When three of Justin Trudeau’s ministers came to the microphone set up in the lobby of the rustically palatial Château Montebello in western Quebec on Monday afternoon, the mood seemed to be one of relief. There may have even been a vague sense of achievement.
In the waning days of his premiership, Trudeau had gathered his cabinet in Montebello for a day and a half of meetings devoted entirely to the situation in the United States (though two of Trudeau’s ministers took advantage of having so many television cameras to announce their support for one of his potential successors).
At noon on Monday, Donald Trump had become the 47th president of the United States. And Trump had previously threatened to quickly apply a 25 per cent tariff on all goods entering the United States from Canada. But on Monday morning the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s administration would not immediately proceed with an import tax — the president would instead launch a review of trade between the United States and other countries.
Canadian officials had read the story in the Journal like everyone else and apparently had no reason to believe it wasn’t accurate.
Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly noted that Trump first raised the possibility of a tariff last November in the context of border security. But the Canadian government had quickly responded with a series of actions and, according to Joly, that response was well received by American officials.
“If the administration wants to study the economic and trade relationship between Canada and the United States, we think that’s a positive opportunity for us,” Joly said.
If that had been the end of the first day of the second Trump presidency, Canadians might have considered it a good day — or at least as good as anyone in Canada could have realistically hoped.
U.S. President Donald Trump hasn’t imposed tariffs on Canada — yet, but the Liberal cabinet met to strategize and Ontario’s premier threatened to pull American booze from the shelves.
But four hours after their first appearance in the lobby, Joly and Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc were back at the microphone. Less than an hour earlier, while Trump was signing executive orders in the Oval Office, a reporter had asked the new president about the threatened tariff. Trump said he thought it would be applied on Feb. 1.
An official Canadian response was hastily arranged.
“The one thing we’ve learned is that President Trump, at moments, can be unpredictable,” LeBlanc said.
On Tuesday morning, flanked by seven cabinet ministers and Canada’s ambassador to Washington, Trudeau tried to offer reassurance.
“We’ve been here before,” he said.
That is true. But it’s not obvious that this time will be any easier. And we may be here for a while.
The Trump era begins again
On the second floor of the lobby, there are framed photographs commemorating the two times this “log cabin resort” has hosted an American president — Ronald Reagan in 1981 for a G7 summit and George W. Bush for a meeting of North American leaders in 2007.
Canadian leaders had their differences with both presidents — and those presidents had their issues with their Canadian counterparts. (Canada’s refusal to join Bush’s invasion of Iraq is one of the most significant foreign policy decisions in this country’s history.) But those days — and those presidents — now seem quaint.
Trump represents the prospect of an America that is less reliable, less predictable, less friendly, less liberal and less democratic. And unlike the first four years, it is harder to view his presidency as an aberration — a temporary crisis, a fluke or a passing fad.
“The return of an America First Republican to the White House would clearly demonstrate to all of the other states of the West that the political system in the United States can no longer be trusted to dependably produce the same kind of government that it did between 1945 and 2016,” Kim Nossal, a foreign policy scholar at Queen’s University wrote in Canada Alone, published in 2023.
Nossal concluded that it was time for a royal commission to consider how Canada could navigate a “post-American” world. If Trudeau wanted to leave his successor(s) a gift, he could consider striking one before he leaves office.
But Donald Trump will not wait for a royal commission.
In his first 12 hours as president, he did not merely muse about applying a 25 per cent tariff to his country’s largest trading partner. He declared his intent to pull the United States out of the Paris accords on climate change. He signalled that the United States would withdraw from the World Health Organization. And he granted clemency to all those Americans who participated in the attempted insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, speaking from Montebello, Que., a day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, was asked how Canada can manage its relationship with the U.S. in the face of unpredictability from the president around tariffs and trade.
Climate change was the one issue Trudeau allowed himself to worry aloud about when he was asked in December 2023 to cast his mind forward to the possibility of another Trump presidency. On Monday, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said it was “deplorable” that Trump was preparing to walk away from the Paris accords.
As was the case when Trump first pulled the United States out of the accords in 2017, Canadian officials can still look to collaborate with other levels of government, but it’s impossible to frame Trump’s actions as anything other than a setback for international efforts to combat climate change — and another reminder, if one was needed, that the world as it has come to exist is subject, in ways big and small, to the whims of American domestic politics (the initial Canadian impulse to tiptoe around Trump may be fading).
Can Canada keep it together?
Pressure can expose structural weaknesses and Trump’s threats have already exposed at least one vulnerability in Canada — the politics of oil and national unity.
Whatever Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s protestations that American access to Canadian oil — arguably Canada’s greatest point of potential leverage — should not be part of any response to American aggression against this country, Trudeau maintained on Tuesday that “everything” is on the table. But he promised to make sure no region or industry shouldered an outsized share of the burden. He also said the federal government would try to minimize the hardship for Canadians — holding out the example of the ketchup wars of 2018.
“This is an important and challenging moment for Canada and for Canadians, and we know there will be many such moments through all of it,” Trudeau said. “I want to be clear that we have Canadians’ backs.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stops to speak with the CBC’s Chris Rands, saying that CUSMA was negotiated to be reviewed next in 2026. Trudeau says that will still happen, but ‘we’re always ready to talk.’
Picking up on Trump’s promise of a new “golden age” for Americans, Trudeau tried to position Canada within that.
“President Trump said that he wants to usher in a golden age for the United States that will require more steel and aluminum, more critical minerals, more reliable and affordable energy, more of everything to run the U.S. economy,” he said. “Canada has all those resources, and we stand at the ready to work with the United States to create a booming and secure North American economy.”
Reasonable minds might debate the exact lustre of the age to which the United States is now headed. But wherever it is going, Canada may be compelled to make the best of it.
By Tuesday at 4 p.m., the official microphone in the lobby had been taken down. But then a new Wall Street Journal story landed — this one claiming that Trump would use the threat of tariffs to persuade Canada and Mexico to reopen the continental free trade deal they signed in 2018.
Cabinet ministers emerging from their last discussion were asked to respond to news they had not yet read.
“We’ll see what the report is, but trust me, we’re always ready — we’re Canadians,” Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said with his typically chipper assurance.
Would it be wise to renegotiate right now, a reporter asked. Champagne tried a few different responses.
“Listen, it’s always a good thing to make sure that we’ve — you know, we have to stop being, you know as Canadians — I think we need to be strong, I think we need to be confident, we need to be ambitious. Let’s turn that around. The best defence is the offensive, is to be on the front foot.”
Immigration Minister Marc Miller, stopped by the stairs, offered similar reassurances before landing on something of a new credo for this new era.
“I think we’re ready for any circumstance. That’s been the case since Trump won the election,” said Miller. “So let’s get ready to dig in for four years. And let’s not be surprised by surprises anymore.”
