Mark Carney started last week with a good move on Canada-U.S. relations. He ended the week undoing it all. Just like he did last summer, Carney is poisoning Ottawa’s relations with Washington over his foolish and unthinking statements on the Middle East.
If you haven’t heard, Carney told a British journalist that he would have Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrested at the behest of the International Criminal Court if the Israeli leader landed in Canada. It was in response to a question from Mishal Husain of Bloomberg during a podcast interview last week.
“Justin Trudeau said that Canada would honour the International Criminal Court arrest warrants i.e. Benjamin Netanyahu would be arrested if he came to Canada,” Husain said.
“Does that stand under your leadership?”
“Yes,” Carney said.
“You’d be prepared to do that?” Husain asked.
“Yes,” Carney said.
Carney’s naive thinking on full display
The problem with this statement is that it puts Carney offside Donald Trump on an issue that is very important to the American president. Trump has been working hard to secure a peace deal in the Middle East, and in some respects already has despite weekend skirmishes.
While he has been allied with Netanyahu on this front, Trump has also put immense pressure on the Israeli leader to accept terms he otherwise wouldn’t have. The relationship is tense and complex, but it is a close one.
Carney can’t claim to be close to Trump and yet we need him to be , yet here he is threatening to arrest a key Trump ally based on questionable rulings from a questionable court that held politically driven hearings. Carney should have simply said what politicians so often say in those situations, that he doesn’t answer hypotheticals and would have to evaluate at the time.
Instead, he made a definitive statement that he would arrest Netanyahu.
It’s not the first time that Carney has let his own personal views, misguided ones at that, put Canada’s national interests at risk.
Blowing up relations with Washington
On July 30, Carney announced that Canada would recognize an independent Palestinian State when the United Nations convened in September. At the time, Carney’s point man on Canada-U.S. relations, Dominic LeBlanc, was in Washington trying to get trade talks going again and to get tariffs on Canadian goods lifted.
The White House was livid at Carney’s announcement on the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian State and LeBlanc, and other top officials, were being frozen out in the hot D.C. summer.
In a massive failure of diplomacy, Carney and his team didn’t even call to give Trump’s team a heads up that Canada was changing decades of official policy. Meetings were cancelled, calls were not returned, and trade talks sputtered for more than a month.
In fact, things looked grim until Carney went to the White House for what appeared to be a good meeting on Oct. 7. A few days later he travelled to Egypt for the signing of Trump’s Middle East peace plan and even had a good exchange with Trump on stage that was caught on a hot mic.
If Canada is going to improve things on the trade file, if we are going to have tariffs lifted and have a successful renegotiation of CUSMA, then Carney and Trump having a good relationship is vital. It will help overcome so many obstacles that would otherwise exist between our two countries.
That’s why the trips to the White House and Egypt were good and why Carney’s comments about arresting Netanyahu are so bad.
He was on the right path for improving our standing in Washington, and now, he’s blowing it all up again. Perhaps this won’t be seen as being as bad as the announcement in July, but it will not help in getting calls returned or meetings booked.
Carney needs to start putting his own thoughts on hold, and put Canada first or we are all going to suffer.
