PARIS — It’s an across the pond sales pitch from Canada’s “bragger-in-chief,” Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne.
He arrived in the French capital to talk up a once-in-a-generation opportunity, but his offering is one borne of brutal geopolitical necessity.
Buy Canada. Invest in Canada. Work with Canada.
That was Champagne’s message to a crowd made up of European business and policy figures Tuesday, one delivered while rushing between Paris, London and Berlin to discuss the global economy, but also to push some of what Canada is eager to sell.
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His is a country that is full of critical minerals, energy, industrial know-how and beautiful minds leading in fields like artificial intelligence ready to be exported and exploited.
“I hope you see Canada as a great partner for Europe,” Champagne said in a speech to the Conference of Paris, held at the headquarters of the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development. “You should think of us as your supplier of choice.”
If the finance minister was laying it on a bit thick, it was out of economic necessity for a country facing an existential threat from U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs while also staring down a potentially painful renegotiation of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement in 2026.
“For many decades we have been trading north-south. Our supply chains have been north-south. The trade lanes have been north-south. The energy lanes have been north south,” he said. “But now we are looking at east-west and certainly Europe is coming to mind.”
The task of forging closer ties will certainly be easier for someone like Prime Minister Mark Carney, a former governor of the Bank of England who has deep and extensive European connections, having stick-handled the Britain’s exit from the European Union.
Earlier this month, Carney concluded a deal allowing Canada to participate in a European military procurement program that, he said, gives Canadian companies preferential access to the European defence market while offering alternative suppliers for Canada’s own military procurement.
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He has also played up the image of Canada as the “most European of non-European nations,” a reference to Canada’s history as a colony of Great Britain and France as well as the many cultural ties forged through immigration.
But European nations also value the across-the-pond connection, even at a time when Trump’s Washington is an unpredictable partner.
“The transatlantic relationship or bond is based on two pillars,” Champagne said. “One is in Washington; one is in Ottawa. And in this world, I think a lot of our partners see that Canada has what they need and what they want.”
“In this world,” is a polite way of referring to the economic chaos sown by Trump, the increasingly aggressive actions of Russia, China’s ambitions of economic dominance and the many changes promised by AI.
It’s a set of geopolitical circumstances that Champagne contends have made Canada newly relevant.
“I think the voice of Canada matters. It didn’t matter in the first quarter of the 21st century, but I think it’s going to matter even more in the second quarter of the 21st century because people see the nexus between food security, energy security, economic security, and national security,” he said, before rushing to catch a train to London for a scheduled meeting with Rachel Reeves, the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer.
“In that frame, in that lens, Canada has a lot to offer.”
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