Carney set to sign two Asian trade deals on nine-day, four-summit trip that tests his middle-power pitch - Toronto Star

Carney has meetings in Ireland, the Phillipines, Cambodia and China to expand markets for Canadian exports and strengthen security alliances.

Prime Minister Mark Carney steps from a plane after arriving in Dublin, Ireland, early on Thursday. The prime minister flew to Ireland following the Remembrance Day service at the National War Memorial in Ottawa on Wednesday.

DUBLIN — Somewhere during the next nine days, as he travels across two oceans and two continents to meet with leaders from 132 countries, Mark Carney will sign a pair of potentially important free-trade agreements and, with any luck, mend Canada’s strained trade ties with the U.S., and call it a day.

Along the way, the prime minister may even sleep.

The man who, friends say, needs less shut-eye than most people is nothing if not relentlessly focused on what “we can control.” So, he continues his quest to expand markets for Canadian exports to buffer the hit from the U.S.-led global trade war and exhort middle powers to strengthen rules-based trade and security alliances.

However, on this diplomatic odyssey, not everything is in Carney’s control.

That starts with the timing. The whirlwind of summits is a function of a calendar that jams international meetings into the fall. Coincidentally, several are being hosted in Asia this year.

Then there are all the competing international and domestic political agendas at play and how they will intersect, or not, with Carney’s.

In Dublin Thursday for a meeting of the European Political Community (a 43-country grouping broader than the European Union), Ukraine and European security are front and centre, with America’s backing of Ukraine more in doubt than ever. Carney has had a lot of face time lately with EU executive leaders, but not with leaders of EU member states, some of whom, like Germany, are not keen on “associate EU membership” status for Canada.