Susan Delacourt is an Ottawa-based columnist covering national politics for the Star. Reach her via email: [email protected] or follow her on Twitter: @susandelacourt
Even before Mark Carney headed off to China this week, he got several sharp reminders of challenges that will be awaiting the prime minister when he comes home.
They come from outside the country and inside it too, and none of them are easily fixed.
Donald Trump took some time out of his busy, world-destabilization efforts this month to pronounce that he didn’t care about Canada-U.S. trade, reminding us once again that the Carney government has come up short in efforts to get that issue on track.
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“There’s no real advantage to it — it’s irrelevant,” Trump said of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement, which comes under review this year.
“It expires very shortly and we could have it or not,” Trump said, arguing Canada is the desperate player at the negotiating table. “It wouldn’t matter to me. I think they want it. I don’t really care about it.”
The president, who was touring a Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan when he made those remarks, also seemed to be doubling down on his vow to get automobile manufacturing out of Canada.
“The problem is we don’t need their product. You know, we don’t need cars made in Canada. We don’t need cars made in Mexico. We want to make them here, and that’s what’s happening.”
That’s also exactly what U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick warned a high-powered audience in Toronto last October, when he said Canada better get used to coming second to the U.S. in the auto business.
Carney has been pretty good so far at managing to persuade all kinds of people that “yes” is always possible, that somehow everybody can get what they’re seeking from Ottawa. But on several fronts this week, it was hard to escape the fact that he might have to stare down a hard no or two in the weeks and months ahead.
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His meeting with Coastal First Nations in Prince Rupert, B.C. just before he got on the plane to China certainly underlined that Alberta’s much desired pipeline — the centrepiece of a big deal Carney made with the province last year — is up against formidable opposition.
“You heard us loud and clear … It’s a ‘no,'” Haida Nation president Gaagwiis Jason Alsop said after the meeting. Marilyn Slett, president of Coastal First Nations, said they were considering “every tool in the tool box,” legal or otherwise, to block any pipeline.
This hypothetical pipeline has already been stirring up tension between Alberta and British Columbia, which Carney is going to have to manage at some point, possibly when all the premiers gather later this month with the prime minister. That’s not the only fault line in the federation either.
Premier Doug Ford was throwing around the word no as well this week, notably on the prospect of lifting Canadian tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.
The tariffs, which Ford wants to remain in place, are also a big item on the agenda of Carney’s China trip, the Star reported earlier this week. Provinces such as Saskatchewan want the tariffs dropped so that China will drop its retaliatory tariffs on canola oil, pork and seafood.
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe has joined Carney on the China visit, which may be a hint that Ford may end up disappointed. The premier, asked about that on Tuesday, said he was “absolutely 100 per cent dead against” the levies being lifted, fearing it would mean China dumping inexpensive electric vehicles into the imperilled Canadian auto market.
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Ford says he understands Moe is doing his job, but that the Ontario premier has a duty to speak up for jobs in his province.
Carney, who remains personally popular in the polls and with premiers, has managed any potential tension simply because he hasn’t had to turn anything down yet. Many of the measures he has taken are focused on the long term, whether that’s major projects or the big budget unveiled late last year.
But one measure in that budget, cuts to the public service, is looming into short-term reality this week. “Federal departments are issuing workforce reduction notices on a scale not seen in decades, raising serious concerns about the federal government’s ability to deliver public services Canadians rely on,” the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada declared in a news release on Tuesday. Statistics Canada alone is shedding more than 800 jobs.
Right now, the biggest challenge confronting Carney is getting the China trip right — “recalibrating” the relationship, as the government likes to say. But events this week, whether it’s Trump rattling trade threats again, premiers divided, or what seems to be an emerging standoff on pipelines, are warnings to Carney that he has a lot of relationships to get calibrated in the not-so-distant future.
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