Canadian Liberals are scrambling to fill the power vacuum left by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation, using a great deal of tough talk intended to convince voters that the party can stand up to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in a potential tariff and border security conflict.
Trudeau announced his resignation on January 6, using a maneuver known as “prorogation” to force the legislature out of session so he could remain as a lame-duck “caretaker” prime minister until March.
One of the major reasons Trudeau lost the confidence of the Liberal Party was his struggle to handle the incoming U.S. president. Trudeau was already unpopular with the public for a host of reasons, and his unpopularity dragged his party down in some painful special election losses, but the last straw for many of his Liberal colleagues was the election of Trump.
Trudeau did his best to talk tough in an interview with MSNBC on Sunday, assuring viewers that Canada does not want a trade fight with the Trump administration but is ready to rumble if Trump makes good on his tariff threats.
“As we did last time, we are ready to respond with tariffs as necessary. We are the number one export partner of about 35 different U.S. states, and anything that thickens the border between us ends up costing American citizens and American jobs,” he said.
Trudeau also insisted Canada is doing a decent job on border security, despite Trump’s accusations to the contrary.
“Less than 1% of the illegal migrants, less than 1% of the fentanyl that comes into the United States, comes from Canada. So we’re not a problem. We’ve actually responded to his request for us to do more with billions of dollars worth of investments to even further strengthen the security of our borders,” he said.
Trudeau’s foreign minister, Melanie Joly, chimed in with a threat to restrict Canadian energy imports to the United States if Trump imposes tariffs.
“What I can tell you is, everything is on the table,” Joly told CTV on Sunday morning.
Joly’s threat was immediately shot down by Danielle Smith, premier of the oil-rich Alberta province, who said her administration would not “support a tariff war with our largest trading partner and closest ally.”
“Alberta’s government believes that the pathway to strengthening this relationship is to double our oil production and increase exports of crude oil to the U.S., enabling them to export even more light oil to the rest of the world,” Smith said, after journeying to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to meet with the president-elect.
Smith said she held a “constructive dialogue” with the returning American president and seemed convinced that “diplomacy” would be more effective with Trump than confrontation.
“The United States and Canada are both proud and independent nations with one of the most important security alliances on earth and the largest economic partnership in history. We need to preserve our independence while we grow this critical partnership for the benefit of Canadians and Americans for generations to come,” she said.
Other premiers have been more inclined toward confrontation, perhaps playing more to an audience of Canadian voters than Trump. Ontario’s Doug Ford, for example, suggested cutting off electricity exports to Michigan, Wisconsin, and New York state – an idea Smith not only rejected as a “non-starter,” but publicly asked Ford to “walk back.”
“I think it’s too dangerous to even talk about cutting off energy. Wars have been started over that kind of conversation,” Smith said in December after Ford proposed the electricity shutoff. As of last week, Ford was talking about increasing electricity exports to America, in the hopes that Trump might see the value of a “renewed strategic alliance” that could help Trump meet his economic and security policy goal of “decoupling” from China.
Ford has yet to secure a meeting with Trump, while Smith has been invited to his second inauguration, sending a rather clear signal about the president-elect’s preference for diplomacy over confrontation.
Former U.S. Ambassador to Canada Bruce Heyman told the Globe and Mail on Monday that Canada’s provincial executives are basically making up foreign policy on their own, since there is no longer a firm hand on the rudder in Ottawa.
“We’ll see how effective it is, but obviously I think having a team all on one side and communicating together and staying on message is much more effective than disparate, independent views,” Heyman said.
The Globe and Mail noted that some of Canada’s premiers seem eager to address Trump’s concerns on border security and fentanyl, rather than arrogantly discarding his concerns as Trudeau did. The premiers hope in return that Trump might grant them exemptions from whatever tariffs he chooses to impose.
Thus, Alberta is setting up a “red zone” to inspect suspicious traffic along the Montana border, Ontario is sending provincial police officers to beef up the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) presence along its lengthy border with America, and Manitoba is telling its wildlife conservation officers to keep an eye out for illegal migrants and drug smugglers.
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