Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Friday dismissed accusations that Canada planned to interfere in next month’s U.S. midterm elections, saying he was disappointed by comments from the American ambassador.
‘There is no merit to these claims,’ Carney told reporters during an official visit to Türkiye. ‘I’m disappointed their envoy sees that as his role to make these suggestions.’
He said Canada had no intention of interfering in the 3 November elections, which will decide control of the U.S. Congress.
On Wednesday, the U.S. embassy in Canada said Ottawa ‘brushes off concerns about potential interference in U.S. elections, even as its ministers and premiers openly describe plans to influence American politics’.
A week earlier, U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra told a podcast that his message to Canadians was to ‘keep your nose out of American politics’.
The exchange underlines the strained state of relations between the two neighbours since Canada walked away from talks on a possible trade deal in late August, citing unreasonable U.S. demands.
U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed a raft of tariffs on Canadian imports and has repeatedly suggested he could annex the country. At home, his approval rating is at record lows, and polls suggest his Republican Party will perform poorly in the midterms.
Asked whether Trump could use poor election results as a reason to impose more tariffs on Canada, Carney said he did not think that was likely.
The collapsed trade talks had been intended in part to reduce some of the tariffs. Carney said Canada was in no rush to sign a deal and, for the first time, suggested Ottawa could wait until Trump’s term ends.
‘If it has to be months from now or longer than that, or another administration before a proper deal comes into place, we will do that,’ he said.
Carney’s visit to Türkiye is part of a wider push to reduce Canada’s heavy reliance on the U.S. economy. During the trip, the first official visit to Türkiye by a Canadian prime minister, Ottawa and Ankara upgraded their ties to a strategic partnership covering trade, defence, energy and people-to-people links.
‘It’s absolutely clear where I stand, where Canada stands, where Canadians stand. We will never be the 51st state. We are going our own way,’ Carney said.
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The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration lifted a nationwide ground stop on Friday (13 November) after a communications failure at air traffic control centres caused chaos at airports and triggered the longest nationwide shutdown since the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
President Vladimir Putin agreed on Thursday to let European representatives join the next round of Ukraine peace talks while the United States continues to work towards what could become the largest prisoner exchange of the Russia-Ukraine war.
Microsoft struggled to restore its services on Friday after a major outage disrupted Outlook, Teams and Copilot across the United States and Asia-Pacific region.
Kazakhstan-linked hackers stole thousands of national security documents from Tajikistan, a cybersecurity company has said.
Hungarian authorities have recovered nearly $20 million in cash hidden in buildings and buried in forests as part of a bribery investigation into Miklós Seszták, a former minister under ex-Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
U.S. President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping are set to hold a historic trilateral meeting in Shenzhen on 19 November. The White House says the talks will focus on nuclear arms reductions, with Iran also on the agenda.
U.S. negotiators floated the idea of Ukraine withdrawing from the eastern Donbas region in exchange for NATO membership, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said.
China is taking its space technology ambitions beyond its borders, with a major deal to build a network of 20 artificial intelligence-powered satellites for Oman.
Europe will send a team of diplomats to Ukraine peace talks rather than a single envoy, EU leaders agreed on Friday at the end of a summit in Dublin.
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