The UK Henry Nowak Case Resurfaces

Last June, I posted about the conviction of a UK Sikh, Vickrum Digwa, for stabbing a university student, Henry Nowak, who died at the scene from his injuries. The case becanme highly controversial due to what appeared to be police misconduct in arresting Nowak instead of Digwa and delaying medical care for Nowak. The government was extremely slow to respond to the controversy, but by July, it was announced that there would be an investigation.

Four months later, any investigation has yet to begin, but they sure are making big plans:

An independent review into the circumstances surrounding the tragic murder of Henry Nowak has been announced by the Home Secretary.

At the heart of the review is a commitment that any lessons that arise from the case are learned so that everything can be done to prevent any other family suffering in the way that the Nowak family has.

The review will be in 2 parts. Phase 1 will investigate whether opportunities were missed to prevent Henry’s murder, examining what was known about the perpetrator, Vickrum Digwa, in the 5 years before the attack.

This will cover the police, health services, local authorities and educational institutions, and faith organisations, including any concerns relating to weapon possession and violent, threatening and erratic behaviour.

Phase 1 will also consider how the Nowak family were treated by agencies across the criminal justice system following Henry’s death – including the police, CPS, HM Courts and Tribunals Service, and the HM Prison and Probation Service.

Phase 2 will follow once the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has concluded its investigation into the actions of police officers who attended the scene, and will consider the actions of the IOPC and, if necessary, the police.

Based on reporting from July, the IOPC investigation has been under way since the stabbing took place on December 3, 2025, nearly a year, and it apparently will still be ongoing for some time, based on the link, but once it's done, the blue-ribbon panel's gonna get straight to the bottom of it! (For comparison, the UK investigation into the Titanic disaster of April 15, 1912, lasted from May 2 to July 3, 1912. A sense of urgency can make a difference, it would seem.)

It does appear that there's quite a bit to investigate, once they get around to it:

The family of the murdered teenager Henry Nowak, who was arrested as he pleaded for medical help after being stabbed, have said they were failed by the authorities and fear they were manipulated in their darkest hour.

His parents described how police wrongly told them Nowak, 18, had been the aggressor, and that officers had immediately administered first aid. They said the police watchdog had initially said there was no evidence of misconduct by officers.

“The story was evolving every time we had an interaction,” Henry’s father, Mark Nowak, told ITV News. “What started off as: ‘When the police arrived, we administered first aid,’ moved through a stage where: ‘When the police arrived, they detained everyone’ … to: ‘We actually only detained Henry,’ to then: ‘We handcuffed Henry,’ and then: ‘We placed Henry under arrest.’

“That evolution of what actually happened that night really shocked us, and we felt we were being hoodwinked. We felt we were being not told the truth.”

. . . In police bodyworn camera footage that prompted a public outcry, Nowak was heard repeatedly saying: “I’ve been stabbed,” to which an officer replied: “Don’t think you have, mate.”

The report at the link reinforces the impression that the IOPC is slow-walking any investigation:

Nowak’s family revealed that the IOPC had said in April: “No [Hampshire police] officers would be subject to conduct or criminal investigation. This was because there were no concerns identified in relation to officer actions.” Less than two months later, Hampshire and Isle of Wight constabulary was forced to apologise for its actions.

The police watchdog’s director of engagement, Derrick Campbell, told ITV News: “The IOPC is committed to establishing the full circumstances of this case, including whether any of the officers involved should face disciplinary proceedings, and providing Henry’s family with answers to the questions they rightly have about how the police treated Henry in the way they did on that terrible night, and why.”

According to The Times,

The IOPC investigation into potential police failures is expected to conclude early next year. In July, two officers were served gross misconduct notices following a full review.

I asked Chrome AI mode, "What does it mean when a UK police officer is served a gross misconduct notice?" It answered,

When a UK police officer is served a gross misconduct notice (often referred to as a Regulation 17 notice), it means they are officially under investigation for a severe breach of the Standards of Professional Behaviour that is serious enough to justify dismissal.

Being served a notice does not mean the officer is guilty. Instead, it marks the formal start of a disciplinary investigation by the force's Professional Standards Department or the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).

So maybe by early next year, the IOPC will finish its investigation, and maybe then it will hold a hearing on whether the officers should be held accountable, or maybe not. Reports from last summer suggeat the officers haven't been suspended, but they're on soft duty to protect them from threats. I asked Chrome AI mode to compare how the Nowak case would be handled in the US vis-a-vis the UK. It answered in part,

In the United States, the officers would almost certainly have been placed on immediate administrative leave or suspension following the public release of the bodycam footage, if not immediately after the incident itself. While police disciplinary actions vary widely across the thousands of independent law enforcement agencies in the US, an incident involving a failure to render aid, mocking a dying victim, and handcuffing them based on an unverified accusation would typically trigger specific procedural steps under American policing standards.

In a US context, dismissing a victim's statements of "I've been stabbed" and "I can't breathe" while delaying medical care for eight minutes would be treated as a egregious violation of department policy and a failure to protect a person in custody.

In the US, due to intense local political pressure and direct accountability of Police Chiefs and Sheriffs to mayors or local electorates, departments typically act much faster publicly. Facing bodycam footage of this nature, a US Police Chief would typically move to suspend or fire the officers quickly to mitigate civil liability, public protests, and political fallout.

In the US, officers acting with such extreme negligence can face state-level criminal charges, such as reckless endangerment, official misconduct, or involuntary manslaughter. If criminal charges are brought by a local District Attorney or state Attorney General, the administrative suspension is immediately upgraded to an unpaid suspension pending the outcome of the trial.

Something is deeply wrong in the UK. Somehow, our founding fathers figured this one out in the 1700s.

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.