TORONTO (AP) — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Friday cast Canada as moving quickly beyond its historical reliance on the United States after a whirlwind week in which he embraced the prospect of becoming the European Union’s first associate member.
Carney, who returned from Europe on Thursday night, said Canada and Europe had “launched a process for a new alliance.” He also called the latest U.S. tariffs a “miscalculation” and repeated that suspending trade talks with Washington last month was the right decision.
Click to Gallery
Prime Minister Mark Carney addresses caucus in Ottawa, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press via AP)
Prime Minister Mark Carney addresses the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026. (Justin Tang /The Canadian Press via AP)
Prime Minister Mark Carney addresses caucus in Ottawa, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press via AP)
Prime Minister Mark Carney addresses caucus in Ottawa, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press via AP)
“Amidst this global rupture, we must move forward,” Carney said.
He spoke Friday to Liberal lawmakers gathered in Ottawa ahead of a new session of Parliament, his first public remarks since returning Thursday evening from Strasbourg.
A day after telling the European Parliament that Canada and Europe needed greater resilience so no country could control their markets, impair their sovereignty or dictate their choices, Carney pointed Friday to Canada’s fiscal position as another source of strength.
Carney, a former head of the central banks of both Canada and England, also appeared to contrast Canada with the United States as U.S. government borrowing costs remain significantly higher than Canada’s.
“We’re now seeing financial markets starting to change the pricing ... to separate the strong from the weak,” Carney said. “We are the strong. We are Canada strong.”
The remarks capped a seven-day stretch in which he hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, convened major global investors in Toronto, met new U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham in Liverpool and addressed the European Parliament.
In Strasbourg, Carney embraced a shift toward Europe, calling for a far deeper alliance spanning energy, critical minerals, defense, artificial intelligence, research and other strategic sectors where he says Canada can no longer afford to depend on a single country.
The next major step is an Oct. 29-30 Canada-EU summit in Montreal.
President Donald Trump has imposed tariffs on Canadian goods, repeatedly talked about making Canada the 51st state and threatened additional economic measures. Trade negotiations collapsed last month and remain suspended.
Carney also touted a business tax break announced at this week’s Canada Investment Summit that is expected to cut the effective tax rate on new investment to 6.4%, less than half the U.S. rate.
“We didn’t need a big beautiful bill. We needed a targeted initiative,” Carney said, drawing laughter with an apparent jab at Trump’s signature tax-and-spending law.
Carney also appeared to mimic Trump while boasting that a major clean-energy project would produce the equivalent of “18 Hoover Dams,” repeating the phrase as he twice used the president’s familiar accordionlike hand gesture.
The government announced nearly half a trillion dollars in investment commitments around the summit.
“In the last seven days, we have stood shoulder to shoulder with an ally, we’ve catalyzed record investment into our country, we’ve deepened our ties with Europe,” Carney said.
“It’s a lot, but that was the warm-up.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney addresses caucus in Ottawa, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press via AP)
Prime Minister Mark Carney addresses the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026. (Justin Tang /The Canadian Press via AP)
Prime Minister Mark Carney addresses caucus in Ottawa, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press via AP)
Prime Minister Mark Carney addresses caucus in Ottawa, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press via AP)
Russians on Friday began three days of voting in the country’s first wartime parliamentary election, which features virtually no opposition and is all but certain to secure the Kremlin’s political dominance.
Authorities spread the election over the weekend, ending Sunday, in a bid to boost turnout among the 111 million eligible voters, and they even allowed electronic balloting. Turnout was about 30% as of late Friday, including online voting, according to the Central Election Commission.
The Kremlin wants the parliamentary election — the first since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — to underline public support for the war and give a veneer of legitimacy to its action. It has sought to avoid any political risks by stamping out even the slightest sign of dissent.
“Your choice and resolve will once again demonstrate that millions of people stand behind our fighters, that we are a united people, bound by shared values, historical memory, and love for the Motherland,” President Vladimir Putin told the nation before the vote.
The Kremlin said Putin voted online Friday and released images of him in front of a computer screen.
The main Kremlin party, United Russia, is all but assured to retain its overwhelming control of the lower house, the State Duma. Several smaller parties of the “systemic opposition” that vote in sync with the government on all key issues also are expected to retain their presence.
Voters cast two separate ballots, filling half of the Duma’s 450 seats by selecting political parties listed on the ballot. The rest are contested in single-seat constituencies, with voters choosing individual candidates.
Russians interviewed by The Associated Press expressed different expectations from the election.
Dmitry Kirillin in Moscow said earlier this week that he would like “to see some changes. To see a different party” at the helm. But Muscovite Alexander Vertukhin believed “what United Russia and the communists are doing is quite sufficient; their platforms cover everything.”
Speaking at a Moscow polling station Friday, pensioner Galina Vavilova said she thought ending the war in Ukraine “is the main thing, of course.”
“That is the most important thing right now. Everyone wants peace, that’s what it comes down to. So that our guys are safe and sound,” she said.
Another pensioner, Lyudmila Kalinina, wished for life “to stabilize for the better” and for “an end to the big divide between the ultra-rich and the extremely poor, because, after all, many people don't live a very sweet life.”
Vladimir Chubarev, a 72-year-old professor, expressed hope “for all the important initiatives our government is undertaking to succeed,” adding: “And, of course, for victory.”
The liberal Yabloko party, the only registered political entity that dared to criticize the war, was removed from the ballot last month by Russia’s Supreme Court, and only has a few dozen candidates in the single-constituency races. Additionally, some anti-war politicians have been imprisoned or forced to flee abroad ahead of the campaign.
The election follows a summer of Ukraine’s long-range drone strikes on oil refineries that triggered a widespread fuel crisis. Warehouses belonging to online retailers Wildberries and Ozon also were attacked. The damage has exacerbated problems for the Russian economy and brought the war home for millions.
In Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi, polling stations were briefly closed because of a threat of a drone attack, local officials said. One polling station in the Krasnodar region had to be set up in a different venue after a drone shattered windows there, said Central Election Commission head Ella Pamfilova.
For the first time, the parliamentary election includes residents of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow illegally annexed after the war began, but still doesn't fully control. Voting also is taking place in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.
Voters dropped their ballots in a box at one polling station in the Russian-held part of the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine as an armed Russian soldier stood nearby and watched.
Speaking at a meeting with officials, Putin said that Ukraine was trying to hamper the vote, mentioning a Ukrainian strike that killed the head of a polling station in the Zaporizhzhia region.
In the Russian-held Luhansk region, 14 polling stations were using backup power sources after Ukrainian drones damaged electrical lines, Pamfilova said.
Separately, Russian officials said Ukrainian attacks earlier this week killed a polling station chief and wounded another in the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia region. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine on the accusation.
Authorities in Kyiv denounced the voting in the Russian-held areas as illegal and urged foreign governments and international organizations not to recognize the election, warning Ukrainians that taking part in organizing the balloting could carry criminal liability.
European Commission spokesperson Christian Wigand also called the voting in Russian-held regions “illegal” and said the European Union condemns it.
“These so-called elections represent yet another blatant violation of international law. The European Union does not, and will never recognize either the holding of these so-called elections, sham elections, in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine or their results," he said.
Wigand said the way the elections are held “underscores the continued and deepening erosion of democracy in Russia," and that the Kremlin “deprives voters in Russia of a genuine choice about the future of their country.”
He also noted that Russia decided not to invite observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, disregarding its commitments. He vowed the EU will continue to support Russian civil society organizations, human rights groups and independent media.
——
Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed.
Voters cast ballots at a polling station during Russia's parliamentary election, in the Russian-controlled part of the Donetsk region, Ukraine, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (AP Photo)
Russian President Vladimir Putin votes online in the parliamentary election, at the Kremlin in Moscow, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Voters leave voting booths during the parliamentary election in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026, with an image of Soviet novelist Valentin Pikul on the wall. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)
Voters use an electronic voting system in the parliamentary election in Moscow, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Pavel Bednyakov)
A voter holds her ballot prior to voting in the parliamentary election in Vladivostok, Russia, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (AP Photo)
Russia's Security Council Deputy Chairman and the head of the United Russia party Dmitry Medvedev casts a ballot in the parliamentary election in Moscow, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (Ekaterina Shtukina, Sputnik, Pool Photo via AP)
A voter casts a ballot in the parliamentary election in Vladivostok, Russia, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (AP Photo)
Voters cast their ballot for the parliamentary election in Vladivostok, Russia, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (AP Photo)
A woman leaves a voting booth to cast her ballot in the parliamentary election in Vladivostok, Russia, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (AP Photo)
A woman walks to cast her ballot in the parliamentary election in Vladivostok, Russia, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (AP Photo)
A woman casts her ballot in the parliamentary election in Vladivostok, Russia, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (AP Photo)
