Canada seeks Ukraine loan role to deepen EU ties

Canada is in talks to back an EU loan for Ukraine, as Prime Minister Mark Carney seeks closer transatlantic ties to reduce his country’s dependence on the U.S.The two sides hope to agree on how much Canada will contribute to a Brussels-led €90 billion loan to Ukraine before an EU summit in Montreal at the end of October, according to people briefed on the matter.The prime minister was seeking to build an alliance of Liberal powers committed to the multilateral order thrown into chaos by Donald Trump , and hoped to show commitment to European allies by contributing to the Ukraine Support Loan, the people said. The U.K. is the only other non-EU country to have participated in the loan. “We are grateful for all the support that Canada is providing to Ukraine and we are ready to do more together,” one European official said.

Carney heads to Europe this week where he will meet European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen for her State of the Union speech in Strasbourg on Wednesday. He is then expected to fly to Liverpool to meet new U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham.

Canada has already allocated $6.5 billion in military assistance to Ukraine, and last Thursday Carney and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Canada signed a “100-year partnership” between the two countries. Kyiv faces a budget hole next year given the escalating cost of its war with Russia.

Canada is hoping to negotiate other deals with the EU as it seeks help in its trade war with the U.S. Ottawa is also set to join an EU supercomputer network to work together on AI and sign a digital trade agreement with Brussels.

Since taking office last year, Carney has aimed to diversify Canada’s global relations in an attempt to unite the world’s “middle powers” as an alternative to the U.S.-centric world order, which he argued at Davos was undergoing a “rupture, not a transition.”

These tensions boiled over last month when Ottawa’s trade talks collapsed with Washington.