"As you know from real estate, there are some places that are never for sale… having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign… it's not for sale. Won't be for sale, ever — never, never, never, never."

Why begin this column with a provocative headline and a blunt statement?

Actually, the raging India-Pakistan stand-off prompted me to centralise this point — only after reading the statement above. It came from Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney during his first meeting with US President Donlad Trump at White House on May 7.

Only a person of Carney's credentials and calibre — committed nationalist, loaded with knowledge and with a belief in public mandate (owners of Canada) — could have been this emphatic when talking to Trump, whose propensity to project power and bully his interlocutors is meanwhile a source of concern even for the European allies of the United States.

In fact Trump's repeated assertion that Canada assimilate in the USA as 51st state served as the single largest factor to unite Canadians across the board. The general elections in April also manifest the rejection by the vast majority of Canadians of Trump's idea of acquiring Canada.

Carney served as the eighth governor of both Bank of Canada (2008-2013) and Bank of England (2013-2020). He is remembered as a person who........

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