Prime Minister Mark Carney said Wednesday that Canadian and U.S. officials are currently “negotiating the terms” of a deal on tariffs, a day after meeting with the U.S. president to try to end the trade war, and that Canada will come out ahead when the two sides reach a deal.
Speaking during question period, while facing direct questions from the opposition about what he accomplished in his Oval Office meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, Carney said Canada already “has the best deal with the Americans” (most goods are still sold in the U.S. tariff-free despite Trump’s trade action) and “we’re going to get an even better deal.”
“We are still negotiating further progress in important sectors,” Carney said, after he and the president held what he described as a “meeting of the minds.”
“As we speak, our team is negotiating. These are not just words. We will reach an agreement.”
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre questions Prime Minister Mark Carney on Wednesday about tariffs on American cars. Carney responds that what Canada has “right now… is the lowest tariff in the world.”
While the initial focus is on an agreement related to the steel, aluminum and energy sectors, Carney said the two sides are “working on the modalities of an automotive agreement” and some type of solution to the tariffs that punish the forestry sector. “We will only take the best deal on softwood lumber,” Carney said.
Carney left Washington without an agreement in hand or anything concrete to announce. Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc, who was also part of the White House talks, stayed behind to finalize the finer details of a potential deal.
Speaking later at a summit on Canada-U.S. relations, Carney said he and Trump were engaged in a “granular discussion” and that he sees “a path toward specific progress” on some of the sectoral tariffs that have hit certain Canadian industries. Steel and aluminum exports have plummeted and thousands of manufacturing jobs have been lost as a result of Trump’s actions.
While he supports working with Mexico and preserving the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), he said not all trade relationships will be governed by that document in the future.
“There will be some bilateral agreements,” he said. “That is one of the realities of negotiation.”
Carney reiterated that, in his opinion, the era of moving closer to the United States is over.
“The future does not imply a relentless process of integration,” as occurred in the almost four previous decades, he stated. “Our relationship will never be what it was.”
Carney said he doesn’t wake up every day thinking about the relationship with the United States, but about how he can make Canada even stronger on his own.
Carney said the Buy Canadian and Travel Local campaigns that have emerged since the start of this trade war are a sign that “Canadians believe in the country” and that “Canadians want to take matters into their own hands,” developments he called “very positive.”
Still, conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said Carney “pathetically” offered “a trillion-dollar gift” to Trump when he spoke to the president on Tuesday, and that it was an example of him “bowing to the president in weakness.”
That’s a reference to Carney’s commitment that the Canadian private sector will resume investing in the United States in earnest if the two sides can reach a deal on Trump’s tariffs.
Prime Minister Mark Carney and Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre clashed Wednesday in question period over the prime minister’s trip to Washington, DC, to meet with US President Donald Trump.
Canadian pension plans in particular contain hundreds of billions worth of US investments, including infrastructure, real estate and technology.
“We are the largest foreign investor in the United States, half a billion in the last five years alone, probably a trillion dollars in the next five years, if we get the deal that we hope to get,” Carney told the president during their meeting, a nod to Trump’s obsession with announcing cases of foreign companies making large investments in the United States.
Poilievre said Carney betrayed Canadian workers by promoting potential investments like this.
“Where in your platform did you promise to give a trillion dollars of our investments to Americans?” Poilievre asked in question period.
Carney, apparently exasperated, sighed and said: “I would like to inform the opposition leader that there is something called the private sector. The private sector makes investment decisions” – a blow to Poilievre’s long parliamentary career.
The prime minister earned praise from Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who said she is seeing signs that Carney is speaking Trump’s “love language” by offering potential private sector investment and proposing a revival of the Keystone XL pipeline, a project Trump supported in the past but which was canceled by his first-term successor, Joe Biden.
As CBC News first reported, Carney raised that shelved pipeline proposal — which, if ever built, would bring Alberta oil to the American Midwest and then point further south — during his talks with Trump.
Accelerating the Keystone expansion project would give the president something he has long wanted. Additionally, U.S. Gulf Coast refineries, which largely process heavy crude like that produced in Alberta, need supplies to replace the Venezuelan oil sanctioned by Trump.
Speaking at the same conference as the prime minister, Smith said Carney appears to be developing a relationship with the president, an improvement over what he described as former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s hostile relationship with Trump that resulted in little for Canada.
“If you go to America and say, ‘You should do this because it helps me or you should stop doing this because it hurts me,’ that’s not their love language. Their love language is, ‘Let me tell you how I can make America even greater,'” Smith said.
Trump is “a relationships guy,” Smith said, and prefers to work with people he likes, and his apparent fondness for Carney is a possible benefit in resolving these irritants.
“We should encourage the prime minister. We want him to have a good personal relationship,” he said.
Smith said Carney is “putting some credits into the bank account, which will allow us to move forward.”
Meanwhile, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he is losing patience with Americans.
“I’m for the prime minister, but I think we have to be tough,” he said.
“We’re lowering tariffs and he’s raising tariffs. If we can’t reach a deal, we have to hit him back twice as hard,” he said of Trump. “We should never leave anyone aside.”
