As U.S. president-elect Donald Trump threatens to hit Canada with tariffs that could weaken the country’s economy, the Trudeau government is promising to tighten up monitoring at the shared border to address his concerns.
On Monday, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc told David Cochrane, host of CBC’s Power & Politics, that the commissioner of the RCMP and the president of the Canada Border Services Agency have prepared a list of “additional measures that they think would be important for the government to approve quickly.”
“A lot of it is equipment they already have that we would simply supplement. We would add additional helicopters, drones,” he said.
LeBlanc said the government has every intention of approving the measures.
Trump has threatened to slap a 25 per cent tariff on all products entering the country from Canada and Mexico on Jan. 20, 2025, his inauguration day, unless those countries curb the flow of drugs and migrants across their borders.
LeBlanc accompanied Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump and a handful of incoming senior administration officials and their spouses.
“It was a social evening, initially,” LeBlanc said. “Nobody gave us a checklist and said, ‘This is what.’ We talked about a shared commitment to do the work we want to do with them.”
Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc was at the table with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. president-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. He says he’s “very confident” that the Canada-U.S. relationship is healthy enough to find a solution to tariff threats.
He said the federal government shares “entirely” Trump’s focus on fighting fentanyl production and illegal immigration.
“Our work now over the coming weeks is to continue the conversation, to show them why we think the Canadian border is secure but also to recognize their concern around fentanyl or illegal migration,” LeBlanc said, adding that he hopes to speak again with incoming U.S. commerce secretary Howard Lutnick “in the coming weeks.”
Retaliatory tariffs remain an option, says ambassador
Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s ambassador to the United States, told CNN on Monday that the federal government is preparing to impose retaliatory tariffs as a last resort.
“We’re going to do everything we can to not get to that place because, as I say, the relationship [with the U.S.] is good,” Hillman said, noting that Canada has slapped tariffs on American steel and aluminum products before.
“We tried to ensure that we tailor them in a way that would cause minimal impact on Canadians, but would be motivating down here in the United States,” she said.
“One other thing that I might say has changed since the last time is that we are now more and more dependent on each other for strategic goods.”
Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly told reporters at a virtual news conference on Monday that after Trump’s election, the federal government started implementing a plan to respond to tariff threats.
“Of course we knew, because of conversations he had had in the past, tariffs was a strategy he was willing to use as he did during his first mandate,” she said.
“Canada has lots of arguments to present to the Americans and has a lot of tools to defend our industries and our economy. As a good government, we are looking at all these tools … and we’ll make sure that we send a clear message to the Americans.”