pretty soon," President Donald Trump told a campaign rally on Sunday [October 25], nine days ahead of crucial US midterm elections.

Tensions between the North American neighbors have been high since trade talks broke down in August, with Trump imposing a slew of new tariffs in response.

"We'll have that settled pretty soon. They're willing to give us anything at this moment," the president said of an agreement during the rally in Port Huron, a Michigan town on the US-Canada border hit hard by his tariff war.

Carney himself had been making similar noises over the week:

Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters Monday [October 26] that there has been some intensification in trade talks with the United States, but the prospect of a deal will depend on the Americans warming to Canada’s perspective.

“To the extent any progress has been made, it’s because the U.S. is coming closer to our position,” said Carney, during a press conference in Ottawa.

. . . Last Wednesday [October 21], Carney spoke with Trump at length about geopolitical and trade issues.

“Canada is ready to sign an agreement that is in the interests of Canadians, all Canadians, with very clear bottom lines, red lines, which meant that we were not willing to sign what was offered in in August,” said Carney. “To the extent to which the U.S. is moving towards accepting those aspects, then there’s a greater prospect of a deal.”

However, as of October 23, Trump was saying the US "holds all the cards" in negotiations. He gave a few details of what's being negotiated in an impromptu press conference yesterday:

At 4:30

We have the concept of a very good deal with Canada. You know, we've been losing money for many years with Canada, many, many years, 75 years, so we are now very, very close to having a deal. I spoke with the prime minister the other day. I spoke with him again yesterday, and we have the concept of a deal that's going to be great for our farmers, great for our country, and it'll be fine for Canada, too.

Q: Is the Keystone Pipeline part of the deal?

They're gonnma build, which I think is great. . . They're gonna pay for it. They're gonna pay for all of it. We're gonna give them the route, and it's largely been determined, but they're gonna build the Keystone Pipeline. . . . One thing we didn't talk about is our farmers were paying tremendous tariffs to send things to Canada. All those tariffs will be gone. There will be no tariff. . . . They were paying as much as 400% for milk products and other things. So part of the agreement is that our farmers will have to pay no tariffs.

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse thinks Carney's change of mind followed the EU-Canada summit:

[M]uch to the chagrin of Prime Minister Mark Carney and EU head Ursula Fond-of-Lyin, last Friday the major economies within the EU, specifically Germany, rejected any possibility of an “Associate Member” status for Canada. Simultaneously, Canadian media realized a trade deal with Europe would subject Canada to carbon taxes that are larger and more economically intrusive than Trump’s tariffs.

However, Carney and Trump talked on the phone October 21 and seem to have been aware of what was being negotiated, but for whatever reason, it was being kept very quiet. They seem to have agreed over the weekend to disclose the talks. The Montreal summit probably had nothing to do with this, and Carney's hard-line remarks to Politico were a pose. (But how much of anything Carney does isn't a pose?) While we still know very little about what's being discussed, Trump did mention the tariffs on US dairy products, which are apparently a complex issue:

“[Canada] has a large dairy producing constituency that it wants to protect, so they put a cap on imports that can be accessed at a competitive rate. That's what we call a ‘TRQ’ (tariff rate quota),” says Becky Rasdall Vargas, senior vice president of trade and workforce policy at the International Dairy Foods Association. Under the TRQ, Canada accepts a certain amount of dairy products duty-free, without tariffs.

“Above and beyond that cap, you are charged a tariff in the realm of 250-270%. That's the simplest way to think about it. Our complaint is we're not able to get anywhere near that cap, even though we have buyers who tell us they would like to bring in our product,” she says, noting the specific tariff rate depends on the product.

. . . Just on principle, a 250%-plus tariff seems outrageous, [s]he says. And when considered “in isolation, people are shocked.” Retaliation seems reasonable. “But it’s not a realistic picture. First of all, [dairy] is one of the outliers for out-of-quota tariffs. Secondly, just because there's a quota” doesn’t mean it’s filled. Neither the cap amount or percentage are the issue at hand, and there isn’t a lack of Canadian demand."

“We have, both from the U.S. government and from our members, some market intelligence that suggests there are Canadian consumers who would really like to have U.S. yogurts in their markets,” Rasdall Vargas says. “The quotas are in place to cap the amount of product going into the country so that we don't flood the market.”

Rather, Rasdall Vargas blames the dispute on “a systemic set of failures” by Canadian administrators that intentionally prevent American dairy exports from reaching the import cap. These protectionist measures are intended to support Canadian dairy farmers. One rule, for example, requires that Canadian dairy processors be the primary recipients of American dairy products.

. . . “Almost immediately, we felt like Canada's administrative rules were not consistent with their obligations in the agreement,” says Rasdall Vargas. “Very quickly after that, the U.S. government engaged in consultations, which are discussions with the government of Canada, as precursor to a dispute.”

The discussions were at a standstill by early 2021, prompting the U.S. to launch a formal dispute aligned with the USMCA arbitration mechanism. The U.S. won, and Canada “immediately changed its rules in a manner that kind of made the problem worse,” Rasdall Vargas explains. “So, the U.S. government took another dispute.”

Again, to no avail. With tensions ratcheting up, the stakes are rising for dairy farmers on both sides of the border.

But the dairy caps and tariffs are only a small part of what's apparently being negotiated, and we basically know nothing else. What we do know is that Carney seems to making a big effort to control the optics of the situation. He's apparently under a lot of pressure to avoid looking like he's giving in, but he has little choice but to do so.

Carney Keeps Thinking He And Trump Are On The Same Ballot

In a Friday interview with Politico, despite spending two days in talks with Ursula von der Leyen, Donald Trump seems still to be foremost in Mark Carney's mind:

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Friday that if his government could not successfully negotiate a suitable trade pact with the Trump administration, he was prepared to wait for a new American president to close the deal.

In an interview with POLITICO in Montreal, Carney also said Canadians were fed up with diplomatic provocations from the United States and described President Donald Trump’s wavering policy toward the Russia-Ukraine war as “unhelpful.”

I asked Chrome AI mode to help me parse out Carney's use of the word "unhelpful" as he applied it to Trump. It replied,

When spoken by someone in a position of authority (a manager, a teacher, or a judge), calling an employee's or subordinate's input "unhelpful" can reinforce a power gap.

The person with higher status acts as the sole arbiter of value.

It can function as a polite way to shut down dissent, dismiss a lower-status person's perspective, or police their tone without having to engage with the substance of their argument.

Except, of course, that in the actual power dynamic, Carney is the lower-status individual. He reinforces this himself later in his remarks:

Carney, who recently received four Brooks Brothers shirts as a gift from Trump, said he had not yet worn any of them but was prepared to do so in the event the countries reach terms.

“I haven’t had occasion to put on the shirts, because we don’t have a mutually advantageous trade deal,” he said.

For the moment, Carney added, “They’re sitting in my closet.”

Now, there's a threat! If we can't negotiate a trade deal, I'm not gonna wear the shirts you sent me! Take that, you big bully! This reinforces the impression I had yesterday that the two B-listers, Carney and Leyen, got together in Montreal and convinced each other they're world leaders, except it's maybe not that simple: Leyen is playing Carney. She's dangling "associate member" of the EU at him, and he's jumping at it, primarily as a way to get even with Trump:

He also brushed off Trump’s threats to retaliate if Canada and the EU forge a new diplomatic bond that would be disadvantageous to the United States. Asked if he had handled the summit differently out of sensitivity to Trump, Carney rejected the idea out of hand.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “That way lies madness.”

Carney is in a position to give Leyen whatever she wants; he has a parliamentary majority, and parliament is supreme. If she wants Canada to be greener, for instance, Canada will be greener -- anything to annoy Trump at tnis point. She's probably fully aware that key members of the EC will never allow "associate member" for Canada, but she can extract whatever conditions from "Dear Mark" she wants anyhow, because they'll annoy Trump.

This continues to suggest to me that Carney is living in some sort of fantasy -- he's a major world leader, he's gonna make history.

Without mentioning Elon Musk by name, the prime minister alluded to the recent slowdown in Starlink satellite service to Ukraine — reportedly ordered by Musk himself — as an example of the vulnerability derived from excessive dependence on technology belonging to other countries or a single private company.

“If you’re connected to a satellite system that a billionaire, almost trillionaire, decides to turn off at one moment or not, that’s not a good idea,” Carney said.

Carney acknowledged that there was no quick way to displace Canadian and European reliance on American technology, but argued that “pooling our space assets” with Europe could help build Canadian independence more quickly.

With the accelerating global race for AI development as a backdrop, Carney and his European counterparts have been grappling with the comparatively limited resources of their homegrown tech companies.

But this misses the much bigger point that Sundance makes at Conservative Treehouse:

Canada, the U.K and Europe are all facing the same problem…. MONEY! Where are they going to come up with the funds to pay for a military investment they have declined to make for the past 50+ years?

It’s not just an issue of finding funds for a standing military, hardware, ships, submarines, aircraft, tanks, heavy and light artillery, missiles and drones etc., they also have to fund the technological capabilities to use and deploy modern weapons.

They also need advanced manufacturing, steel works, technological guidance systems, large numbers of strategically placed satellites, a space program that includes rockets to put them into orbit, and much, much more.

At scale this is multiple trillions, and that doesn’t include the baseline manufacturing systems needed to create all this independent infrastructure.

The photo above is from one of Carney's political missteps, an appearance at a pride parade in Vancouver in August 2025 where he embraced a man in a thong, to the amusement of much of the country. This is Carney the politican, who somehow imagines he's on a par with Trump -- or even a bit above him.

The Grandiosity Of The Leyen-Carney Romance

I've got to say that I've never seen B-listers quiite like Ursula von der Leyen and Mark Carney. Completely uncharismatic, they try to make up for it with public displays of affection and grandiose mutual pronouncements of their importance in B-list places like Strasbourg and Montreal.

The Arctic is one place where the tectonic plates of geopolitics are colliding. And it's not someone else's frontier, it's part of the European Union. Three of our member states are arctic countries. . .

This was part of yesterday's statement in Montreal, carried in the video embedded above. She refers majestically to "the tectonic plates of geopolitics" as part of the EU, but she glosses over that two European Arctic countries, Norway and Iceland, aren't part of the EU by choice, while the US and Russia are far more influential, and the US manages the Canadian Arctic defense on Canada's behalf. Beyond that, earlier this year, Denmark ceded military control of Greenland to the US as well.

It seem to me that she and Carney are trying to build a vibe that Canada has thrown in its lot with the EU, when nobody has any idea what the actual arrangement will be, and any defense agreement will still rely almost exclusively on NATO. Canada's contribution to NATO is nugatory, while the European NATO countries would not be able to undertake serious military operations without direct US logistical and intelligence support.

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse tries to parse out what Carney may have in mind, without much success:

Canada is in a really weird place and I’ve all but given up trying to understand it. At a certain point you just have to accept that Prime Minister Mark Carney is operating on an agenda for that country that is disconnected from all traditional perspectives around national best interest.

For example, the Canadian trade relationship with the single state of Texas, USA, is larger than the total Canadian trade relationship with the European Union, yet Carney is spending an inordinate amount of time chasing a trade deal with the EU that is never going to amount to anything. Seriously, it’s a literal dead-end.

First, there’s not a scintilla of alignment between the USMCA (Canada says CUSMA) and the European Union. There’s two entirely different sets of economic baselines, standards, rules and regulations between trading with the United States and trading with the EU. If Canada wants a trade relationship with the USA, they have to give up trying to structure their economy to align with the EU; both systems are entirely different.

Canada cannot have a comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the EU that contains structural regulations on the flow of goods that substantively restricts Canadian products from entering the USA. The same issue exists with China.

Now, if Canada wants to separate from the North American trade agreement, then by all means – go for the deal with the EU and/or China. However, as long as Canada wants to retain their USA dependencies and benefits, there’s no mechanism that permits an FTA of substance with Europe or China. Mark Carney cannot have it both ways.

In other words, both Carney and Leyen live in a world of vibes, atmosphere, and impressions. It's entirely appropriate that both seem to think they're the Holy Roman Emperor. Meanwhile, in Fortune, How Canada decided to hurt its own economy, raise its inflation—and most Canadians approved because they’re so angry at Trump:

In a report published after Canada announced the tariffs on Aug. 25, Oxford Economics analysts warned that while the retaliatory tariffs may help protect some domestic manufacturers, it will also force Canadian businesses to absorb added business costs and increase consumer prices.

Canada depends on the U.S. buyers for about 70% of its exports, and the U.S. economy is about 13-times larger than Canada's.

Oxford projected that Canada's GDP will likely grow by 0.8% in 2026, but tariffs will reduce growth in 2027 by 0.2% to 0.3% relative to its August baseline calculations. It predicted inflation to increase by about 0.3% compared to the August 2027 baseline.

. . . Then there's the practical matter of Canada being able to sustain its efforts to combat Trump's trade policy. While the popularity of Carney's trade tactics are popular now, political analysts suggest support for the Canadian government's tariff payback could wane should the economy take a downturn.

"Carney's leverage will start to diminish if this escalating trade war starts to show up in palpable increases in unemployment, factory shutdowns and declining income," Julian Karaguesian, a former adviser at Canada's Finance ​Ministry and economics professor at McGill University, told Reuters last month. "Canada cannot win an economic war of attrition with the U.S."

For now, Carney is trading on being a world-class B-lister and a technocratic cool kid, insofar as technocrats can be cool, but let's face it, Scott Bessent is way cooler than either one. Carney's shown no urgency in resuming the trade talks, apparently banking on continuing support for standing up to Trump. Does he really believe Trump will blink first?

Leyen Defies EC Commissioners

Arriving in Montreal for the Canada-EU Summit yesterday, EC President Ursula von der Leyen doubled down on the words "associate member":

Of course, Canada cannot become a full-fledged member of the EU because of geography, but we both want to bring our relationship to the highest level possible. This is why we are discussing the idea of Canada becoming the first associate member of the European Union. Our idea is simple: it is an ‘association without accession'. But we can replace accession with a ‘common ambition and vision'. We can build a partnership that comes closer to membership than anything we have done before. So how do we get there? First, it means closer alignment on policies. We can work on everything, from AI and climate to energy and security, you just name it.

This simply clarifies one of the issues that was in the news yesterday, the EU requirement that Canada effectively double its carbon tax to match the EU's. Canada will have to bring itself into alignment with pretty much every tax and regulation within the EU in order to trade with it.

The opinions I linked yesterday characterized the objections by several major EU members to the term "associate member" as a political setback for Leyen, but she's going full speed ahead on using the term and defining it as she means it. What are the political options within the EU if it chooses to oppose this? There's a procedure for removing the EU President, but it also involves removing the full set of EU Commissioners. The European Parliament can remove the President of the European Commission and the whole Commission by a motion of censure, which must pass by a two-thirds majority.

In fact Leyen has survived four such motions so far in her tenure, most recently in January of this year. But four censure motions are more than for any other EC President: the prior record was three, held by Jacques Delors in the early 1990s. However, no EC President has ever been removed.

This brought me to the same question regarding the closest historical equivalent to the EC President, the Holy Roman Emperor and a reddit thread, Could a Holy Roman Emperor be removed?

There was no “constitutional” way to get rid of an emperor. An emperor could lose the support of the pope and/or the German nobility, which happened a couple of times, but they couldn’t really be removed.

. . . In 1198 the German nobles couldn’t agree on who to elect as the new king of Germany. One faction elected Henry VI’s brother (and Frederick’s uncle) Philip of Swabia, but another faction elected Otto of Brunswick, the nephew of Richard I of England (Otto’s father was married to Richard’s sister). Innocent claimed he had the power to choose one or the other as emperor, and he was clearly in favour of Otto - it would not be in the interest of the pope to have Frederick ruling in Sicily and his uncle Philip ruling in Germany. But Innocent never crowned Otto as emperor and let the conflict drag on until 1208, when Philip was assassinated.

Otto was finally crowned emperor in 1209. But then Otto tried to capture Rome and tried to invade Sicily, so Innocent excommunicated him. The Germans decided to elect Frederick as king of Germany instead. In 1212, Frederick, who was now 18, was installed as king of Germany and king of the Romans, and crowned emperor by the pope.

. . . Otto of course did not accept this and he continued to act as emperor. From his point of view Frederick was just a rival claimant - just as the emperors sometimes tried to appoint an anti-pope, now the pope had essentially appointed an anti-king.

. . . Sometimes historians say Otto “resigned” or “abdicated” but that’s not exactly what happened, he just lost control of the Empire, lost of the support of the pope and the nobles, and lost the actual physical insignia of the Empire, so for all practical purposes Frederick was the emperor. But since there was no precedent for replacing an emperor like this, could he still claim to be the emperor or not? In the end it didn’t really matter[.]

I'm inclined to follow the historic parallel and suggest that whether or not Leyen is eventually removed. it doesn't really matter. Here is Sundance's assessment of the EU at Conservative Treehouse:

As readers are well aware, Europe is on the cusp of an irreversible economic downward spiral. Low growth, high inflation, and the entire continent is crippled by short-sighted energy policy and subsequent deindustrialization that is creating significant debt burdens. In short, the EU is contracting.

The #1 issue that makes the downward spiral irreversible is their entrenched advocacy for the net zero ‘climate change’ agenda, which is now triggering carbon taxes and various carbon border adjustment mechanisms on trade. Their energy policy is killing their industrial capacity, and the overall European Union is in a self-fulfilling crisis.

On top of the economic mess is the ever-worsening mass migration problem that will eventually topple several key European capitals.

What puzzles me about the commentary I've seen is that it recognizes two things. first, that the EC is divided over the issue of "associate membership", but nobody knows what that means or what agenda it entails -- but second, Leyen and Carney have their own kissy-kissy separate agenda, and they aren't really saying what that means, either. If these two undefined agendas collide, we're probably talking about another attempt to remove Leyen, except removing Leyen by definition involves remov\ingf the whole slate of elector princes EC Commissioners as well, excpet it's the elector princes EC Commissioners who are divided.

Both the EU and the Holy Roman Empire are and were meant to rely on collegiality, the appearance of unity, as a principle of governance. When differences can't be resolved via back-channel dealings, it leads to problems, but also, trying to maintain a face of unanimity on issues like climate, deindustrialization, and migration just delays the inevitable confrontations.

Canada Associate Member Of EU? Never Mind!

It appears that the Prince-Electors of the Holy Roman Empire European Commissioners, in a highly unusual move, have forced the Holy Roman Emperor President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to stop using the expression "Associate Member" of the EU in advance of the Montreal Canada-EU Summit, which begins today. Via Politico:

EU countries have dropped the idea of offering Canada "associate member" status in the 27-member bloc, opting instead for softer language promising "ever closer association" ahead of a landmark EU-Canada summit, according to the latest version of the draft statement, seen by POLITICO.

A group of countries including Germany, Greece and France all objected to mentioning associate membership in a joint EU-Canada statement to be issued in Montreal, the diplomats said.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had originally proposed "associate membership" for Canada in her State of the European Union speech in September, catching some EU countries off-guard.

A previous draft of the joint statement had read that the EU and Canada would "work to define by the 2027 EU-Canada Summit the concept of Associate Member that will reflect, through this even closer association, our common endeavour and cooperation towards our shared goals of prosperity, economic security and strategic autonomy."

In the final version, the text reads: "We will create an even closer association between Canada and the EU... and work to define by the 2027 EU-Canada Summit the concept of an ever closer association of Canada to the EU, short of full membership itself."

Later in the statement, the language changes from "even closer" to "ever closer." The text still needs final approval. EU countries have a deadline of 6 p.m. to raise objections.

While countries disagree over the wording to describe the relationship, Brussels is not softening its offering to Canada of a vastly expanded partnership.

“The good news is it doesn’t matter about specific names or nomenclature," Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Tuesday. "What matters is the difference that it will make to lives of Canadians."

Except that whnatever diffference there will actually be in the lives of Canadians remains completely undefined and has been kicked another year down the road. Conservative Canadian columnist Doug Lilley in the video embedded above includes a clip of Leyen's announcement of an EU "associate membership" for Canada in her September speech in Strasbourg, but what strikes me in the current context is how tepid the applause there actually was. This doesn't seem to have been a popular idea. Lilley also points out another problem that's also covered in CBC News:

Canada is facing a carbon tariff threat from the European Union within months as the economic bloc fully implements its Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM).

According to internal documents CBC News obtained through an access to information request, Canadian iron, steel and aluminum are not exempt from the carbon tariff even with Canada's national price on carbon and its decade-old trade deal with the European Union.

. . . The EU, however, is exempting countries like Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and soon the U.K. That's because their carbon pricing systems are linked or fall under Europe's carbon market, the EU Emissions Trading System.

The briefing note obtained by CBC News explicitly states that an "exemption … is not currently possible" for Canada because our carbon price is not linked to Europe's.

"In 2025, the EU carbon price is approximately $134 per tonne, compared to $95 per tonne [in Canada]," according to the briefing note.

The Carney government's recent energy accord with Alberta weakened Canada's carbon price further.

Lilley concludes by citing a previous column he'd written on "associate membership" in the EU:

What would Canada need to give up control over to get a deal that gave us the kind of deep trade access, deeper than a free-trade agreement, that Carney is seeking?

We don’t need to wonder. Such deals already exist.

The agreement with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein requires those countries to follow European laws and regulations to gain access to the EU common market. In areas such as product standards, food safety, consumer protection, environmental rules and corporate law, EU standards take precedence over domestic law.

Norway, a supposedly free and independent country, must adopt most EU legislation, yet gets no vote. Its representatives can appear before committees and voice concerns, but they cannot vote on the rules that govern much of their lives.

There is no way that the EU would grant Canada similar common-market access without similar concessions.

. . . Carney has told Canadians that he walked away from the trade deal on offer from the U.S. last month to protect Canadian sovereignty. He said the Americans wanted to control which countries Canada could sign free-trade agreements with.

How would getting close to the EU, the way Norway has, protect our sovereignty?

We’d be giving up much of our decision-making power to nameless, faceless bureaucrats in Brussels and Strasbourg.

What we're beginning to see with Carney is promises on which he doesn't deliver. The first one was the threat to sue Stelco for laying off workers; two weeks ago, in response to questions from the press, Minister of Induistry Mélanie Joly said "It's a question of days" before the government took action, but so far, there's been nothing. Now, the EU is backing off "associate membership" whie contiinuing a policy of tariffs for Canada if Canada's carbon tax doesn't match its own.

Carney's main problem is his reluctance to negotiate in any serious way with the Trump administration after pulling the rug out from under his own negotiators in trade talks last August. The resulting US tariffs are doing major dmage to the Canadian economy. Carney has been deflecting this by promising increased trade with other countries, but it's looking like these deals are mostly just vague promises. At the same time, his honeymoon with Leyen has done her damage inside the EU:

It may look like a semantic distinction, but it amounts to an embarrassing political setback for [Leyen], who floated the idea of Canada becoming the EU's first associate member with great fanfare in September.

Arriving in Montreal for the summit, [Leyen] appeared determined to press ahead regardless.

Yet despite the wordplay, the final text leaves little doubt that the much-hyped format failed to win the support of European governments, whom [Leyen] did not consult before making her grand pitch to Canada.

Her own country, Germany, led the charge to remove the term, arguing that the substance of the new partnership should be defined before attaching a label with potential legal implications, rather than the other way round.

My own someehat cursory investigation into the EU decisionmaking process indicates that any such public disagreement among EU members is highly unusual -- in fact, Leyen's failure to consult with them apparently violated treaties:

According to Euronews, the idea had been discussed with Canada, but neither with EU member states nor within the Commission itself. ‘We don’t know what we are talking about,’ one diplomat told the outlet. Another was even more explicit: ‘It does not mean anything, it is not in the treaties.’

So Carney seems basically to be damaging Canada's economy while promising changes that will somehow make things better in the vague and distant future. We'll have to see how long he can keep this up.

The Montreal EU Summit: What Problem Are They Trying To Solve?

In recent weeks, I've had to educate myself on the UK-Canadian parliamentary system. Now I'm finding I have to learn about governance in the European Union, and as I noted yesterday, the closest parallel I can find is the Holy Roman Empire. As I understand this, the Holy Roman Empire was governed by the Emperor, who was elected by seven prince-electors. He in turn had to negotiate with the Diet, comprised of members of the nobility, on important decisions. The Emperor/Electors and the Diet were separate power centers.

As far as I can tell, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, is in a position roughly comparable to Holy Roman Emperor. She is nominated by 27 European Commissioners, the heads of government of the EU member countries, who correspond to the Electors. The nomination is confirmed by a vote of the European Parliament, which roughly corresponds to the Diet. No such nomination has ever failed to be confirmed by the European Parliament.

Like the Holy Roman Empire, the EU operates on the principle of collegiality. Discussions among the Electors/Commissioners are private, and decisions are not made public until a consensus is reached. At that point, matters are voted on by the European Parliament. But what we're seeing in the runup to the EU-Canada summit in Montreal tomorrow and Friday is highly unusual public disagreement among the Electors/Commissioners.

Last month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made a bombshell offer to Canada: to become the first EU “associate member”. Now the term is proving hard to swallow for several member states, including her own Germany.

Ahead of the EU-Canada summit, meant to chart what many see as the closest partnership between the bloc and a non-member country, European capitals led by Berlin have pushed back against a term that has yet to be clearly defined, five EU diplomats told Euronews.

“The main concern is that this is unknown terminology, it might bring up legal uncertainty and expectations from other third countries,” one of the diplomats said. “This was not communicated previously from the Commission. We don’t know what we are talking about.”

Last week, a revised draft of the joint declaration explicitly mentioned the notion, vowing regular exchanges with Canadian authorities on major policy and regulatory initiatives and to define the full scope of the partnership at the 2027 summit.

. . . The text was due to be adopted on Tuesday through the so-called silent procedure, under which a document passes unless a member state objects. Germany, Italy, France and Greece all raised objections before the deadline.

Elsewhere,

Germany is leading efforts to remove the term "associate membership" entirely from the proposed text, the diplomats said.

The disagreement reflects divisions within the bloc over the proposed status, which European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen suggested to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney during her State of the Union address in Strasbourg last month.

There are subtexts all over the place here. I would surmise that a big issue is that Leyen is trying to redefine EU policy on membership to accommodate a non-member, while not consulting with members on what she's doing. The YouTube commentary embedded above makes the point that EU "associate membership" hasn't been raised in Parliament, and it wasn't an issue in last year's national election, but apparently negotiations have been ongoimg, to the point that Canada advanced a draft, since before Carney and Leyen floated the idea in Strasbourg.

Why are they doing this? What problem are they trying to solve? One answer would be the one Canadian commentator Jasmin Laine suggested in a YouTube video embedded in Monday's post, that she wants Mark Carney to be her successor as President of the European Commission, and Canada would need to be a member of the EU for this to happen.

The YouTube embedded in today's post suggests that the document, however it eventually reads, could also force a widening of Canadian immigration policy. As we've already seen here, this is a particularly sensitive issue in French Canada, where immigration from South Asia is threatening the traditional French culture. The newly elected premier of Quebec, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, is raising this as an issue surrounding tne Montreal summit:

Quebec Premier Paul St-Pierre Plamondon will not be allowed to speak at this week's Canada-EU summit, according to the Parti Québécois (PQ).

The summit is set to take place Oct. 29 and 30 in Montreal.

St-Pierre Plamondon wrote in a statement Tuesday that the federal government refused his request to make a speech at the event, despite the fact that it will be held on Quebec soil.

. . . In a statement released Monday, Quebec's Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs Marie-Claude Sarrazin quoted a phrase from Carney's lauded speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, earlier this year: "If you are not at the table, you are on the menu."

Sarrazin added that the federal government's decision shows a "basic lack of respect for Quebec and a denial of the role of our parliament, which reminds us of the need to be in control of our own destiny."

Both Carney and Leyen look like they're trying to force major policy changes on both Canada and the EU without going through normal consultation. I'm not sure they can succeed with this.

Ilhan Omar Update

Ilhan Omar has finally accepted one piece of Alan Deshowitz's advice to her last week, which was to hire an attorney:

The legal eagles defending embattled “Squad” Rep. Ilhan Omar from prison or deportation include former President Biden’s “autopen” personal attorney and the white-shoe lawyer who quarterbacked both of President Trump’s impeachments.

The Somalia-born Omar’s defense duo boasts impressive lefty legal pedigrees, but neither specializes in immigration law — raising questions about whether the Minnesota Democrat is more concerned about her husband’s alleged $30 million fraudulent windfall than she is about her immigration status.

Amy Jeffress, a partner at boutique DC firm Hecker Fink, became Biden’s personal attorney in 2025, succeeding longtime confidant Bob Bauer.

. . . The other half of Omar’s legal squad is Joshua Matz, also a partner at Hecker Fink, who represented House Democrats during both Trump impeachments and served on the legal team of the House Jan. 6. committee.

He also represented Brown University, New York University and Columbia University, who have all tangled with the Trump Administration on legal matters.

On the other hand, she has yet to follow Dershowitz's other advice, which was to keep her mouth shut.

Leftist gaming site commentator Hasan Piker and Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., met up in Minnesota to cohost a campaign event on Monday night, bashing President Donald Trump's administration as well as Democrats who are willing to work with him.

Piker, who streams his commentary on Twitch, called Republicans "terrorists" during the event, and Omar referred to the party as the "pedophile protection party."

They made the comments during a Q&A session led by failed Minneapolis mayoral candidate Omar Fateh.

"Trump's obsession with us started in 2016, when he arrived at the airport and begged for our vote. We said, no thank you. We continued to say, no thank you. He lies and says he's won Minnesota three times, as if," Omar said.

"This defeat is going to be the fourth time! We remind him that Minnesota is not interested in a pedophile protection party. Minnesota doesn't send people who are corrupt and are interested in enriching themselves. And Minnesota does not come after the refugees, they send one to Congress," she added.

But immigration isn't her only problem. Her husband's "business" ventures are beginning to look more and more sketchy:

Omar's husband's venture capital firm received a mysterious $11.25 million cash infusion from an Indian billionaire in 2024. Then his other businesses settled fraud allegations for millions of dollars.

As Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) tells it, she and her husband, Tim Mynett, are on the precipice of financial ruin. The embattled lawmaker told MSNOW she lives a "basic" paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle and struggles to pay rent on her two homes[.]

But Omar's financial situation is anything but basic. It includes enviable taxpayer-funded perks that she accepts as a member of Congress to cover her living expenses, millions of dollars that her campaign paid her husband’s former consulting firm, and a mysterious $11.25 million cash infusion that her husband's venture capital company received from an Indian billionaire in 2024. Omar mentioned none of this on Wednesday when sympathetic MSNOW host Chris Hayes inquired about her financial situation.

"I mean, it's, you know, working, working-class, I guess, like paycheck to paycheck still," Omar said. "You know, we've got four kids. And, you know, we live, I think, like a basic life. I have a Toyota Camry that's from 2016. It's our only car. I rent my D.C. place and my Minneapolis place. And so, I mean, I don't know if that sounds like, you know, not majority of Congress, but there's some of us that are, that don't come from wealth and don't have wealth."

Omar's claim that she struggles to keep up with rent on her Washington, D.C., home defies belief. Taxpayers have paid that bill for the past several years. The Minnesota Democrat has received $85,000 in taxpayer funds to cover her D.C. lodging expenses as part of a fringe congressional benefit activated in early 2023. Omar, who earns a base salary of $174,000 before the housing stipend, hasn't had to worry about rising grocery costs either, because taxpayers have taken on that bill as well: She has raked in $33,000 from taxpayers since 2023 from another fringe benefit that covers the cost of her daily meals, according to House spending records.

Buit this leaves aside her husband's ventures. As we've already covered here, Tim Mynett and his partner Will Hailer were sued by investors in their California winery, a South Dakota cannabis distributor, and venture capital firm Rose Lake Capital for not repaying funds. But now it's emerged that, according to the link,

Mynett and Hailer struck gold with Byju Raveendran, the Indian billionaire owner of the now-bankrupt educational technology firm Byju.

Hailer testified in those bankruptcy proceedings that Rose Lake Capital received two wires from Byju in June 2024, totaling $11.25 million, in connection with a failed deal to acquire the $1.2 billion leveraged loan at the center of the bankruptcy case. Hailer testified that the funds were routed to Rose Lake "from Dubai to Mauritius to the UK to the USA" and that, days later, Byju demanded the return of the funds.

It's unclear whether Rose Lake Capital ever returned Byju's $11.25 million. By the end of 2024, Mynett and Hailer's winery and marijuana businesses settled their respective fraud lawsuits with cash settlements, and Rose Lake Capital distributed $213,000 to Mynett, according to records reviewed in April by the Wall Street Journal. One of their investors told the New York Post he was "shocked" Mynett and Hailer obtained the money to settle the lawsuit after claiming financial insolvency just months earlier.

Rose Lake Capital's $11.25 million cash infusion in June 2024 may be the nexus of Omar's infamous $30 million accounting error in her 2024 financial disclosure. She first reported last year that her husband's stake in Rose Lake Capital was worth up to $25 million, and his winery was worth up to $5 million at the end of 2024.

But in April, Omar filed an amended report revising her and her husband's 2024 net worth down to no more than $65,000 and that his companies were worthless on paper. Her office told the Free Beacon that Mynett's accountant made the elementary accounting error of failing to account for business liabilities when calculating their worth.

. . . The criminal investigation isn't limited to Omar's immigration status. U.S. attorney Jeanine Pirro said Monday her office is probing the Minnesota congresswoman's financial disclosures.

"We're looking at the facts. Based upon the facts, we'll follow them wherever they take us," Pirro told Axios as she confirmed Omar's financial affairs are also under investigation.

Finally, a new clue has emerged over her father's actual identity:

A since-deleted tweet in 2013 on Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar's social media account appeared to refer to her father by a different name.

"Happy Father’s Day to my aabo Nur Said, I am forever grateful to Allah for giving me the best father …," Omar stated in the June 2013 post, which was deleted in 2019, Fox News reported.

A memorial post in 2020, as well as several other records, refer to Omar's father as "Nur Omar Mohamed."

The deleted post on what was then called Twitter — now called X — refers to Omar's father as "Nur Said," which also appears similar to the name of her former husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi.

An archived version of the post, first reported on by the Daily Caller in 2019, has received new attention as a federal investigation has been launched into allegations Omar made false statements on immigration and naturalization documents.

She does seem to be in a great deal of potential trouble.