Before he’d even been prime minister for a week, Mark Carney was in the air, en route first to Paris, for a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and then over to London to sit down with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Since then, Carney has hardly stopped, and by the time he marks his first anniversary as prime minister, he will have spent one of every five days in office out of the country.
Global News analyzed the itineraries of Carney and former prime ministers Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau and found that Carney has been on the road more than his two predecessors, a reflection of Carney’s promise, made during last spring’s election campaign, to diversify and strengthen Canada’s trade and security relationships beyond the United States.
“This prime minister has made trade diversification a real centrepiece of his time in office. And so it makes sense that he’s going out there trying to make deals,” said Roland Paris, a University of Ottawa professor who briefly served as a foreign policy advisor to Trudeau.
On Monday, the Prime Minister’s Office announced Carney will be wheels up again this week.
The Royal Canadian Air Force CC-330 Husky aircraft that carries the prime minister, aides, the media and others on these delegations will, beginning on Thursday, circumnavigate the globe, flying east from Ottawa to touchdown in Mumbai, New Delhi, Canberra, Sydney and Tokyo before returning to Ottawa.
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And it will be Carney’s second circumnavigation in as many months.
In January, Carney flew west to Vancouver and then kept going to Beijing, Doha, Davos and back to Ottawa.
By the time he returns home on March 7, Carney will have spent 68 days abroad in his first year, which, when you subtract the 36 days of the 2025 general election, represents more than 20 per cent of his time in office. By comparison, Trudeau was abroad for 34 days, or 9.3 per cent of the time, while Harper was abroad for 54 days, or 15 per cent of his first year.
Liberals say Carney’s travel is paying off.
“We live in a world where Canada continues to develop trading relationships, other strategic partnerships right around the world, and if I look at the job numbers, it’s sure yielding dividends,” said government House leader Steven MacKinnon.
But the pace — and cost — of Carney’s travel has been a frequent target for opposition MPs.
“He has flown enough kilometres to circle the earth four times, but after all that globetrotting, Canadians still get no deals, no relief, higher tariffs and higher bills,” said Carole Anstey, the Conservative MP for Long Range Mountains, in the House of Commons on Nov. 21.
“Every time the prime minister steps off a private jet, Canadians get hit with another tariff hike. After the U.S., there were higher tariffs. After China, there were new tariffs on seafood and grain.”
Mark Strahl, the Conservative MP for Chilliwack-Hope, told the House of Commons on Nov. 19: “What does he have to show for all of his gallivanting around in a private jet? He just has expensive photo ops, empty announcements and no real results for Canadian workers. Not only have these trips failed to get the deals he promised but tariffs and costs for Canadians seem to go higher each time he takes off.”
Carney does not, as the Conservatives claim, fly on a private jet. Just as Harper and Trudeau did, Carney flies on a Royal Canadian Air Force plane.
That said, Paris, the foreign policy expert, agrees that it is incumbent on the government to show how Canadians are benefiting from Carney’s travel.
“It makes sense for people to look at these trips and to ask whether they’re advancing those objectives,” said Paris.
Carney himself has made the case for the value of travelling to have to have face-to-face meetings with foreign political and business leaders.
His trip to China, for example, resulted in an agreement by China to drop punishing tariffs on Canadian canola. Indonesia agreed to drop tariffs on 95 per cent of Canadian goods after Carney travelled to Jakarta. A trip to the United Arab Emirates won a commitment by Emirati interests to invest $70 billion in Canada (though details have yet to be released).
But the big deal — a renewal of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement and the end of tariffs on Canadian aluminum, steel and cars — has yet to be landed.
And of all the places Carney has visited in his first year so far, Washington has been the most frequent destination, with a total of five days spent by Carney in the American capital.
© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
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