Carney Met Macron on French Soil, 25 Kilometres Off Newfoundland
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney did not need to cross the Atlantic to meet Emmanuel Macron on French soil over the weekend. He joined the French president in Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, just 25 kilometres off Newfoundland — the first official visit to the archipelago by a Canadian prime minister. A first visit is easy to dismiss as ceremonial trivia; it is also a measure of how long a relationship went without one.
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The Conversation Canada frames the setting as the substance: the visit brought together a contentious shared history, Canada's rapprochement with Europe and the archipelago's search for new development opportunities, with France and Canada seeking closer ties amid growing tensions with the United States.
Part of that backdrop: Trump has repeatedly threatened to make Canada a 51st state and recently posted a map depicting an expanded U.S. encompassing Canada, Greenland and Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon.
An archipelago of 242 square kilometres and around 6,000 people is not a market or a base in any ordinary accounting. Being drawn onto someone else's map is a strange route to strategic relevance, but it is a route.