OTTAWA — U. S. President-elect Donald Trump put Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s congratulatory phone call in the queue. And it was a long one.
Newly empowered to enter office in January with a clear mandate and Republican control of the U.S. Senate, Trump spent his first day postelection taking calls from President Joe Biden, his defeated rival Kamala Harris, and the leaders of Israel, India, France, the U.K., and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
More than 13 hours after the Associated Press officially declared Trump the victor, 17 hours after Trump called it himself, Canada’s call had still not been connected.
Thus begins a fascinating next political chapter in Canada-U. S. history: how will Canada handle Donald Trump 2.0? Or more to the point, how will Trump handle Canada?
Canada’s two main political leaders, Trudeau and Official Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre — who polls suggest could be the next prime minister during Trump’s tenure — both congratulated Trump Wednesday morning on his decisive second campaign victory in statements posted to the social media platform X. Both hailed Canada-U. S. friendly ties, and the long-standing cross-border history.
Yet in a sign of what’s to come, the domestic stakes took centre stage.
Poilievre quickly pivoted to Trump’s threat of 10-to-20 per cent import tariffs to taunt Trudeau as too weak to take on the Republican leader, and sparred with Trudeau on the floor of the House of Commons over who is the toughest guy to stand up to Trump. “We understand why Donald Trump wants to take Canadian jobs, but why does the Prime Minister want to help him?” Poilievre said.
Trudeau defended his government’s record, saying it “stood up” and defended Canadian jobs in negotiating the new North American trade pact with Trump. Then the prime minister turned tables, saying “I know Donald Trump well enough to know he’d be deeply perplexed” by Poilievre who Trudeau castigated for aspiring to the top office but refusing the security clearance needed to defend against foreign interference.
In the Trump 2.0 era, it’s a political tightrope for each political leader to walk.
Each must project friendship and strength in the face of a potential bullying Trump administration which threatens 10-to-20-per-cent tariffs on all imports, mass deportations, demands Canada spend billions more on the military, and muses about possible diversions southward of Canadian freshwater resources.
The U.S. election result, Poilievre posted on X, “confirms we must cancel Trudeau’s plan to quadruple the carbon tax and hike other taxes, which would push hundreds of thousands more jobs south where President Trump will be cutting taxes even further.”
Expect more of the same, as all things Trump will dominate Canadian politics for four more years.
Ahead of the vote, Liberals projected an outward calm that belied inward apprehension. Trudeau claims his government successfully navigated a Trump Administration before, and can do it again. The government and Canada’s embassy in Washington spent months prepping for a possible return.
Trudeau and Trump have an oddly friendly relationship, despite past clashes over trade and tariffs, but personal ties with Trump only go so far.
“Donald Trump doesn’t have long-standing personal friendships with anybody,” said former Canadian ambassador David MacNaughton. In an interview days before the election, he described Trump as “transactional.”
“You can be number one on the hit parade and then all of a sudden … do something wrong and you’re gone,” he said. “You’ve got to find a way to make him feel like he’s in charge, or winning … And that’ll be even more so this go around, because he won’t have the same kind of solid people who are prepared to say the truth to power.”
Liberal cabinet ministers gave off “been-there-done-that” vibes, yet the day after the election, there was a clear sense Trump’s victory had not fully sunk in.
Government officials said nothing should be read into the delayed Trudeau call to Trump, since other Canadian ministers and officials had already tapped contacts south of the border postelection.
The Trudeau call to Trump was finally patched through at 7 p.m. Wednesday. An official readout summarizing the call said they discussed the North American free trade deal they’d reached in Trump’s first term, and a “shared interest in secure and reliable supply chains and addressing unfair trading practices in the global economy.”
“During their conversation, the two leaders also discussed North American security. They agreed to stay in close contact,” it said.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland was in contact Wednesday with Trump adviser and former top trade negotiator Robert Lighthizer, who is expected to take a leading role in the second Trump Administration. Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said he’d been in contact with other influential Republicans. “Let’s be calm,” said Champagne, citing the personal ties and relationships formed in the first Trump term.
Ministers and MPs embraced the safety of talking points, or ignored reporters bombarding them with questions about the potential impacts of Trump on Canada’s economy, defence, the environment and immigration.
Conservative MPs said nothing to any reporters who asked for a reaction.
New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh acknowledged Trump’s election was a gut punch.
“I think a lot of folks woke up today and woke up really worried, really afraid, felt crushed,” said Singh. Trump’s threatened tariffs will “have serious impacts on Canadians,” Singh said. He first called on “all parties, all leaders” to put Canadian interests first, then later hammered the prime minister, saying he had to stand up to Trump and tell him tariffs are wrong.
Freeland said Canadians may feel anxiety about the future but insisted, “Canada will be absolutely fine.”
“The reality is, the relationship between Canada and the United States works for both,” she said.
More broadly, the international stakes with Trump’s return to the world stage are also stark.
Trump is noncommittal on support for Ukraine in the war against the Russian invasion now backed by North Korean soldiers. He’s vowed to settle the war within weeks through some kind of deal, almost certainly not in line with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s wishes. In the broadening Middle East conflict, Israel’s right-wing Netanyahu coalition government cheered the return of Trump who withdrew the U.S. from a nuclear non-proliferation deal with Iran, an enemy Israel views as an existential threat.
Freeland switched to speaking Ukrainian at the end of a news conference to assure its people Canada remained a staunch ally.
Joly would not comment on whether a Trump presidency makes it harder to resolve conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East the way Canada wants, but she signalled allies are concerned about what is to come, saying she was on the phone Wednesday with Ukraine’s foreign minister and with unnamed European foreign ministers who she said are united in wanting “peace and stability.”
Canada, she said, will do its part to reinforce the North American “partnership” on defence — a pressure point for Trump who wants Ottawa to spend billions more on the military. Joly said she will soon present a new strategy on protecting the Arctic, has increased its focus on the Indo-Pacific, and is increasing military spending — although not to the level Trump demands, of 2 per cent of the GDP. “Our goal is to, of course, get to 2 per cent,” Joly said.
When Trump first won office in 2016, the Trudeau government completely reorganized its operations around the Trump presidency and the NAFTA renegotiation.
He created a cross-partisan NAFTA advisory council, which no longer exists, and a Canada-U. S. team in the PMO, and shifted Freeland into foreign affairs making her the lead minister responsible for the cross-border relationship, and created a dedicated cabinet committee. The cabinet committee and special ministerial designation no longer exist. But another cabinet shuffle is now in the works, government officials say.
Back then, Canada’s cross-border charm offensive was focused on key economic sectors directly at risk in the NAFTA talks, like the auto industry, and Canada’s quota-managed agriculture sectors. This time, according to Canadian Ambassador to the United States Kirsten Hillman, Canada has deepened outreach beyond border states to lawmakers and influencers in other states like Texas, South Carolina, Florida or New Mexico, places that have “enormous economic and trade relationships with Canada, often multiple times more than their next trading partner … that maybe aren’t thinking about Canada every day.”
Several departments have delivered memos to the PMO, that posed possible responses in the event of a Trump win, on immigration, environment, natural resources, tax issues, trade tariffs, foreign policy issues and defence.
Champagne, the industry minister, said Ottawa has shifted its pitch to the U.S. from “friendly neighbour” and its focus on the “commerce aspect” of the relationship to position Canada instead as a reliable, strategic, national and economic security partner which is already paying “dividends,” he said.
“Let’s take things step by step. We’re talking to his team. People were texting already this morning.”
With files from Mark Ramzy.
