After warning Ontario would cut off electricity exports stateside in retaliation for any Donald Trump tariffs, Premier Doug Ford wants to better integrate energy systems with the U.S. to avert a trade war.
With the president-elect threatening 25-per-cent levies on Canadian and Mexican goods later this month unless America’s neighbours tighten borders, Ford on Wednesday pitched “Fortress Am-Can” fuelled by domestic energy production.
“With a new administration set to take office in the White House, our government has an ambitious plan to build up Fortress Am-Can to usher in a new American and Canadian century defined by unprecedented growth, job creation and prosperity,” he said.
“We can only do so by working together and respecting each other,” the premier said Wednesday at the Darlington energy complex in Courtice, Ont., 70 km east of Toronto.
“Fortress Am-Can should be powered by Am-Can energy of every type that’s produced, consumed and creates jobs in every region of both countries,” said Ford, touting Ontario existing nuclear fleet and its planned small modular reactors.
His comments come exactly four weeks after he warned the province would not sit idly by if Trump makes good on his threat to slap 25-per-cent tariffs on Canadian products after his Jan. 20 inauguration.
“We will go to the extent of cutting off their energy — going down to Michigan, going down to New York state and over to Wisconsin,” Ford said on Dec. 18, noting Ontario supplies about 1.5 million Americans with electricity.
While that gambit got Trump’s attention, the president-elect has ramped up his rhetoric, deriding America’s largest trading partner as “the great state of Canada” and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a state “governor.”
At a rambling 70-minute news conference at his Florida resort on Tuesday, he said he would use “economic force” to make Canada a “51st state.”
“Canada and the United States, that would really be something,” said Trump.
“You get rid of that artificially drawn line, and you take a look at what that looks like … it would also be much better for national security,” said the president-elect, who also mused about annexing Greenland, which is part of Denmark, as well as Panama and renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”
In response, Trudeau, who announced his resignation as prime minister and Liberal leader Monday, said “there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell” that Canada would ever join the U.S.
“Workers and communities in both our countries benefit from being each other’s biggest trading and security partner,” he said.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who polls suggest would win the next federal election expected later this year, echoed Trudeau, saying “Canada will never be the 51st state.”
On Wednesday in Courtice, Ford said that beyond further integration of the electricity grid, he wants Canadian and American lawmakers to forge a working group with energy and security experts “to ensure both countries adhere to best practices for power system security against foreign interference, cyber attacks, terrorism and extreme weather, among other threats.”
As well, he would like to “align regulations and eliminate red-tape that slows building cross-border energy infrastructure, including for transmission lines, interties and pipelines.”
But that does not mean Ontario isn’t prepared to counter any Trump tariffs by withholding energy exports to the U.S.
Officials emphasized the province would “use every tool in our tool belt to defend Ontario and retaliate if we need to.”
Later Wednesday, Ford, who is chair of the Council of the Federation, will meet virtually with the other provincial and territorial leaders to discuss the Trump threat and next moves after the prime minister’s departure.
On Jan. 15, Trudeau will convene the premiers for an in-person first ministers’ meeting in Ottawa on the tariff crisis.
