{"id":13898,"date":"2026-04-21T23:16:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T23:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/13898\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T23:16:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T23:16:12","slug":"editorial-carney-snail-paced-on-cusma-talks-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/13898\/","title":{"rendered":"EDITORIAL: Carney snail-paced on CUSMA talks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Moving at speeds previously seen in many generations of Canadian governments \u2014 slowly and the opposite of what he promised \u2014 Prime Minister Mark Carney on Tuesday unveiled his new Advisory Committee<\/a> on Canada-U.S. Economic Relations.<\/p>\n

It replaces, after almost 15 months, former PM Justin Trudeau\u2019s Council on Canada-U.S. Relations appointed on Jan. 16, 2025.<\/p>\n

At 24 members, it is 26% bigger than the 19 on Trudeau\u2019s panel, contrary to Carney\u2019s promises of running a tighter, more efficient government.<\/p>\n

While Carney is perfectly entitled to appoint his own advisers, waiting until just two months before the technical July 1 Canada Day deadline for the U.S., Canada and Mexico to decide whether to renew the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) on trade for 16 years until 2042 \u2014 which few believe will happen \u2014 is cutting it very close.<\/p>\n

The alternatives are for the three countries to conduct annual reviews of CUSMA (or as the US calls it, USMCA) until 2042, or for any country to withdraw with six months\u2019 written notice.<\/p>\n

While Carney\u2019s group will be chaired by his point man on Canada-U.S. trade negotiations, federal cabinet minister Dominic LeBlanc, we suspect this announcement is largely for show \u2014 to create the impression the federal government is working hard to renew CUSMA, while providing political cover if it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s alarming is that Mexico is reportedly far further ahead<\/a> in its talks with the U.S. than Canada.<\/p>\n

In the real world, CUSMA is vital to our economy since it allows 85% of our exports to the U.S. to enter tariff free.<\/p>\n

Three members from Trudeau\u2019s advisory group are on Carney\u2019s \u2014 former Quebec Liberal premier and federal Progressive Conservative cabinet minister Jean Charest; Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers\u2019\u200b Association; and union leader Lana Payne, national president of Unifor.<\/p>\n

Carney\u2019s group also includes some new bipartisan appointments \u2014 former federal Conservative leader Erin O\u2019Toole and Lisa Raitt, a former cabinet minister in Conservative PM Stephen Harper\u2019s cabinet \u2014 along with Ralph Goodale, former Liberal finance minister and high commissioner to the U.K. \u2014 and P.J. Akeeagok, the former premier of Nunavut, which has no political parties.<\/p>\n

The rest are mainly CEOs and presidents of Canadian companies hardest hit by U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s tariffs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Moving at speeds previously seen in many generations of Canadian governments \u2014 slowly and the opposite of what…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[7156,7442,4939,7185,127,111],"class_list":{"0":"post-13898","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mark-carney","8":"tag-advisory-committee","9":"tag-cabinet-minister","10":"tag-cusma","11":"tag-dominic-leblanc","12":"tag-justin-trudeau","13":"tag-mark-carney"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}