Tasha Kheiriddin: Mark Carney, the European prime minister

France's President Emmanuel Macron and Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney hold a meeting on the sidelines of the 8th European Political Community (EPC) summit in Yerevan on May 4, 2026. (Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP via Getty Images)

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If it’s Tuesday, this must be Belgium. If you’re old enough to remember this 1969 film, where a busload of hapless tourists barrel across Europe on an 18-day tour of nine cities, you probably voted Liberal in the last election, like most of Canada’s Baby Boomers. And you’re probably happy with the way things are going so far. But you may not have expected Prime Minister Mark Carney to rack up quite so much time across the pond.

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In the first six months of his mandate, Carney made five trips to Europe covering 11 countries, and has travelled to the U.K., France, Switzerland and other nations in 2026. Last weekend he addressed a meeting of the European Political Community in Yerevan, Armenia — a first for a non-European leader. Carney also been asked to address the European Parliament later this year. In fairness, Justin Trudeau did so twice — but in Carney’s case, the invite carries a different vibe.

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The prime minister’s pivot to Europe is not just economic, but personal and political. Carney spent a large part of his career as Governor of the Bank of England and the United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Finance. His first foreign trip was to Europe to meet French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer — a nod to Canada’s dual French-English heritage, but also a message to Washington that Canada has other friends.

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But will this pivot work? In 1957, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker explored stronger economic links with Britain, while in the 1970’s Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau advanced a “Third Option” strategy to diversify trade away from the U.S. after the so-called “Nixon shocks,” which subjected Canada to 10 per cent tariffs. Neither effort bore much fruit, and in the 1980’s Prime Minister Brian Mulroney pursued greater economic integration with the United States, ultimately signing our first bilateral free trade deal in 1987, and boosting Canada’s annual GDP by $1.1 trillion over the following 25 years.

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Canada also already has trade agreements with both the EU and the U.K., signed in 2017 and 2021 respectively, and 98 per cent of our goods now enter the EU tariff-free. Canada’s merchandise exports to the EU have since increased by 57 per cent since 2015, reaching $34 billion, and the UK is our third largest trading partner, with trade valued at $61 billion in 2024.

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The next step, of course, would be formal application to join the EU — something that is not impossible (Turkey is not technically a European country, and was allowed to apply) — but also not advisable. Membership would require adopting thousands of European laws and strict environmental and agricultural standards. We would have to apply EU tariffs on trading partners including the U.S., and open our doors to the EU’s 450 million people as potential workers, migrants, and students — at a time when we are cutting immigration to curb housing and employment shortages.