Prime Minister Mark Carney says he advised Ontario Premier Doug Ford against running the anti-tariff ad campaign that provoked U.S. President Donald Trump and spurred him to break off trade negotiations.
Asked on Saturday about Ford’s reaction, the prime minister said, “Well, you saw what came of it.”
Carney also confirmed he did apologize to Trump at a dinner on Wednesday hosted by the South Korean president at the start of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Gyeongju because the U.S. President was “offended” by the ad.
Trump dropped word of Carney’s apology to American reporters on Friday, and shot back a firm “no” when asked if he would resume trade talks with Canada — even as he said he has a “very good relationship” with Carney.
“I’m the one who is responsible, in my role as prime minister, for the relationship with the president of the U.S., and the federal government is responsible for the foreign relationship with the U.S. government,” Carney said at a press conference as he wrapped a nine-day trip to Asia.
Ford’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
But Ford said earlier he ran the ad by Carney and the prime minister’s chief of staff, Marc-André Blanchard, as a courtesy before it aired on Oct. 8 — first reported by The Star — and dismissed claims that it jeopardized a good trade deal.
When asked about Carney’s reaction, Ford has consistently refused to reveal the details of their private conversations.
The premier has pulled the plug on the campaign in the United States — which accurately quotes a 1987 Ronald Reagan speech denouncing tariffs and has generated 11.4 billion “impressions” on social media and TV worldwide — after running the ads during the first two World Series games last weekend.
Aboard Air Force One en route to Palm Beach on Friday, Trump claimed that Carney acknowledged the Reagan ad commissioned by Ford was “false.” He insisted that Reagan supported tariffs, even though in fact the former president opposed protectionism and signed the 1988 Free Trade Agreement with Canada.
Ford, unapologetic, wrote pieces that ran in the Washington Post on Friday and the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.
“I’m not American, but like millions of Canadians I admire Reagan and his commitment to free trade, free markets and closer ties between our two countries,” the premier wrote in the Journal, whose conservative opinion pages are closely studied in the Trump administration.
Earlier on Oct. 23, before Trump’s rant on social media, Ford told the Star he was “100 per cent on the same page” as the prime minister.
“It might be a little easier for me to sit here and say what I say, but it’s a lot tougher when someone’s sitting across from Donald Trump and he has a big hammer in his hand,” Ford said Oct. 23 as he shared the stage with Carney at the Darlington nuclear generating station in Bowmanville.
With files from The Canadian Press and Robert Benzie
