From his Davos speech to his non-stop globetrotting, Prime Minister Mark Carney is on a mission to realign Canada’s foreign affairs and trade relations within the international community, expressly apart from the United States. Canada’s prime minister has forged a new strategic partnership with China to lay the foundation for his envisioned New World Order that binds like-minded countries together to counter U.S. influence over global trade and diplomacy. Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand has coined this China pivot and New World Order as the “Carney Doctrine.”
BBC News reported that “Prime Minister Mark Carney’s new approach to Canada’s foreign policy can perhaps be distilled in one line: ‘We take the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.’” The prime minister stated Canada’s relationship with China had become “more predictable” than its relationship with the U.S. and he posted in social media that Canada was “recalibrating” the relationship with China, “strategically, pragmatically, and decisively.”
The Carney government’s China pivot has come under scrutiny in the past few weeks, but the prime minister is decisively doubling down on his chosen course. First, there is an ongoing debate on the impact the Canada-Sino EVs deal will have on Canadian automakers. Even as the Liberals heralded the Chinese talks with Stellantis to assemble Chinese EVs in Ontario, the U.S. has made it known that they will block Chinese EVs access to the American market. Second, there is the controversy caused by floor-crosser MP Michael Ma, who challenged the fact of China’s use of forced labour – followed by Carney’s weak responses, excusing CCP’s human rights abuses as concerns seen around the world. Last weekend Carney appeared at a $1,775 per-ticket Liberal fundraiser alongside Ma, praising him as exemplifying “Liberal values,” even while a U.S. Trade Representative report questioned Canada’s efforts to prevent imported Chinese goods made from forced labour of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
As the Liberals pursue the Carney Doctrine, the Conservatives have rejected the China pivot and are making their case for repairing and renewing U.S. trade relations. Shuv Majumdar, a Conservative MP who sits on a parliamentary committee focused on international human rights, stated in the House of Commons, “We shouldn’t be strengthening Beijing’s New World Order. We should be replacing it instead with one underpinned by Canadian resources.” Making use of the country’s natural resources and the long-established integrated market with Canada’s southern neighbour is the crux of the Conservatives’ argument for bolstering Canada’s trade and economic prosperity.
Last week the Conservatives lost a vote in Parliament when they argued to reinforce the Canada-U.S. auto pact. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has recently announced that a proposed “tariff-free auto pact” would double production of automobiles in Canada, “What we’re putting forward here is a realistic plan to get the tariffs removed, not because we expect the Americans are going to do it to be nice, but because we’ve got a plan that actually increases their production as well as ours.” Poilievre insists that the Conservative plan will increase production on both sides of the border and will continue to attract foreign investors into the Canadian market. He pointed to Japanese Ambassador to Canada Kanji Yamanouchi’s interview on CTV News in which the ambassador stated Japan’s attraction to Canada is its CUSMA agreement, a gateway into the American market.
Earlier in the month, Poilievre made three significant appearances south of the border to articulate the Conservatives’ alternative foreign affairs and trade strategy for Canada. On March 19 the Conservative Leader spoke in New York to the Foreign Policy Association where he stated, “I’m here today to restore and renew our friendship and to bring affordability, security, and strength to the peoples of both of our two separate countries… I reject the idea that we can afford to treat the current and very real problems we have between Canada and the United States as a permanent end to our relationship. They’re not.”
Poilievre also appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast, an interview that has recorded nearly three million YouTube views and produced countless viral clips across social media platforms. Ben Woodfinden, former Conservative director of communications, stated “This is what Pierre Poilievre looks like in real life.” One of the podcast highlights was Poilievre’s strident reaction when asked what he thought of President Donald Trump’s repeated taunt of Canada becoming the 51st State. Poilievre stated, “We’re very proudly Canadian. So we’re never going to be the 51st state and I just wish he’d knock that shit off so that we can get back to talking about the things that we can do as two separate countries but that are actually friends.”
In each of his American addresses, Poilievre was delivering an aspirational message to both Canadians and Americans, reminding his audiences of what good is possible with our longstanding alliance and a functioning, integrated North American economy. The Conservative Leader was compelling in his Bloomberg News interview with This Weekend anchor David Gura. This is an important interview for Canadians wanting to know how the Conservatives would manage the country’s challenges with the U.S. Here are a few of the key exchanges.
Gura: “I want to have you draw a contrast between your view of Canada and the world and the Prime Minister, if you can, in the world vis a vis the United States. So, Prime Minister Carney went to Davos, delivered the speech that talked about a rupture, really an irreparable rupture that Canada needs to move on because things had changed. Your outlook is markedly different – spell it out for me.”
Poilievre: “So, my outlook is that the United States is the source, that American capitalism is the greatest economic force the world has ever seen. And that’s not my opinion. That’s not an ideological point of view. That’s just a mathematical fact. U.S. GDP far outstrips any other competitor. You have the biggest military the world has ever seen. And you’re right next door. We sell twice as much to America as to the rest of the world combined. We sell 20 times more to America than we sell to China. Our interests are intertwined with the United States of America.
“We have to get this relationship back on track. And I believe that we can, because first and foremost, all of our interests on security, affordability and economic growth are broadly aligned. Our peoples like each other. Our geography… I wouldn’t want any other neighbour. And frankly, I know that the Americans would rather not have another neighbour than Canada. So let’s get past the politics, fix the relationship, and let our countries go forward successfully.”
Gura: “How would you approach this trade negotiation differently? What could you tell us about the way that you would try to broker a deal with the U.S. in this moment?”
Poilievre: “Leverage – that’s the key word. And we have a lot of leverage that we perhaps don’t realize we have. We’re America’s second biggest customer. We are the number one destination for exports from about 30 different states. Look at what’s happening right now. Oil prices are up 60 per cent. Americans are paying five bucks a gallon in some parts of the country. We are the single biggest seller of oil to the United States of America. We sell ten times more oil than your next biggest supplier, Mexico. And we have the ability to produce an extra two million barrels, which would be about 10 per cent of your daily consumption. Two million barrels a day. We can actually supply you with affordable energy if you’re that American guy who’s at the pump today and you’re overpaying. Canada could be part of the solution to that.
“And then you’ve got minerals like the ten NATO has identified for our defense, minerals that are necessary for modern warfare – whether it’s cobalt for the alloys that go into jet engines, or it’s germanium for night vision technology or, you know, we’ve got aluminum, what you need for armored vehicles and aircraft, the list goes on. We should build up a massive strategic reserve of that and avail it to those allies that sign on to us in free trade agreements. The Americans would obviously be on our side, I would presume, in any future conflict. And in that case, if we have built up a massive reserve of both energy and minerals and we’ve signed on to an agreement that allows for that preferred access, then Americans would benefit. Now, to get that, what do we want in return: tariff free trade. We want the tariffs gone on our aluminum, all the steel, autos, lumber. So simply put, build up leverage using our strengths. Use that leverage to get tariff free trade.”
Gura: “What is the sense that you have of President Trump being open to that tariff free trade deal? I imagine there’s a lot of endemic impatience in Canada for how long this has dragged on.”
Poilievre: “I think there is, but I think that if you look at what the president’s stated objectives are, he wants more production in the United States and he wants greater national security. Canada, as an independent and separate country with whom the United States would have a free trade agreement that includes things like a strategic minerals and an energy agreement, would serve those purposes. So, you know, our interests as countries are fairly aligned. We just have to put them into practice.”
Chris George is an advocate, government relations advisor, and writer/copy editor. As president of a public relations firm established in 1994, Chris provides discreet counsel, tactical advice and management skills to CEOs/Presidents, Boards of Directors and senior executive teams in executing public and government relations campaigns and managing issues. Prior to this PR/GR career, Chris spent seven years on Parliament Hill on staffs of Cabinet Ministers and MPs. He has served in senior campaign positions for electoral and advocacy campaigns at every level of government. Today, Chris resides in Almonte, Ontario where he and his wife manage www.cgacommunications.com. Contact Chris at chrisg.george@gmail.com.
