PM Mark Carney on Canada-U.S. trade war, Alberta referendum – September 10, 2026

How are you? Welcome everyone. Merci d'être venu. It's a pleasure to be here and back home in Alberta, here in Banff. It's an honor to be welcoming here at cabinet President Zelenskyy, who will address cabinet after we finish this session. I look forward to your questions. I'll just say a few words of context for this retreat and leading into the fall. Now, the first thing is to be clear: we're coming here as Canadians in a position of strength. The economy, most recent quarter, grew at the fastest rate in three years. We've been creating jobs. Lost jobs a bit in the last month, but over the last year, creating jobs at twice the rate of the United States. We have foreign investment at the highest level in 20 years. We're on course to double our non-US exports. We're the most attractive destination for foreign investment. Within that context, of course, though, we face some headwinds, some uncertainties. First and foremost for Canadians, affordability challenges. We're making progress, but there's more that needs to be done. We have a more dangerous and divided world. You only have to refer back to the discussion we had today with President Zelenskyy on one of the examples of that. There are many others. And of course, we have the trade relationship with the United States. We have a clear plan to address these that builds on those strengths and the fundamental strengths of this country. It's to build, build at home. Build housing. Build community infrastructure. Build major projects. Build new trade corridors, new energy corridors. It's to partner, diversify our partnerships abroad, reliable partnerships. We have access to 1.5 billion consumers around the world in free trade deals. We expect to double that over the course of the next six months. And it's to deliver, and this will be a big focus of this cabinet session: delivering for Canadians, delivering a more affordable life, protecting more secure communities, delivering more effective government, protecting online Canadians, and executing on those partnerships that we're developing abroad.

And now Canada is strong. I mean, sure, you have these uncertainties at a global level. A more dangerous and divided world. We can see the situation in Ukraine as one of several examples. And I mean, sure, we have a plan. It's the same plan from the beginning. We will strengthen... And the plan... We can start with your questions.

Well, thanks for the question. And let me say first and foremost, our responsibility, my responsibility, is to deliver for Albertans and deliver for Canadians, and focusing on what we call cooperative federalism: a federal government that's working with the province of Alberta, working on behalf of all Albertans, working on behalf of all Canadians. We're making a lot of progress, a lot more to be done in that regard. It kind of goes to the theme of your question, if I may, which is about... It's not just making agreements, but it's executing on those agreements and actually delivering the results of that. I think we're seeing that with the agreements with the province of Alberta. We're seeing it with the infrastructure announcement Minister Robertson made in Edmonton, the announcement Minister Champagne did as well in Edmonton just in the last couple of days. But your question goes to a fundamental point, which is, you know, Canada's worth fighting for. And fighting for in this regard means showing up on the 19th, or mailing in your ballot, or participating in early voting. There are of course a number of questions on the ballot as part of this referendum, a number of other questions. And I'm heartened to see... one can never put too much weight on polls. The only poll that matters, as you know, in a referendum or election is the one on the actual day and the sum of those. I'm heartened to see the level of support, but we do need that to follow through.