September 18, 2026 -- Crafty Carney Smokeshow
In Prime Minister Carney’s address to the European Parliament yesterday, he noted the following:
“Canada can contribute LNG and hydrogen at large scale to support Europe’s energy security including by developing and leveraging new port infrastructure in the High North and on our East Coast.”
All of that sounds wonderful. None of it requires special EU status.
On hydrogen, Canada and Germany signed a Hydrogen Alliance in 2022. First deliveries were supposed to start in 2025. They did not. Giving Carney any credit if we start delivering hydrogen to the EU tomorrow would be unwarranted. Scale, if it comes at all, is now talked about for 2030.
An East Coast expansion at Saint John has already happened. No Carney. No EU membership card. If Carney wants further expansion or wants LNG to leave Saint John, it will require massive investment and a pipeline. Don’t hold your breath. Fermeuse Energy’s FLNG work in Newfoundland was already in pre-application before Carney started touring Europe.
Then the High North. Port of Churchill Plus is on Carney’s list. The forecast is LNG out of Churchill by 2030. Wab Kinew, who openly loathes Trump, called that timeline “very aggressive.” If Churchill gets any amount of LNG moving by 2030, give Carney props. Churchill was already shipping critical minerals in 2024. He does not get credit for that either.
And, again, no special EU status is required for expansion in the High North.
Which is how you get to the political game. Anything that reads as anti-American is gold for Carney right now. That may last until Trump is gone, or until the Canadian economy slumps hard enough that people notice the bill. What should they notice?
- We don’t need any globalist shenanigans to sell hydrogen, critical minerals, and LNG to the world. These are commodities. The prices are known. Getting them to market is the issue.
- A special bargain with the EU is not what secures Canadian finances. There are other reasons why Carney is enamoured with visiting France, the EU, Asia, etc. There are other reasons why Carney mentioned a “new world order.”
A lot of Carney’s extracurricular globetrotting will be forgiven if the Canadian economy starts strengthening. Economic prosperity has a funny way of ironing out some of the potentially reckless integrations Carney is proposing with the EU, China, and others.
In New Brunswick, more than 90 percent of exports still go to the United States, and another company just announced closures. Premier Susan Holt followed Carney to Europe earlier this year looking for new business. None showed up.
The takeaway is not that Carney is hunting customers. It is that he is doing everything he can to needle Washington — for politics, for leverage, or because he actually thinks dollar hegemony is ending. Intention aside, Canada still needs the U.S. market. The idea that “the world” will fill that hole if American business keeps slowing is nonsense.
This is not a claim that he is selling the country. It is a claim that he is playing a game: reorient Canada toward a broader global roster and loosen the American tie. Some of it is symbolic. Some of it is not.
Unless he has misread the room, he is hoping the theatre produces a better trade deal with the United States. When the smoke clears, Canadians would do well to remember that the present world order already works — if we can get our stuff to market.