Getting Canada a great, big, beautiful trade deal with the USA...

We have a great, big, beautiful country, why not have an equally great trade deal? Here are some issues...

I arrived in Calgary last night after a drive from Saskatoon that took too long, but what views and scenery. Today’s newsletter is focused on one overarching issue – trade with the U.S., protecting jobs and getting a deal for the hard-working people whose farms, oil jacks, ranches and service businesses that I drove through on the drive.

Before I dive in though, a comment on the beauty of this country.

If you’ve never driven across the prairies, you must. I’ve been blessed to travel more of Canada than most Canadians thanks to my job, that includes visiting nine of 10 provinces – I’ll visit The Rock hopefully in the next few months – and I’ve driven across vast parts of the provinces I have visited.

There is nothing like the blue prairie sky and clouds that you get out here. We passed through all kinds of terrain, including the Alberta Badlands, marveled at the scenery and took lots of pictures.

If you don’t follow me on your favourite social media platforms, you can find the photos on X, Facebook and Instagram. Perhaps I’ll even post a gallery here when I have the time.

Now, on to the main issue, fixing our current trade debacle and protecting jobs.

Carney’s Liberals telling you things that just aren’t so…

The Carney Liberals are trying to slip a few things by you and hope you don’t notice reality. Unfortunately for them, some of us pay attention and have long memories.

The first thing they are trying to do is portray their backpedaling of the Digital Services Tax as some kind of strategic win; it’s anything but that. The second thing they are trying to do is claim they are being tough on foreign steel flooding the Canadian market, even Canada’s industry says that’s not true.

Scrapping the DST was the right thing to do, how Carney did it made us weaker in talks with the Americans and that’s a bad thing.

“It is something we expected, in the broader sense, that would be part of a broader deal,” Carney said Monday afternoon.

This is a case of were they lying then, or are they lying now. Every time the DST had been raised, the Liberals defended the tax, said it was going forward and said things like Canadians decide what kind of taxes we levy here.

The Americans asked us to pause implementation of the tax, which was supposed to take effect on Monday, and we said no. On Friday, Donald Trump announced late in the day that trade talks were off with Canada due to the DST.

Just after 10pm Sunday night, the Carney Liberals announced they were scrapping the DST completely. We went from saying no to a pause, which would have made Carney look good and like he was a strong negotiator, to scrapping it outright.

All those Liberals whispering in hallways that the DST was being used as a bargaining chip to extract something from Trump certainly look foolish now that they gave the DST up for nothing.

Scrapping it was the right thing to do, for Canada and for the trade talks, but doing it this way hurts us in future talks.

Gaslighting by the steel works wall…

The second thing that isn’t true that they want you to believe is that they are getting tough on foreign countries dumping steel and aluminum into Canada

“Canada has been one of the first partners to step up with the United States, going back to the previous administration, on dealing with non-market economies—principally China, but not exclusively—that dump products like steel directly or indirectly in Canada,” cabinet minister and US point man Dominic LeBlanc said in a recent interview with The Logic.

Not only do the Americans not believe this, neither does Canada’s steel industry which put out a statement

“Last week, the Canadian government announced a package of new and future measures to address the steel sector’s concerns. While we appreciated their willingness to act, we are concerned that the immediate measures fail to address the crisis we are in,” said Catherine Cobden, President and CEO of the Canadian Steel Producers Association.

Canadian steel is currently facing 50% tariffs from the Americans while “significant volumes of US steel continue to enjoy the privilege of entering Canada tariff-free.” Meanwhile, as the steel industry points out, there is plenty of steel from other countries, including China, entering Canada with little or no tariffs.

In an ideal world, this is how things would operate, tariffs are bad and should be eliminated, but we don’t live in an ideal world.

China protects its markets from competition by Canadian or American businesses. They subsidize their companies and help them to export out of country at below market prices.

When that finished or unfinished product lands here on Canadian soil, at cut rate prices, it makes it more difficult for Canadian suppliers to compete for domestic contracts or for American companies to export into Canada under our free trade agreement. These imports are a market distortion and dealing with them is a correction.

Déjà vu all over again…

During the first Trump administration they raised the issue of Chinese steel and aluminum in 2017 and asked us for a year to fix the issue. We had Chinese product showing up in Canada, getting a quick polish and then being shipped to the United States duty free in a practice known as trans-shipment.

It was only after the Trump administration put tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum in 2018 that they attempted to fix the issue, which could have been avoided. It still took a year to get the American tariffs lifted after Canada promised action on the issue – it wasn’t tariffs on bourbon or playing cards, it was doing the right thing for our industry and theirs.

The joint declaration from May 2019 had two main promises.

• Prevent the importation of aluminum and steel that is unfairly subsidized and/or sold at dumped prices; and

• Prevent the transshipment of aluminum and steel made outside of Canada or the United States to the other country. Canada and the United States will consult together on these measures.

Here we are six years later and the same issue, with all the same players, is haunting us still.

We need to put Canadian companies and Canadian jobs ahead of anything to do with China, or India or any of the other players who engage in dumping cheap product in Canada. This isn’t about caving to Trump – that's what Carney did on the DST – it is standing up for Canadian interests first.

Carney meets some, but not all automakers…

Why just the Big Three based in, or previously based in, Detroit?

PM Carney met with the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association and the CEOs of their member companies - Ford, General Motors and Stellantis. I’m all for this meeting but where were the CEOs of the Canadian operations of Toyota and Honda which have been major builders of Canada’s auto sector for decades.

And what about Volkswagen, which recently pledged billions - of it’s own money - to start building in Canada.

I get they are rivals, that they have different industry associations, but when you are the PM of the country and keep claiming we are in a crisis, at a “hinge moment” as Carney likes to say, surely you can tell them all to put rivalries aside and come see him in Ottawa. Based on the statement made by David Adams, president and CEO of the Global Automakers of Canada, it seems feathers were ruffled.

The readout from Carney’s office was weak with a statement about “the need to build up a made-in-Canada supply chain as well as diversify our trading partners.” Yawn, we’ve heard it before, either deliver or move on.

Are the teams an even match…

Diane Francs has a column out saying that Carney has the D Team in against Trump’s A Team. She’s especially critical of LeBlanc whose business resume has nothing to compare it to the likes of U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

While the resumes of Trump’s team are impressive and anyone telling you otherwise is lying or an idiot, I will still quibble with Diane. What LeBlanc has going for him that Lutnick, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and others don’t is uncanny political instinct.

LeBlanc needs to stop driving this car in conjunction with Canada’s Ambassador in Washington Kristen Hillman and tell her that she’s the passenger and he is in control. That doesn’t mean LeBlanc wouldn’t provide advice, especially technical advice, to LeBlanc, but he has to take the political lead on this, we only get a deal through politics.

Witht he greatest of respect to the Ambassador, and I’ve said before, many people I know like her and respect her, but my intel is that she has been an impediment to getting a deal. Time for LeBlanc to use his political savvy to score one for Canada.