The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - How Practical Are Municipal Made-In-Canada Initiatives?

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

Donald Trump has not yet imposed widespread tariffs on Canada yet, but already municipal leaders are waving the Maple Leaf and promising to investigate Made-in-Canada substitutes for goods and services sourced from the U.S. But with deeply integrated, cross-border supply chains, the job of procurement professionals just got harder. So, how practical is it for Ontario's cities and towns to replace U.S. goods? A closer look at the opportunities to support Canadian businesses, and the risks of restricting U.S. suppliers.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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the job of procurement professionals just got harder. So how practical is it for Ontario cities and towns to replace U.S. goods? For a closer look at the opportunities to support Canadian businesses and the risks of restricting U.S. suppliers, let's welcome in Berries Bay, Ontario, Paul Emanuele, managing director of the procurement office, which has offered purchasing advice to hundreds of public institutions across North America. In London, Ontario, Josh Morgan,

the mayor of the forest city. And here in studio, Jennifer Moore, chief administrative officer of Northumberland County, which covers seven municipalities in Eastern Ontario. And Jennifer, it's nice to have you on the program And here in studio, Jennifer Moore, Chief Administrative Officer of Northumberland County, which covers seven municipalities in Eastern Ontario. And Jennifer, it's nice to have you on the program for the first time. Paul, I think you're a first timer as well in your worship.

It's good to have you back on our airwaves here on TVO. And why don't I start with you, your worship. What's the main reason for reassessing procurement right now? I'd say there's two reasons. One is to have a really good understanding about where we're procuring from, how well we're procuring both locally

and from Canadian sources, but as well as to prepare for any sort of changes to the rules that might happen, whether that's changes to inter-provincial trade barriers, changes to the provincial rules that oversee how municipalities do procurement, or even the renegotiation of international trade agreements. For us to have a really good understanding about how we procure,

where the restrictions are for procuring local, will allow us to feed that back up through the chain to our federal counterparts in preparation for any sort of significant renegotiation of any trade agreements. And let me do a quick follow-up with you. Have you directed your staff or your council, or the people you have to deal with on a daily basis to take that extra step to buy Canadian, to procure Canadian, that kind of thing?

Yeah, so all we've done so far is ask our staff to do an analysis of our procurement policy with the idea that we would like to ensure that we can shift towards buying Canadian and local where we can. It's already expected that we're doing a lot of that already. But I've also engaged with the other major procurers in our city, educational institutions, you know, hospitals, the school boards to ask them to take a review

and a look at their policies, which they've agreed to as well. At this point, again, we tend to procure a lot locally, but I think we just need a greater understanding about exactly what we're doing, and that's why we've ordered and directed the review, and that review is happening, and should be reported back soon. Gotcha. Jennifer, how about you in Northumberland County?

Are you reassessing? Absolutely, we've started to look at where we purchase. We actually purchase most of our products from Ontario, Canada, or local. About 1% of our supplier databases is directly from the U.S. So it's a fairly small portion, but we're looking at some of our major projects and assessing those capital is where we have our biggest concerns and looking at some of the inputs that will go into those projects and whether or not the affordability will still

be there for some of our projects. So balancing that and looking at what the cost impacts might be if we see some of the tariffs. And a follow-up for you. I think you need to give, or let's give our listeners and viewers a sense about what North umberland County purchases. So when you're reassessing procurement, what are we talking about? We buy a very wide range. So everybody thinks about our capital projects. We're paving roads, we're buying asphalt,

we're buying steel for bridges, we're looking at housing developments. But we also buy food for our long-term care home. We buy supplies, health care supplies for our paramedic department. We buy office supplies. We purchase a huge range of goods and services and they vary greatly.

Some of them are quite unique, some of them are standard that you might buy in your house, and it's a pretty broad range and our supplies come from all over. Any guess at a dollar figure? Our budget for this year is about $230 million. That's real money. So it is. About $58 million is our capital over the next couple of years. And that's really where we're focusing our biggest look at risk for tariffs. Gotcha.

Paul, how difficult is it for procurement officers now across this province who, you know, for understandable reasons, are being asked to rethink how they do their thing? Well, I'll give you just one example from this morning, Steve. I was looking at the retaliatory tariff schedule that the federal government just released this morning. It's a 170-page document. It has over 2,000 categories with multiple subcategories within it of products that now are facing a 25% tariff

that we're feeling immediate pressure in every contract that's being managed across the Canadian public sector to deal with this price volatility. So these are real and present disruptions to government activities that we're seeing. in every contract that's being managed across the Canadian public sector to deal with this price volatility. So these are real and present disruptions to government activities that we're feeling in real time. You give advice to customers not only in Canada, but I presume clients in the States as well? We work exclusively for the purchaser side, predominantly almost exclusively for government bodies. We don't advise suppliers. And our our practices from coast to coast across Canada. We do some international work for public institutions more

globally as well. That's right. What do you tell people to do right now? On the procurement front, as far as retaliatory bans to U.S. products, we're recommending that everyone hold the line and not escalate this trade war. We need to de-escalate it because of the unintended consequences and complexities that will be created by imposing made in Canada requirements in our projects, in our tendering processes. Further, we're recommending brace for impact because of the price volatility we're currently feeling because of the retaliatory tariffs being imposed

by our federal government on day-to-day contracts that we're currently acquiring under. Your worship, what does brace for impact look like in London? Well, it means a number of things. But first and foremost, it means understanding the complexity of the supply chain. I'll give you an example of something that through conversations I've had with the companies that we procure with, something that's come up. We build a lot of roads, sewers, reconstruction of basic municipal infrastructure. I spoke with one of the contractors

who does major sewer projects for us. They said one of the main impacts they would have is the pipes that they put in the ground are made in Canada, but the resin made to produce those pipes is pretty much only made in the US. And so, you know, we can say, well, let's not buy the pipes, but the pipes are technically generating Canadian jobs and economic activity here. But there's a component of those pipes that could, if tariffed, actually increase the

cost for everybody. So we're trying to do a deep level dive into, you know, the second level of how this could be impacted, because one of the things we want to do is provide feedback to the federal government on what to counter tariff and what not to counter tariff. As was just mentioned, there's a long and complex list. We need to be able to be in a position to give feedback to say, we don't have anywhere else to go for this product. If you tariff it, all you do is raise costs on Canadians, and we probably buy it anyways. So if we can be as strategic as possible with any sort of counter tariffs that are considered so that

we're only really counter-tariffing things that are true Canadian or international alternatives for, that would be preferable but that requires a deep level of analysis to even get it close to being able to provide that feedback. And what's your budget in the City of London every year? Our budget is about 1.3 billion including the boards and commissions and our capital plan just for the municipalities is about 200 million dollars. And given how you just described the complexity of trying to figure out what's a Canadian product and what's an American product and what's both, do you have a sense about what

percentage of your budget is Canadian versus purchased down south? We have an initial assessment of our general procurement, the things we buy. It's over 60% local and regional. It's probably up in the mid to upper 90s Canadian or Ontario Canadian generally, but there are portions of our budget that would be U.S. based. But that's only a high level analysis. Like I just discussed, when you get into the second component or second level of that, there may be inputs into those projects that we procure from Canadian businesses with Canadian jobs that actually have American inputs into them. So that, I mean, that's how complicated this can get. And that's why I think, as was mentioned, a really slow, steady, thoughtful analysis

about what to do and what not to do is here. Because, you know, technically, there's an American company, you know, but that has a plant here in my city and it's employing Londoners doing a job and producing products that are produced here. You know, that's doing something to that company is only going to hurt those local jobs. So it's not just about what we procure, it's about who's making them, who's employed and what jobs we're protecting as well. Paul, boy, is that a good example

of how this gets complicated, eh? Very good example. I'll give you another one, Steve. I was just doing some back of the envelope math today, looking at one of the categories in the federal, well, not the ban list, the tariff list, rubber tires, all sorts of rubber tires. And I did some quick math. The cost of the extra cost of a tire change in all

the school buses in Ontario would run the taxpayer over 20 million dollars. Just the tire change because of the extra levy. So that's real money being drawn out of the municipal tax base that goes to school bus transportation services and that's just one of thousands of examples out there. Well let me me pluck this off your website, Paul, because you published this yesterday, which speaks to the complexity of what we're discussing tonight.

Sheldon, you want to bring this up, and I'll read along for those listening on podcast? Here's Paul Emanuele writing from the procurement office, how would we establish that a company is Canadian? Would a physical presence operating on Canadian soil be the test to qualify as Canadian? Would a physical presence operating on Canadian soil be the test to qualify as Canadian? Would U.S. owned companies with U.S. head offices that also operate Canadian offices and facilities and employ Canadians qualify as Canadian? Would it make a difference whether they were

operating directly from the U.S. parent company or operated in Canada through a wholly U.S. owned Canadian subsidiary. Okay, Paul, follow up on that. You've asked some great questions. Do we know the answers to those questions? We don't. In one municipality that's rushed forward with a Canadian content set of rules,

I was going through their rules and conducting an analysis and considering ambulance purchases. And if you look at a Canadian owned company that manufactures ambulances but has the final assembly in the United States, they may not be Canadian enough in that test. They may be too American if more than 20% of their workforce is in the US at the assembly plant.

So the unfortunate unintended consequence, which is perfectly foreseeable of these kind of rules, was that the Canadian company would be disqualified and I looked it up they do manufacture ambulances in China so the Chinese bidder could win that and we'd end up buying ambulances from China while disqualifying the Canadian company because they were too American. Oh my goodness. Jennifer in Northumberland County does it get this complicated as you try to figure out what's Canadian and what isn't?

Absolutely everything that we look at it has so many different components to it and we even look at what we're doing with our own our own vendors and and looking at our local economy and trying to encourage that that buy local but many of them they might just simply retail and we want to keep those jobs as well in our local community so even for our purchases, there can be a big multiplier effect if we were to stop buying anything with that American component. We see heavy equipment, and there's places where we need certain things.

And Paul gave the example of an ambulance. And we're already backlogged. We've still never recovered on the delivery times after COVID. And we're trying to get some of those pieces of equipment that are critical to our services that we must deliver to our communities. They rely on those, in some cases life and death. And we can't disqualify something because it has a certain percentage of an American component or we might not be able to deliver that service. And it could be quite critical if we don't buy those products.

Mayor Morgan, you're the one politician on our group today. So I want to ask you about another politician's recent speech. I suspect you saw Jean Crenshaw speak at the Liberal leadership on Sunday where he sort of jokingly suggested we should put up Donald Trump for the Order of Canada because he's done such a good job unifying Canadians, admittedly, against him. But let me pluck a serious question out of that, which is, should we give Trump some credit for the fact that Canadian municipalities and businesses

and people in general are now starting to think about an issue, namely by Canadian in a way that we haven't before. What do you think? Absolutely. I've actually said this a number of times in some speeches I've given in the city here. I think Donald Trump and the external threat he's created has been a very positive force on Canadian unity and the ability of not just governments, but governments, business, citizens to all kind of pull together in a common direction. You know, setting aside political differences, differences of opinion.

I mean, look at the conversation happening about inter-provincial trade barriers, just as an example. You know, this is something that has been decades of different politicians trying to pick at, and it's become, it seems it has become a much simpler conversation simply because of an external threat that Donald Trump has created. So you know we're gonna get through this challenge over some period of time one way or another. If we can harness, we can harness the good that has come from the unity because we were a country going down a very strong path of

division much like the United States. And this has been a very unifying factor. If we can keep that as a centre for us moving forward, you know, we have so much potential once we get through this crisis to really collaborate and build a country that I think is going to be much better than it was before this threat came in the first place. So that's, you know, that's my optimistic silver lining on all this challenge that we have before us. How about it, Jennifer? Do you see the same silver lining on all this challenge that we have before us. How about it Jennifer, do you see the same silver lining? Absolutely, I can see our community pulling together. I can see a lot of people looking at products that maybe we hadn't thought about manufacturing locally or offering locally

and looking at ways that our economic development teams can be part of this procurement and actually supporting our local businesses and saying what have you not been building, what can we offer locally? How can they ramp up production and broaden their markets? It's a great opportunity for those businesses to really expand what they can deliver. Having said all that, Paul, would it still be preferable if the president just simply stopped all this tariff nonsense and we could actually get back to a saner way to do business?

That would be an ideal outcome, Steve. I think that we need to de-escalate this issue, certainly not expand it on the procurement front, and see what Trump's threats are, which is largely a bluff that he keeps walking back because his tariffs will cause more immediate damage to the U.S. economy than they will to the impact on Canadian suppliers. The Canadian impact will be severe, but the impact will be more immediate in the U.S. And that's why I think this is a bit of a tempest in the T-pond, at least I hope that it is. Let me do a follow-up with you on this, because you're a lawyer too, right, Paul? That's right. Okay, so could you give us an example of how, you know, municipalities are now starting to think

about how to change their procurement policies in order to deal with all this tariff business. Presumably somewhere, somehow down the road, that could also open them up to some legal jeopardy because of just all of the complications that we've been talking about today. Can you give us an example of that? Sure. Let's go back to that example of the Canadian content requirement. What we can't forget is once you set those rules up you can enforce them and you have to enforce them once you set them up in your bidding process. So if you have an unintended consequence you can't then decide actually we didn't mean that

outcome we actually do want to buy those Canadian ambulances too late once you set those rules in process and every government contract will then be subject to legal challenge on whether we apply the Canadian content rules correctly. And those rules will be extremely complicated to apply and time consuming to apply if they ever could be applied defensively. So let me ask you Mayor Morgan, are you worried about getting sued more because of the crazy world we live in now? No, I'm not because we're taking a cautious approach.

That's why we haven't jumped to making changes right away, but done an analysis of our procurement policies and expect that back. As I said in the intro, part of that analysis is to prepare ourselves for any sort of legal changes that may happen, whether those be provincial or renegotiations of international trade agreements. Because Paul's absolutely right. There are rules in place, and if you change your rules, you've got to follow them. But we cannot be offside, despite the fact that Donald Trump may not respect international agreements. We can't be offside with significant international agreements that require us to keep commitments that the federal government or provincial governments have already made.

So, you know, we need to move in lockstep with other levels of government, and we need to be prepared for rule changes, but we can't get ahead of them in a way that puts us at legal risk because that's just going to cost us more money and that's what we're trying to avoid in all this. I hear what you're saying, but as a political leader, do you not also find yourself, you know, deep inside wanting to just lash out and fight back against all this? Boy, I was going to use a profanity there, so I'll be careful not to. But, I mean, doesn't the politician in you just want to strike back hard?

Oh yeah, and I've used profanity in this debate already, but I absolutely do. But Canadians are already doing that, right? I was in the grocery store the other day, and I saw a mother and a child, and she was showing the child the label to show where the product came from. Like that sort of thing is just fundamentally changed the way that we approach consumerism here. And so I think we're fighting back on an individual by individual basis here.

What we've got to do, though, at this level is be smart. We've got to be smarter than President Trump, right? He is putting these broad-based tariffs in that simply tax Americans, right? In an indiscriminate way, and Americans can't go anywhere but buy Canadian products. So they're basically just taxing Americans and raising revenue for the US federal government. I think we can be much smarter than that. If we're going to do counter tariffs, let's do it on things where there are true alternatives. Let's not just set up a regime where we take municipal property tax dollars or dollars from the pockets of people in my city and put it in the federal government's coffers

through retaliatory tariffs. Let's actually try to do something that makes sense and be smarter than what the US administration is doing. Jennifer, let me ask you about that as well. You're the chief administrative officer for the town. You're not elected, but you're dealing with elected officials every day. Do you find yourself having to talk them off the ledge from wanting to lash back hard against Trump? I think we've had some really productive discussions, but like they're having in London, same sort of thing.

We want to take a very intentional approach to this. We don't want to jump too quickly. We want to make sure that we set any policies or any procedures that we change. We want to make sure that those are things that we can enforce, and they don't have any unintended consequences for us, either. I think what it is is it's getting a much smarter, more aware population. We're doing the same thing.

When we go in the grocery store, we're looking at where we're purchasing, and now we're asking our staff to do the same thing. And it's that conscious awareness of where we're buying the goods and services we have at the municipality, same as the consumers. And it's really crossing over.

And I think staff want to do that. And our politicians want us to do that. But we're not getting too crazy about it. We're trying to be very deliberate, very intentional, monitoring each step that we take and looking at what those consequences will be. Well, Paul, humor me for a second. What if a chief administrative officer from some municipality in this

province called you up and said, look, I can't stand what Trump is doing right now and I want to hit back hard. Paul, make me a list of things I can do so that I can absolutely smack this guy right across the face. What would your advice be? My advice would be to calm down. That would be the first thing I would recommend. They don't want to hear that, Paul.

They want to hear how you can help them smack them. I'm not that kind of lawyer who tries to incite disputes. We have a lot of work to do, and we're trying to get contracts done to support public services. And so what we need to do is hit the brakes. As in this discussion in a truly Canadian fashion, we're arriving at a well-reasoned consensus

that we need to proceed with caution and be very deliberate and rational in our decision-making and how we respond to this crisis. You know, Mayor Morgan, you may find yourself in a situation where in order to buy Canadian and prefer Canadian goods and or services, you might have to spend more than you have in the past if you can no longer source those goods or services

in the United States. That's a conundrum for somebody who's trying to keep tax rates down. How do you handle that? That's engaging with our provincial and federal counterparts, right? If we're going to, and let's step back for a second. Let's say our capital plan, our $200 million capital plan gets $25 million more expensive. If we pull back on that capital plan, we're basically pulling back on an economic injection into our community, the job creation, building the roads and the sewers and the community

centers that we know we need at a time when we probably shouldn't be because the economy is under threat. So how do we absorb that? Property taxes is not the way to do that. But if the federal government is filling up coffers because they're taking in counter tariffs, there is money at play here that can be partnered with municipalities and say, let's maintain those economic injections. Let's talk about supporting that infrastructure plan together.

And then let's proceed with what you've planned already without layering additional pressure on property taxes at the local level. Because remember, the counter tariffs will generate revenue for Ottawa. What to do with that revenue is a really important conversation and how we can be strategic and supporting local economies I think is one of those discussions that I've already engaged with our friends at the federal level and provincial level about and I think that's the way to approach this. Well let me follow up with you in this regard because I take your point that all of you are trying to you know keep calm and carry on while at the same time

show some strength in the face of these unjust tariffs. So give me a sense, Mayor Morgan, as to how you think. Well, let's start with Doug Ford. Doug Ford is obviously trying to walk that balance of looking strong, looking tough, while at the same time not over-escalating. And we saw that he took the surcharges off the electricity to sort of buy a pause of calm at the moment. How well do you think he's doing right now?

I think Premier Ford is doing a great job. I had traveled to Washington with him a little while back. We met with American senators, congressmen, American business leaders. I met with a number of American mayors. And the interesting thing is his message is resonating as is that of Canadian municipalities, particularly with our counterparts in the US who do not see this as benefiting their communities or their consumers in any sort of way. And I think part of the solution to this isn't exactly how we respond to Donald Trump, but how Americans respond to Donald Trump, right? Because they are hurt by this in a significant way and they do not see the

sense in this. And so there is a partnership here. As much as we want to talk about buying Canadian and I like supporting my city and I like supporting Canadian products, there is still a really critical partnership with everyday average Americans and then their leadership at the municipal, provincial, and state and federal level to say, this doesn't make sense. And we're on the same team here about, you know,

moving away from fighting each other and getting back to one of the most successful economic partnerships the world has seen. And that's where we wanna get to. So it's kind of a tricky thing to navigate through because as you said, you wanna be out there waving the Canadian flag, but recognize that there are a lot of Americans who agree with us that these tariffs do not make any sense whatsoever.

Paul, can I get a comment from you on that as well? How well do you think both our national and provincial leaders are finding the balance between looking tough, talking strong, but not over escalating? I think that's a tenuous analysis Steve and it really changes by the day and how quickly we respond and don't respond but one of the areas that I take a silver lining under this as was mentioned previously is that our provincial leaders need to focus on removing inter-provincial trade barriers that has been a major impediment to economic wealth in Canada and hopefully that focus is sustained and

they maintain and follow through on those commitments. Jennifer, is anything happening on that that is constructive and positive enough to satisfy the folks in Northumberland County in terms of breaking down those barriers within the country as opposed to outside the country? I don't think we're significantly impacted by those internal barriers. I think there's probably some hidden barriers that maybe we're not aware of, but it has not been a big issue for us. I think it's all going to help, and I think that's part of the education process as we

look at our procurement processes maturing through this and becoming smarter and looking at ways that we can broaden where we're getting our goods from. So I think that's all part of the learning that we're doing and changing those artificial barriers that we have within our country, I think will certainly open up avenues for us to get the goods and services that we need to deliver our services. And a follow-up for you, Jennifer. The Premier of Ontario has mused about passing new legislation which would require municipalities to buy Ontario or buy Canadian.

What do you think about the advisability of doing that? I think that's a really tough one because there's so many essential services that we need and we don't always have the luxury of opting not to purchase something. So there are a lot of services that are essential. They, like the example earlier with paramedic services or long-term care services, we have to have the supplies to offer those. And there's some examples, you know,

when I look at our lower tiers, they're talking about chemicals for treating water treatment chemicals, that we're looking at some of the heavy equipment that we buy. Some of those things just aren't available here. And we need looking at some of the heavy equipment that we buy, some of those things just aren't available here and we need to have some of that flexibility. So if there is going to be any requirements we still need some flexibility in that legislation that we can not disrupt the

services that our residents rely on and that we can we can make sure that they have what they need and that's really our bottom line is delivering those services, but not artificially inflating the prices at the same time by forcing us to look at other avenues. Well, let me go to Mayor Morgan on that. Have you discussed that with the Premier of Ontario? And if so, what advice have you given him or would you give him on that front? I mean, I've talked to the Premier several times and I'm pretty consistent in my messaging and that's We can and we should fight back. We should take action

But we can be much more strategic than donald trump is being on this and so play it smart, right? Let's play strategic. Let's talk to each other. Let's understand the consequences of our actions and then let's move forward Together and I think that that's something the Premier is interested in pursuing. Sure, we can move towards buying even more local and more Ontarian and more Canadian, but let's make sure that that makes absolute sense. And that is the most strategic thing to do in this fight. Because again, if there is something that we absolutely have to buy from the US anyways, and there is not yet a Canadian or international alternative,

simply filling up federal coffers with counter-tariff money. And that's not really impacting that US business at all. So being strategic, I think is the smartest possible thing we can do here. Paul, how about it? Do you think it's an advisable thing for the province of Ontario to pass a new law obliging municipalities to buy Canadian or buy

Ontarian? Frankly no. The complications that would be incurred through the attempt to implement that policy would grind and logjam our procurement process almost instantaneously. If we're trying to conduct that analysis to see if every product is Canadian enough, we don't have the resources to be able to withstand that type of additional strain in the system. The government procurement system is a very delicate ecosystem and we often take it for granted, but we rely on it for a broad range of goods and services that are critical to public service delivery. Mayor Morgan, do I assume that you have relationships with fellow mayors south of the border? Absolutely, yeah. No, I have great relationships with a number of mayors there.

I chair the Federation of Canadian Municipalities Big City Mayors Caucus, which is the 23 largest cities in Canada. My counterpart in the U.S. at the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National League of Cities and even the Association of Counties there. I've met with all of their leadership. I've spoken with them and we have ongoing dialogue about this. The US Conference of Mayors passed a resolution saying basically the Cherubs don't make sense and we shouldn't be fighting our Canadian partners. They're our partners with us. And this is not good for any of us. We have great, strong allies at the municipal level in the US.

And that's why, you know, for all of the Canadian pride here, we also need to recognize that we have Americans, American leaders who will stand by us through this, who recognize the historic partnership and the strong allyship that we have between our two countries. And we're not gonna let one person who happens to be the president throw all of that away.

That being said, we need to prepare for the actions of that one individual. Will Americans work out the type of pressure that they're going to put from the bottom up on him? Let me put you on the spot here. When you have those late night phone calls with a mayor from a similarly sized city in the United States, and you two start talking about the president of the United States, what is your counterpart in America?

How do they refer to the current president? Kind of depends if they're Republican or Democrat, but even the Republicans are very concerned about the tariffs. I will say there is a fear of repercussionary actions against their municipalities and their cities. They've seen the president be vindictive on political enemies.

And so there is a relative fear of speaking up. Again, American cities, what always comes up is there are other executive orders that have greatly impacted the local level of government in the US by restricting grants, freezing infrastructure funding, and they're working through those challenges as well, and that has created tremendous pressure on them. So it isn't great. I don't think the president has a really great impression at the local level because of a number of actions he's taken. We are focused on tariffs, but the Americans are focused on some of those other executive orders that have really

impacted municipalities and their ability to provide those basic services in the U.S. In our last few minutes here, Jennifer, is this the new normal? Is this what your life and the life of your council is going to be like for the next four or eight years? I think that we're used to being adaptable to whatever's going on in the broader community. So I think it's going to be a challenge. We are certainly still struggling with some of the repercussions after COVID inflation

and getting budgets back in line. So this is going to be a real challenge for our communities. We've seen our tax, our levy tax rates this year be quite a bit higher than what we've seen in previous years. The impact of tariffs could certainly, or counter-terrorists could certainly have a big dollar impact if we're looking just at capital projects. Some early analysis is you know a percent or two and that

that's a lot for for our residents to have to see on their property taxes if we can't have supports from other levels of government to try and keep those those projects going forward. It's we have to be nimble. I think a lot of the municipalities are accustomed to that. Our budgets are tight and we're used to responding but it's going to be a tough slog over the next few years. Paul, last 30 seconds to you. Are you advising your clients to buckle up and get used to this for the next four or eight years?

We're not looking that far into the future quite frankly, Steve. It's too hard to predict. So we're trying to deal with the here and now. We have operational impacts. I was just speaking with the school board yesterday. Their suppliers are adding an extra 25% to a new order of supplies. They don't have that extra 25%. We're trying to deal through and brace for impact on day-to-day transactions that are coming in. But I am optimistic in the long term that cooler heads will prevail. Our federal government will be able to rein this in and get to the bargaining table probably early on NAFTA 3.0. And in the meantime, we really need to deescalate this

and get back to business. There's plenty of important work that needs to be done for the Canadian public. We can't afford these types of distractions. I want to thank the three of you for sharing your experiences with us and our viewers and listeners on TVO tonight. Josh Morgan, the Mayor of London,

Jennifer Moore, the CAO from Northumberland County. Paul Emanuele from the Procurement Office. Great to have you all on our program tonight. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.