As Donald Trump threatens to annex Canada and attacks the country economically, Prime Minister Mark Carney has sought to diversify business ties. Notwithstanding an internationally acclaimed speech, he has maintained military and diplomatic support for the US empire.
In a much-heralded speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Canada’s PM challenged Donald Trump, defended sovereignty and criticized the so-called international rules-based order. But in the days after the late January speech, Ottawa coordinated with the Trump administration to strong arm Haitian officials and two weeks earlier Carney “welcomed” the US kidnapping Venezuela’s president in a crass violation of international law. In fact, with 750 Canadian soldiers stationed in the US as part of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) or numerous exchanges with the US internationally, Canadian soldiers likely assisted US violence against Venezuela and boats in the Caribbean.
A month after the Davos speech Carney expressed “support” for the US/Israeli aggression against Iran, which has killed 3,500. In a statement blaming Iran for being attacked, Carney and foreign affairs minister, Anita Anand, immediately stated, “Canada supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security.” While they subsequently softened their rhetoric, a dozen Canadian statements have framed Iran as the aggressor.
Ottawa has also assisted the Israeli/US war in many other ways. The US Airforce passes through Canadian airspace, Canadian arms flow southward and hundreds of Canadian soldiers in NORAD assist with monitoring West Asia, almost certainly providing intelligence assistance for US/Israeli strikes. Additionally, 200 Canadian troops stationed at a Canadian base in Kuwait and with US forces in the region may also have assisted the aggression.
Ottawa also paved the way for the war through a slew of measures designed to isolate Iran. By cutting off diplomatic ties, labelling Iran a terror supporter and sanctioning the country, Canada has worked for years to weaken Iran diplomatically and economically.
As Israel has killed over 3,000 Lebanese and depopulated a large swath of southern Lebanon since March, Ottawa has pushed to further subordinate that country to US and Israeli dictates. They’ve repeatedly called for Hezbollah to be disarmed even though it’s the only force countering Israeli aggression. As part of this effort, the Canadian Training and Assistance Team-Lebanon has bolstered the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) as a counterweight to Hezbollah. LAF receives most of its budget from the US and has received tens of millions of dollars in Canadian support.
In a sign of his hostility to a long-colonized people, Carney has repeatedly said Canada would only accept a “Zionist Palestinian state”. Basically, Ottawa is willing to recognize a (non-existent) Palestinian state dominated by the colonizer.
While recognition of a Palestinian state is conditional on acceptance of colonial rule, Canadian officials regularly express remarkable fidelity to the Jewish supremacist state. Two years into the genocide in Gaza, foreign minister Anand declared Canada’s “unwavering support for Israel’s security.”
In practice, this means refusing to uphold Canadian law — on arms sales, registered charities, foreign enlistment and war criminals in Canada — vis-a-vis a state committing genocide. In addition to failing to uphold its own laws, Canada’s assistance to apartheid includes criminalizing Palestinian political life through a ‘terror list’, repressing domestic opposition to genocide and a significant security/aid effort to bolster Palestinian security forces assisting Israel’s occupation in the West Bank.
While maintaining Canada’s geopolitical alignment with the US/Israel, Carney, the former head of both the Bank of Canada and Bank of England, is wary of Trump’s tariffs and erratic economic moves. Having become deeply integrated and therefore dependent on the US over the past 35 years of ‘free trade’, Canadian capitalists are terrified that Trump will withdraw from the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA). Attuned to the interests of capital, Carney, also the former chair of a trillion-dollar investment firm — long known as the “Canadian octopus” in Brazil since its tentacles reached into so many areas of that country’s economy — Canada’s Liberal prime minister has worked to diversify trade. He’s signed a slew of new international economic accords and trampled on environmental and indigenous rights to pursue his vision of Canada as a fossil fuel exporting “energy superpower”. Over 14 months in office Carney has also pursued an unprecedently rapid militarization of Canada’s economy.
This massive increase in military spending highlights a fundamental contradiction in Canada’s role within the US empire. Done explicitly to placate Trump, the militarization is sold to and accepted by the public partly as a way to protect Canada from Trump’s annexation threat. Yet, there’s been no move to pause officer exchanges, joint naval deployments, training missions, US overflights or the US using Canadian bases, let alone pausing arms sales or reviewing the hundreds of accords Canada has with the US military amidst Trump’s annexation threats.
A similar imperial contradiction is on display in one of Carney’s only positive moves as PM. Dialing down the Washington-instigated anti-China hysteria, Carney visited the growing economic powerhouse as part of his bid to reduce Canadian economic dependence on the US. Despite being driven by corporate interests, resetting ties with China is a positive shift. But barely three months after Carney’s visit to Beijing the Canadian military joined a highly provocative US-led exercise in the Philippines targeting that country. And then last week HMCS Charlottetown passed through the Taiwan Strait, prompting Chinese criticism. That provocative move took place days before the Chinese foreign minister visited Ottawa. Even though there’s a strong economic motive to avoid antagonizing China, Canadian military ties to the US and longstanding alignment with Anglo-Saxon imperialism drives Ottawa towards belligerence.
Canada has had a special place with the two main empires of the past two centuries. Canada, particularly its elite, has benefited from preferential access to British and US capital, universities, armaments, etc. Prime Minister Carney is a product of this history and has maintained Canada’s Anglo-Saxon imperial trajectory even as Donald Trump’s crass, erratic, stewardship of the US empire has caused trouble.
He is self-conscious part of the current imperial system, not a leader of some new way for smaller countries to change the world.
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