Prime Minister Mark Carney’s oft-stated determination to keep his government focused on what Canadians can control could be tested today, as he meets with leaders from the 55 other member countries of the Commonwealth in Antigua.
As he boarded his flight with his wife Diana on Monday, Carney gestured as if he couldn’t hear reporters yelling for clarification on where things stand following his conversation with U.S. President Donald Trump over the weekend.
Trade negotiations could return to a full boil, but for now they remain on a back burner while the White House focuses on the verdict about to be rendered by American voters in their midterm elections.
The future of the Canada-U.S. relationship hangs so heavy over the Carney government’s agenda that it could be hard to focus on anything else. But this week’s Commonwealth talks are the first in a series of multilateral summits this month where Canadian officials will pursue alternative partnerships in trade, security and diplomacy.
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The Commonwealth has three main priorities leading up to 2030: democratic resilience, economic resilience and environmental resilience.
On that first priority, ministers, including Foreign Minister Anita Anand, met Sunday to welcome the restoration of an elected government in Gabon, the central African country which had its membership partially suspended following a military coup in 2023.
But the main focus at this summit is trade partnerships: specifically the association’s ambition to lower trade barriers and double trade between member countries by the time they meet for their next biennial summit.
That dovetails perfectly with the Carney government’s attempt to pivot away from the U.S.
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“I think people don’t realize the economic clout of the Commonwealth. There’s almost a trillion dollars of trade,” said Arif Lalani, a former diplomat who served as a senior official the last time a Canadian prime minister attended the Commonwealth Summit, in 2022.
“There are studies which show that it’s cheaper to do business between Commonwealth countries because we have the same practices, same language, generally the same set of regulations. So it’s definitely a place to pursue the economic diversification agenda,” Lalani said.
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His fear, however, is that the Commonwealth’s “relevance is growing faster than its capacity to deliver.”
Leaders need to get more outcome-oriented on trade, he said. He agrees with Carney’s efforts to expand this focus to defence and security co-operation too.
At a time when conflicts over choke points like the Strait of Hormuz are restricting global trade, “Commonwealth countries have a lot of coastline, they have strong navies, and so I think there’s something that can be done to increase maritime co-operation,” Lalani said.
This is Carney’s first trip to the Caribbean as prime minister.
That diplomatic deficiency will be addressed this morning in a bilateral meeting with this year’s Commonwealth host, Antigua and Barbuda’s Prime Minister Gaston Browne, followed by a working breakfast Canada is hosting for all the Caribbean leaders attending this year’s summit.
While not a complete gathering of CARICOM leaders, officials briefed reporters that this breakfast is a chance to discuss trade and investment, climate action and regional security.
Prime Minister Mark Carney and Diana Fox Carney are met by a greeting party as they arrive in Antigua. (Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press)
Vandana Kattar, who worked in the prime minister’s office under former prime minister Justin Trudeau, says Carney’s approach so far makes sense to her.
“Multilateralism is important to him,” she said. Carney went after some of the bigger pieces of his puzzle first, she reckons — pursuing the “low-hanging fruit” of a closer relationship with Europe, attempting to resolve tariff tensions with China.
“Those are big pieces of the puzzle that he’s been able to put together,” she said. But he also needs to fit smaller pieces into that puzzle, like nurturing Canada’s relationships in the Caribbean, “otherwise that doesn’t complete the whole picture.”
“You can’t go to the Caribbean countries and not talk of climate resiliency,” Kattar said. “They’re the ones impacted the most.”
Canada’s already contributed $4.65 million over three years to the Commonwealth’s climate finance access hub to help small island states. It’s also made a bigger $13-billion commitment to support all developing countries adapt to the consequences of climate change — like stronger and more frequent hurricanes — over the next five years.
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Canada hopes to amplify the voices of smaller Commonwealth partners on climate issues, officials told reporters prior to the trip.
“That’s what actually builds the trust, and that’s what ensures that Canada is seen as a reliable and a trustworthy partner that actually listens to the concerns of their partners and [is] not just forcing their own agenda onto them,” said Climate Action Network’s Soomin Han.
Han believes conversations on climate financing between big and small Commonwealth partners might be more productive than at United Nations climate conferences, where a few large countries can block progress.
“Countries should not have to take out more debt simply to survive a crisis they contributed comparatively little to creating,” she said.
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While the Commonwealth has 56 members, King Charles is the head of state in only 15 of them. Half of those are Caribbean countries, and for the week leading up to this summit, he’s been touring the region, amid ongoing political pressure for the Crown and the government of the United Kingdom to apologize for its historical role profiting off the slave trade in British colonies.
So far, the King has acknowledged “the great suffering and injustices of the past in these islands and beyond,” but he has not apologized.
Canadian officials briefing reporters prior to the trip said Canada acknowledges the generational and lasting impact of slavery, and supports “open and respectful dialogue” on reparations, but noted there are a “diversity” of perspectives on reparatory justice among Commonwealth members.
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Nicholas Marcus Thompson, an advocate for reparations for Canada’s Black communities, says the current U.K. government’s opposition to negotiating reparations for slavery is “simply a non-starter” for Caribbean nations.
“Reparations is not giving away a freebie. It’s repaying what you took, right? Wealth extracted from enslaved Africans built businesses, financial institutions, universities,” said Thompson, who is also the president and CEO of the Black Class Action Secretariat.
“It would have been billions of dollars in today’s currency.”
Former diplomat Lalani said he believes Canada is heading into this summit with more credibility than it’s had in the past, thanks to the “provocative vision” Carney laid out in his speech on middle powers at the World Economic Forum in Davos last winter.
Carney’s conversations today won’t be limited to people he’s close to, like Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. It’s also a chance to talk to leaders with whom he doesn’t have full agreement — without being overshadowed by superpowers like the U.S. or China.
“Canada can have a discussion with other countries without the baggage of having the United States at the table,” he said.
“The biggest destabilizing power in the world right now is the United States. … That requires a candid discussion.”
