Live updates: Carney meets with premiers in Muskoka ahead of Trump tariff deadline

“We do have to have tough discussions with each other,” she added, criticizing Ford’s Bill 5 and the similar federal Bill C-5, which passed quickly in recent weeks, for measures that “bulldoze” treaty rights and other protections. 

“We’re all trying to make a better country. Rushing bills through is not a good way to start.”

Ford, this year’s chair of the council, pledged to pitch such a meeting to Carney over a barbecue dinner with premiers Monday night at his lakefront cottage south of Huntsville.

“We’ll really push it as quickly as possible to make that happen,” he said. 

British Columbia Premier David Eby said the request from Nepinak was “well received” by the premiers.

“Without question, Indigenous leadership need to be at the table with premiers and with the prime minister on issues,” he added. “We know if we want to get projects done quickly … the projects have to have strong Indigenous partnerships.”

The premiers’ meeting with the Assembly of First Nations, the Métis National Council, Congress of Aboriginal Peoples and others centred on the fight many Indigenous leaders are waging against Ford’s Protect Ontario by Unleashing Our Economy Act, and Carney’s One Canadian Economy Act, which also has a less contentious element — removing most federal barriers to interprovincial trade.

Both laws are aimed at speeding development of pipelines, rail corridors, mines and other major infrastructure projects — in Ottawa’s case, projects deemed of “national interest” and which the premiers and Carney are still discussing. 

Their passage left First Nations leaders furious at a lack of advance consultation. Ford and Carney have been attempting to smooth the resulting tensions ever since. 

Following their warnings that the controversial laws will end up slowing development, nine Ontario First Nations have launched legal challenges of both bills, insisting they are unconstitutional, and are seeking court injunctions to prevent Ottawa and Queen’s Park from moving quickly on projects. 

“Our rights cannot be implemented or respected without us, in substance and in process,” Nepinak warned last week. 

While still carrying a big stick in terms of his legislation, Ford said he’ll work with First Nations that are in agreement on projects and keep talking to others that are not.

“The ones that want to be progressive, more quick, we’ll move quick. The ones that want a little more conversation, that’s fine,” Ford told reporters.

“For the most part, I can’t do something if they don’t want to do it,” he added. “You can’t move forward without their collaboration and buy-in.”

That is hardly a guarantee, noted Chief Alvin Fiddler of Nishnawbe Aski Nation.

“That’s not what the bills say,” said Fiddler, who sat in on the meeting and in May pledged “fierce resistance” from native communities that are worried about being trampled in the rush to development. 

“We don’t believe you,” he added in a shot at Ford. 

Earlier in the day, Ford urged First Nations leaders to take advantage of billions of dollars in financial supports.

“This door is only open so long,” Ford said as he and his fellow premiers arrived at Deerhurst in a motorcade from Toronto, escorted by an Ontario Provincial Police motorcycle unit.

“There’s never been a better opportunity for Indigenous communities — I’ll speak for Ontario — than right now,” added Ford. “There’s $3 billion of equity sitting in the window that they can draw from. There’s $70 million of training, $10 million of scholarships.”

Ford is eager to accelerate projects in northwestern Ontario’s Ring of Fire to extract critical minerals needed for electric vehicles, defence and other industries.

“We’re gonna work with them,” he pledged in regard to First Nations. “We want everyone to have an opportunity.”

Carney, who met with hundreds of Indigenous representatives last Thursday in Gatineau over their concerns about the federal legislation, will provide premiers with an update Tuesday on trade negotiations with the Americans. 

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said she’s eager to hear more details from Carney on Bill C-5 and echoed Ford’s concerns that major projects need to get rolling sooner rather than later.

“The problem has been, historically, that they haven’t moved at all, that projects have 10 year or more time horizons,” she told reporters.

“This new world we’re in, we have to figure out a way to get to ‘yes’ faster. It doesn’t mean there isn’t a robust conversation that has to happen, but it has to happen in a time frame when a proponent is going to know that the answer is ‘yes’ and how we get there,” Smith added.

“I’m supportive of an abridged time frame but I think we also have to figure out how that’s going to work.”

“What’s changed since last year? You have a new (federal) leader, but you also have this new sense of urgency, where I think the public’s patience for government finger-pointing at each other has probably gone way down because the stakes have gone way up,” said Andrew Parkin, executive director of the Environics Institute, on the ever-escalating Canada-U.S. trade dispute.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney and the country’s premiers will convene in Huntsville following U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to slap 35 per cent tariffs on Canadian imports by Aug. 1 if a trade agreement between the nations is not reached by then.

The survey found that Canadians’ feelings about intergovernmental relations improved in most parts of the country outside of the North, where opinions were already more positive than in other regions.

Compared to 2024 figures, Saskatchewan boasted the largest increase, where the proportion of those who felt satisfied by federal-provincial collaboration more than doubled.

In Alberta and Quebec, however, the number of Canadians who felt the federal Liberals and their provincial governments did not work well together still outweighed those who felt the opposite.

The survey was conducted between May 1 and June 16 with 5,391 Canadians, with 90 per cent of responses collected online and the remainder by telephone. Because the majority of the survey was conducted online, the Environics Institute did not calculate a margin of error because online polls, despite being representative, cannot be considered truly random.

For the first time in the annual survey’s seven-year-history, the Environics Institute also asked respondents whether they trust the federal government or their provincial government more when it comes to handling international trade relations.

The report notes that 42 per cent of Canadians are more likely to trust the federal government on that file, which is triple the 14 per cent of those who trust their provincial government more.

Levels of trust were highest in Quebec at 46 per cent, and lowest in the Prairie provinces at 38 per cent.

Ottawa does not enjoy that same level of trust when it comes to other portfolios.

“After three consecutive years of increases, there has been a drop in the proportions trusting neither the federal nor their provincial government to deal with other key issues such as health care, climate change, immigration or the economy,” the report states.

The proportion of Canadians who did not trust either Ottawa or their provincial government to address climate change, for example, dropped by seven percentage points from last year.

“This change follows the removal of the federal consumer carbon tax after the change of prime minister earlier this year,” the report noted.

The survey also looked at supporters of provincial conservative parties in the prairies compared to those in Ontario, and found that of those who backed Alberta’s United Conservative Party, the Saskatchewan Party and Manitoba’s Progressive Conservatives, 68 per cent had a negative view of intergovernmental relations, while 27 per cent had a positive assessment.

Meanwhile, 40 per cent of supporters of Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives had a negative view of those relations, with 56 per cent considering the relationship between provinces and the federal Liberals to be positive.

Ford, a key ally to Carney, opted not to aid Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives, with whom he has a frosty relationship, in the recent federal election campaign.