Ontario Premier Doug Ford says neither his team nor the prime minister asked him to tone down a war of words with U.S. President Donald Trump that saw him tell the president he was a “loser” who could “kiss my ass.”
Trade talks between Canada and the United States fell apart late on Friday night, leading to 50 per cent tariffs on billions of dollars of Canadian goods and plans for massive counter levies from Ottawa set to come in next month.
Since talks failed, Trump has posted regularly on his Truth Social platform about Canada, including one post that described Ontario’s premier as “the less charismatic, intelligent, and overall unimpressive brother of the late, great, Rob Ford.”
Monday saw Ford hold a fiery news conference where he repeatedly attacked the president as a “loser,” the “king of bankruptcies” and a “dictator.”
“I’m not going to take the bait,” Ford told reporters. “This guy’s a loser. He’s going to be a loser, simple as that. We’re going to fight with everything we have. And, you know something? I have more courage, more brains in my baby toe than he has in his whole body.”
Since Monday, the Ontario premier has dramatically lowered the rhetoric.
Speaking on CNN in the United States on Tuesday, he acknowledged that “it got a little heated” with the president, but Ford told reporters on Wednesday nobody had asked him to pull back.
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“I had a call, but (Prime Minister Mark Carney) never said that at all. He knows I have his back, the country knows I have their back,” Ford told reporters.
“Does it get heated? When Donald Trump wants to take the livelihood and try to hurt our country and hurt our province, I have a job for the people of Ontario.”
Asked later during the news conference if his staff had raised concerns, Ford again denied the idea.
“Not at all, a total opposite, you know? Those words resonated,” the premier said. “I usually don’t use those words, but when your country is under attack, and your province is under attack, and this guy is just nothing but a bully, it resonated around the world.”
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Elsewhere, Ford said he and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith continue to disagree about whether or not to use oil as leverage in trade talks.
Ford said he and Smith spoke on Monday after he called on all provinces to take a “Team Canada” approach to the latest tariff developments and use their resources such as oil to “put pain on the U.S.”
Smith strongly disagreed, saying in a statement Monday after their call that cutting off Alberta’s energy exports to the United States would be extremely harmful to Canadians and is not a viable option.
Ford said the two premiers disagree on some items, but are working well together to advance a proposed oil pipeline from Alberta to refineries in Sarnia, Ont., routed through Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
He also revealed he will be going to Alberta to meet with Smith in person in a few weeks.
— with files from The Canadian Press
The people criticizing him don’t remember when Justin prorogued parliament, for no reason other than to save the LPC from oblivion, and it was Ford as head of the association of premiers as the only person negotiating with the then incoming Trump administration about his intent to tariff the world. We had no federal negotiators. Ministers, the ones who hadn’t announced they weren’t running again, were busy campaigning in their ridings.
A few months earlier to those events the country saw a record 100k people emigrate away from Canada due to the economic impact of the Lost Liberal Decade. Yet parliament was shut and the opposition was not able to question the government.
Who is the Prime of Canada ?
It’s not like his tirades are helping Canada in any way, shape, or form. He’s doing a great job destroying manufacturing industry in Ontario
They turned down energy east 10 years ago. Currently all western O&G to eastern Canada goes through the U.S. If they still want us to tax it, or turn it off, September is around the corner.
Danielle Smith just said the quiet part out loud that the Elbows Up morons refuse to hear: using Canadian energy as a trade weapon is not toughness. It’s self sabotage masquerading as patriotism. The Americans have the far bigger stick and thanks solely to feckless Liberals we only have the one customer. Threaten their oil and gas supplies and they can slam the door on Canadian crude moving through Michigan, jack up tariffs on our exports, and torch Ontario and Quebec’s economies overnight. Smith’s “basic math” is correct: you don’t start a fight you lose harder than the other guy, nor bring a peashooter to a gun fight.
Ford wants escalation because his auto plants are getting hammered due to his poor handling of the situation. Demanding Alberta torch its largest customer so Eastern premiers can feel brave is not strategy. Energy trade between the two countries is $137 billion and deeply integrated for a reason, neither side has been reckless enough to blow it up until now.
Smith is protecting the actual national interest while Leftist idiots want to play chicken with someone else’s pipeline. Refusing to do something so self defeating is not kowtowing. It’s called competence.
This guy needs to be dead like his coke-head brother.
Hey Doug tone it down. Clearly your running to be the next Federal Conservative Leader. So your career matters more to you than Canada. So please shut your are hole.
Ford is an idiot
Ford is like a bratty kid showboating and trying to make himself relevant by causing a lot of noise. And he’s not much better than Trump with the whole corruption thing and needs to be botted s premier.
Him and all the other premiers need to stop causing noise and let Carney’s team handle the talking.
Everyone in the world is thinking it. Ford just said the quiet part out loud for once. Others should follow his example.
Ford just shat in Tramps mouth, good job!
Ford needs to shut his mouth. He is like a big cry baby. The moment he whined last year he made matters worse. Just shut up and let Carney and his teams (idiots) do the negotiations. All premiers need to SHUT UP, put pacifiers in their mouths.
Now we’ll have to endure this insufferable fake conservative klepto-socialist clown barking all over the place again.