Front Burner - Is Canada ready for the next tariff fight?

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

Many Canadians breathed a sigh of relief on Monday, after Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump agreed to pause tariffs for at least 30 days. But how permanent is this solution? And with the clock ticking on the Liberal leadership race, a prorogued parliament, and a looming federal election, will Canada’s domestic political chaos hamper our ability to respond if the fragile tariff peace doesn’t hold?Today Rosemary Barton, CBC’s Chief Political Correspondent, joins us to break down the government’s response so far, and the rocky road ahead.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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This is a CBC Podcast. Hey, I'm Jonathan Mulbsey in for Jimmy Poisson. So, Donald Trump's economy-destroying tariffs are on ice, at least for a month. The US president kicked the can down the road after our Prime Minister made a bunch of promises about border security. But lots of big questions remain. Do these measures make the tariff threats disappear for good? Is the political instability in Ottawa a liability? And could this crack in the once stable Canada-U.S. partnership deepen into a full blown rupture? Rosemary Barton is here, CBC's chief political

correspondent. Well, Rosie, thanks so much for taking the time to talk with us. Happy to do it. So since Monday, there's been a lot of talk that the deals that both Mexico and Canada made with Trump were basically just theatrics, that they mostly made commitments to things that they were already doing. After the deal was reached on Monday, Trudeau highlighted this $1.3 billion border security plan that was actually first announced six weeks ago. So who played who here?

Did Trump win this round or did Trudeau? I'm not sure I'm in a position to declare a winner at least yet. I will say that there were some new things, new elements to what was promised to the president. You're right that the big package, the more than billion dollars had been announced before. But there were a few other things that the Canadian government threw at the president in the second phone call of two that happened on Monday. One was 10,000 frontline personnel working on the border, so not 10,000 additional people, but 10,000 people total,

so there will be more people working there. The other was this idea of the fentanyl czar, which is kind of undefined as of yet, but it would be someone yet to be hired who would work with the United States between Canada and the United States to sort of look after the issue of Fentanyl would also coordinate across jurisdictions and police departments right across the country. You know, czar is a word that Donald Trump really likes, that Americans really like, and it's not a word that we typically use, but sometimes you've got

to buy into the language to sort of sell the idea. So that's also a new component. And then finally, they offered up some additional money to work on intelligence sharing around this issue of fentanyl, $200 million. What that looks like, again, we don't really know. Because remember, this is just sort of happening on the fly, right, as the Canadian government starts to wrap its head around what is going to make the president back down. So I mean, I would say it's a win for Canada because it buys us some time to try and keep these tariffs off.

It might be a win for Trump too if this is just the first play in a long chess match. And it's interesting that all these measures are kind of aimed at addressing this concern about fentanyl when it appears that such a small amount of illegal fentanyl going into the US comes from Canada. So in that sense, did we have to make some serious concessions to Trump's demands? Yeah. I mean, I think a couple of things to remind people, it's estimated the last sort of amount for a year was 19 kilos is what went from Canada to the United States. Just so you have an

idea going the other way, Mexico to the United States, it's more than 9,500 kilos. So, you know, it could not be more different in terms of what they're dealing with. There is a reality though that Canada has had some super labs, right? And been dealing with that in British Columbia. Canada has also in recent weeks started to move more aggressively on precursors, so the things that you use to make the fentanyl. So it's not as though the problem is not existent, but it is not in any way of the same kind of magnitude that the United States was dealing with in other places. So I don't know that we're making concessions, but I think that we are tackling it in a way that probably we wouldn't have frankly if the president hadn't been asking for these specific things.

You know, when I was doom scrolling on social media on Saturday night after Trudeau gave his speech announcing the government's retaliatory tariffs. If President Trump wants to usher in a new golden age for the United States, the better path is to partner with Canada, not to punish us. I saw that even some of his harshest critics were ready to give him an amount of credit in how he came across. How do you think Trudeau has come across to Canadians in his response to all this? I think there's a lot of advantage to being in a job that you know you're not going to have five

weeks from now when you're positioning yourself as leader. And I say that glibly, but I do think he's taking this very seriously. I mean, you talk to anyone around the prime minister who's advising him right now, and this is all they are doing. Like really all they are doing is focusing on this relationship and how to prevent this from happening. His speech on Saturday, you know, as I was watching it, I guess it was 9 p.m. on Saturday, I felt it really met the moment, right? It really struck the right chords. He did a few important things. He spoke directly to Americans to talk to them about what tariffs would mean for them, their jobs, their country. Tariffs against Canada will put your jobs at risk,

potentially shutting down American auto assembly plants and other manufacturing facilities. They will raise costs for you, including food at the grocery stores and gas at the pump. He listed the ways that Canada has stood by the United States, whether it be from wars to 9-11 to fighting California wildfires. From the beaches of Normandy to the mountains of the Korean Peninsula, from the fields of Flanders to the streets of Kandahar. We have fought and died alongside you. He went through the things that he believes were important to know about the border, as we were just talking about the lack of really fentanyl that was coming from that way.

Less than 1% of fentanyl, less than 1% of illegal crossings into the United States, come from Canada. And then he talked about the measures they were going to take, yes, the counter tariffs, but also appealed to Canadians to say, if you're going to do one thing right now to help, it is time to choose Canada. There are many ways for you to do your part. It might mean checking the labels at the supermarket and picking Canadian-made products. It might mean opting for Canadian rye over Kentucky bourbon or forgoing Florida orange juice altogether.

An appeal to Canadians to start buying Canadian, maybe not vacationing in the United States, things that I think might be still going to happen even without this tariff threat for 30 days. So we do have this 30-day reprieve. What do we know about what the government will do during these 30 days? Is it going to be trying to both avert a trade war and prepare for one just in case it does happen? Yeah, I think you're dead on. I mean, I think that the first step that they were trying to do

after Donald Trump got elected was to prevent it entirely. Now they can see that this is perhaps even more serious than they had thought. So they're going to keep their foot on the gas for sure. All those relationships that cabinet ministers here have been developing with cabinet secretaries are proving to be useful. It is useful that Melanesia Lee can get Marco Rubio on the phone. It is useful that Dominique LeBlanc can get Howard Lutnick on the phone and that they can have conversations. You'll see more ministers going to Washington in the days ahead. You will see, I think, more pressure from Canadian businesses to reach out

to governors and other businesses. You'll see the same thing from premiers. I don't think this is a time for anybody to sit back and just say, let's hope it doesn't get worse. They're gonna keep this pressure on, in part because remember, this executive order was about, presumably, was about fentanyl, the border and migrants. But there was also on January 20th, that memo that was put on the White House website about

trade. And the next deadline in that memo was April 1st. And by that time, the president supposedly wanted an examination and investigation into trade deficits. So even if we get another reprieve, say, something is coming, right? Whether it's the magnitude of 25% or not, the president and the people around him fundamentally believe that trade is not fair and that tariffs are a good way to raise money for the United States.

With this threat that doesn't seem to be going away as you hinted at, you know, there have been some rumblings about possible relief measures for Canadians in the event of a trade war. This is something I think the NDP, for instance, has been calling for. Do we have any sense of what those measures would look like? So they didn't get too far down the road in terms of articulating those to the public on the weekend, but we know a couple things. We know that the counter tariffs, the revenue from those counter tariffs would go back to Canadians in some way, and that some of the measures could be things like making it easier to qualify for EI. They might be relief efforts that are targeted to the sectors that are going to get hit the fastest, like the auto sector, for instance.

I mean, we thought that the auto sector would effectively be shut down by Friday. So those sectors have to make sure that they get money very quickly, and that money would come from the revenue of the counter tariffs. But what that exactly looks like, I'm sure they have it mapped out, but we don't have all the details of that yet. When we look at the retaliatory tariffs that Canada was initially planning, you know, they were fairly limited targeted at, at red States, but Trudeau did suggest that, you know, that response could be ramped up if needed. Do you think Trudeau is going to use this coming month to try to build support for like a, you know,

a bigger tariff counterattack? I don't know if that's where this is headed. I mean, I think one of the things he said on Saturday that we need to keep in mind is that Canada didn't want this. That this is not the road that this country wanted to go down, that this was started by one person, the president, and that this is not to the benefit of anybody.

So remember, it was $155 billion in counter tariffs, but there was a first portion that was going to happen on the Tuesday, the dreaded Tuesday, and then there was going to be 130 odd more going forward. Yes, there is a way to keep ramping up tariffs, to make it bigger and bigger counter tariffs. But at some point that also starts to really get painful for Canadians and for Canadian consumers. And so I think it's sort of how do you balance that? How do you make sure that you're sending a clear

economic message back to the White House without pulling the carpet right out from under Canadians. So I think that they will just stick with the list that they have. The only other thing that really is kind of still on the table is the issue of Canadian energy. The fact that the president was going to tariff it at a lower rate, a 10 percent, definitely recognition that Americans need it and that they don't want Americans to feel it at the pump or in other ways. So that is still something that is in the federal government's back pocket. It is kind of the nuclear option because it would create all kinds of national unity problems

inside this country, starting with Alberta and Premier Daniel Smith, who does not believe that this is the way forward. But it is something that could still happen if we get to the point where that we need to really put everything on the table. When Derek Johnson was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, his family thought that he would never be able to speak. And then they met Professor Anna Stubblefield, and she believed that with the right technique, he could say what was on his mind. But what began as an opportunity turned into accusations of sexual assault. I'm Kathleen Goldtahr, and this week on Crime Story,

we dive into the complicated questions surrounding the doc, Tell Them You Love Me. Find Crime Story wherever you get your podcasts. As we move forward, the timelines start to get pretty messy, right? So Trump says the tariffs are on pause for 30 days. That takes us to say early March, just days before the liberals are supposed to select a new leader on March 9th.

Parliament slated to return late March, but for how long? You know, an election is obviously one possibility. And then you also mentioned the April 1st deadline for this White House report into deficits. So how much does the timing of all this stuff potentially complicate our ability to respond to the tariff threat? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a huge, huge issue. I don't think we could be sort of in a worse position to respond than we are now in terms of the political context, in spite of what I said off

the top, and that is that the prime minister and the people around him and his cabinet are solely focused on this issue. So that's maybe the good thing. The bad thing is that, you know, five days after tariffs may or may not go into effect, we will have a new liberal leader and a new prime minister for as short or as long a period of time as that may be. And then if we are plunged into an election where the central issue, like the ballot box issue is very likely going to be who can manage Donald Trump. And then we find ourselves with yet another prime minister potentially. I mean, we could be fighting Donald Trump in tariffs

over the next few months with three different prime ministers. Just think about that for a moment. So all the relationships and things that have been built up between officials and ministers may be for naught. And we may be back to sort of ground zero by the time we get through our own complicated political headaches and messes here. That is incredibly challenging for this country. And I think challenging for voters too. Once I think challenging for voters too, if once we get to an election campaign, and I am fairly convinced that's where we're headed,

because they are really gonna have to weigh all those things. And there is opportunity for some candidates there, and there is real concern for others who maybe haven't focused on this up until now. Parliament, of course, is also prorogued right now while this liberal leadership race is underway. The Conservatives, the NDP, the Bloc, they've all been calling for Parliament to be brought back to help Canada better respond to this trade crisis.

Rosalia, I was wondering if you could kind of help us explain concretely what kinds of measures the country could potentially put in place if Parliament was in session that it can't do right now? Yeah, so I would say one thing about all those opposition parties think that it is critical for Parliament to be back. None of those opposition parties will commit to not bringing down the government and forcing an election, right? So you can understand the political calculus from them and from the government. That would be highly risky, like absolutely crazy to be in an election without knowing who the liberal leader is. I don't even know who would be campaigning.

So put aside that part of it. Parliament does a couple of things. First of all, I mean, obviously it is sort of a formal place of accountability, right? So opposition parties could ask clear questions. the government would be forced to respond, that kind of work would be done in a really public setting rather than just reporters trying their best to get answers from the government. And the second thing that it would allow for

is for money to be freed up if it needed to be. And that would happen through what we call estimates that would have to go through the House and be voted on in order to allow the taps to turn back on. Right now, the money that the government has and is using is money that is already there, that they are sort of reappropriating and moving around. If we got to a place where, say, there is a huge package of aid and assistance that needs to go out to Canadians, that might be hard for the government to be able to find

money in existing packages for something like that. And then you might see that Parliament needs to come back. Listen, there's different opinions about whether it is essential, not needed, whether the government is avoiding things. I think that for now, they can do what they need to do without Parliament coming back. But that's not to say that Parliament coming back wouldn't add a layer of accountability that is important in this moment. But again, the political calculus here is real. All right, let's shift to Pierre-Paul Léves and the conservatives now. How has he responded to the terror threats? What messages is he trying to convey? It's really fascinating what has happened to the conservatives really since the election

of Donald Trump, but also since the resignation of Justin Trudeau. After Trudeau resigned, these liberal leadership candidates all jumped up and said that they were walking away from the carbon tax. That has been the central driving force of what the conservatives wanted the next election to be about. I mean, they really successfully polluted the conversation around a consumer carbon tax and made it so toxic that no liberal leadership candidate can Before that policy anymore, but because they did that

It means that the central theme of what they wanted the election to be about is also now kind of gone, right? It doesn't really make sense. It's not the ballot box issue anymore And so there are conversations inside the Conservative Party right now about whether they need to abandon that message and Find new ones or how they need to pivot themselves. You saw the beginning of some of that This week with Pierre Poliev who yes is supportive of counter tariffs who yes Condemned what Donald Trump was doing. President Trump has raised concerns and he has wrongly used this risk as a rationale for tariffs. These tariffs are unjustified and they are wrong. The United States needs to do more on its border and so do we. But then you know finally put forward some of his own notions around

how he would go about solving this. The plan immediately deploy military troops, helicopters, and surveillance to the border to spot and intercept risks. Increasing border agents and the Canadian Border Services powers, putting border surveillance towers at the border, making sure there are scanners at ports that can better detect fentanyl, those kinds of things. So he's starting to lay sort of a different groundwork here in case the election is really just about this, is just about Donald Trump, and in case that issue of the carbon tax and affordability and cost of living isn't quite as palpable as it was even just two months ago.

What kind of tightrope do you think he's walking in, in terms of his messaging on tariffs? You know, this kind of idea that both wants to be critical of Donald Trump, but at the same time, not too critical of, of the liberal government. There's a kind of, you know, rally around the flag effect going on to some extent. Yeah, it's really hard. And I think it's partly hard because of some of the positions he's taken in the past. Like he, as soon as Donald Trump was elected and even leading up to that, jumped on that whole broken border slogan.

You know, he took it, he claimed it, he used the president's words against Canada. In less than two months, President Trump will come into office. He has threatened the possibility of imposing tariffs unless there is action to address Trudeau's broken border. Since Trudeau became prime minister, there have been massive increases in illegal border activity. It is his job to immediately introduce action to solve it. And some people really felt that that was, you know, deeply weakening our position when

it came to negotiating with President Trump. He's trying now to find, I think, to your point, a much finer line, criticizing some of the things that the government has done that he says have created what he says is chaos at the border. I'm not sure I would agree, but that's the language he uses. But this is a much more complicated political position for him than what he was hoping to run on. And it does show that, you know, his desire for an election, it would have been so much easier for him. If this was back in November, he had Justin Trudeau as his opponent,

and he knew what the whole election was about. Now he's sort of rewriting the script and he's having to do it very quickly. That's not to say he's gonna lose a 20 point lead overnight when we don't even know who the future liberal leader is, but it is to say that there is risk here that he didn't have before. ["The New York Times"] Whether or not the rhetoric is different, in a substantive sense, how different are the moves that Poliev is calling for? How different are they from what the liberals are doing or planning to do?

Yeah, I mean, that's the other key point. So I'm glad you asked. They are not remarkably different. And that's why it is a challenging position for him. Obviously in this moment, you want to differentiate yourself between what the government is doing and then also in a complicated way, what the liberal leadership candidates are saying. Everyone agrees that this is not acceptable. What the United States is threatening is threatening. Everyone agrees that counter tariffs not acceptable, what the United States is threatening.

Everyone agrees that counter tariffs must happen to different degrees, whether it be dollar for dollar or where we ended up. Where the line for Pierre Poiliev is, where he can go a little bit deeper and that plays to conservative value points, is around security, right? Around security and cracking down on drugs. Those are two issues that I think he has a bit of room to differentiate himself. It is not for President Trump or any other foreign leader that I want to stop fentanyl in my country. It's so that not one more mother has to bury her face in her hands in the terrible agony of learning her son died in a back alley somewhere from this poison. And that is why I will take back control of

Canada's borders. Because of course the Liberal government put in place you know harm reduction strategies across the country and is a supporter of that when it comes to dealing with drugs and addiction, namely in British Columbia, where small amounts of illegal narcotics were allowed. There has been a change in mood and opinion about whether that was the right direction even inside the province. So I can see him finding a way to make that wedge more apparent over the coming months. Whereas the liberals have to still maintain the values that make them who they are while still cracking down at the border and somehow making sure that the president believes that

they're taking this seriously. So, Rosie, you mentioned Pierre Poliev borrowing some of Trump's language on the border. Some people have likened Poliev's brand of conservative populism to aspects of Trump, although there's obviously plenty of pushback against that comparison. But either way, as tensions with Trump continue, does that association become a liability for him? Listen, I think that if you look at polls, most Canadians are not the biggest fans of Donald Trump. That has probably intensified in some regard, particularly, of course, when

it comes to the idea of attacking Canada economically. I don't know that people lump Donald Trump and Pierre Poiliev together. Donald Trump and Pierre Poilieff together. I think that the advantage that Pierre Poilieff has when it comes to how he positions himself in relation to Donald Trump is that he is looking to shake things up, right? It is that he is, like Donald Trump, wanting to be elected on promising Canadians that he will look out for them, right? And that he will help them through a difficult economic time. That he is promising tax cuts and smaller government. That he doesn't want to be up in everybody's business.

He said some things around gender that are perhaps more appealing to the conservative base and not quite as far as Donald Trump, but sort of opening up that conversation. So I think that there is opportunity for Pierre Poilieff because there is a shift kind of worldwide in this direction, you know, moving away from liberals and progressives, but there's also risk.

If Donald Trump does something, you know, totally off the wall bananas in the next couple of months, or even during an election campaign that has some sort of dramatic impact on this country, tariffs perhaps, but other things as well, that then becomes, I think, really, really challenging for Pierre Poilier, because he has to stand up for his country first. And if that means pushing aside some of the similar small C conservative values that they

might share, then that might be what he has to do. Just lastly, Rosie, I'd love to get your perspective from Ottawa on something a bit bigger picture. I think that Canadians are really starting to feel like this Trump administration is orders of magnitude different from the first one. And that potentially we're looking at a fundamentally different relationship with the US from what any of us have ever seen before. Like this guy does not stop talking about annexing our country. Do you get the sense that the political class in Ottawa,

both parties and the civil service, views this as a radical moment of change? And does it appear that they're ready to reorient their thinking to deal with this new moment? The short answer is yes. I think that this is unlike anything this country has experienced in, well, a very, very long time. I think there's a difference between fearing rhetoric and seeing action about to happen that many people on Saturday felt very anxious and fearful about.

And I'm including the political class in that as well. This was perhaps expected to some extent, but the fact that it was going to happen, that this economic, you know, politicians were calling this on TV on Saturday, economic warfare, that they felt like this was going to happen changed completely how they were viewing what needs to be done in the coming weeks and months. What it also did, and I'm sure people listening felt it too, is ignite a kind of patriotism and nationalism and protection of Canadian identity, the likes of which I have not seen in a very long time. I mean, I might compare it to, you know, the 1995 referendum where Canadians stood up for their country. But now

we're talking about the whole country feeling this, right, to varying degrees. And what I found was remarkable was the way Canadians all responded in different ways to that. I know people, I'm sure you do too, who canceled trips immediately, canceled trips to the United States. I know people who put their California wine down the sink, even though they had already purchased it. And I thought that going back to the prime minister on that night, on Saturday, the fact that he kept saying, we will make it through this, this is challenging, but we will make it through this, was something perhaps that Americans and Donald Trump had not bargained for, that this was not going to be as easy or as, you know, as easy or as simple as they thought, that there was going to be a little fight left in Canada.

And that to me was, just as a person, very reassuring. Rosemary Barton, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks. Thanks for having me. That's all for today. I'm John Mulbitsie. We'll talk to you guys again tomorrow. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.