I’m troubled by Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Tuscany vacation, but not just because it comes at a bad time in trade negotiations.<\/p>\n
There are plenty of examples of Carney caving to Trump on trade and tariffs. He can give in to Trump just as easily from Italy as from Ottawa.<\/p>\n
Besides, modern G7 leaders have sophisticated communications suites with them \u2013 secure phones, video, and satellite. Carney is instantly available even on a beach or a golf course.<\/p>\n
What truly bothers me, though, is that Carney’s office says the trip was cleared in advance by the ethics commissioner.<\/p>\n
Where is he staying? Whose villa is he using? What’s the potential conflict? Is there a quid pro quo?<\/p>\n
Since becoming prime minister a year-and-a-half ago, Carney has seemingly backed down every time he has confronted U.S. President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Admittedly, Trump is an irrational bully. Dealing with him must at times be the equivalent of encountering someone having a psychotic episode on the street. The temptation is to just smile and back away slowly.<\/p>\n
But Carney always seems to go beyond that.<\/p>\n
Take his “negotiations” with Trump over the Gordie Howe bridge in July. Carney insisted he wouldn’t give in to Trump’s extortion. The Americans wouldn’t get a nickel of the bridge’s toll revenue until its $6.4-billion construction costs, which had been paid exclusively by Canadians, had been paid back.<\/p>\n
Of course, the truth was what our self-described “tough negotiator” prime minister had agreed to give the Americans half of the toll revenue from Day One for at least 15 years.<\/p>\n
What kind of signal does that send the White House about Canada’s strength in standing up for its own interests in trade negotiations in general?<\/p>\n
Carney has cratered on a digital services tax, which irritated American trade negotiators, but he gave up on it only after it was too late to extract concessions from the U.S.<\/p>\n
In the midst of tough negotiations last October on CUSMA \u2013 the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade pact \u2013 Carney’s industry minister, Melanie Joly, announced, out of the blue, that Canada would slash the number of autos American manufacturers could bring to Canada tariff-free. That had nothing to do with CUSMA talks, but it caused the Americans to walk away from the table.<\/p>\n
For a man who promised during the 2025 election to be the crisis leader Canada needed, Carney has solved few crises. I expect him to take similarly weak action over Trump’s threatened 50% tariffs coming Aug. 19.<\/p>\n
The best the Carney government can offer steelmakers, for instance, who are hard hit by tariffs, is a $100-million subsidy to help them cut their shipping costs.<\/p>\n
The Liberals are not going to be able to spend their way out of the current trade crisis.<\/p>\n
But that brings me back to the question of where, exactly, is Carney staying during his Tuscany trip for “personal commitments?”<\/p>\n
What kind of accommodations has to be cleared with the ethics commissioner in advance?<\/p>\n
This puts me in mind of a 2004 vacation to Jamaica taken by then-prime minister Justin Trudeau.<\/p>\n
At the time, his office said he was staying at a vacation home a family friend had lent him.<\/p>\n
That home turned out to be a $9,000-a-night beachfront estate, the use of which had been a “gift” from a friend, complete with servants and fancy meals.<\/p>\n
After the Trudeau family’s fiasco of staying twice on the private island of the Aga Khan, whose foundation does business with the federal government, the PMO decided to clear the Jamaica stay before Trudeau took off.<\/p>\n
Still, there was the hint of potential conflict, cleared or not.<\/p>\n
What, if anything, is Carney hiding? Tell me what Marriott he’s at and I’ll stop worrying about conflicts.<\/p>\n
But until the PMO can come clean, I’m going to wonder, because as the former head of one of the biggest investment house in the world, Carney has all sorts of well-connected friends.<\/p>\n
Related<\/p>\n
Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don’t miss the news you need to know \u2014 add EdmontonJournal.com<\/a> and EdmontonSun.com<\/a> to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters here.<\/a><\/p>\n You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribers gain unlimited access to The Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. Support us by subscribing today: The Edmonton Journal<\/a> | The Edmonton Sun.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’m troubled by Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Tuscany vacation, but not just because it comes at a bad…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165086,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[52790,127,111,141,28],"class_list":["post-165085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mark-carney","tag-ethics-commissioner","tag-justin-trudeau","tag-mark-carney","tag-prime-minister","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165085","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=165085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}