I expect anyone who follows Canadian politics – and, hopefully, even some who don’t – have watched Mark Carney’s Forward Guidance video released on Sunday:

The video has had more than 430,000 views on YouTube, and 7,000 comments – no wonder Carney released it online rather than just doing a speech in the House of Commons as Dale Smith suggested .
But if 10 minutes is too long for you to watch, here are some good excerpts:

At Canadian Policy magazine, publisher Lisa Van Dusen writes

…As anyone who has ever covered or followed central bank news on a regular basis knows, forward guidance is a communications tool whereby a central bank provides — in meticulously parsed and curated language — clues as to its sense of the direction of monetary policy beyond that day’s bank rate news….
The most interesting thing about Carney’s decision to revive the regular (it’s not clear how regular yet), leader broadcast is that, in a content sphere that allows any world leader to post video 24 hours a day, it’s not strictly necessary as a communications tool. And yet, making this a regular messaging event makes sense in what amounts to a new kind of wartime.
And, as of the first episode, it has a wartime feel — more akin to Churchill’s defiant radio speeches than to Reagan’s FTA address, although one could argue it is both the opposite of the former’s “Give Us the Tools” address pleading with America to come to Britain’s aid and the opposite of the latter’s exhortation to Congress to embrace bilateral trade with Canada.
“Many of our former strengths, based on our close ties to America,” Carney said in his address, “have become our weaknesses — weaknesses that we must correct.”
Spoken like the voice of stability.

Dean Blundell summarizes Carney’s initiatives in Canada over the last year:

…The Build Communities Strong Fund launched on April 7th — a $51 billion commitment over ten years, with $3 billion flowing every year after that. That is real money going to real places: hospitals, transit, water systems, universities, recreation centres, and climate-resilient infrastructure. The first tranche alone spans Brampton, Cornwall, PEI, Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, Headingley, Manitoba, Regina, St. Albert, Alberta, Hay River in the Northwest Territories, and Laval, Quebec. Thirteen projects, $300 million out the door, with provinces’ cost-matching nearly $17 billion more.
A minimum of 20% is earmarked for rural, northern, and Indigenous communities. At least 10% of direct federal delivery goes to Indigenous nations. This isn’t Ottawa lecturing the country — this is Ottawa in partnership with it.
The Ontario housing partnership with Premier Ford — yes, that Doug Ford — is cutting up to $200,000 off the cost of a new home through a joint $8.8 billion fund and the full elimination of the 13% HST on new builds up to $1 million. A Liberal prime minister and a Progressive Conservative premier, building houses together, while Washington sets the house on fire.
The Northern and Arctic plan — over $40 billion including more than $35 billion in federal investment — is building Forward Operating Locations in Yellowknife, Inuvik, Iqaluit, and Goose Bay, developing critical minerals, clean energy corridors, and doing something this country has needed to do for a generation: taking full responsibility for defending our own Arctic sovereignty without asking the Americans for permission.
Build Canada Homes, the new federal housing agency. A Buy Canadian policy attached to every federal infrastructure dollar. “One Canadian economy out of thirteen” — dismantling the internal trade barriers between provinces that have cost us more than any American tariff ever has.
This is what a crisis response actually looks like when the person in charge has run a central bank through two of them.
The partnerships landing right now:
The United Kingdom. Carney and Keir Starmer are co-founding the Defence, Security, and Resilience Bank — a multilateral institution owned by nation-states to finance defence supply chains that don’t run through American contractors.
The European Union. Carney has called Canada “the most European of the non-European countries” and is deepening CETA while exploring a potential EU–CPTPP linkup that would unite nearly forty nations under shared trade rules.
Japan. A comprehensive strategic partnership signed in Tokyo in March covering trade, defence, cybersecurity, supply chains, Arctic cooperation, and Alberta LNG exports.
China. A new strategic partnership that unwound the 85% tariff on Canadian canola — reopening a $4 billion market — alongside lifted tariffs on lobster, peas, crab, and canola meal.
India. Talks restarted after years of frost.
Indonesia. Ecuador. The UAE. Mexico. Signed, sealed, or moving. The Philippines, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, and Mercosur are on deck.
Finland. A joint statement with President Stubb just last week deepened ties and produced an invitation to join the EU.
Fen Hampson has described the emerging architecture as a modern Hanseatic League — a network of middle powers (Canada, Germany, the UK, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, key EU members) that together represent roughly 30% of global GDP and a simple shared message to Washington and Beijing alike: you WILL respect our sovereignty.
This is the firewall. Not a wall against people. A wall against the coercion of a single unreliable neighbour.

Wesley Wark describes our new relationship with the US:

… the note of realism about Canada’s relations with the United States was pronounced, and more direct than anything that has been said by the Carney government to date. His message went beyond a general picture of a dangerous and divided world to zero in on the changed nature of the US, its tariff wars, and the ways in which what was once a strength for Canada—its close partnership with the US—was now a weakness. A weakness, Carney stated, that “we must correct.”
He also batted back against the illusion that the US will, in some unknowable future, return to normal. He dismissed such thinking as based on nothing more than hope and nostalgia. Not a plan, not a strategy.
He reminded any Americans listening that “we’ve been a great neighbour.” Past tense. He also delivered a history lesson, with a toy model of General Sir Isaac Brock at his side (a gift from Mike Myers), of how Canada had fought successfully against a US invasion in 1812 and had built a country, sometimes in the face of US pressure, sometimes in advance of the progress of manifest destiny beyond our borders.
The PM promised that Canada would “take back control of our security, our borders and our future.”
If that promise is real, it is not just ambitious, as Carney admits, it means a fundamental reordering of Canada’s national security after decades of security reliance and dependency on the United States. It means the pursuit of genuine sovereign autonomy in Canada’s capacity to defend itself, project power, and know the world through its intelligence capabilities. It means a sundering of a relationship with the United States that is often taken to be a product of some geographic inevitability and an expression of a vast power imbalance between the two countries.
Yes, we inhabit the same continent. Yes, we are a middle power in the face of a great power. Yes, we share some of the same threats. Yes, we share a language, our cultures are intertwined, people to people ties are still strong.
What we no longer share are the same values and interests. Without such shared foundations, you cannot sustain security alliances….

I think after Carney’s Davos speech in January (and yes, that speech actually has its own Wikipedia page, the world media now see Carney as an international figure. His Sunday YouTube speech certainly got coverage around the world:

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered an address about the country’s economic ties to the U.S.

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— Newsweek (@newsweek.com) April 20, 2026 at 5:17 AM

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a video address released Sunday that Canada’s strong economic ties to the United States were once a strength but are now a weakness that must be corrected.

Read more: https://mrf.lu/H72c

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— The Manila Times (@themanilatimes.bsky.social) April 20, 2026 at 2:30 AM

That “weakness” line was the one seized on by US media.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney​ said in a video address​ released Sunday that Canada’s strong economic ties to the United States were once a strength but are now a weakness that must be corrected.

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— CBS Detroit (@cbsdetroit.bsky.social) April 20, 2026 at 5:00 AM

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a video address released Sunday that Canada’s strong economic ties to the United States were once a strength but are now a weakness that must be corrected. https://to.pbs.org/4tf50lM

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— PBS News (@pbsnews.org) April 19, 2026 at 4:46 PM

In a video address, Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered an assessment of Canada’s economic relationship with the United States, warning that ties have shifted from a strategic advantage to a “weakness.”

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— FOX 11 Los Angeles (@foxla.bsky.social) April 20, 2026 at 3:40 PM

I would imagine the US will get even more peckish as they start to understand just how quickly Canada is moving away from them:

So what was Poilievre’s reaction?
You had to ask?

On a side note, the Conservatives are running ads right now which sound sorta like election ads – in the Toronto Star, Éric Blais writes:

…The Conservative Party of Canada launched two new ads recently[gift link], backed by what the party says is a million-dollar-plus media buy across television, radio, connected TV and digital platforms. They will be running through the end of June.
The ads are well produced. One features Pierre Poilievre speaking of a country that stands on its own feet and bows before no nation. The other is an attack ad, built on the classic Reagan frame: are you better off than you were a year ago. Both are professionally executed and the mix balances the kind of positive and negative messaging we see during an election campaign.
But they raise an obvious question that nobody seems to be asking: why are the Conservatives spending this kind of money right now?
…Carney’s approval sits at or above 60 per cent. His net favourability leads Poilievre’s by as much as 50 points. The Liberals hold a double-digit lead in vote intention. Five opposition MPs have now crossed the floor to join the government, with Marilyn Gladu, a Conservative from southwestern Ontario, defecting on the very day the new campaign launched.
Most of all, even those who did not vote for the Liberals and or those who did out of fear and could be convinced to vote for the Conservatives will have to wait a few years.
Imagine you are a Conservative MP settling into what could be three years in opposition under a leader whose brand has been badly bruised. You watched him spend years telling Canadians the country was broken, only to see the Canadians choose someone else to fix it. You’ve watched colleagues leave. You’re doing the math on your own future. And you’re being courted by team Carney to do real things instead of opposing.
This is the audience that needs reassuring. It looks like an expensive pre-emptive move aimed at the caucus who have the power to decide whether Poilievre remains leader long enough to fight another election.
…Whether any of this works is another matter. A $1 million is a lot of money to spend on internal morale. And advertising has a poor track record of solving problems that aren’t advertising problems….

On another side note, here is a good video from Tod Maffin about the Isaac Brock story: