Prime Minister Mark Carney met with President Obama in Toronto in May 2026. He also met with Alex Soros at the same time. Alex Soros, son of financier George Soros, is assuming his father’s role as president of the Open Society Foundation (OSF). The OSF is criticized by four European countries for alleged interference in domestic politics. George Soros’s Super PAC, personal donations, “dark money” contributions, and the OSF have provided millions of dollars to the Democratic National Committee. In addition, Alex Soros and Huma Abedin (Chief of Staff for Hillary Clinton) met with Minister of Industry Mélanie Joly and former ambassador Frank McKenna (Chair of Brookfield Corp. and Deputy Chair of TD Bank Group) on July 13. Prime Minister Carney also hired Maia Johnson, who now serves as Senior Special Advisor for the US. Ms. Johnson is a longtime Democrat political operative, having worked on the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. This appears to be the first instance an American Democrat operative has been appointed to such a senior advisory position within the Canadian government.In his first year, Prime Minister Carney has travelled to Europe five times, meeting with leaders in eleven countries and giving a speech to the European Political Community. He also met with the European leaders at the Kananaskis G7 summit. The King and Queen of Sweden, along with the Deputy Prime Minister Busch and Defence Minister Jonson, visited Canada in November 2025. The Prime Minister has met seven times with the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. President von der Leyen is reported to announce a bilateral agreement between the EU and Canada on September 16. The agreement would cover trade, security and defence, supply chains and critical raw materials, exploration and research, and single market access. This arrangement just falls short of full EU membership for Canada. The agreement will impose obligations on Canada that have yet to be specified, as reported by the Financial Post/Bloomberg News. Prime Minister Carney will also address the meeting on September 16. The Prime Minister has met President Trump only four times. A tentative trade deal was nearing completion in October 2025, when Premier Ford aired his infamous Reagan advertisement in the US — an action no foreign political figure has ever taken. This move is widely viewed as having derailed further negotiations. On August 21, Prime Minister Carney abruptly withdrew from trade talks at the last moment. Was he playing President Trump? His publicly stated reasons appear implausible. For instance, he claimed that the US was hostile to the French language. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer responded by noting that he speaks French and that his child was born in France. The Prime Minister also appears to be unaware that approximately 1.3 million Americans report French as their native language; many of these individuals live in Louisiana. In reality, the central issue concerned a 5% surtax levied to support French-language productions. .Earlier this month, Canada and China held the fifth Defence Coordination Dialogue, a military-to-military engagement in which comparatively little official information was released. Following this, China — rather than Canada — announced the dialogue had taken place. According to a CTV News report, a government spokesman said: “the talks are about protecting Canadian interests.” Prime Minister Carney and his government have demonstrated a striking lack of transparency regarding these dialogues, a point raised by Pierre Poilievre. Canadians are learning about these engagements from Chinese sources; what precisely is the Prime Minister concealing?Based on Prime Minister Carney’s travelogue, he has invested far greater effort in securing arrangements with the EU than with Canada’s primary trading partner. He has pushed Canada toward what is effectively full membership in the EU without a referendum, which Iceland recently held on EU membership. The complete text of the agreement must be provided to Canadians before final approval. His secondary objective appears to be enhancing trade with China as an offset.This arrangement will not meaningfully offset the loss of trade with the U.S. Canada already benefits from the CETA agreement with the EU, and access to the single market would only provide marginal additional benefits in areas where CETA is silent—a small fraction of the overall market access. The anticipated economic gains for Canada will therefore be limited. One may conclude this initiative represents a political arrangement masquerading as a trade agreement. Regardless, Canadian products will be required to meet EU regulations, environmental standards, and labeling, to gain smooth access to the EU market. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni gave a speech on having the same standards on 11 September. In practice, Brussels will dictate the laws and regulations, while a compliant Liberal government in Canada will enact similar domestic legislation, as has already occurred. China’s economy remains heavily export-dependent and not consumer-driven. While the government may increase purchases of Canadian goods, any such rise will stem from political considerations rather than commercial competition. Furthermore, if Canadians want to find out how rapidly Canada could become the fifty-first state, Mark Carney’s growing alignment with the Chinese military will have US troops in Ottawa, just as fast as occurred in Caracas. The 1823 US Monroe Doctrine remains a consequential foreign-policy principle, as demonstrated repeatedly over the years..How will this affect Albertans? China will certainly continue to be interested in purchasing Canadian oil, as it has done previously. However, China is not committed to high-price oil. They are expanding their own production and will probably seek cheaper sources, and reliance on Canadian oil will decrease. The EU has a progressive cap-and-trade policy whose full impact will take effect in 2036. The carbon pricing component is an artificial market in which allowances (or is it indulgences) are sold. This will raise the cost of fossil fuels within the EU. Yet, ten EU member states have called for a reconsideration of carbon pricing. In addition, the EU has initiated the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). The official EU policy now places primary emphasis on competitiveness to mitigate the competitive pressure from Chinese imports. To foster manufacturing, the EU will need to eliminate many regulations that stifle business activity — particularly in small and medium enterprises — and to provide cheap energy to power its factories. The competitiveness agenda and the Green Deal cap-and-trade system, together with CBAM, stand in direct conflict, the resolution of which will require years. A series of pauses in implementation will therefore be necessary until the political dimensions of this conflict can be resolved. None of these developments are favourable for Alberta. Exporting high-price fuel is slow economic suicide, and the infrastructure required to capture and sequester carbon — combined with carbon pricing revenues that flow to Ottawa — may represent billions of dollars of wasted investment if the EU ultimately decides to relax its regulations. Additionally, the cost of complying with EU standards for Alberta companies would be significant, and smaller companies may be unable to participate, lacking sufficient resources to comply.Many well-meaning Albertans, who are deeply patriotic, cherish the warm memories of the Canada they grew up in. All of us feel a warmth when we travel down memory lane. That Canada is gone and is not returning. Prime Minister Mark Carney has sold it out from under you to the EU, made it a ploy of the Democratic Party, and is determined to bind it more closely to China’s security interests. By the time the Prime Minister leaves office, he will once again be able to claim that he “is European,” and for Albertans, the prospects of remaining under Brussels’ authority will be a nightmare and getting out from under that authority will be hell. Simply ask any average Brit.Dr. A.W. Barber is the former Director of Asian Studies at the University of Calgary. He is internationally active and has wide-ranging interests.
