October 27, 2026
MONTREAL — If Mark Carney was anticipating a quiet, even raffiné Canada-EU Summit this week in this most European city of non-European cities in this most European country of non-European countries, he may already be disappointed.
The Prime Minister, who recently accepted compliments from a reporter on his vastly improved French and credited his teacher for his fluency, may want to add a term to his weekly devoir: “guerre des drapeaux”.
It means “battle of the flags”, and it describes the unique diplomatic tension that afflicts Ottawa and Quebec City when it comes to the finer points of matters international, especially those that touch on Quebec’s status as a distinct diplomatic entity, most especially in France.
Imagine the classic example of this conflict class as a literal fight over the placement of the Canadian and Quebec flags at an Elysée reception, with the ambassador and the délégué général engaged in fisticuffs over the size and prominence-of-place of the maple leaf vs. the fleur-de-lys.
In this week’s real-life shock-and-awe edition, newly elected Parti Québécois Premier Paul St-Pierre Plamondon has accused Carney of muzzling him ahead of the Canada-EU Summit during which the transatlantic political and economic allies will spend Thursday and Friday refining the recent upgrade of their relationship, both on the rebound from a sadly, dangerously deranged America.
Prime Minister Carney, having not yet learned the term “guerre des drapeaux” apparently misunderstood the context of this predictable traquenard, thinking it was a routine protocol issue rather than a fresh skirmish in a longstanding war, and countered PSPP’s demand for representation with an invitation to be a tarmac dignitary greeter, and an offer of a non-speaking role at a diplomatic dinner on Thursday.
On Tuesday, the “How dare you, sir!” hyperbole escalated publicly into something borderline Trumpian, but so refreshingly coherent that it made one nostalgic for the days before righteous indignation on the part of politicians was EXPRESSED IN ALL-CAPS.
In this week’s shock-and-awe edition, newly elected Parti Québécois Premier Paul St-Pierre Plamondon has accused Carney of muzzling him ahead of the Canada-EU Summit during which the transatlantic political and economic allies will spend Thursday and Friday refining the recent upgrade of their relationship.
“The federal government would have us believe,” wrote St-Pierre Plamondon in an X post, “that giving the Quebec premier permission to serve shrimp cocktails at a reception constitutes an acceptable and sufficient form of influence in representing Quebec’s interests.”
(For the translation nerds — “shrimp cocktails” was “crevettes cocktail” in the original, and for the Office de la langue française, le mot français pour “cocktail” c’est “cocktail”).
He then unsheathed the cultural-reference equivalent of a bazooka: “In the film *Le temps des bouffons* [The Time of the Buffoons], Pierre Falardeau highlighted, with derision, the fact that Quebecers are treated as water carriers on their own territory, condemned to let financial elites with no democratic legitimacy dictate the fundamental decisions of their society.”
For his part, Carney, clearly still mistaking Fight Club for a cotillion, channelled both Letitia Baldridge and Charles Dickens. “He was invited to the dinner and he refused,” he told reporters on Tuesday. “It’s his decision to leave the chair empty.”
(That was a pointed callback to St-Pierre Plamondon’s no-show at Monday’s First Nations-First Ministers Conference, the first indication that his disruption-narrative weapons of choice as premier will be absence and/or presence).
As Tuesday’s spectacle drew a larger and larger crowd of virtual rubberneckers, hecklers, and punters, the only thing it was missing finally materialized when Donald Trump’s long-suffering writers’ room weighed in on “Truth Social” with a congratulatory note for St-Pierre Plamondon on the occasion of his election win — 22 days after the fact.
It included a troll link to an Irish Times piece headlined Separatists win Quebec provincial election in blow to Mark Carney that the president of the United States has evidently been carrying around for three weeks.
Because. The only thing more appealing to Donald Trump than a timely Canada-Quebec guerre des drapeaux is one in which he gets to wield the third flag.
Policy Editor and Publisher Lisa Van Dusen has served as Washington bureau chief for Sun Media, Washington Columnist for the Ottawa Citizen, international writer for Peter Jennings at ABC News, and as an editor at AP National in New York and UPI in Washington.
