Terry Newman: Trudeau puts Canada last

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It’s finally happened. On Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he will be imposing a 10 per cent tariff on Canadian energy products and 25 per cent tariffs on everything else, starting Tuesday. We have no idea what kind of negotiations took place between the Liberals and Trump. All we know is that Canada is now facing the greatest economic threat it has faced in decades.

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Here’s what has to happen now: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberal party need to end their unconscionable self-serving break from Parliament immediately, so that elected MPs from across the country can discuss the best path forward for Canada now.

When asked if he would recall Parliament at a news conference Saturday, Trudeau said “we have the tools to support Canadians at this time” — read cheques for everyone like during COVID — which would make Canadians dependent on a Liberal government going into the upcoming election. So that’s a “no” on recalling Parliament, I guess.

The voices of elected members of the House of Commons represent the interests of their constituents’ ridings across Canada, none of which will now be untouched by Trump’s tariffs. All MPs should have been involved in discussions about how to deal with Trump’s threats from day one.

Thanks to prorogation, the Liberal party avoided a confidence vote it was sure to lose, and is holding a leadership race that they could have very well held with Parliament open.

Canadians will want to know what happened during negotiations with the Americans, so the Liberal party had better have some answers. While some cabinet ministers appear to have been having a good time taking photographs in Washington, often with Democrats, it’s unclear what kind of negotiations were held, or what the content of them were.

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It’s certainly not a good sign that on Jan. 31, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt expressed her distaste with Justin Trudeau, saying it would be “wise for him to talk to president Trump directly before pushing outlandish comments to the media.” Trudeau claimed at Saturday night’s news conference that Trump would not talk to him. This should have been predictable.

The first rule of being a successful negotiator is being able to make people like you. And Trudeau has done everything possible to undermine his relationship with Donald Trump and Americans.

Trudeau immediately made Trump his enemy in 2017. Only eight days after the president was sworn in, Trudeau posted, in response to Trump’s executive order limiting the number of refugees allowed into the U.S., his infamous tweet, “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada.” An undeniable migrant crisis in Canada followed.

And Canada’s lax attitude to border crossings just happens to be one of Trump’s complaints justifying the tariffs, except in the opposite direction. In the first 10 months of 2024, the U.S. Border Patrol intercepted more than 21,000 migrants crossing illegally from Canada into the United States, illustrating that Canada does, in fact, have a border security problem. 

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Trump’s other complaint is that in 2024, more than 21,000 pounds of fentanyl was apprehended at U.S. borders which his executive order points out is enough to kill more than four billion people. Fentanyl is odourless, tasteless, and therefore hard to detect. And only a tiny amount, two milligrams (about the size of grams of salt) is all that’s needed to kill the average adult, as it is 100 times more toxic than morphine. So, while only 43 pounds were actually intercepted coming from the Canadian border, this doesn’t justify dismissing concerns about Canada’s fentanyl market.

But don’t take my word for it. Mathieu Bertrand, chief superintendent of Serious Organized Crime & border Integrity at RCMP Federal Policing told CBC in 2023 that Canada is not only a significant producer of fentanyl, we’re also an exporter, like Trump complains. And Canadian fentanyl has gone global. In other words, this is a real problem that Canada has to tackle, even if Canada is not as large a producer as Mexico at this time. Look around at our neighbourhoods. That could quickly change. We do ourselves no favours pretending it isn’t a legitimate concern.

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The president’s order says that the tariffs, which are also applied against Mexico, will remain in place “until the crisis is alleviated.”

Trudeau’s relationship with Trump and Americans has been going downhill since 2017, with the prime minister’s anti-American arrogance on full display recently on American television. Trump no longer takes Trudeau seriously, as evidenced by his Governor of Canada remark. Parliament never should have been prorogued with Trudeau at the helm.

An immediate election should have been held to ensure a government with an actual mandate would be place during the coming economic crisis.

Instead, negotiations have failed and we are now going to be issuing “25 per cent tariffs against a $155 billion worth of American goods,” including immediate tariffs on $30 billion worth of goods as of Tuesday. This will be followed by another $125 billion in 21 days to “allow Canadian companies and supply chains to seek to find alternatives.”

Whatever Trump’s complaints about the border, that doesn’t mean tariffs are justified, especially against longstanding allies, but one has to wonder if this all could have been avoided, perhaps by Canada taking the border crossing and fentanyl issues seriously, and by having Parliament up and running with a respected leader who can actually negotiate. 

Canadians, and especially the government’s Laurentian elite enablers, should unite in demanding that the Liberal party ends prorogation immediately, despite Trudeau’s stated plans to the contrary. The limits of our democracy have already been stretched far enough.

National Post

tnewman@postmedia.com

X: @TLNewmanMTL

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