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OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney said he spoke with U.S. President Donald Trump about efforts to protect the Arctic ahead of their attendance at the NATO summit in Turkey next month.
Carney said Thursday the U.S. president called him Wednesday for a “long discussion” that also brought in other senior officials, including U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
At a press conference on Thursday marking the end of the spring parliamentary sitting, Carney said he and Trump spoke about NATO, Iran and the broader situation in the Middle East. He would not elaborate on any details.
“So both current and structural issues, it was a very constructive conversation, those things we’re working on together. I think those are best left until they come to fruition,” Carney said.
Asked about past U.S. claims that Canada has been a freeloader in NATO, the prime minister said the country is pulling its weight in the alliance.
“There’s more to do, without question, but we have moved to meet the two per cent target, as you know. We already meet the 1.5 per cent target for defence resilience, defence industrial. We have a track to getting overall four per cent by the end of this decade,” he said.
In March, NATO published estimates showing Canada met its alliance defence spending target of two per cent of GDP for the first time over the past year.
The prime minister added that Canada will soon be making some major defence procurement announcements, including its decision on a preferred contractor for a new submarine fleet.
During a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte Wednesday in Washington, Trump said the alliance wasn’t “too nice to us,” citing its decision to stay out of the war in Iran.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 25, 2206.
David Baxter, The Canadian Press
