Canada to Become EU's First Associate Member as Carney Sets Six-Month Deadline at Montreal Summit

The contours of a new partnership between the European Union and Canada were hammered out during a whirlwind 48-hour summit in Montreal. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President António Costa and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney discussed critical minerals, supercomputers and defence cooperation.

Carney wanted the landmark summit to be about much more than nomenclature. By the end of the summit, he had come around to endorsing von der Leyen's controversial label: Canada is becoming the EU's first 'associate member'. He had initially been reluctant, according to accounts from the summit.

Carney set a six-month deadline to firm up the ground rules of what 'associate membership' is. He said on Friday that, with Canada becoming the European Union's first associate member, the coming months will determine the full substance, scale and scope of this new form of membership. The process could be a model for other non-European countries.

Carney said he will meet periodically with von der Leyen to track progress, including a return trip in March for the College of European Commissioners to meet their Canadian counterparts.

One major win from the summit is the framework agreement signed between the European Investment Bank and Canada, opening up the bloc's lending arm to Canadian critical minerals crucial for future technology. Batteries, circuit boards and semiconductors all require lithium, nickel, cobalt and other critical raw materials that the EU is currently largely dependent on China to obtain.

The agreement does not immediately unlock funding for specific projects, but it supports pathways for future investment in Canadian mining and helps link the bloc's supply chains with Canada's. Both sides pledged deeper cooperation on pumping more European money into the mining, production and refining of critical minerals.

Canadian Defence Minister David McGuinty was more candid at the summit on Friday. He said China has been vacuuming up as many critical minerals as it can throughout the world, particularly in Africa, usually in infrastructure-for-minerals deals. Canada, he said, has huge amounts of critical minerals — basically all 10 of the 10 critical minerals on NATO's short list — and intends not only to exploit them but to transform them.

Energy was also discussed. Carney has said he wants to make Canada an 'energy superpower' and leverage its huge stores of oil and liquefied natural gas for export. Most of it, however, is in the western province of Alberta, far from Europe. The summit concluded with a commitment by both sides to a 'long-term feasibility study' on exporting LNG to Europe via the east coast or Arctic ports closer to the bloc.

A Commission official, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic negotiations, said there is a huge opportunity in bringing some of Canada's fossils and gas to the EU. Canada's old infrastructure, the official said, was built north-south for historical reasons, but now there is talk of starting to build east-west.

The trio of leaders — Carney, von der Leyen and Costa — invoked individual and collective sovereignty as reasons to pursue a closer alliance to weather 'new storms' stoked by climate change, challenges to democratic norms and the weaponisation of trade. 'Today is about sovereignty,' Carney said. 'We're building the industries and infrastructure that underwrite our collective security.'

The United States also featured. Senator Peter Welch of Vermont, a little over an hour's drive south of Montreal, spent Thursday reassuring business leaders that US relations with Canada and beyond can someday get back to normal, though he could not say exactly when. He saw Tuesday's US midterm elections as a possible waypoint, but cautioned that even if Democrats succeed, there will still be a president who abuses his authority and acts in arbitrary ways.

There was tension around the host province, Quebec, weeks after it elected a separatist government. Ottawa refused to let new Premier Paul St-Pierre Plamondon address the summit, so he boycotted it. Carney accused him of leaving 'an empty chair', even though six former Quebec premiers came to dinner. Von der Leyen's English-only speech on the opening day was also panned by the Quebec press as a faux pas in Canada's largest francophone metropolis.