The Ties That Bind
Over 63,000 Canadians are buried in the War Cemeteries across Europe, with another 27,000 missing Canadians, who are named on memorials. Nearly 70% of Canadians can trace their origins back to Europe. Since 2016, Canada has had a free-trade agreement and a Strategic Partnership Agreement with the 27 member nations of the European Union (EU). Through NATO, Canada has sworn to come to the defence of 30 European nations. Canadians and many European countries enjoy visa free travel with each other. Europeans are our friends, our family members, our business partners, and allies.
In the 18 months since Carney was elected Prime Minister, he has gone on 31 foreign trips, with 19 of those trips to Europe. Given the close ties between Canada and Europe, the economic size of the European Union, and the self-destructive economic policies of the current U.S. executive branch, diversifying trade to Europe seems understandable, but it is not without risks. While Canada and Europe share many values, such as democracy, individual freedoms, and human rights, there is one value we do not share, and that is in our regulatory approach.
Associate Membership If Necessary, But Not Necessarily Membership
On Sunday, September 13, 2026, the Wall Street Journal reported:
Now, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is attempting an ambitious pivot toward Europe, with his team using diplomatic backchannels to negotiate an “associate member” status with the European Union.
That Sunday evening, Carney was asked about Canada becoming an “associate member” of the European Union. He said:
“We’re not looking to become a member of the European Union.”
On Wednesday, September 16, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, in a speech before the European Parliament said she wanted to work with Carney to:
“on opening the door for Canada to be the first associate member of the EU.”
The following day, Carney gave a speech to the European Parliament in which he said:
Yesterday, President von der Leyen spoke of moving beyond CETA to an alliance for the future — opening the door to Canada to become the European Union’s first associate member.
Carney’s decision to be evasive when asked about “associate membership” was similar to his evasions on the Gordie Howe Bridge deal. Despite the speeches by von der Leyen and Carney, nobody can explain what exactly “associate membership” means.
Norway may be the best example of what an “associate membership” looks like. While not a member of the Union, Norway has access to the EU market, and a mobility agreement with the EU allowing citizens from Norway and the EU to live and work in each others’ territories. This requires Norway to pay EU taxes and adopt over 5000 EU laws and regulations, without any representation in the EU Parliament or EU Commission.
During Carney’s speech to the European Parliament on Thursday, September 17, 2026, he listed areas where Canada and the EU could work together.
Canada and Europe should secure our strategic autonomy through deep co-operation in the full range of strategic capabilities, including critical minerals, defence industrial capacity, AI and compute, energy security, space and payments. We should move towards seamless, digital trade in non-agricultural goods and a wide range of services.
This was identical to his speech in Yerevan, Armenia, last May when the liberal funded media were gushing that Canada had been the first non-European country to be invited to the Council of Europe. In fact, it is very much in keeping with Carney’s speech in Brussels, Belgium on June 23, 2025, when Carney announced a “New EU-Canada Strategic Partnership of the Future”, and said:
As the most European of non-European countries, Canada looks first to the EU to build a better world.
Together, Canada and the EU will be able to create more opportunities for industries and workers through more frequent exchanges and better regulatory alignment.
U.S. President Ronald Regan once said that the nine scariest words are – I’m from the government and I’m here to help. Today, those words should be – I’m from the EU and I’m here to regulate.
Regulatory Values – Very Boring, Critically Important
Canada and the European Union have very different approaches to regulation. Canada’s approach is commonly referred to as risk management, while the European Union has adopted what is known as the Precautionary Principle. The Government of Canada’s Cabinet Directive on Regulation explicitly requires regulatory decisions to be based on evidence, robust analysis of costs and benefits, and the assessment of risk. It also directs regulation toward the “greatest overall benefits” for Canadians while supporting competition, entrepreneurship and innovation.
By contrast, the precautionary principle has an explicit place in EU law through Article 191 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. EU guidance describes it as permitting regulatory action where potentially harmful effects have been identified but scientific evidence does not permit the risk to be established with sufficient certainty.
Canada’s regulatory advantage has traditionally been pragmatism. We regulate risk rather than innovation itself. Every new technology carries uncertainty. The responsible role of government is not to demand the impossible standard of zero risk. It is to identify genuine risks, measure them against the evidence, consider both costs and benefits, and impose safeguards proportionate to the danger. That philosophy is reflected in Canada’s own regulatory framework, which calls for decisions grounded in evidence, cost-benefit analysis and risk assessment, while supporting innovation and a competitive economy.
Europe has taken a different path. The precautionary principle occupies an explicit place in EU law and allows governments to intervene where a potential danger has been identified, but science cannot yet determine the risk with sufficient certainty. Precaution has its place. If a potential harm is catastrophic or irreversible, waiting for certainty can itself be reckless, but precaution should be a tool of risk management, not its governing philosophy.
The difference matters because there is no risk-free choice. There are risks in permitting new technologies, but there are also costs in delaying them: treatments that arrive later, investment that goes elsewhere, businesses that never start and productivity gains that never occur.
Good government must account for both. The Canadian approach is not regulation versus deregulation. It is proportionate regulation: regulate according to evidence, regulate according to risk, and regulate no more heavily than necessary to protect Canadians.
Under the last eleven years of Liberal Government, Canada has moved towards a more precautionary approach, while the EU has commissioned countless studies calling for regulatory reform that would bring them more in line with Canada and the U.S.
Europe recognizes that it has fallen behind in innovation and technology, but the nature of the European Union makes adopting changes extremely hard.
Liberal Talking Points Reveal the Truth About Europe
One of the Liberals’ favourite talking points is to claim that Canada is projected to have the second highest economic growth in the G7. What they don’t tell you is that the fastest growing economy is the United States, and the slowest growing economies are the UK, France, Germany, and Italy. The EU has been debating a set of proposals to boost productivity for two years with no real movement in sight. With the support of the Conservative Party, Parliament passed the One Canadian Economy Act in twenty days. Any deal with the European Union, or China, or the US, must preserve the sovereignty which allows us to preserve that speed and flexibility not found in Washington, Brussels or Beijing.
The nations of Europe and Canada have deep ties forged through blood and history, but Canada has never seen Europe as the future. Despite Carney spending 2/3rds of his foreign trips in Europe, Canada must look to the Pacific, to South America, to Africa, and South Asia; all regions which are seeing three to four times the economic growth rates of Europe and twice the growth of the US.
In May, Mark Carney said: “The international order will be rebuilt, but it will be rebuilt out of Europe.” Carney is wrong. If the United States is unwilling to lead the world in advancing free trade and free markets, there is only one other country with the ability to bridge the Pacific and the Atlantic, to bridge the old world with the new: Canada.