TORONTO (AP) — Prime Minister Mark Carney said Thursday eliminating trade barriers within Canada would benefit Canadians far more than U.S. President Donald Trump can ever take away with his trade war as he made his case to retain power at the last debate ahead of the April 28 vote.
Carney has set a goal of free trade within the country's 10 provinces and three territories by July 1. Canada has long had interprovincial trade barriers.
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Canada's Prime Minister and Liberal Leader Mark Carney arrives for the English-language federal election debate, in Montreal, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP)
New Democratic Party (NDP) Leader Jagmeet Singh and his wife Gurkiran Kaur Sidhu arrive for the English-language federal election leaders' debate, in Montreal, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP)
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre arrives with his wife Anaida Poilievre, for the English-language federal election debate, in Montreal, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP)
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, from left, Liberal Leader Mark Carney, New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh, and Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet, take part in a group photo prior participating in the English-language federal leaders' debate, in Montreal, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press via AP)
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, from left, Liberal Leader Mark Carney and New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh participate in the English-language federal leaders' debate in Montreal, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press via AP)
"We can give ourselves far more than Donald Trump can ever take away," Carney said “We can have one economy. This is within our grasp.”
Carney said the relationship Canada has had with the U.S. for the past 40 years has fundamentally changed because of Trump's tariffs. If reelected Carney plans to immediately enter into trade walks with the Trump administration.
“We are facing the biggest crisis of our lifetimes. Donald Trump is trying to fundamentally change the world economy, the trading system, but really is he's trying to break us so the U.S. can own us. They want our land, they want our resources, they our water, they want our country” Carney said in his closing statement. “I am ready and I have managed crisis over the years ... We will fight back with counter tariffs and we will protect our workers.”
Trump’s trade war and threats to make Canada the 51st state have infuriated Canadians and led to a surge in Canadian nationalism that has bolstered Liberal Party poll numbers.
Opposition Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is imploring Canadians not to give the Liberals a fourth term. He hoped to make the election a referendum on Justin Trudeau, whose popularity declined toward the end of his decade in power as food and housing prices rose and immigration surged.
But Trump attacked, Trudeau resigned and Carney, a two-time central banker, became Liberal party leader and prime minister last month after a party leadership race.
“It maybe difficult, Mr. Poilievre, you spent years running against Justin Trudeau and the carbon tax and they are both gone,” Carney said. “I am a very different person than Justin Trudeau.”
Public opinion has changed. In a mid-January poll by Nanos, Liberals trailed the Conservative Party by 47% to 20%. In the latest Nanos poll released Thursday, the Liberals led by 5 percentage points. The January poll had a margin of error 3.1 points while the latest poll had a 2.7-point margin.
"We can’t afford a fourth Liberal term of rising housing costs," Poilievre said.
Poilievre accused Carney's Liberals of being hostile toward Canada’s energy sector and pipelines. He accused the Liberals of weakening the economy and vowed that a Conservative government would repeal “anti-energy laws, red tape and high taxes.”
“We need a change, and you, sir, are not a change,” Poilievre said in one exchange.
Canada's Prime Minister and Liberal Leader Mark Carney arrives for the English-language federal election debate, in Montreal, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP)
New Democratic Party (NDP) Leader Jagmeet Singh and his wife Gurkiran Kaur Sidhu arrive for the English-language federal election leaders' debate, in Montreal, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP)
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre arrives with his wife Anaida Poilievre, for the English-language federal election debate, in Montreal, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP)
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, from left, Liberal Leader Mark Carney, New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh, and Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet, take part in a group photo prior participating in the English-language federal leaders' debate, in Montreal, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press via AP)
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, from left, Liberal Leader Mark Carney and New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh participate in the English-language federal leaders' debate in Montreal, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press via AP)
CANNES, France (AP) — Cannes is a short trip from Bono’s seaside villa in Eze-sur-Mer. He bought it with The Edge in 1993, and considers himself grateful to a coastline that, he says, gave him a “delayed adolescence.”
“I can tell you I’ve slept on beaches close to here,” Bono says with a grin. “I’ve woken up in the sun.”
But that doesn't mean the Cannes Film Festival is a particularly familiar experience for the U2 frontman. He’s here to premiere the Apple TV+ documentary “Bono: Stories of Surrender,” which captures his one-man stage show. Before coming, Bono’s daughter, the actor Eve Hewson, gave him some advice.
“She said: ‘Just get over yourself and bring it,’" Bono said in an interview on a hotel off the Croisette. "What do I have to bring? Bring yourself and your gratitude that you’re a musician and they’re allowing you into a festival that celebrates actors and storytellers of a different kind. I said, ‘OK, I’ll try to bring it.’”
Besides, Cannes, he notes, was founded amid World War II as an alternative to then-Mussolini controlled Venice Film Festival. It was, he says, “designed to find fascists.”
Shifts in geopolitical tectonics was much on Bono's mind. He has spent much of his activist life fighting for aid to Africa and combating HIV-AIDS. U.S. President Donald Trump's dismantling of USAID has reversed much of that.
“What’s irrational is taking pleasure in the defacement of these institutions of mercy,” Bono said.
“Bono: Stories of Surrender,” an Andrew Dominik-directed black-and-white film that begins streaming May 30, adapts the one-man stage show that, in turn, came from Bono's 2022 book, “Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story.”
In the film, Bono is self-effacing and reflective, sifting through the formative influence of his father, U2's skyrocketing to fame and considering how ego and social work might be related. He calls it “the tall tales of a short rock star.” And as was the case on a recent sunny afternoon in Cannes, Bono makes a captivating raconteur.
Remarks have been lightly edited for clarity.
BONO: Well, that’s right. Globalization did very well for the world’s poor. That and increased aid levels brought a billion people out of extreme poverty and halved childhood mortality — remarkable jumps for quality of life for human beings.
But it’s also fair to say certain communities really paid the price for that — here in Europe, in the United States. And I’m not sure those communities were credited enough for weathering storms that globalization brought. So I understand how we got to this place, but it doesn’t mean that it’s the right place to be in.
Nationalism is not what we need. We grew up in a very charged atmosphere in Ireland. It makes you suspicious of nationalism and those animal spirits that can be drummed up. This is me speaking about surrender, “Stories of Surrender,” at a time when the world has never been closer to a world war in my lifetime. At first I think it looks absurd, a bit ridiculous — now that has never stopped me in the past — but I think it’s OK to look ridiculous for these ideas. Like surrender, nonviolence, peace.
BONO: The new pope, he does look like a pope. That’s a good start. I just saw the other day his first piece and he was talking about stopping shouting, God might prefer whispers. I thought, “Oh, this could be interesting.” I’m more of a shouter myself. I come from punk rock. But I’m learning to turn that shout into a whisper in this film to get to an intimacy.
BONO: Well, the accuracy of the put-down — “You are a baritone who thinks he’s a tenor” — is so all encompassing. I was going to call the play “The Baritone Who Thinks He’s a Tenor.” He’s on my mind because he’s the reason I sing.
It’s a wound that will never close because after playing him on stage for all those nights — just by turning left or right — I always loved him but I started to really like him. He started to make me laugh. There was a gift, as well as the voice, that he left me. Would he forgive me for impersonating him in the Teatro di San Carlo, a sacred place for tenors, probably not. But here I am impersonating an actor, so.
BONO: Mission creep. I knew I had to write the book. The play was so I didn’t have to tour the book in normal promotional activity, that I could actually have fun with it and play all the different characters in my life. I thought it was really good fun. Then I realized: Oh, there’s parts of you that people don’t know about. We don’t go to U2 shows for belly laughs. But that’s a part of who I am, which is the mischief as well as the melancholy.
Then you end up doing a play with a lot of cameras in the way. Enter Andrew Dominik and he taught me something that I didn’t really understand but my daughter does: The camera really knows when you’re lying. So if want to tell this story, you better get ready to take your armor off. You’re going to feel naked in front of the whole school, but that’s what it takes.
BONO: Based on my behavior just in the past week, the answer to that question is probably: Must try harder. The pilgrim’s lack of progress. I would say that I understand a little better where I came from and that where I end up depends on how I deal with that.
I’ve been calling it the hall of mirrors, when you try to figure out who you are and who’s behind the face. Then you just see all these faces staring back at you, and they’re all true. The real star of this movie is my dad. I sort of like him better than I like myself because humor has become so important to me. It’s not like everything needs to be a belly laugh, but there’s a freedom. People like me, we can sing about freedom. It’s much better to be it.
BONO: There’s a minister from Albania who said something that really stuck with me. She said: If you have a chance to hope, it’s a moral duty because most people don’t. So, yes, I feel we’ll figure our way out of this. This is a scary moment.
I think acknowledging that we can lose all we’ve gained is sobering but it may be course-changing. I just believe in people enough. I believe in Americans enough. I’m an Irish person, I can’t tell people how to vote.
I can tell you that a million children dying because their life support systems were pulled out of the wall, with glee, that’s not the America that I recognize or understand. You’re on the front lines of Europe here. America came in and saved the day. Ironically, so did Russia. More people died from Russia fighting the Nazis than everybody else. Now they tread on their own sacred memories by treading on the Ukrainians who also died on the front lines. I think part of that is that history didn’t acknowledge it.
I believe there is integrity in the Russian people. They need to change their leader, in my view. I believe there is integrity in the Americans. They will figure it out. Who was it who said: If you give Americans the facts, they will eventually make the right choice. Right now, they’re not getting the facts. Think of it: a 70% decline in HIV-AIDS, Republican-led, Democratically followed though. The greatest health intervention in the history of medicine to fight HIV-AIDS has been thrown away. It was nearly there. To a space traveler, it’s like getting to Mars and going, “Nah, we’ll go back.” It’s bewildering to me.
For more coverage of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, visit https://apnews.com/hub/cannes-film-festival.
The Edge, from second left, Bono and Sean Penn pose with military personnel for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Bono: Stories of Surrender' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
The Edge, left, and Bono pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Bono: Stories of Surrender' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)
Erik Messerschmid, from left, Bono, Kelly McNamara, and Jon Kamen pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Bono: Stories of Surrender' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Bono poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Bono: Stories of Surrender' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Bono poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Bono: Stories of Surrender' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Lewis Joly/Invision/AP)
