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What the France and UK elections mean for the West
Major Western democracies like France, the UK, Canada, and the US are on the verge of sweeping political change, but how will upcoming elections impact our collective ability to deal with the world’s biggest challenges? How will Western allies approach issues like climate change, the AI revolution, and cyber defense in an increasingly fractured world? Mark Carney, former Governor of the Banks of England and Canada and current UN Special Envoy on Climate Action & Finance, joins Ian Bremmer on GZERO World for a hard look at three of America’s closest allies: France, Britain, and Canada.
“We're operating in a world where security is paramount. You need resilience,” Carney tells Bremmer, “You need to look to those countries where you have common values and you need to reinforce them.”
Carney and Bremmer also delve into the strategic importance of the US-Canada relationship and how our neighbor to the north can be a reliable, strategic partner in many critical areas, including national security and climate transition. He warns Canadians and Americans shouldn’t “hit the snooze button” when it comes to strengthening US-Canada ties and stresses that Canada can be a critical partner in providing lean energy, crucial minerals, and AI expertise. As for Carney’s rumored political future as a potential Liberal Party leader? Well, you’ll just have to watch the interview to find out.
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week on US public television (check local listings) and online.
How political unrest across the West will impact the world: A conversation with UN's Mark Carney
Listen: On this episode of the GZERO World Podcast, major Western democracies like France, the UK, Canada, and the US are on the verge of sweeping political change, but how will upcoming elections impact our collective ability to deal with the world’s biggest challenges like climate, AI, and cyber defense? Mark Carney, former Governor of the Banks of England and Canada and current UN Special Envoy on Climate Action & Finance, joins Ian Bremmer to take a hard look at three of America’s closest allies: France, Britain, and Canada.
Upcoming elections in France and the UK could mean big changes for the West, similar to the aftermath of Brexit. Carney says there are still many aspects of the UK-EU relationship that need to be recalibrated. He also stresses the strategic importance of the US-Canada relationship and Canada’s role as a reliable partner in everything from national security to critical minerals to fighting climate change.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.
Hunter Biden's convictions won't derail his father's re-election bid
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60, live from the Toronto US-Canada Summit.
What are the implications of Hunter Biden's convictions for his father's presidential campaign?
You know, it's a little bit of tit for tat. You're going to see a lot of Republicans saying, “See the Biden crime family! Look at this guy. I mean, he's a convict.” It's ugly. It's embarrassing for the Biden family, of course. But at the same time, it's not very significant charges and it certainly doesn't link directly to President Biden. Five months away, are people going to be talking about this or Trump's 34 convictions, the weakest of the cases that he's actually facing? I suspect neither of them are going to matter very much, even though, on balance, Trump's is the one that should matter more.
Will recent EU elections bring a dramatic shift to Europe or more of the same?
Well, overall, the European Parliament looks a lot like the old European Parliament. A few more seats for the right wing, but the far-right is not very aligned, doesn't work cohesively. I still think Ursula von der Leyen is going to be, yet again, European Commission president. And in many countries the populist, the anti-establishment did a lot worse. In Sweden, for example, in Portugal and others. On balance, there's not much change here. Two things that matter one a little bit is that Schulz and his Social Democrats really underperformed. The German economy not doing well, he's not seen as much of a leader. A three-party coalition, Germany, largely centrist and pretty stable no matter what. Much bigger: France. Macron's party, historically, got pasted. That's why he's called for parliamentary elections in just a few weeks. And when they happen, if Le Pen's party, the National Rally, wins and they're able to put forward a prime minister, there's is a major, major problem for governance in France and for the need of anything that the EU has to have parliamentary approval in France to get done, and that includes the Ukraine problem going forward.
How Canadians viewing the impending Biden Trump rematch?
You know, in some ways a little more comfortably than they did the last time around because the US-Mexico-Canada agreement's already in place and Trump got it done with this Canadian government. So, I think that they feel a little like, “Hey, we dealt with them once, we can deal with them again.” There's much more strategy and strategic alignment in the importance of the US-Canada relationship today than there was five, 10 years ago, in part because on China they're much more aligned, on things like, major wars outside of this part of the world, they're much more aligned, on Haiti, they're much more aligned. But also keep in mind that Canada's also facing an election in a year. And right now, it looks like the Tories, the conservatives in Canada, would win big, ahead by over 20 points. In which case you'd have a Canadian government and a US government, if Trump were to win, that would be very aligned. Just on a very different part of the political spectrum. Either way, very friendly and very stable relationship, which is more than we can say for most of them around the world.
Columbia River Gorge
Hard Numbers: A river runs through US-Canada talks, Indian hackers hit CAF, Swedes supercharge Quebec investment, Unifor sets sights on GM, Canada emits mixed picture on climate progress
40: The US and Canada are in an eddy of difficult negotiations about water use from the shared Columbia River, whose dams provide half of British Columbia’s electricity and 40% of all US hydropower. Time is running out — the 1964 treaty that governs the two countries’ use of the river expires next September.
2: Canada’s bad blood with India is now spilling into the cyber realm. The website of the Canadian Armed Forces was knocked offline for two hours on Wednesday in an operation carried out by a pro-Indian hacking group called Indian Cyber Force. The group had threatened to attack Canada just days after PM Justin Trudeau accused New Delhi of involvement in the murder of a Sikh separatist leader in British Columbia.
7 billion: Sweden’s Northvolt, a major battery supplier to Volkswagen and BMW, has chosen a site in Quebec for a new $7 billion factory that will manufacture EV batteries. The company had been scouting locations on both sides of the US-Canada border. The deal will be the largest-ever private investment in Quebec and is the latest in a slew of EV battery production deals reached with US and Asian manufacturers.
3: After reaching a last-minute strike-averting deal with Ford, Canada’s Unifor, a trade union, is now targeting the Motor City giant’s crosstown rivals at GM. Unifor wants a 3-year contract based on the one they inked with Ford, which increased worker’s wages and pensions, while also providing more support for labor during transitions to EV production. Across the border, the UAW’s unprecedented strike against all three major US automakers continues.
2.1: Canada’s emissions rose 2.1% in 2022 compared to the year before, according to data released on Thursday. While that seems like a red flag for the country’s aim of cutting 2005 emissions in half by the end of this decade, the larger picture is greener. Emissions are down more than 6% since 2005, driven largely by the power sector, where the shuttering of coal plants has halved emissions. Still, oil and gas sector emissions are up more than 20% since then, driven largely by the boom in oil sands production over the past two decades.A US roadtrip.
Vacation warnings & 1776 time travel
The long weekend is upon us, and you’re probably traveling to see family or friends in that last escape from work before summer fades away like a political promise to balance the budget. It never lasts. But plans for some Canadians got complicated this week after Trudeau’s government issued a travel warning to the LGBT community to be careful visiting US states that have enacted restrictive new laws and policies.
This isn’t Afghanistan or Russia, where you might normally expect these warnings, but this is the USA. Is this just another log on the “woke,” virtue-signaling bonfire of the sanities that is torching the political landscape?
Well, the data is compelling. The ACLU is currently tracking more than 495 anti-LGBTQ bills in different US states that restrict accommodation in washrooms, educational curriculums, and healthcare access, and weaken non-discrimination laws. In other words, it’s a real thing, but does it make a US visit dangerous?
Back in May, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report on the rise of violence against the LGBTQ community, saying “These issues include actions linked to drag-themed events, gender-affirming care, and LGBTQIA+ curricula in schools." Countries like Canada, which have already warned about things like mass shootings, are clearly taking notice of this as well.
It's stylish to dismiss all this as merely a “culture war,” as if the Jello-ey bloviations of pundits trying to build a social media profile are just low-rent cultural entertainment for the politically craven. But the emphasis is shifting from the “culture” part toward the “war” part, where open attacks on the human rights of citizens are cast in the flag-waving, revolutionary rhetoric of battle.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the sudden rise of the tech-bro Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Ramaswamy casts his entire campaign as a “1776 moment” of revolution against the Woke Straw Man. (I am so tempted to write “Straw Person” just to see the social media brushfire, but we have had enough summer fires, haven’t we?) Ramaswamy told the House Anti-Woke Caucus that to defeat the woke agenda there needs to be “a new kind of American Revolution in our country, reviving the ideals of 1776.” Fellow candidate Ron DeSantis is on the same train, and his war with Disney — yes, taking on Mickey Mouse is frontline political work — was meant to affirm his anti-woke bona fides.
1776 was a revolutionary and foundational moment, but it’s not some Paradise Lost that needs to be reclaimed. It was merely the starter pistol for a historic period of transformative change. After all, it took hundreds of years, a bloody civil war, constitutional amendments, and countless political movements to end slavery and extend full rights — including the vote — to women and multiple minority groups. Not a lot of folks would want to live in 1776 America, where the idealism about freedom (written by a whole bunch of dudes who owned slaves) and the reality of it only had a passing relationship. The whole point of the 1776 Big Bang was to accelerate more freedoms for individuals, not less. That makes it hard to jibe with the campaign rhetoric of restrictions today.
It is an issue boiling up in Canada as well. In New Brunswick, Premier Blaine Higgs is embroiled in a battle over gender self-identification in schools and the balance between parental and kids rights, a topic picked up nationally by Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, who believes these are parenting issues, not government ones. Is this why the Canadian government suddenly made the travel warning announcement? Trudeau is fading in current polls while Poilievre is surging, and this is a convenient wedge.
Or is this another part of the same culture war, only this time trying to animate the left, not the right? “It seems like too much of a coincidence for the Canadian government suddenly to make this announcement and there be no connection to domestic politics,” Graeme Thompson, a senior analyst at Eurasia Group, told me.
Ok, it’s the long weekend, and you might be annoyed that it’s so political. Where to go to spend your tourism dollars, who to visit, what’s the risk … it’s enough to wreck a good vacation. But remember, this weekend started as a political battleground. Labor Day in the US became a national holiday in 1894 after workers in places like Chicago (in the famous Haymarket riot of 1886) fought to get fair wages, better working conditions, and an eight-hour workday. It worked.
It’s worth noting that your weekend of rest came 118 years after 1776. Ready to give that back too? Maybe this long weekend is actually the best time to get political.
This column by GZERO Publisher Evan Solomon was featured in GZERO North on Aug. 31, 2023. Subscribe today.
Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and former President Donald Trump
Why Trump 2.0 could be bad news for Canada
When Donald Trump was elected in 2016, Justin Trudeau launched a charm offensive carefully calibrated to try to keep the crucial trade relationship on track. There were gifts, phone calls, and visits, and it worked, to a point.
The Trudeau team managed to develop a friendly relationship with Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, opening a crucial back channel.
By 2018, though, as Trump and Trudeau tussled over a new trade arrangement, tempers frayed. After the leaders of the rest of the free world ganged up on Trump at a G7 meeting in Quebec – he didn't want to sign the communique the rest favored, which left him angry and isolated – the US president lashed out at Trudeau on Twitter from Air Force One. According to a memoir by John Bolton, then Trump’s national security adviser, when Trudeau said that American “tariffs threaten to harm industry and workers on both sides of our border,” Trump’s blood boiled.
Trump, Bolton wrote, directed his aide Larry Kudlow to attack Trudeau on the Sunday shows: “Just go after Trudeau. Don’t knock the others. Trudeau’s a ‘behind your back’ guy.” Peter Navarro went further on Fox News Sunday, saying there is a “special place in hell” for Trudeau.
The blow-up in Quebec was a low point in the Canada-US relationship, which normally consists of politicians exchanging friendly pieties while officials and businesspeople on both sides of the border aim to maximize trade and minimize tension. That was true when the leaders were politically like-minded — the Trudeau-Barack Obama bromance — and during periods where the leaders met across an ideological divide, as when Jean Chrétien and George W. Bush led their countries.
Finding leverage in USMCA review
If Trump is the nominee in November, and the polls say he will be, and if he defeats Joe Biden, which polls say he might, we can expect craziness, says Bruce Heyman, who served as Obama’s ambassador to Canada.
“That craziness is not good,” he said. “Not good for the world order and not good for the Canada-US relationship.”
Trump mobilized a coalition of blue-collar workers against NAFTA – the standing trade agreement between Canada, the US, and Mexico – as the reason for the economic pain many working class voters experienced as manufacturing jobs moved to Mexico and overseas. Once in the White House, Trump forced Canada and Mexico to negotiate the USMCA, a deal similar to NAFTA except with some added bonuses for US dairy farmers.
The USMCA comes up for review next year, and while Trump hasn’t indicated that he plans to renegotiate it, Heyman thinks a re-elected Trump might decide to let it lapse.
“Donald Trump doesn't have a large appetite for Canada-US relations. If we revert back to isolationism, and autocracy, and a King-of-the-Hill kind of attitude, then alliances get thrown under the bus.”
Jon Lieber, Eurasia Group's head of research and managing director for the United States, who worked as a Republican economic policy advisor, agrees that we should expect conflict from Trump 2.0. “His modus operandi is to use whatever leverage he has to get what he wants. We don’t know exactly what he wants yet, because he hasn’t articulated a vision for North American trade, but we know there’s these pre-existing irritants, and a big part of his political coalition is going to be auto workers in the Upper Midwest.”
Trump will need to say something that contrasts with Biden on the campaign trail, and “things that you say on the campaign end up being enacted as policy,” Lieber adds.
Poster boy for a frozen blue state
Trump was an unknown quantity in his first term, and it took him some time to find his footing as he slowly figured out how to manipulate the levers of power. As Bolton wrote: “It is undeniable that Trump’s transition and opening year-plus were botched irretrievably.”
Next time, Trump would know how to work the levers — aided by a group of policy and communications professionals who have been cooking up plans in a new constellation of MAGA think tanks. And Trump wants to exact revenge on the Democrats who he blames for his grave legal difficulties.
Trudeau, of course, has not played any role in prosecuting Trump, and the former president hasn’t gone after him, but the Congressional Republicans closest to him have taken to lobbing rhetorical potshots north of the border. Marjorie Taylor Greene, for instance, has suggested (falsely) that Trudeau is the child of Fidel Castro while complaining about Canadian gun laws. Lauren Boebert has said that Canada needs “to be liberated,” and Tucker Carlson proposed that the United States invade Canada, although the hour-long special he had planned was kiboshed when Fox showed him the door.
Trudeau’s image as global progressive poster boy grates on American conservatives, who see him as a woke, virtue-signaling irritant, overseeing a frozen blue state where Muslim immigrants are welcome, guns are banned and vaccines mandated. Over the weekend, prominent Republican online influencers denounced and mocked him in crude terms when he posted a picture of himself and his son at a showing of Barbie. He is an irresistible target for the MAGA GOP.
‘Deeply fearful’
As the culture war increasingly dominates American politics, and the two voting blocks come to resemble warring factions, it is possible that the domestic American impulses may find expression in the Canada-US relationship, which has for decades been dominated by arcane disputes about softwood stumpage fees and dairy quotas.
Lieber thinks that’s likely just noise: “Fundamentally, none of these people have reason to care about US-Canada trade relations or do anything to upset it. It’s not like Mexico.”
Heyman, though, is uneasy. “I am deeply, deeply fearful for the Canada-US relationship if Donald Trump is back in the White House.”
Next time, if it happens, Trudeau would be unwise to rely on charm.
The Graphic Truth: Canada rolls out the welcome mat
Canada’s population is booming, and a huge portion of that growth is being fueled by record-high immigration. The Trudeau government aims to grant permanent residency to 465,000 people in 2023 and raise that number to 500,000 people a year by 2025 – betting that immigration can spur economic growth and support its aging population. This commitment to immigration is why Canada is the fastest-growing G7 country, even as its peers brace for population contractions.
Meanwhile, across the border in the US, immigration is a much more polarizing issue. But contrary to what many on the right think, immigration numbers have declined under President Joe Biden.
We compare immigration in the US and Canada over the last two decades.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith speaks during the Canada Strong and Free Networking Conference in Ottawa, Canada.
Two battles at once in Alberta, the home of key US energy exports
Alberta is in the middle of a tight election, the first for United Conservative Party Premier Danielle Smith. She won the party’s leadership after former Premier Jason Kenney resigned last May following his poor showing in a leadership review vote. This election is really a battle pitting Smith’s UPC against the left-wing New Democratic Party and former Alberta Premier Rachel Notley. But suddenly, a third player has emerged, and it could prove decisive.
Take Back Alberta, an ultra-conservative third-party organization, is reportedly working to get Smith to lean in harder to her already libertarian beliefs and to push the UCP father to the right – and away from its more centrist policies. The trick? Take Back Alberta must stay within the lines of third-party election rules. Indeed, they claim to actually control the UCP and the premier’s office! The battle is an extension of the struggle that led to Kenney losing the leadership after he too could not control or corral the more libertarian sides of his party.
Why does this matter to US-Canada relations? Canada is the largest source of US energy imports, with much of that coming from Alberta. In 2020, the oil-rich province exported CAD$77.5 billion in goods to the US, its primary global trading partner. So who runs the province is material to the energy sector.
Smith – who is being hounded this week after an old recording surfaced in which she compared those who got the COVID-19 vaccine to followers of Hitler (Yes, Hitler has become part of the election campaign) – supports loose energy regulations and says federal climate policies are an “existential” threat to the province.
Smith has also said US Republicans, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, are models for creating “little bastions of freedom.” If Smith wins, and with her party controlled by the Take Back Alberta crowd, the province will see more open hostility toward the federal government’s climate and natural resources policies, creating volatility that might give energy investors pause. It could also lead to more legal fights over provincial-federal powers and create confusion on what rules will apply and when. After all, investors just love instability, don’t they?