At the 21st EU-Canada summit in Montreal on October 29 and 30, 2026, the Government of Canada named the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism as one of its three priority trade issues with the EU, next to the EU Deforestation Regulation and proposed EU measures on pesticides.
The joint statement signed by Prime Minister Mark Carney, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Council President António Costa does not mention CBAM. Nothing in the Regulation changes: Canadian iron ore, steel and aluminium stay in scope, and no country's carbon price is recognised under Article 9 yet.
What the official documents say
The Canadian Prime Minister's Office published a backgrounder on October 30, 2026 with a section headed "Addressing Canada-EU bilateral trade issues". It states: "The three issues of concern for Canada that were identified for this accelerated work are the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, the EU Deforestation Regulation, and proposed EU measures on pesticides."
The EU, in turn, "identified Canada's steel tariff-rate quota regime, Canada's application of luxury tax on certain electric vehicles, and the Buy Canadian policy as priority trade issues of concern". Both sides "have engaged constructively and made progress in advancing discussions on these issues ahead of the Summit" and "remain committed to ongoing joint work".
The joint statement itself, "Canada and the European Union building together an Alliance for the Future", launches a Canada-EU Alliance for the Future and covers critical raw materials, an LNG feasibility study, Canada joining the EuroHPC supercomputing network and talks on Erasmus+ and Galileo.
Its only climate-policy line close to the subject says that "carbon pricing and industrial decarbonisation alongside clean-tech value chains" are "key to reaching our shared 2050 net-zero and decarbonisation goals".
No Commission or Council text from the summit mentions CBAM, and the Commission has announced no change to its position that the mechanism applies equally to all third countries.
What was said at the closing press conference
According to CBC News, Carney said at the closing news conference that there are "common solutions" to resolving the carbon import levy on Canadian products such as iron ore, steel, aluminium and cement, and von der Leyen said she could not have answered the question better, referring to "trade irritants".
Canada's ambassador-designate to the EU, Jonathan Wilkinson, told CBC that talks are heading in the right direction but are not resolved, and that "they will recognize our carbon price". These are press reports of oral remarks. No written EU commitment on recognition exists.
CBC also reported on October 28, 2026, from a Global Affairs Canada memo of December 10, 2025 obtained under access to information, that Canadian iron, steel and aluminium are not exempt from CBAM despite Canada's carbon pricing and the CETA trade agreement, and that Global Affairs estimates about CAD 2.8 billion of goods a year are exposed, mostly metals.
That is consistent with the law: Regulation (EU) 2023/956 exempts only the countries and territories listed in Annex III, which are the EFTA states and a handful of EU-linked territories, and CETA contains no CBAM carve-out.
What "recognition" would mean under the Regulation
The route Ottawa describes is Article 9 of Regulation (EU) 2023/956. An authorised CBAM declarant may claim a reduction in the number of certificates to be surrendered for a carbon price "effectively paid" in the country of origin, with any rebate or compensation deducted (Article 9(1)), on the basis of documentation certified by an independent person (Article 9(2)).
The implementing act that sets the rules for this deduction is still not adopted as of October 31, 2026. The Commission's draft describes four recognition pathways, including emissions trading systems and point-source carbon taxes.
As from 2027 the Commission may also set yearly default carbon prices per third country and publish them in the CBAM Registry (Article 9(4)), which is the only way an importer declaring on default values can claim the reduction.
Canada prices industrial emissions through the federal Output-Based Pricing System and provincial systems that meet the federal benchmark. The federal consumer fuel charge was set to zero on April 1, 2025, which does not touch the industrial systems.
Whether and how much of the industrial price counts as "effectively paid" per tonne of a specific good, after the free intensity standards those systems grant, is exactly the question the Article 9 act and the certification rules have to answer.
Until the act applies, no deduction is operational for any country, Canada included. Our Article 9 carbon price deduction guide tracks the draft.
Why it matters for EU importers
The EU imported EUR 2.60 billion of CBAM-covered goods from Canada in 2025, 2.3 percent of extra-EU imports by value and the thirteenth-largest origin (Eurostat Comext DS-045409, 2025). Two products carry almost all of it. Unwrought aluminium was EUR 1.41 billion, which makes Canada the fourth-largest non-EU source with 8.6 percent of the value.
Iron ore sinter and pellets under CN 2601 12 00 were EUR 1.00 billion, the largest single origin with 47.6 percent of extra-EU value in that heading. Steel products of Chapters 72 and 73 were EUR 157 million.
For importers of Canadian aluminium and iron ore the summit changes nothing in the 2026 declaration: embedded emissions are declared on actual values or default values, the free allocation adjustment applies as for every origin, and the carbon price term is zero until an Article 9 act applies.
A recognised Canadian carbon price would lower the certificate count for actual-value declarants from the year the act takes effect, and for default-value declarants only once a default carbon price for Canada is published in the Registry.
Agreements of this kind are negotiated by the Commission; neither the summit statement nor the backgrounder sets a date.
Sources
The official texts are the Prime Minister of Canada's backgrounder on the Alliance for the Future and the joint statement of October 30, 2026, also published by the Council of the EU.
The press-conference remarks and the Global Affairs memo are reported by CBC News (October 30 and October 28, 2026). Background on how the mechanism treats every origin is in the EU CBAM guide.
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