Prime Minister Mark Carney told the New York Times he has examined the possibility of Trump ordering US-led military action against Canada. “I think you have a responsibility in these roles to look at extreme tail risk,” he said. “That’s just risk management.”
He was careful to add it wasn’t a “base case” scenario, but said it would be irresponsible not to prepare for it regardless.
The Globe and Mail reported in January that senior government sources told the paper Canadian planners expect American troops to overrun the country’s conventional positions within roughly a week, maybe two days at the outside, since Canada doesn’t have the personnel or equipment to mount a conventional defense against a force that size.
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The modeling reportedly leans on unconventional tactics instead — ambushes, sabotage, drone strikes carried out by small, irregular units — drawing on the same playbook Afghan mujahideen used against Soviet troops in the 1980s. Those same tactics were later turned against US and allied forces, Canada included, during the Taliban’s two-decade war in Afghanistan.
Officials were careful to describe this as a model, a theoretical framework, rather than an actual military plan. Still, it’s reportedly the first time in a century Canada’s Forces have modeled an assault by the United States specifically — a country Canada has fought alongside as a founding NATO member and partner in continental air defense for as long as either institution has existed.
Trump has, for what it’s worth, already drawn one line here. He ruled out using military force to annex Canada back in January 2025, even as he kept floating “economic force” as a lever to pressure Canada into becoming the 51st state.
Carney’s decision to study the risk regardless suggests he isn’t taking that assurance entirely at face value, more than a year and several rounds of tariff fights later — a suspicion the timing of this interview did nothing to ease, since Trump posted on Truth Social the same day it published that Canada was “destroying itself” through its immigration policy.
The rest of the NYT interview reads like a hedge against that same uncertainty. Carney described active work to cut Canada’s reliance on Elon Musk’s Starlink for satellite service and said the country is weighing alternatives to its American F-35 fighter jet order.
