Mark Carney Caves — and Canada Says Sorry (Again)
Mark Carney’s apology for a Reagan-inspired ad wasn’t diplomacy — it was capitulation. And Canadians will remember this 'elbows down' move
Hot Take Analyses
At the APEC summit in South Korea, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney did what too many of his predecessors have done when facing an angry American president — he said “sorry.”
The apology, offered privately to Donald Trump over a provincial television ad quoting Ronald Reagan on the dangers of tariffs, was a self-inflicted wound. The ad wasn’t deceitful. It wasn’t hostile. It was patriotic — a creative reminder that protectionism hurts both sides of the border. Yet Carney, behaving more like the cautious central banker he once was than the political fighter he promised to be, chose appeasement over assertion.
Newly released government memos now suggest that this wasn’t a one-off lapse in judgment — it’s a pattern. Carney had been explicitly advised months earlier to stand firm with Trump - who has repeatedly spoken of his desire to make Canada the 51st state - on key issues, from border security to fentanyl to defence spending. Instead of pushing back, he agreed with nearly every one of Trump’s talking points.
This latest episode — apologizing for an ad quoting an American conservative icon — takes that instinct to please even further. Rather than defending Canada’s right to express itself freely and challenge harmful U.S. tariffs, Carney tried to smooth things over. It’s a risky habit: every time Ottawa tries to appease Washington, Canada loses leverage.
For many Canadians, this cuts deep. Carney was elected to stand up for Canada, not to placate a tantrum-prone American president. His contrition feeds an old stereotype — that Canadians apologize too much, even when they’ve done nothing wrong.
If Mark Carney continues to confuse diplomacy with deference, his premiership may be remembered not for courage, but for capitulation — and he may pay the price for not standing up for Canada at the ballot box.
Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada said on Saturday that he had apologized this week to President Trump for an anti-tariff television ad from a Canadian province that led the American leader to abruptly cut off talks about U.S. tariffs on steel, aluminum and other products from Canada. Mr. Carney, who was attending a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Gyeongju, South Korea, told reporters on Saturday that he made the apology earlier in the week during a dinner where he and Mr. Trump sat across from each other. It was not long after the president said that he had no interest in speaking with Mr. Carney for a “long time.” The commercial that set off Mr. Trump’s ire was funded by the province of Ontario and is an assembly of clips from a 1987 speech in which President Ronald Reagan warned of the dangers tariffs posed to the American economy. Mr. Trump claimed that the ad, which was shown in the United States during World Series games, was fraudulent. It accurately reproduces Mr. Reagan’s remarks, but changed the order in which he said them. “The president was offended by the act, or by the ad, rather,” Mr. Carney told reporters as he prepared to head back to Canada after about a week in Asia. “It’s not something I would have done — which is to put in place that advertisement — and so I apologized to him.” - NYT
Mark Carney was counselled to push back during an April call with Donald Trump if the U.S. president revived his complaints about border security, fentanyl from Canada or low defence spending, a newly released memo shows. Federal officials prepared the internal memo to guide Carney’s conversation with Trump following the Liberal party’s April 28 election victory. A concise Canadian summary of the April 29 call, released that day, says Trump congratulated Carney and that the leaders agreed on the importance of working together — as independent, sovereign nations — for their mutual betterment. The memo drafted for Carney, obtained by The Canadian Press through the Access to Information Act, suggested the prime minister remind Trump that the two countries had agreed to negotiate a new economic and security partnership after the election - CTV
“As a Canadian, I’m ashamed of Carney. His mantra during the election was ‘elbows up’. We elected him believing he’s a fighter” - Canadian social media user
Ukrainian military authorities have insisted their forces are holding out in the front-line eastern town of Pokrovsk, while Russian and Ukrainian forces launched missile and drone attacks at various locations overnight from November 1-2. As the fighting raged, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said a meeting between the Russian and US presidents was “not necessary at the moment.” Analysts warn that the fall of Pokrovsk, which had a prewar population of around 70,000, could open a route west into Dnipropetrovsk for Russian forces, putting Ukraine’s southern regions at risk. “We are holding Pokrovsk,” Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, General Oleksandr Syrskiy, wrote on Facebook on November 1. Following Western media reports, Kyiv confirmed that special forces had been deployed to the strategic city -- which had a prewar population of some 70,000 -- as Russian forces claimed to have encircled Ukrainian defenders there. Russia’s Defense Ministry also claimed that its forces had killed all 11 members of a Ukrainian special forces team that had landed in the city from a helicopter. The situation on the ground remains unclear and cannot be independently verified - RFE/RL
German companies have paid nearly €1.72 billion in taxes to the Kremlin since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — enough to fund 10,000 attack drones targeting Ukrainian cities — yet more than half of German firms that operated in Russia before the all-out war remain there today, according to a new report. Legally, some 250 German companies still active in Russia are doing nothing wrong. Many of these firms, such as the cheese manufacturer Hochland and the gypsum producer Knauf which produce fast-moving consumer goods are, in principle, not in violation of EU regulations. Yet, the critics believe that contributing to the Kremlin’s war chest is an issue that must be addressed. “Companies support Russia’s war economy through the taxes they pay,” said Nezir Sinani, director of B4Ukraine, a global coalition of civil society organisations seeking to block access to the economic resources behind Russia’s aggression - Euronews
This major commentary in POLITICO, by Jamie Dettmer — opinion editor and foreign affairs columnist at POLITICO Europe — is making the rounds in the capitals of Ukraine’s key backers. It’s a troubling read for the Zelensky circle. International coverage of the presidency is turning increasingly critical, and what were once hairline cracks in wartime political unity are widening into dangerous fissures. Many of the wounds — including efforts to weaken Ukraine’s anti-corruption bodies and the political and legal assaults on major city mayors, most recently in Odesa — are entirely self-inflicted.
🔗 Read the full article on POLITICO here.
Passengers travelling from Doncaster to London were attacked in a mass stabbing on a train on Saturday night. Eleven people were injured and received hospital treatment. Two of them remain in a life-threatening condition. Two British men in their thirties were arrested and police said there was currently “nothing to suggest” it was a terror incident. Witnesses reported that police used a Taser on one man who was holding a knife. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the attack was “appalling” and “deeply concerning” - BBC
Zohran Mamdani and former New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo accused each other on Saturday of sowing division among New Yorkers as the rancorous three-way mayoral race headed into its homestretch. Mr. Mamdani, the Democratic nominee and clear front-runner in the polls who is vying to be the city’s first Muslim mayor, said that Mr. Cuomo had amplified anti-Islamic attacks against him. Mr. Cuomo, the former New York governor running in second place as an independent, insisted that it was Mr. Mamdani, an outspoken critic of Israel, who was driving a wedge among New Yorkers. Mr. Cuomo has been criticized by Mr. Mamdani’s supporters for laughing along with a radio host who said that Mr. Mamdani would cheer a Sept. 11-style terror attack and for not challenging the outgoing mayor, Eric Adams, when he warned of “Islamic extremism” if Mr. Mamdani was elected. Mr. Adams has endorsed Mr. Cuomo. The two leading candidates and Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee who is polling in third place, spent the day crisscrossing the five boroughs, meeting voters in parks, supermarkets, churches and even at a car rally in the Bronx. Mr. Mamdani found time to field a half-hour call on Saturday from former President Barack Obama, who praised his campaign and offered to be a “sounding board” into the future. The Democratic establishment has been deeply divided about the candidacy of Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, and Mr. Obama’s call suggested he was invested in Mr. Mamdani’s success beyond the election. New Yorkers have flocked to the polls in early voting and had already cast more than half a million ballots by Saturday night, more than four times as many as were cast at the same point in the last mayoral race, in 2021. Lines outside some polling places on Saturday stretched for nearly an hour. Early voting ends on Sunday and Election Day is Tuesday - NYT
Andrew Mountbatten Windsor arranged a private tour of Buckingham Palace while the late Queen was in residence, for businessmen from a cryptocurrency mining firm which agreed to pay his ex-wife up to £1.4m, the BBC can reveal. Jay Bloom and his colleague Michael Evers were driven through the palace gates in the former prince’s own car after being collected from their five-star Knightsbridge hotel for the visit in June 2019. Their company, Pegasus Group Holdings, which Mr Bloom co-founded, employed Sarah Ferguson as a “brand ambassador” for a crypto-mining scheme which would lose investors millions when it failed less than a year later. Mr Bloom, an entrepreneur who had previously set up a failed Mafia-themed museum in Las Vegas, and Mr Evers, a former actor, were met by a greeter and escorted inside the palace. Mr Evers told the BBC they then met the Queen, although Mr Bloom disputed this. Both Mr Evers and Mr Bloom were invited by the then-prince to his Pitch@Palace event - a Dragons’ Den-style business pitching competition - at nearby St James’s Palace later that day, and they dined that evening with Andrew, Ms Ferguson and their daughter Princess Beatrice. Ms Ferguson was working with Pegasus Group Holdings at the time of the palace visit, while she was Duchess of York, to promote plans to use thousands of solar power generators to mine Bitcoin at a remote site in the Arizona desert. But the project ultimately failed with only 615 of the planned 16,000 generators acquired and just $33,779 (about £25,000) in cryptocurrency mined - BBC
CBS News is learning that several million dollars go a long way to healing a relationship with President Donald Trump. The president spent months fuming at CBS News and sued the network and its parent company, Paramount, over the editing of an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 election. Despite serious legal doubts about whether Trump’s argument would succeed in court, Paramount opted instead to pay Trump $16 million to settle the lawsuit. Now, he appears ready to talk again. Trump is set to sit down with CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell on Friday afternoon, Semafor has learned. O’Donnell flew down to Florida on Thursday to prepare for the Trump interview, which Semafor previously reported was weeks in the making. It will mark the president’s first time sitting down with the network since the lawsuit.
After weeks of nerve-racking anticipation, Paramount finally followed through with its “tough day” of layoffs, which included letting roughly 100 CBS News employees go on Wednesday. All told, the sweeping cuts resulted in the loss of two streaming shows, the gutting of the network’s Saturday morning news program, and the disbanding of its race and culture unit. On top of that, eight on-air correspondents and hosts were given their pink slips – and all of them are women, with half of them people of color. According to three sources with knowledge of the situation, a male correspondent was initially included on the layoff list but was removed after he appealed directly to the new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, leading to another female correspondent being added to the list at the last minute. Meanwhile, a CBS News producer who was fired as part of the network-wide cuts took to social media Wednesday to suggest that executives were engaging in “race-based layoffs,” claiming that every producer from his team who was laid off is a person of color while his white colleagues were relocated to other jobs - The Independent
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