Canada may have secured a 30-day reprieve from U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs after it promised to secure the border, but tariffs might still be coming, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Thursday.
“Fentanyl must be wiped from the face of the earth,” said Trudeau, speaking at a meeting of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
He outlined Canada’s efforts to stop the flow of the illegal substance, but said it does not guarantee success.
“Our work doesn’t take the proposed tariffs off the table,” Trudeau told reporters, flanked by members of Canada’s Big City Caucus.
Trudeau said he was “blown away” by how Canadians have responded to the economic threat from the United States.
“We all need to keep that spirit up because we’re not out of the woods yet. Because we don’t just want to get through this challenging moment. We want to emerge from it stronger than ever before,” he said.
Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson, who was in Washington, D.C., spoke to reporters and said it was unclear what the U.S. administration wanted out of the negotiations.
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“I would say the U.S. has not set out clear metrics at this time to resolve the issue. But what does success look like from my perspective? Well, success looks like it’s getting to the point that the administration fully understands the damage that it will cause to the United States and to American consumers by moving ahead with tariffs,” he said.
Wilkinson said he impressed upon U.S. officials and the American business community that the U.S. and Canada could work together on fulfilling the U.S. economy’s needs in areas such as critical minerals.
At the same time, he said Canada was looking to diversify its trade relationships beyond the U.S. Wilkinson said some American governors he spoke to were concerned Trump’s tariffs and the impact of Canada’s retaliatory tariffs on their respective economies.
“We’ve heard now from a number of governors that are raising concerns both about the tariffs and about the response from Canada,” he said. “We are hearing more public expressions of concern. I will tell you that the business community is united in its view that this is not a good idea and it will create enormous challenges for American business. And they are making those points very clearly to folks in the administration.”
Wilkinson, Defence Minister Bill Blair and Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne were all in Washington, wrapping up meetings with U.S. officials this week.
A group of mayors of the 23 largest cities in Canada also met Thursday in Ottawa to “discuss key shared priorities amid an upcoming federal election, and the impacts of a Canada-U.S. tariff war.”
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Champagne said Ottawa has been working to ease free trade barriers between provinces as pressure grows to try to mitigate the impacts of potential tariffs.
“I can tell you, having spoken to a number of premiers, the premiers are ready. The country is ready. Businesses are ready,” Champagne told reporters on Wednesday.
Champagne said the federal government was also planning a “Canada First procurement policy.”
Transport and Internal Trade Minister Anita Anand told reporters in Halifax on Wednesday that Ottawa was making “fast-paced progress with all of the provinces and territories.”
“We had an urgent meeting on Friday of the relevant ministers. At that meeting, we reached three strong recommendations,” she said.
Canada’s Committee on Internal Trade met last week to discuss how to open up trade between Canada’s provinces. Anand said the first major recommendation that the committee agreed to implement is mutual recognition of regulations across the country.
“That is, in other words, respecting the rules in place in other jurisdictions. So, you don’t have to comply, if you’re a trucker, with moving your lights to a slightly different location if you cross a provincial boundary,” she said.
“Secondly, we all agreed to reduce the exceptions in the Canadian Free Trade Act.”
Anand said the committee also agreed to make labour mobility across Canada smoother, making it easier for a professional certified in one province to practise in another.
Trudeau also discussed the lifting of interprovincial trade barriers in his meeting with Canada’s premiers.
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