When it comes to Canada-U.S. relations, the Canadian side is a rudderless ship. There is no plan or strategy that the public can see; the PM is off in Asia as premiers across the country are freelancing, and a once stable relationship melts down.
On Monday night, as baseball fans turned their attention to the World Series, a gathering at the National Gallery in Ottawa that was supposed to celebrate the cross-border relationship turned sour.
Pete Hoekstra, Donald Trump’s ambassador to Canada, was seen tearing a strip off David Paterson, Ontario’s representative in Washington. It’s been described by those who witnessed it as a heated exchange, a one-way conversation, and yelling, with plenty of F-bombs.
It’s not known exactly what was said, but several who witnessed it said Hoekstra laid into Paterson for several minutes.
The occasion was the 31st Annual State of the Relationship event hosted by the Canadian American Business Council. In normal years, the ambassadors from Canada and the United States stand on stage and give a toast to our close ties.
This year, and it’s unclear why, Hoekstra didn’t go on stage and Canada’s ambassador to Washington, Kristen Hillman, performed the duties on her own.
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Prior to that, a VIP reception for sponsors of the event was held in a small room featuring a fireside chat with Dominic LeBlanc, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s point man on the Canada-U.S. relationship. Attendees said LeBlanc was candid about the fact that negotiations with the Americans had been going nowhere for months up until the Oct. 7 visit to the White House when Trump gave his officials orders to get a deal done with Canada.
According to those in attendance, LeBlanc gave some details about the progress but said that a deal wasn’t fully ready before it was derailed last week, in particular, on the numbers. While he didn’t elaborate, numbers could include quotas or a global tariff rate, such as the 10% tariff idea that has floated in Washington for months.
TRADE TALKS DERAILED
Of course, the deal being derailed has been blamed on the Ontario ad that was airing in the United States featuring Ronald Reagan speaking out against tariffs.
Trump had acknowledged the ad during an event in the Rose Garden on Tuesday of last week and said that he’d run the same ad if he were running Canada. By Thursday, Trump was furious with the ad, called it fake and cancelled all trade talks with Canada.
One of Trump’s top trade officials, Kevin Hassett, the National Economic Council director, said that the ad was just part of growing frustrations in dealing with the Canadian side.
BEHAVIOUR OF ‘TRUDEAU FOLKS’
“It’s not just one ad, it’s frustration that has built up over months,” Hassett said.
“A lack of flexibility and also leftover behaviours from the Trudeau folks that can be very frustrating for people who are negotiating,” he added when asked about the cause of the frustrations.
That cryptic mention of “Trudeau folks” appears to be a reference to Industry Minister Melanie Joly. In response to Stellantis and General Motors making changes to their production plans in Canada – GM dropping production of an EV vehicle that wasn’t selling and Stellantis choosing to produce the Jeep Compass in Illinois instead of Ontario – Joly threatened to sue both firms and then took away their tariff-free status for vehicles produced in the United States that are imported into Canada under CUSMA.
Both of those issues were raised by the companies with the White House between Trump’s Tuesday comments about the Ford ad and his Thursday comments.
Once again, this appears to be a case of the Canadian side getting in its own way, of our government being our own worst enemy. We need steady and solid leadership out of Ottawa, instead we have a PM who praises Trump to his face then takes veiled shots at him at home, in Europe and in Asia – moves that don’t go unnoticed.
Actions such as these may make his voting base feel good, but they also lead to the kind of breakdown in the relationship described above and that costs real people their jobs, their livelihood.
Carney and his team need to get their act together.
