Does Mark Carney know where he stands on the US-Israeli war on Iran?
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has spent almost as much time abroad as he has at home since his election last year, reaffirming and rebuilding his country's international relationships as the US becomes less of a reliable partner.
On 28 February, while on a high-stakes visit to India as the US and Israel launched their war on Iran, Carney released a statement that made his position unabashedly clear.
After four paragraphs, in which he outlined why Iran provoked the attack, he said: "Canada supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security."
The Trump administration, in fact, had not even fully settled on the nuclear issue as the key rationale for starting the war. But it seemed that Carney had.
This is despite the US not obtaining a United Nations mandate for its mission, which has usually set the trajectory for Canadian foreign policy.
Lawmakers from Carney's own Liberal Party took issue with his support for the war.
On Tuesday, Canada's premier polling agency, The Angus Reid Institute, revealed that fewer than half of all Canadians support air strikes on Iran, and only three in 10 believe those strikes will improve the lives of Iranians.
That same day, while on a visit to Australia, Carney shifted his position.
"Canada stands with the Iranian people in their long and courageous struggle against the regime’s oppressive rule. Which is why we support efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security," he said in a statement. "Because Canada is actively taking on the world as it is, not passively waiting for a world we wish to be."
"We take this position with regret," he added.
"The United States and Israel have acted without engaging the United Nations or consulting with allies, including Canada," he acknowledged, and called for de-escalation by all sides.
When a reporter later asked the prime minister about his unusual but widely acclaimed Davos speech about a new world order, and how that squares with support for a war on Iran, Carney said he was not an international lawyer, so it was up to the US and Israel to make a case for the legality of their attacks.
"You know that we were not informed in advance [of the war]. We were not asked to participate," Carney said, adding that he wouldn't have been able to surmise if there were legal violations early on.
"Prima facie, it appears that these actions are inconsistent with international law. So we would not have been in a position earlier this week or the weekend, I guess, to take a judgment that met our standards."
UN secretary general Antonio Guterres, however, immediately condemned the US-Israeli attacks that began on Saturday.
'Contradictory statements'
By Thursday, at a press conference alongside his Australian counterpart, Carney said he could not "categorically rule out" Canadian participation in the conflict.
"You've asked a fundamental hypothetical in a conflict that can spread very broadly," Carney said.
"One can never categorically rule out participation. We will stand by our allies."
Those remarks come after Canadian Defence Minister David McGuinty said last month that there has been a surge in enlistment in the Canadian military, in light of US President Donald Trump's threats to annex Canada, and his ever-increasing tariffs on his northern neighbour.
Michael Bueckert, the vice president of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, told Middle East Eye that Carney's willingness to potentially join the war "creates a pretty dangerous situation for us down the road".
"The fact that he changes, he puts out contradictory statements every day... who knows what he will be saying about this tomorrow? So I don't know exactly how to interpret what he's thinking."
Over the course of the week, the prime minister has spoken with King Abdullah of Jordan and Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan of the UAE, and Canadians in the region have been urged to shelter in place. There are no evacuation efforts being undertaken by the government.