Lake Ontario ‘now and always,’ Carney says after Trump ‘Lake America’ order

Prime Minister Mark Carney said the name of Lake Ontario will remain “now and always” after U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order that he said would have the U.S. refer to the Great Lake as “Lake America,” his latest shot at Canada after trade talks fell apart last week.

Trump, speaking in the Oval Office after signing the order, took the opportunity to once again criticize Canada’s trade policies and leadership but insisted he loves the country and that renaming Lake Ontario was not about sending a message.

“No message,” he told reporters. “As you know, Canada has been ripping us off for a long time on trade, very sadly. Even the military — you know, we defend Canada for nothing, we don’t get anything.

“They’re not a state, but they want to be treated like they’re a state. And so we just can’t do that anymore,” he added. “We love the people of Canada. I don’t think their representatives do an appropriate job. Maybe they’ll change, I really don’t know. It doesn’t make much difference.”

The U.S. president equated the move to his order for the U.S. to call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” last year — a move that has not been recognized by the rest of the world. Even U.S.-based Google has opted to put the “Gulf of America” name in parenthesis after the original name in Google Maps.

Carney noted in a statement that the name Lake Ontario is over 400 years old and “comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means ‘the lake is beautiful, the lake is big.'”

2:14 Ontario rejects Trump’s executive order renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America

“We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms,” Carney said on social media.

“Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and always.”

Experts have told Global News that Canada and the rest of the world are under no obligation to recognize Trump’s new order, noting the name Lake Ontario appeared on maps more than a century before the U.S. declared independence and long before there was a province called Ontario.

“It’s ridiculous on a number of levels,” Daniel Macfarlane, an environmental historian at Western Michigan University and author of The Lives of Lake Ontario, told Global News in an earlier interview.

“Trump really doesn’t even have the capability to actually rename it in a meaningful way without Canadian consent.”

1:55 ‘Lake America’: Trump threatens to rename Lake Ontario amid trade war with Canada

Trump said Tuesday the U.S. was giving “serious consideration” to changing the name of Lake Ontario as relations with Canada, and particularly Ontario, sour. He later posted a graphic depicting the Great Lake under the proposed “Lake America” name, as well as a TikTok video of himself crossing out Lake Ontario with a Sharpie on a printed-out map and writing “Lake America” overtop.

The move came after Ontario Premier Doug Ford lashed out at Trump over his new 50 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods and the collapse of trade talks, calling the U.S. president a “loser,” a “bully” and a “dictator.”

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“The lake change, ‘Lake of America,’ is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, actually,” Trump said Thursday. “As you know, we took something called the Gulf of Mexico, we changed it, and now it’s very routinely the ‘Gulf of America.’

“If you think about it, we have a gulf, we have a lake, now all we need is an ocean. So maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific. Maybe we’ll change them both.”

Asked why he was taking such actions against American allies rather than its adversaries, Trump replied: “Well they haven’t treated us very well,” referring to Canadian government officials.

“They’re nasty people,” he said, adding they’re “the worst to deal with on trade” and “feel entitled.”

Canadian officials were quick to slam Trump’s order Thursday.

0:46 ‘Lake Ontario, that’s gone’: Trump says ‘a good pen and some intelligence’ enough to change lake’s name

“You know when a rock band is really over the hill and you see them in a casino playing some song from, like, 50 years ago? I think that’s the part of Donald Trump’s presidency we’re at now,” Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew told reporters at an unrelated press conference in Winnipeg.

“He thought he had a real hit, a real ‘golden oldie’ with the Gulf of Mexico, and he’s trying to bring back that. He’s trying to play the hits for his base, but I think everybody here thinks it’s a little sad and it’s not his best work.”

Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston posted on X: “We’re into some real foolishness now. It’s Lake Ontario, buddy.”

6:54 U.S. takes notice over Doug Ford’s inflammatory comments about Trump

Trump’s executive order says the U.S. lays claim to most of the “volume” of Lake Ontario and is mostly responsible for its security, economic activity and environmental stewardship.

“The United States has invested nearly $4 billion in protecting the Great Lakes freshwater ecosystem in the last decade, while Canada has invested far less in similar initiatives over the same period,” the document says.

“The Lake will continue to play a pivotal role in shaping America’s future and the global economy. In recognition of this flourishing economic resource and its critical importance to our nation’s economy and its people, I am directing that the Lake officially be renamed as Lake America.”

Macfarlane pointed out that the Canadian side of Lake Ontario is actually “far more populated” than the American side in upstate New York, which is “more or less the U.S. backwoods” other than the city of Rochester.

The lake, along with the St. Lawrence River, is “sort of the centre of the original Canada,” he added.

“It’s far more important to Canada than it is to the United States, which on top of the difficulty of how you would even rename it, it just doesn’t really even make logical sense,” Macfarlane said.

“I think it’s just his usual buffoonery tactics.”

The order directs U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to work with the Board on Geographic Names to ensure all U.S. federal government references to Lake Ontario, “including on executive department and agency maps, contracts, and other documents and communications,” reflect Trump’s name change.

“We’re on it, Mr. President!,” Burgum posted on social media, adding he and the U.S. Geological Survey were “PROUD” to implement the order.

“The places and waters that border our nation and support our economy should reflect the greatness of the United States,” he wrote.

As governor of North Dakota, which borders Canada, Burgum often spoke about the “crucial” need to ensure a strong relationship, pointing out that Canada is the state’s largest trading partner “by far.”

Democrats, who are running to take control of Congress in November’s midterm elections, lambasted the move for not addressing Americans’ priorities.

“Donald Trump picked a fight with Canada that is costing you money. Instead of fixing it, he is spending your tax dollars to rename Lake Ontario,” U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries posted on X.

“Republicans don’t give a damn about making your life more affordable.”

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Trump was putting his own grievances first and “Americans last.”

“Inflation increasing. The Iran war raging on with no end in sight. A trade war with Canada. And what does Trump want? To rename Lake Ontario,” he wrote on social media.

—With files from Global’s Touria Izri