Politics·New
Prime Minister Mark Carney is aiming to hold his first meeting with Canada’s premiers on Friday, sources tell CBC News.
Would be first meeting between new PM and all 13 provincial and territorial leaders
Darren Major · CBC News
· Posted: Mar 18, 2025 2:26 PM EDT | Last Updated: 29 minutes ago
Sources say Prime Minister Mark Carney is expected to meet with Canada’s premiers on Friday. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)Prime Minister Mark Carney is aiming to hold his first meeting with Canada’s premiers on Friday, sources tell CBC News.
Carney, who was sworn in last week, has met with a couple of premiers but this would be his first meeting with all 13 provincial and territorial leaders.
The virtual meeting is being planned against the backdrop of further looming tariffs from U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.
Trump has so far hit all Canadian goods with a 25 per cent tariff — though he has since backtracked to temporarily exclude goods compliant with the current North American trade deal — and 25 per cent on Canadian steel and aluminum.
The president is planning further “reciprocal tariffs” on goods from a number of countries starting April 2, though it is not yet clear how those would impact Canada.
Carney met with French President Emmanuel Macron and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer earlier this week on a short European trip.
Speaking to reporters after meeting with Starmer in London on Monday, Carney said he’d be willing to meet with Trump to talk trade, but insisted the president first stop referring to Canada as the 51st state.
“We’ve called out those comments. They’re disrespectful, they’re not helpful and they need to stop,” he said.
“They will have to stop before we sit down and have a conversation about our broader partnership with the United States.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Darren Major is a senior writer for CBC’s Parliamentary Bureau. He can be reached via email at darren.major@cbc.ca.
With files from Kate McKenna, Catherine Cullen and David Cochrane
