Mark Carney

I started these videos so I could talk with you directly about the challenges we face, the solutions we need, and how we can build Canada strong together. In other words, for moments just like this.

For the past year and a half, we've been building, building the very things that bring our communities together, the things that make them stronger, that stand the test of time on factory floors like the one I'm at right now at Caivan, a factory built housing company. We've been building in our communities, in our mines, in our ports right across Canada.

Canadians have been building strong, building new ways to get our goods to market, to drive investment, and to create jobs right here at home. We're on the right road to a better future.

So even though the United States trade actions will cause us some challenges in the short term, we are going to just move faster, get shovels in the ground quicker, make it even more attractive to invest here in Canada and break down more barriers between our provinces so we can become our own best customer. We'll keep building on our strengths, never forgetting who we are.

Canada is a nation forged in adversity, a country that prides itself on doing what's right, not what's easy, a nation that knows we're always stronger together. Canada came to life in many ways in response to American aggression. Our first prime minister, Sir John A.

Macdonald, recognized the threat of an expansionist United States for what it was and raced to unite this land. He knew that agreements such as confederation as important as they were could only do so much, and that Canada needed an economic and military corridor that could connect our peoples from east to west. And so at an incredible human and financial cost, Canadians took what was a country on paper and made it real.

They built an iron spine. Almost five thousand kilometers of railroad track from east to west, the Canadian Pacific Railway stitched together our country and made our presence undeniable and unbreakable. And with it, we created the national policy, which allowed Canadian businesses and industries to succeed by building Canada from within.

Now, this wasn't enough to see off the American threat for good. In fact, that threat has flared up periodically throughout our hundred and sixty year relationship. This isn't the first time Americans have tried to use tariffs to break us.

Before he became president, William McKinley was an Ohio congressman known as the Napoleon of protection. McKinley championed the Tariff Act of eighteen ninety. It put fifty percent tariffs on our exports to the US.

Sound familiar? McKinley's fifty percent tariff was meant to pressure us into dependence and eventually annexation by the United States. In reality, it did just the opposite. Rather than getting weaker, Canada grew stronger.

Instead of becoming more dependent, we diversified by changing who we did business with. And at the same time, inflation rose in the United States. They had a financial crisis and a four year economic depression.

Our forebearers understood that building this improbable country in an inhospitable land wouldn't always be easy, but they also knew that they could rely on one of Canada's strongest traits, resilience. Canada strong isn't just about withstanding this crisis. It's about coming out of it stronger, more resilient, and more independent than when we started.

It's about ensuring that no country can ever hold us hostage and that we can live how we want to live. By now, you've likely heard something about the collapse of our trade talks with the United States, and you probably heard that we could not accept what they were proposing.

Let's be clear. It's a shame because a mutually beneficial trade agreement between Canada and the United States is possible, one that respects our sovereignty, one that builds on our complementary strengths, one that lowers costs for families on both sides of the border, one that creates good jobs for our workers. Canada has always worked towards these goals even while America's attention and dedication to them has wavered.

Canada has consistently proposed long term partnerships while the US has too often demanded short term transactions. At the eleventh hour, they were still pursuing restrictions on our ability to protect and promote the French language and our culture. They wanted a say in our future trade agreements with other countries, and they were offering terms that would, over time, undermine some of the most important industries in our country, including automobiles, steel, and forest products.

In short, they were asking far too much and offering far too little. We worked in good faith to reach a fair deal. But since a fair deal wasn't on the table, we made the right choice to walk away from a bad one.

The most fundamental issue is that the cumulative US demands revealed that they wanted us to become even more reliant on them, not less. In too many areas, they wanted dependency, not a true economic partnership. In the spring of last year, I warned that America is trying to break us so they can own us, and I promised that that will never ever happen.

Because just like in Macdonald's day, our future won't be decided in Washington, but right across Canada. And so I wanna talk to you today about our economic plan, a plan that will make us stronger, because rest assured, we've been planning for just this scenario. Our response is three-pronged.

First, we are matching the new US tariffs dollar for dollar with new tariffs of our own. Now, I don't believe in escalating the conflict. That's not constructive. But our tariffs are necessary to protect our workers, protect our companies, and our communities.

We can't let American goods into Canada tariff free while they charge our companies to export them. Second, we're supporting Canadians because up here we take care of each other. The harsh reality is that the American tariffs will hurt some Canadians more than others, and that was by design.

So we're putting real support behind the businesses and people caught in the middle of this fight, a fight they didn't start. We will do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to bridge those people to a better future. We're starting with seven and a half billion dollars in new help.

That will mean fast access to capital for small businesses, income support and retraining for those workers who need it, targeted help for those sectors hardest hit: autos, forestry, steel, aluminum. And this is on top of nearly twenty-five billion dollars already delivered since the start of this trade war. That's what we do in this country.

We stand up for each other when times get hard. Now, this won't be easy, and I won't pretend otherwise. But Canadians have faced difficult stretches before, and what's carried us through has never, ever been just one measure.

It's always been Canadians looking out for each other. In fact, the most powerful actions have come from you buying Canadian and traveling in Canada. Decisions taken at the kitchen table, not the boardroom table.

Every time we choose to buy Canadian, travel in Canada, we're sending a message that nobody in this country is in the stands. Forty million of us are on the ice, and I thank you for that. That same spirit is behind making Canada strong for all, standing up for you as long as it takes.

The past forty years has been a period of deeper economic integration with the United States. Truth is, it was easy business, but it meant we relied too much on one economic partner. It's clear that time is over.

This is why our plan since I came into office has been development and diversification, not denial, waiting to go back to some good old days, and not continued dependence. For the past year and a half, we've been steering our economy towards trusted partners. We've signed twenty trade and defence agreements across four different continents.

These represent real opportunities for Canadians and Canadian businesses. They're good for today, and they're great for tomorrow. And these are more than deals, they're agreements.

Deals privilege the few. Agreements benefit the many. For example, in July of this year, we announced that the Montreal-based Marconi Technologies would be the first Canadian company to get a contract through SAFE, which is Europe's defence procurement program.

This one is a multi-million dollar deal to design and produce tactical radios. Canada, our companies can strike these agreements because we're trusted, because we're reliable, and because we have what the world wants. Another good example is Antler Valley Farm in Alberta, which has been part of the community for five generations, dating back to the late eighteen nineties.

It's a family-run farm. It's one of Western Canada's top malt producers, growing malt barley, wheat, peas, and canola. And because of our trade diversification, we've opened new opportunities with China, and the family can sell their canola at higher prices, putting more money into their pockets, more certainty for their future.

The world is opening its doors to us, making Canada the best connected economy in the world. Our businesses now enjoy tariff-free access to one and a half billion consumers around the world. Over the next six months, we will double that number.

I wanna be very clear. Building at home, diversifying trade abroad was never our plan B. It's been our plan A from the start.

Canada will continue to pursue this path to build Canada strong because we're on the right road and it's working. We're moving rapidly to build major infrastructure, new ports, mines, energy corridors from every region of the country that now collectively represent five hundred billion dollars in new private investment. These are projects that will help Canada build bigger, move faster, and trade more with the world.

We're building affordable housing through Build Canada Homes using Canadian materials, ingenuity, and labour. We're building local infrastructure that Canadians can rely on every single day with new hospitals, community centres, public transit lines, and over a hundred projects on the way right across the country. And tying it all together, we're doubling the capacity of our electricity grid by twenty fifty so Canadians can have access to affordable and sustainable energy for generations to come.

Because controlling our energy means controlling our destiny. I want you to picture it. The nation-building that Canadians pursued in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries ran along a horizontal line.

The railway, Trans-Canada Highway, stitched us together from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Now we're developing around that line, north and south, a new iron spine with an electric grid that connects each and every one of us, regardless of where we live. Churchill Falls is powering communities and businesses with clean energy, enough to power every single car and truck in Canada.

We're gonna build a new pipeline connecting Alberta's resources to the Pacific ports and Asian markets, new transmission corridors linking our energy wealth to the world, new nuclear energy in Ontario, the transformation of the Port of Churchill in Manitoba and the Pacific Gateway in British Columbia, connecting Canadians and connecting Canada with new partners in Asia and Europe. Just as we're connecting physically, we're also focused on building the right connections virtually, including through AI.

Now, AI is a critical subject, and it's one I want to speak directly with you about in the future. But know this, maintaining and protecting our sovereignty and our values in technology and AI will be just as important as it is in big projects and infrastructure. We're stronger now than when the United States started this trade war a year and a half ago, more unified, more determined, more ambitious.

Our non-US exports are up sharply, and they're on track to double over the next decade. Foreign direct investment in Canada is at its highest level in two decades, and it's running at twice the rate of our nearest G seven competitor. Canada is now rated as the most attractive country in the world for infrastructure investment.

Our growth is accelerating and is projected to be the second fastest in the G seven this year and next. So with a resilient economy and the strongest fiscal position in the G seven, we have everything we need to pivot and prosper. That pivot will come at a cost.

There's always a cost to action, but it doesn't come close to the cost of standing still. This is about who we are as Canadians. It's about our livelihoods and the country we leave to our kids.

It's about making Canada strong, and it's about the compassion that makes us who we really are. The truth is, adversity only makes us stronger. It always has. We are Maîtres Chez Nous.

What we're doing is working, and we're just getting started. Let's keep going. Thank you for your time. I know it's precious.