June 20, 2025
MONTREAL (AP) — New Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is heading to Paris and London on Monday to seek alliances. Carney is purposely making his first foreign trip to the capital cities of the two countries that shaped Canada's early existence.
At his swearing-in ceremony on Friday, Carney noted the country was built on the bedrock of three peoples, French, English, and Indigenous, and said Canada is fundamentally different from America and will “never, ever, in any way, shape or form, be part of the United States.”
A senior government official briefed reporters on the plane before picking up Carney in Montreal and said the purpose of the trip is to double down on partnerships with Canada's two founding countries.
Carney, a former central banker who turned 60 on Sunday, will meet with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Monday and later travel to London to sit down with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer in an effort to diversify trade and perhaps coordinate a response to U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs.
He will also meet with King Charles III, the head of state in Canada. The trip to England is a bit of a homecoming, as Carney is a former governor of the Bank of England, the first non-citizen to be named to the role in the bank’s 300-plus-year history.
Carney then travels to the edge of Canada's Arctic to “reaffirm Canada’s Arctic security and sovereignty” before returning to Ottawa, where he's expected to call an election within days.
