Canadian Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre announced a sprawling national plan to address President Donald Trump’s 25-percent tariffs on Canadian goods this weekend, condemning them as “unjust and unjustified” against America’s “best friend.”
President Trump announced a plan shortly before his inauguration to impose 25-percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, as well as a ten-percent tariff on Chinese goods, in response to the ongoing mass migration and organized crime crisis on America’s borders and China’s outsized role in fueling the North American fentanyl trade.
“This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” Trump promised in November, when he initially stated he would impose the tariffs on his first day in office.
Once in office, Trump said on Inauguration Day that he would give the countries in question until February 1 to take meaningful measures to stop crime on our borders and curtail the fentanyl trade or face the tariffs. The tariffs went into effect on Saturday.
Canada is in a uniquely weak position to address the tariffs. It currently does not have a functional parliament as radical leftist Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used a provision known as prorogation to paralyze the Parliament through March 24. Trudeau’s poor handling of the tariff threat resulted in political pressure forcing him to resign from the prime ministership and the leadership of the Liberal Party; the prorogation allows the Liberals to choose a new leader and comfortably regroup before expected general elections this year. Without a lawmaking body, Trudeau can only use executive action to address the crisis.
Poilievre, widely believed to be the frontrunner to replace Trudeau as prime minister, issued a speech condemning Trump from imposing the tariffs but subtly accepting the premise of the sanctions by calling for Canada to strengthen security on its border and fight the fentanyl trade, the issues that prompted the tariffs. In a speech on Sunday, Poilievre – likely aware of how Trudeau’s apparent weakness on the tariff issue tanked his political career – categorically condemned the tariffs and launched a plan to dramatically boost domestic trade in an attempt to make Canada less dependent on the American market.
“Common Sense Conservatives condemn President Trump’s massive, unjust and unjustified tariffs which will damage both American and Canadian economies,” Poilievre proclaimed, calling Canada America’s “closest neighbor, greatest ally, and best friend.”
“We share the longest undefended border and fought alongside Americans in two world wars, Korea and Afghanistan, where 158 of our brave men and women died helping the U.S. avenge the 9/11 attacks,” Poilievre declared. “There is no justification whatsoever for these tariffs this treatment.”
“You are our friends, you are our neighbors,” he continued. “We share the longest undefended border in the history of the world … You have a trade surplus with us when energy is excluded and, when it is included, the deal is even better for you because you buy our oil and our gas at massive price discounts.”
“Not because we’re nice Canadians, but because here at home we’ve made really dumb decisions to prevent us from exporting our energy to any other countries,” he explained. “Either way, Americans are better off with this friendship.”
Rather than blame Trump for Canada’s economic woes, Poilievre asserted that Canada was “in this position because we sell twice as much to the Americans as we sell to themselves,” decrying onerous regulations that prevent a significant volume of inter-provincial trade.
In a video published on Monday, Poilievre proposed dismantling convoluted inter-provincial trade regulation system to make Canada, not America, Canada’s top trade partner.
“With President Trump’s new tariffs on Canada’s economy, it is reckless to remain so helplessly dependent on just one export market: the United States,” Poilievre explained in the video.
“Canada must also look to sell to other countries and I found just the one,” he continued, referring to Canada as a country with “famously nice people [that] it shares our climate, culture, and – would you believe it? – their official languages are French and English!”
Poilievre estimated that inter-provincial regulations cost $5,100 per person in profits from the country because “it’s actually easier for our businesses to sell to other countries than to other Canadian provinces.” Among the cases highlighted in the video are the “free the beer” case in which Gerard Comeau of New Brunswick was fined hundreds of dollars for buying beer in Quebec; the Supreme Court ruled against his right to buy beer in a different Canadian province in 2018.
“Some provinces require certain trucks to only drive during daylight,” Poilievre explained as another example, “but the provinces can’t agree on the definition of daylight.”
Ending such regulations, which Poilievre blamed on “politically connected corporations and power-hungry bureaucrats,” was one of several policy moves that Poilievre promised he would make if elected prime minister. Poilievre called for Trudeau to bring Parliament back into session as soon as possible to implement what he called a “Canada First Plan” that included “dollar-to-dollar tariffs” against the United States, using tariff revenue for tax relief for Canadians, major tax cuts, and a massive deregulation program to grow Canada’s fossil fuel industries and boost domestic consumption.
In a nod to Trump, Poilievre also included a plan to “rebuild our military and take back control of our borders to regain the confidence of our partners, assert our sovereignty, protect our people and put Canada First.”
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