Former Conservative leader explains why he joined Mark Carney's trade advisory council

O’Toole said a “diversity of views” is important for Carney and his team to hear, and he thinks a bigger emphasis on defence as a part of economic security has to be key to the talks.

Overall, O’Toole said, Carney is more serious about his approach to the Canada-U.S. relationship than Justin Trudeau had been as prime minister, adding that is clear in how the revised trade advisory council is structured too.

“We’re dealing with a much more substantive leader that I agree with on many fronts. There will be some areas of disagreement, but that’s what this panel’s meant to be,” he said.

Poilievre did not oppose or criticize his decision to accept Carney’s invitation, O’Toole said, nor did he demand that O’Toole co-ordinate with Poilievre’s stances on trade or tariffs. Rather, he said, Poilievre agreed that “it was important, that I had a lot to add, so that was good. It was a courtesy.” 

Poilievre “knows I’m going to bring the perspective” that O’Toole had when he served as party leader and before that as foreign affairs critic.

Like others named Tuesday, O’Toole said he wants to “help the government in this moment of redefining the trade. And I’ve said, I’m going to talk a lot about defence and security … because I do think that is a critical aspect of it,” citing Canadian shipbuilding, energy and critical minerals as strengths he wants Canada to emphasize at the trade table. 

“But this isn’t meant to be me co-ordinating the opposition’s response … just my perspective as a former Conservative leader but also a veteran business leader.”

A lawyer, former RCAF navigator and now president of the risk advisory firm ADIT North America, O’Toole said he disagrees with Carney’s recent decision to allow Chinese electric vehicles into Canada, but fundamentally agrees with Carney that if the U.S. is going to turn its back on its trading allies, that Canada has to become more “self reliant.” 

O’Toole agreed with Carney on the current rupture with America, Canada’s closest ally and trading partner — a notion that Poilievre has pushed back on, saying Ottawa should seek deeper ties by leveraging its assets.

“I do think if the U.S. is going to turn its back on traditional trading allies, we do have to diversify. We just have to not give up on the U.S. relationship while we’re diversifying. We have to try and work with a difficult administration, but always make the case for Canada.

“I agree with the prime minister in his speech on the rupture. In fact, the rupture began long before the speech in Davos, but he articulated well the fact that the post-World War II rules-based system had changed,” O’Toole said. “It’s just accelerated in recent years.”

In another key respect, O’Toole agrees more with Carney than with Poilievre, who has criticized Carney’s claim that Canada has developed a “weakness” because of its trading reliance on the U.S. 

”I agree with his (Carney’s) statements the other day as well as if the U.S. is going to treat a long-standing ally like this, what was our strength sitting on top of the most voracious economic market in the world? If they’re going to close their market off, that strength is now a weakness,” said O’Toole. “While we diversify, though, I still think we try and find common cause with the U.S., be much smarter than we were last time.” 

He criticized the previous Liberal government’s approach to trade talks, and to the advisory council.

“The progressive trade agenda that Mr. Trudeau put forward actually misaligned with the U.S. priorities at the time, which we should have been focused on — on steel, aluminum, on shipbuilding, on defence, on ballistic missiles,” O’Toole said. “We need to speak their language a little bit better as opposed to the optics” of issues like gender and Indigenous concerns or environment standards.

O’Toole said while those are important, focusing on them instead of aligning with the U.S. on China, electric vehicles and the dumping of cheaply produced metals on the world market missed the mark when it came to priorities in that original renegotiation.

O’Toole said he called Poilievre and Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong last week to give them notice he had accepted the new position.

That was in contrast to what happened when former Conservative interim leader Rona Ambrose joined Trudeau’s first advisory council on trade. O’Toole said Ambrose’s decision came as a frustrating surprise, both to him as foreign affairs critic and to then-Conservative leader Andrew Scheer.

That was during Donald Trump’s first presidential term amid the early rounds of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiation that ultimately led to a revised continental free trade pact, renamed the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA).

O’Toole said he had two conditions before accepting the invitation to join the advisory council: he would give Poilievre advance notice, and he would be able to publicly speak about the issues at stake.

“I found (Trudeau’s advisory council) was more symbolic and not as substantive, and I said I want to be able to talk to people about it, obviously, safeguarding confidential discussions about strategy.”