An historic day for Canada

David Parkins/The Globe and Mail 

What an invite!

The EU just invited Canada to become its first Associate Member! 🇪🇺🇨🇦

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— Brexit Bin 🇪🇺 🇬🇧 🇩🇪 (@brexitbin.bsky.social) September 16, 2026 at 4:26 AM

Here's what it means - really!


And here is how Damian Boeselager, EU parliament member from Germany, welcomed PM Carney

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A post shared by Damian Boeselager (@damian.boeselager)

Now seriously... 

In Towards Equilibrium, political writer John Ralston Saul describes what happened on Wednesday Sept. 16:

There are days when understatement is foolish. Today would be one of those.
You know what has happened. The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has invited Canada to become an Associate Member. There is no other. This is a first for the E.U..
She did this in her annual State of the Union speech before the European Parliament. Her invitation was greeted by a sustained standing ovation. Tomorrow Mark Carney will reply before the same assembly.
True, nothing is yet done. The whole thing will have to be negotiated in no doubt painful detail. There will be lots of drama, which is normal when democracies negotiate exactly how to work together.
During those moments of drama, opponents will see opportunities to stop this breakthrough. And others who are of good will, but not great experts, may begin to have doubts.
Then, as now, we must remind ourselves how important this moment is.
This is the first time in Canada’s almost two centuries of existence as a continuous democracy (March 11, 1848) that we will be putting in place a concrete counterweight to the omnipresence of our neighbour.
Of course the U.S. will remain our neighbour. We will continue to share our 8,891 kilometre border. The U.S. will remain our largest trading partner. We will do everything we can, as we always have, to get on with Washington.
None of this will be easy. None of this has ever been easy.
Our talent for difficult international negotiations and relationships comes from this inescapable and endless experience of daily dealings with the most powerful country in the world. There have been up days and down days, but always that pressure to deal with our geographic reality. And there have been endless negotiations between the two countries in order to ensure our well-being; sometimes our survival.
There can never be certainty living on the border of a powerful empire.
Let me rephrase that.
A successful arrangement with the E.U. will not bring us relief from the reality of our border.
And yet! And yet this is a profoundly strategic moment in our history. For the first time in almost two centuries we will be building a solid counterweight – an equivalent weight – to our neighbour. Europe – a half billion people with a multiplicity of cultures and a higher real standard of education and living than our neighbour....

I don't think such a significant deal can be approved by Carney and the Cabinet alone, it needs to be debated and voted in by Parliament. 

I'll be interested to hear what Carney says to the EU on Thursday morning about his timeline for negotiations and an approval process.
But it is exactly the kind of deal that Trump wanted to stop Canada from making. Am I ever glad we didn't sign that US-Canada deal last month!

Trump says Canada-EU associate membership could be ‘hostile act’

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— Medias 🇨🇦 (@mediasca.skyfleet.blue) September 16, 2026 at 7:14 PM

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Other takes:

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The path towards closer formal partnership between Canada and the EU will be long and will feature many choices in the coming years. But if you’re currently saying stuff like “we don’t have any details of the agreement yet!” you kind of don’t understand what’s going on — or how the world works. MAGA has made it very clear that they side with dictators and territorial aggression and are waging war against democracy, America’s traditional allies, human rights and the rule of law. The post-war order is dead. And because the operating system in which Canada has operated for decades is dead, Canada is choosing a different path, one focused on closer collaboration with democratic allies and Europe. So, ya, as the established global order collapses, some of the details of the new path haven’t been worked out yet. If you want to criticize the overall strategic direction, have at it, but I for one am very happy with Canada’s big strategic choice and I have nothing but praise for the strength, clarity and alacrity with which we are pivoting.

- Matthew Mendelsohn

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Fear not. We have friends. Listen to the reception Mark Carney receives in the European Parliament — and then listen carefully to what Ursula von der Leyen actually says. Europe wants to take its relationship with Canada to “the highest level possible,” including opening the door to Canada becoming the EU’s first associate member. Why does this matter? Optionality. Canada does not need to turn its back on the United States. We need to build enough alternatives that no country — friend, ally or adversary — has the leverage to dictate our choices. Europe. Asia. Energy. Critical minerals. Defence. Technology. Arctic security. New markets and new capital. More doors. More choices. Less leverage over Canada. And buckle up, because I suspect we’re going to hear a lot about Canada abandoning America as this strategy becomes more visible. That misses the point. Diversification isn't anti-American. It's pro-Canadian. We have friends. And we're starting to remember it. https://youtu.be/Qh__qxz_mhs?si=F-3aqGYLu5arAhEg

- Kevin Boucher

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🇨🇦 🇺🇦 Ukraine took one look over the border at Putin's failed regime, a petrol station with nuclear weapons, recoiled in horror and said hell no! Now Canada has peered downstairs at Trump's failed regime, seen the same thing and said hell no! Ottawa has asked Brussels whether there is room at the table, and Ursula von der Leyen says we love you, opening the door for Canada to become the EU's first associate member. Both countries share a border with a country whose leader has said out loud that they should not really exist as independent states. Putin wrote essays explaining that Ukraine was a historical accident. Trump spent years musing about a fifty-first state, slapping tariffs on his closest ally and treating a G7 democracy like its worst enemy. And before you raise your hand, yes, Canada already borders the EU. Since 2022 it has shared a land border with the Kingdom of Denmark on Hans Island, a lump of rock in the Nares Strait between Ellesmere Island and Greenland, which the two countries split down the middle after a decades-long dispute conducted entirely with flags and bottles of schnapps. That is how civilised neighbours settle territory. And frankly, why would anyone choose otherwise. Europe beats both Russia and the United States on every measure of a life worth living, from life expectancy to healthcare to the simple ability to send a child to school without a gun drill. Putin offers trenches and conscription, Trump offers tariffs and chaos, and Europe offers the next century. Welcome, Canada. You picked the obvious winner. Stay connected, follow @Gandalv

- Gandalv

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Yes, I also believe that Carney's push for a strong alliance with Europe reflects concern about a war of conquest by the United States too. One of the reasons I think a deal with the EU would be good is because France and Britain have nukes - this just might pause Trump's ambition to annex us.

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It's not all one way, either. Canada might also need to support Europe as it arms against Russia. This piece describes how the US has dismissed Europe's concerns for the last two years too.

‪A Friend Does Not Send You the Bill for Your Own Stabbing‬ ‪Lay the map on the table and look at it properly. Compiled by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, it plots Russian hybrid operations across Europe from January 2018 to mid-2025, and the continent is speckled like a patient with measles. Sabotage of energy, water, transport and undersea cables. GPS jamming across the Baltic and up the Norwegian coast. Drones over airfields, arson in warehouses, migrants pushed at the Finnish and Polish borders, and red stars marking assassinations from Britain to Bulgaria. Set that beside a war now in its fifth year, with a Russian army that has learned to fight and a leadership that calls the post-Soviet borders negotiable, and you have the largest security threat to Europe since 1945.‬ ‪This is the moment Washington chose to explain that the problem is not really its problem. Pete Hegseth flew to Brussels in February 2025 and said that stark strategic realities prevent the United States from being primarily focused on the security of Europe.‬ ‪Two days later JD Vance stood in Munich, at a conference convened to discuss how to stop Russia, and declared that the threat he worried most about was not Russia and not China but the threat from within, meaning Europe's own voters and speech laws. If you are afraid of your own people, he added, there is nothing America can do for you. There was almost no applause. He did not return the following year.‬ ‪The sales pitch ran in parallel, because there is always a sales pitch. Bloomberg reported that Trump's team told European capitals repeatedly that the way to keep NATO strong was to buy American weapons. Trump himself had set the tone earlier, telling a rally that an ally that did not pay its bills would get no protection, and that he would encourage Russia to do whatever the hell they want.‬ ‪Read the two messages together as a European. The moment Russia poses the gravest threat to the continent in eighty years, America announces it is leaving with its tail between its legs, and in the same breath asks Europe to celebrate the departure by placing the largest arms orders in its history with American factories. All hostage to American goodwill for the next thirty years. Run when it counts, but keep buying our weapons. What Europe says: Hell no.‬ ‪Here is where Washington's logic falls apart. It assumes Europe will conclude, from being told to fend for itself, that it should build that new defence around American kit. That is naive to the point of comedy. A supplier who says he may not turn up when it matters, who can withhold spare parts, intelligence or software keys on a presidential whim, is the last supplier you design your survival around. So Europe is hedging, exactly as any rational actor does when trust collapses. ‬ ‪The allies agreed in June 2025 to 3.5 percent on hard defence plus 1.5 on infrastructure, and then went shopping in Sweden, Germany, France, Italy, Britain, South Korea and Turkey. Every deferred F-35 decision, every Gripen, Rafale and Eurofighter order, every euro of EU defence lending steered to European factories is the same sentence in procurement language: we will buy from ourselves and from partners who do not threaten us at rallies.‬ ‪The map shows a continent under attack, and the transcripts show its oldest friend looking at that map and reaching for the door. What follows is not ingratitude. It is memory, and memory outlasts any administration.‬ Stay informed, follow @Gandalv

- Gandalv

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  I thought this was an illuminating Evan Scrimshaw column. It's titled Airports, Incentives, And The Opportunities In Shunning Shibboleths On Carney’s Investment Summit And Bold Ideas but I think his critique also applies to the kind of knee-jerk simplifications we also may hear about the proposed EU membership. Scrimshaw writes:

...Any idea that the airport deals that might be signed is privatization is nonsense - the land isn’t being sold and the physical infrastructure will revert to the Feds at the end of a (to be specified) lease agreement. What the Feds are doing is taking a big cheque up front from someone to give up the revenues the airport will throw off over the length of the deal. Whether the deal makes sense is entirely dependent on whether or not the government can do something with the billions of dollars in upfront revenues they’ll receive that gets them a better return on the money than waiting for 25 years to grab another year’s profit from Pearson. But regardless, this isn’t privatization, it’s a way of raising huge sums of money to fund investments without giving up any assets....
The corporate tax incentive is a similar situation, where the instinct of many - a handout to corporate Canada! - is at odds with the actual policy. The policy is designed to attract investment into the country at a time when we desperately need growth to be the engine of our continued prosperity. In a stagnant economy, we will have to make hard choices between OAS and GIS and child benefits, between debt servicing and health care, and between investments and austerity. That is the world we face as the Boomers retire and our spending is going to have to keep going to account for those realities. Growth, and properly sharing the proceeds of that growth, gets us out of having to make those decisions.
Every job created, even at this relatively modest tax rate, will be a bonanza for the government’s balance sheet. Increases in employment will raise income tax revenues, lower benefit bills from means-tested supports, and support businesses through more sales and a more robust GST take. It’s the kind of aggressive but targeted approach that won’t line the pockets of Ed Rogers or Galen Weston, but will spur job creation and much needed investment.
The reality is, in both cases, the government has made decisions that are economically sound, but politically potentially dicey. ...
... More broadly, Canadians need to understand that Carney is doing what he was elected to do - break the Shibboleths of Canadian policy and find ways to make this country better off. Plainly, that will involve making those of us who thought we were above the need for these pro-growth policies eat some amount of shit as the Trudeau era of redistribution first has failed.
That doesn’t mean consistently telling the left to go fuck themselves, however. Carney needs to make sure that the money earned from whatever cheque he gets from leasing Pearson et al goes to progressive causes, like seed funding for the next generation of green energy projects, subsidies for rooftop solar and other home greenification, refurbishments of pulp and paper mills and other manufacturing plants in the BC interior and Ontario and Quebec to more useful purposes, and significant supports to get Indigenous communities connected to the rest of the country both economically and in some cases physically. In all those cases, the government needs a return on investment, but buying abandoned steel mills or aluminum plants and using them to build solar panels or military drones is a far better investment than waiting 30 years to see the final profits from Pearson.
Carney has an opportunity to be a revolutionary PM for Canadians, and to solve longstanding crises that we face. In doing so, he’ll need to be bold in the face of critics wanting to sing the same tune they always do. If he wants to set Canada up for a future where we boldly call our own shots moving forward, he’ll need to make the case for his actions strongly and carefully. If not, he’ll be right, and yet in political hell anyways.
Don’t fuck it up.

On a more mundane note, I think this would be a great program

The unprecedented talks over a new form of “associate membership” between Canada and the European Union are now under way. The full architecture will take time to emerge, but one of the first concrete elements is already coming into view: Canada is considering joining the Erasmus+ exchange programme, which would allow Canadian and European students to study at one another’s universities. Canada would be the first non-European country to join the exchange programme, which funds people and organizations to study and train abroad.

- Shankar Narayan

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The Canada-EU bromance was fated in the stars

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Canada is getting excited!

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