Chris Selley: Carney's EU cuteness is an unwelcome return to Justin Trudeau's playbook - National Post

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks during a press conference during the second day of the inaugural Canada Investment Summit in Toronto, Ontario on September 15, 2026. Photo by VALERIE MACON /AFP via Getty ImagesArticle contentIt has been an exemplary few days in the world of prime ministerial communications, though not in a good way. PMO Comms World hasn’t changed much since Justin Trudeau’s departure, interestingly. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s gang is still far too cute for its own long-term good, launching trial balloons and then deflating them, leveraging foreign (especially American) media when able, and apparently believing that their popularity in the polls is proof of this strategy’s success.

It isn’t. It’s just proof of what Carney is able to get away with these days.

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The Wall Street Journal’s report, published Sunday, that Canada is pursuing “associate membership” in the European Union, and that the EU is “open to the idea,” was a fine piece of journalism with a lot of resources behind it. It cited officials, albeit mostly anonymous, “from a dozen different governments involved in … conversations” to back up the story.

No doubt the Journal asked the PMO to comment on this, which is when the PMO could have poured cold water on the idea right out of the gate. For that matter, if Carney didn’t want this story out there, he and his representatives could presumably have made that clear to their EU partners during these “conversations.”

Those dozen governments’ officials mentioned everything from “frictionless” trade in goods and services to allowing Canadians to work in Europe without a visa — and, presumably, vice versa. You might reasonably call such an agreement “associate membership,” though that’s not a category that currently exists. Helpfully for the Liberals, it could mean anything.

“What we are looking and will begin discussion for is a unique alliance … between Canada and the European Union,” Carney told reporters hours after the Journal story dropped. Speaking to Bloomberg, Carney called it a “high-ambition process.” But never “associate membership,” whatever that means, heavens no.