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Jul 14 7 tweets 2 min read Read on X
PM @MarkJCarney just handed day-to-day control of his office to an American political operative who worked for Hillary Clinton and Michael Bloomberg.

Her title didn't exist until this week, and even the Globe and Mail can't fully explain how she got here. 🧵👇 (1/6) Image
Her name is Maia Johnson. She surfaced in Canadian politics last year, coming in from New York City to volunteer on Carney's leadership campaign.

By this year she was inside the PMO as his senior adviser on Canada-U.S. relations. (2/6)
Now Carney has made her chief operating officer, a corporate title never before used in the Prime Minister's Office.

The chief of staff runs the political agenda. Johnson runs the machine itself, making sure the day-to-day work of the government happens as desired. (3/6)
The Globe pieced together what it could about her. She is cited in news stories as running political strategy and logistics for Democrats, including Clinton, and is connected to Bloomberg's now-defunct strategy firm, Hawkfish.

Bloomberg co-chaired Carney's UN climate finance alliance, which sources say is where the two connected. (4/6)
In June, the ethics commissioner fined her for filing her required public disclosures late. Her disclosure statement is still listed as in progress.

The Globe asked Johnson directly how she came to work in Canadian politics. She did not reply, and the PMO declined to comment. (5/6)
Her promotion comes as Carney enters year two, under pressure to land a U.S. trade deal and steady a shaky economy.

The person now keeping his government running is one whose path to the job nobody in Ottawa can fully explain — The Globe and Mail (6/6)

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More from @TrendPolCa

Jul 9
The Carney government did not send anyone to defend Canadian workers this week, as the United States considers whether to hit our autos, steel, and softwood with a new wave of tariffs.

Trade lawyer Barry Appleton went in their place, and what he saw inside that Washington hearing room left him sickened, Toronto Star reports. 🧵👇 (1/7)Image
The hearings are part of a Section 301 investigation, the same American law that powered the tariff campaign against China. It lets Washington impose duties on its own say-so, with no vote in Congress and no treaty behind it.

Pointed at Canada, Appleton writes, it can tax autos built in Windsor and Oshawa, steel poured in Hamilton and Sault Ste. Marie, and softwood cut in mill towns from British Columbia to New Brunswick, where the mill is often the last large employer left. (2/7)
Other countries treated the hearing as a fight worth showing up for. Mexico sent its Economy Minister to argue in person that the tariffs had no legal basis, and Peru sent its own minister to argue that Washington had skipped the analysis the law requires.

Canada sent no one. The chair reserved for a Canadian representative sat empty all three days. (3/7)
Read 8 tweets
Jul 8
PM @MarkJCarney has been waging a war in the shadows against Donald Trump, using a network of elite connections to quietly undermine the U.S. President at every turn.

The WSJ reports the exclusive details of how it happened, and the answer has nothing to do with tariffs or troops. 🧵👇 (1/8)Image
Within days of taking office, Carney ordered a quiet audit of a single question: how dependent is Canada on one country for its data, its weapons, its payments, and even its food?

Rather than fly to Washington like every new prime minister before him, his first trip was to Paris, where he called Canada "the most European of non-European countries." (2/8)
Carney could make that trip because he already knew the people on the other end of it. Before they were heads of state, Europe's leaders were bankers like him.

Macron had been a Rothschild banker, Merz once chaired BlackRock's German arm, and Stubb came out of the European Investment Bank.

Carney, a Harvard and Oxford man who ran the Bank of England, kept a second phone with a British number and a contacts list from his London years, and used it to text them directly while his own staff struggled to keep up. (3/8)
Read 9 tweets
Jul 7
More than 40% of Canadian manufacturers have or are considering moving production to the U.S., a new KPMG survey finds.

Of those considering the move, 77% expect to make it within two years. 🧵👇(1/6) Image
57% of manufacturing firms have paused, reduced or cancelled capital investment projects.

36% scaled back investments. 12% paused plans. 9% cancelled spending altogether. (2/6)
KPMG's Anamika Gadia says manufacturers have shown resilience over the past year, but warns that resilience has its limits.

"They're not waiting to see what might happen with the trade situation. They're moving to make longer-term investment decisions, including shifting production to the U.S." (3/6)
Read 7 tweets
Jun 24
PM @MarkJCarney is being sidelined.

New reporting from the Toronto Star reveals the PM has been excluded from at least 17 government deliberations because of conflicts tied to his corporate past. 🧵👇 (1/5) Image
The details are contained in letters the Privy Council Office sent to a parliamentary ethics committee.

Carney's office created a "conflict of interest screen" covering 103 companies he previously worked with, including Brookfield Asset Management, where he served as chair, and Stripe, where he was a board member for four years. (2/5)
Among the decisions Carney was excluded from:

- A $3.1B payout to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation
- A 30-year electricity export deal involving Powell River Energy, a Brookfield subsidiary
- Four housing loan policies from Budget 2025 and the Spring Fiscal Update
- The creation of Canada's new Nuclear Energy Strategy (3/5)
Read 6 tweets
Jun 10
Country singer @CorbLund's campaign to ban new coal mining in Alberta's Rocky Mountains has gathered enough signatures to meet the threshold under Alberta's Citizen Initiative Act. 🧵👇 (1/5) Image
Prominent entrepreneur @WBrettWilson, invested in one of the proposed coal projects, fired back at Lund on X, accusing him of alignment with "US funded environmental extremists" and the Alberta NDP. Lund shot back: "I'm no more NDP than I am UCP. It's all BS." (2/5)
Wilson pointed out that Lund relies on steel made from the very coal he wants banned. "It allows Corb to get spurs and bits for his horses, get his steel for his chain-link fence, get steel for his rodeos. He needs it." (3/5)
Read 6 tweets
Jun 8
BREAKING: The Financial Times is reporting Canada has quietly shifted its trade strategy, pivoting from open defiance of U.S. tariffs to a "Fortress North America" pitch aimed at winning back a seat at the CUSMA negotiating table before the July 1 deadline. 👇🧵 (1/5) Image
Canada has been frozen out of U.S.-Mexico trade talks since Ontario Premier Doug Ford's anti-tariff ad campaign upset President Trump last October. Ford is now heading to Washington to promote regional economic integration, while PM Carney recently told Wall Street executives: "Canada strong will help make America great again." (2/5)
CUSMA covers roughly C$1.3 trillion in annual Canada-U.S. trade and shields a large share of Canadian exports from Trump's tariffs. In an effort to smooth relations, Ottawa has also reversed a planned 15% tax on U.S. streaming services, following last year's scrapping of a digital services tax targeting U.S. tech companies including Meta, Netflix and Amazon. (3/5)
Read 6 tweets

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