Terry Newman: Has anyone told Carney he can do interviews with Canadian media?

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But perhaps the most disturbing part of the New York Times interview is that these journalists decided to lead their article with Carney’s statement that, as an “extreme tail risk” he investigated the possibility of the U.S. invading Canada.

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This, despite the fact that elsewhere in the interview they say that Carney said he and Trump “have a good relationship in the sense of we can pick up the phone and talk to each other about issues,” speak “frequently” and have spoken “a number of times” since talks broke down last month.

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Apparently, the New York Times never even bothered to ask what the results of the possibility of invasion investigation were or they decided not to share them. As a result, the foreboding suggestion that U.S. soldiers might cross our borders and point weapons at our citizens just hangs there.

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Worse, because it was suggested in an interview with our PM, this bizarre, unfounded, fearmongering suggestion was picked up by Canadian media outlets, flooding our headlines and hijacking Canadian voters’ nervous systems.

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The New York Times journalists apparently never bothered to drill down on the specifics about why Carney decided to walk away from the deal, if they did, they didn’t share what they’d learned. And, if they never asked for specifics, it suggests they just assumed it was necessary.

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The article was less of an interview than it was a friendly platform for Carney to elucidate his vision for reducing dependence on the U.S.

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As for Canadian media, we have not been granted any sit-down interviews from Carney about the breakdown in negotiations.

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Reporters here have only been able to ask harried questions after press conferences. Oh, and on Sept. 8, Carney released his third, and perhaps most polished, pre-recorded “Forward Guidance” video, which was wholly absent of details about why talks broke down. In the video meant to reassure us we were told he “simply could not accept what they were proposing.”

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Then why not sit down for interviews with Canadian media?

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The most recent sit-down interview our PM granted to a Canadian media outlet took place before talks broke down. On April 27, CBC News’s chief correspondent Adrienne Arsenault sat down for a 30-minute interview to mark Carney’s one-year anniversary as PM.

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An interview marking a PM’s one-year anniversary didn’t have to be cozy, but it was. Arsenault was all smiles and leant toward the PM who returned her smiles. Arsenault asked, “Prime Minister, so, we are almost, you know, one day shy of a year, and it’s kinda been a lot.”

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Then, instead of Arsenault pressing him on specifics about the progress of any of his government’s policies over the last year, she let him guide the interview. She asked, “How do you think you’re doing?”

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Carney refused to grade his progress and turned the question into how it had felt to be in the role of PM over the last year, and Arsenault didn’t press him to answer her original question. Nor did she seem prepared to question his progress herself. Not exactly what Canadians would expect from an anniversary check-in interview.

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Instead, Arsenault moved to a question about whether there was going to be anything new or more for Canadians in terms of economic relief.

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To Arsenault’s credit, she did press him later in the interview about tariff negotiations up until that point. But when he refused to answer her question about whether any other countries are happy with the deals they have worked out with the U.S. and threw it back at her to answer, she accepted his evasion and the excuse that these unnamed countries dislike their deals “in private.”

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Carney’s Canadian media evasion doesn’t end there. Outlets here had to hear from the Wall Street Journal that it was Carney’s idea to make Canada an associate member of the European Union.