Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney took office last year amid a flurry of aggressive actions by his country\u2019s southern neighbour. A recently sworn-in United States president, Donald Trump, slapped tariffs on Canadian exports and threatened to make the US neighbour the 51st state.<\/p>\n
The actions were particularly damning as Canada had deep trade and security ties with the US, not only sending nearly 80 percent of its exports to that market, but also often following lockstep on geopolitical policy and strategic moves.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n All that was thrown aside when Trump took office, and Canada, under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, was one of the first countries he slapped with tariffs.<\/p>\n After a year of dealing with a mercurial and unpredictable US president, experts applaud Carney as \u201cstanding strong and resolute\u201d, not just in the face of Trump\u2019s threats, but also against internal critics.<\/p>\n \u201cThe most notable aspect of the last year was both a bullet dodged and a savvy bit of statecraft to avoid a rush to do a deal on trade and invest with the US the way many other countries did,\u201d said Brett House, a senior fellow at the University of Toronto\u2019s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.<\/p>\n \u201cCommitments from this president are absolutely worthless, and the biggest accomplishment of the first year has been standing strong and resolute in the face of internal critics,\u201d House told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n Indeed, Carney has used Trump\u2019s attacks on allies and others to refocus Canada\u2019s foreign policy and place in the world.<\/p>\n With the US no longer the anchor of a rules-based order, and with there now being a \u201cdeep rupture\u201d caused by changes in Washington, \u201cCarney has aimed to build at home and diversify abroad, as Ottawa\u2019s dependence and long ties have now become a source of weakness,\u201d said Vina Nadjibulla, the vice president of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd he\u2019s doing this at a speed, scale and ambition that we haven\u2019t seen in recent years\u201d in Ottawa, Nadjibulla said.<\/p>\n Some of that stance was evident in January, when Carney, in a speech in Davos, said there was a \u201crupture\u201d in the global rules-based order and that Middle Powers like Canada and others had to rise strategically to address geopolitical tensions.<\/p>\n But it was visible in his actions even before Davos, when he had reached out to countries that had historically been important trade partners but where relations had been frozen due to political tensions under his predecessor, Trudeau.<\/p>\n For instance, Carney invited Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the G7 meeting in Canada to initiate a reset of ties with New Delhi that had been in a deep freeze since Trudeau alleged in 2023 that India was involved in the killing of a Sikh separatist activist on Canadian soil.<\/p>\n Carney also recalibrated Canada\u2019s relations with China, which had been tense since Canadian authorities arrested a key official of Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei as she was transitioning through the Vancouver international airport in December 2018. China retaliated against the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, which was carried out at the request of US authorities, by detaining two Canadians.<\/p>\n Carney has also deepened relations with Japan, South Korea, Australia, and others, making sure to align on security and economic issues, and has drawn Canada closer to Europe, Nadjibulla pointed out.<\/p>\n In the lead-up to elections last year, Carney \u201cpositioned himself as a centrist, a moderate, and went to great lengths to distance himself from the image of Justin Trudeau,\u201d said Sanjay Jeram, the chair of the political science department at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada.<\/p>\n \u201cHe hasn\u2019t shown much interest in discussing things outside the economy, international relations and trade, and even when asked, has avoided those questions and steered the conversation back to what he believes is his true purpose. Or that could be his political strategy, or a bit of both.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Under that pragmatist persona, \u201cCarney takes the world and the economy as it is, rather than what we hope it to be\u201d, which allows him to be judged on pragmatist metrics, Jeram said, referring to criticisms that Carney is overlooking concerns related to political interference or human rights in his dealings with foreign partners.<\/p>\n \u201cCanadians have bought that [stance] so far,\u201d Jeram added.<\/p>\nRecommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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