Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said she doesn’t believe the relationship between Canada and the United Kingdom has changed after comments made by the British prime minister during a visit to the White House.
At a news conference in Vancouver on Friday, Joly said “no country on Earth will be able to divide Canada and the U.K.”
“It is just in our DNA to be close to the U.K.,” she said, noting that she is in contact with British Foreign Secretary David Lammy and national security adviser Jonathan Powell.
“At the same time, we need to work together on addressing the unpredictability that is coming out of the White House.”
As U.S. President Donald Trump continues to undermine Canadian sovereignty, Canada has been trying to strengthen its relationship with historic allies, such as the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
Since the start of his second term, Trump has repeatedly made threats about Canada becoming the “51st state” and referred to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a “governor.”
Joly’s comments come a day after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer insisted that the United States and the United Kingdom are on good terms.
At a news conference during Starmer’s White House visit on Thursday, a journalist asked the prime minister whether King Charles expressed concern over Trump’s recent statements about annexing Canada.
But the prime minister dodged the question, accusing the journalist of “trying to find a divide between us that doesn’t exist.”
Starmer brought Trump an invitation from the King to visit Balmoral, a royal estate and castle in Scotland.
“We’re the closest of nations, and we had very good discussions today. But we didn’t discuss Canada,” Starmer said as the president interrupted him, saying, “that’s enough.”
Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said Friday that countries are figuring out what the change in U.S. leadership means for the world. U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer downplayed President Donald Trump’s 51st state threats against Canada during a joint news conference on Thursday.
Roland Paris, a former foreign policy adviser to Trudeau, called Starmer’s response to the question about Canada unfortunate.
“Mr. Starmer could have easily said something like that Canada is a sovereign nation,” Paris said. “Instead, he just took the opportunity to say that there was no difference between his position and Donald Trump’s position.”
Starmer seemingly did not want to “ruin the mood” after what he described as a positive discussion with the president, Paris said, but the result was that the British prime minister “threw Canada under the bus.”
“Trump has created an environment in which there’s so much uncertainty that countries are scrambling to secure their own interests,” Paris said. “They’re not really paying a lot of attention to the interests of other countries.”
In an event with the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade earlier on Friday, Joly noted that she had warned her European counterparts about potential threats from Trump and told them Canada was the “canary in a coal mine.”
After Trump threatened tariffs on the European Union, Joly said she “wrote to all of them, and I said, ‘I told you.'”