Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney doesn’t appear to be taking President Donald Trump’s latest threat of an across-the-board 35% tariff on all Canadian goods very seriously.

He was on vacation when Trump issued the declaration last week and has remained on vacation ever since.

Canada’s ethics commissioner revealed Friday that Carney has control or interest in hundreds of Canadian and American companies.

The PM did announce an “emergency” meeting with his cabinet and all Canadian premiers for July 22 in Ontario’s cottage country. But that’s not until next week. And an emergency response usually entails dealing with issues right now, today, immediately.

So why is Carney so blasé about a tariff that could be catastrophic for the Canadian economy?

Fentanyl flow

Unlike Trump's regular "51st state" jabs, this is not idle trolling. The president has indicated that any counter-tariffs will result in an increase in the U.S. tariff. He's also restated his disappointment in Canada’s lack of resolve to address the flow of fentanyl across the Canadian border.

Whatever happened to that "fentanyl czar" that former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed, anyway?

Kevin Brosseau has literally not made the news since the announcement of his appointment in February. Since then, there have been increasing revelations of fentanyl precursors arriving at the port of Vancouver, where they are shipped to drug factories deep within the interior of British Columbia. FBI Director Kash Patel has called out this Canadian connection, yet we have heard nothing from Brosseau.

“If Canada works with me to stop the flow of fentanyl, we will, perhaps, consider an adjustment to this letter,” Trump wrote in his letter to Carney.

Out of office

Carney blandly responded to Trump on Thursday, saying in a post on X that the Liberal government had “steadfastly defended our workers and businesses” and “will continue to do so as we work towards the revised deadline of August 1.”

“Canada has made vital progress to stop the scourge of fentanyl in North America,” he claimed, without indicating just what kind of progress had been made.

Is Carney relying on his apparent friendship with Trump and the goodwill of the president who endorsed Carney during Canada’s recent federal election campaign?

Or is Carney deliberately brewing a crisis in order to further his control of the Canadian Parliament and distract attention from the real elephant in the room: Carney’s massive conflict of interest problems?

RELATED: Fentanyl from Canada is killing Americans — but Trudeau cares more about prosecuting the Freedom Convoy

  Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images

Blind trust

When Carney first won the leadership of the Liberal Party, he was quick to remind everyone that he was not legally obliged to reveal his corporate involvement and stock investments for months. He feigned outrage whenever he was asked about potential conflict of interests as a result of the financial matrix that has generated his personal wealth.

Well, the truth about Carney’s massive financial interests finally emerged last week. His response? There's no problem because all of it is in a “blind trust.”

Canada’s ethics commissioner revealed Friday that Carney has control or interest in hundreds of Canadian and American companies.

Carney's much-publicized sting as Brookfield Asset Management chairman of the board was only the beginning. It turns out his financial interests embrace a huge swath of green energy corporations and companies like Stripe Inc.

Free reign

But the ethics commissioner has essentially allowed Carney to self-regulate and to participate in broad matters relating to his companies “unless those interests are disproportionate to the other members of the class.” That means Carney will essentially be trusted to govern himself.

That is a recipe for disaster when it comes to a well-connected operator who is already aggrandizing power within the prime minister’s office.

To recap: The most conflicted prime minister in the history of Canada will be given the benefit of the doubt to maintain a financial empire without much oversight while being responsible for generating huge infrastructure projects under legislation that his government just passed.

Just say 'Trump'

Sounds like an ideal time for Carney to demonize Trump and the United States again. Otherwise, Canada’s lapdog media might dwell too much on what Carney stands to gain from his green, China-friendly policies.

It's also in keeping with the Liberals' long tradition of never wasting a crisis. Trudeau was fairly efficient at finding opportunities to advance his party's authoritarian agenda; recall his invocation of the Emergency Act to crush the Freedom Convoy protest.

But Carney — enmeshed in a tangled web of business interests and significantly more ambitious than his feckless predecessor — promises to go even further.