OTTAWA—Prime Minister Mark Carney and his team are so over it.
From scampering in search of meetings with President Donald Trump and top U.S. aides all spring, summer and early fall — including the PM travelling twice to Washington and overseas to Egypt where he hailed Trump’s dealmaking — to now shrugging off the current suspension of trade talks, Carney is taking a different tack to Trump. And to the politics of a minority Parliament.
Not negotiating is the new black.
Where Carney was once in nearly a 24/7 texting-back-and-forth relationship with Trump (as he told Toronto Life on Oct. 16), and their negotiating teams were inching close to a deal, the prime minister and the president have had no contact on trade since the APEC summit in Korea, his office confirmed to the Star Friday.
Instead, Carney and his team are making a show of biding their time.
“We’re not going to wait around and look at our phones and turn up the notifications to make sure we don’t miss a ding because somebody sent us a text message at 9:30 at night,” said Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc this week.
“We’re going to get on with building the Canadian economy that’s more resilient, that’s more diversified, do deals with new trading partners, with long-standing trading partners in parts of the world where we can expand opportunities for Canadian businesses and Canadian workers.”
That’s in contrast to what Carney told Toronto Life before things blew up.
Back then — a whole month ago — Carney said he received texts from the president “in the middle of the night, early in the morning, all hours of the day.” The texts were written in “a lot of caps. And exclamation marks. And there is no time limit — there is a 24/7 element to it. In other words, it is not apparent how much the president of the United States sleeps.”
Even when he turned off his notifications, if Trump pinged him twice, they’d turn back on, Carney joked then.
Now, it’s more like radio silence.
LeBlanc and his co-negotiator Amb. Kirsten Hillman continue to have informal exchanges with their U.S. counterparts.
But Carney is heads-down on getting on with business.
In the past two weeks, the prime minister has used two big moments — the Nov. 4 federal government budget and Thursday’s unveiling of a second wave of energy and mining projects to be fast-tracked — as inflection points to pivot Canadians’ attention away from the on-again, off-again trade threats toward a different, more prosperous future Carney insists is within reach, and at risk if the opposition doesn’t get on board with his plans.
Carney stands “ready” to resume talks whenever the president is willing to negotiate, but he wryly jokes about the conundrum he’s found himself in.
At a post-budget speech at the Canadian Club, Carney noted former prime minister Brian Mulroney addressed the same club in 1988 “to argue for a free-trade agreement with the United States.”
“I’d like to argue for a free-trade agreement with the United States,” Carney quipped. “He was a little more successful on that.”
Two weeks ago, in the interests of appeasing Trump, the prime minister did apologize after the U.S. president expressed outrage over Ontario’s government-sponsored anti-tariff advertisement. Trump ordered U.S. negotiators to cease talks with Canada on trade, and threatened further to jack up tariffs on Canada another 10 per cent – a threat he has not implemented.
Carney said he, not Ontario Premier Doug Ford, was responsible for the overall Canada-U.S. relationship, and it was appropriate to say “sorry” since Trump had taken offence.
Yet while Carney offered the apology, he also shifted quickly to promoting the trip to Malaysia, Singapore and Korea as designed to bolster ties to other trading partners and possibilities.
And for the past two weeks, Carney and his ministers have hit the road pitching the budget plan as “critical” and the 11 major projects now identified as potentially “nation-building” as key to getting on with the job of getting over the U.S.
That budget — which gets put to a make-or-break vote Monday — acknowledged that the pain of U.S. global tariffs hit more swiftly and caused more of an economic impact than even Carney initially anticipated.
The fallout and uncertainty created by the Trump’s tariffs shaved about 1.8 per cent off Canada’s gross domestic product, more than what had been forecast a year earlier.
So Carney frames his “build, baby, build” plan as the antidote to that pain, one that will generate $500 billion in additional private investment in Canada over the next five years, and raise real GDP 3.5 per cent higher than it otherwise would be.
The prime minister is not only urging opposition parties to support it, he is all but daring them to defeat it.
Although there have been talks to clarify questions that some opposition NDP and Green MPs’ have about the budget, there appear to be no negotiations about amending it to secure its passage.
And as of early Friday evening, no assurances, only sheer bravado, that the Commons will see the wisdom in passing it.
On Friday, Carney flatly rejected a concern at the Montreal Chamber of Commerce about Canada’s rising debt and deficit — the same concerns Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre raised at a late Friday news conference.
Poilievre teed off after the parliamentary budget office suggested the government’s accounting plays too fast and loose with how it categorizes capital and operating expenses, and will find it difficult to balance the operating books as projected.
When challenged by business leaders in Montreal about running big deficits, Carney was having none of it.
“First of all, you have a government that can count, OK. We can count. Me, Champagne and Sabia,” he said, naming his finance minister, and Privy Council Clerk Michael Sabia. “We know the numbers.”
He said the deficit-to-GDP ratio is the second lowest in the G7, and in a decade will be the lowest.
Carney joked that the “good news, on a Friday afternoon, is that yes, we’re in a crisis. But better news: we have the means to act.”
The prime minister exuded confidence, and plans to travel immediately after Monday’s budget vote — not on an election campaign plane — but to the United Arab Emirates and to the G20 in South Africa, to boost more international ties.
“It’s a privilege to have meetings around the world, except maybe one country,” Carney quipped Friday.
Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request.
There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again.
You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply.
Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page.
