Although U.S. President Donald Trump has wrecked Canada-U.S. trade talks over an anti-tariff announcement by the Ontario government, Canadian politicians from the municipal to federal level support Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s approach and won’t say the announcement was a mistake.
“I support the premier’s approach,” Brampton, Ont., Mayor Patrick Brown said in an interview on rosemary barton live on Sunday. “Sometimes you need to throw a rock into a pond to take a dip. It has a reaction. It has a lot of coverage.”
“I’m glad our prime minister had the courage to criticize the president of the United States for his inconsistencies,” Brown told host Rosemary Barton.
Ontario’s ad uses the late US President Ronald Reagan’s own words to send an anti-tariff message to the American public.
It appears to have struck a chord with US President Donald Trump, who first halted trade negotiations with Canada on Thursday afternoon over the announcement and then promised to raise “the tariff on Canada” by 10 percent on Saturday afternoon.
Chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton discusses where trade talks are headed following Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s announcement with Globe and Mail reporter Ian Bailey’s Sunday Scrum panel, CBC Radio’s The House host Catherine Cullen and the Toronto Star’s Queen’s Park bureau chief Robert Benzie. Additionally, PEI Premier Rob Lantz, former Canadian ambassador to the United States Frank McKenna, and Justin Trudeau’s former deputy chief of staff Brian Clow join the show to discuss trade negotiations.
Trump claims the ad is fraudulent and false. The president and his advisers have also argued that Canada is trying to influence an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case that will decide whether U.S. tariffs Trump imposed on Canada on national security grounds were constitutional.
In an interview in Face the nation Airing Sunday morning on CBS, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Ford “seems to have gone off the rails a little bit” and argued that the announcement is “interference in sovereign affairs of the United States.”
British Columbia Forests Minister Ravi Parmar told Barton on Sunday that he believes Ontario’s announcement was effective and “woke the president up.”
Parmer also said his government will run its own anti-tariff ads next month to defend B.C.’s forestry industry, but it won’t be as broad as Ford’s ad campaign.
“We certainly appreciate the hard work that Premier Ford is doing. We are going to be very measured in our approach,” Parmar said.
BC will run anti-tariff ads in some US states in November, despite President Donald Trump saying he will end trade negotiations with Canada over similar ads in Ontario. British Columbia Economic Growth Minister Ravi Kahlon said “it’s important to speak directly to American citizens.”
Prince Edward Island Premier Rob Lantz said Sunday that Ford “has been a very strong voice for Ontario” and very effective in communicating Canadians’ frustrations with the tariffs.
“His announcement was very smart,” Lantz said. “But he decided to take it back and I respect that and now we can move forward.”
At the federal level, Liberal House Leader Steven MacKinnon said in an interview broadcast Sunday morning: “Doug Ford is on Team Canada. He might be our front-line center. He’s been an incredible patriot.”
MacKinnon, who spoke with Barton before Trump’s latest tariff threat, added that he is “reluctant to criticize” Ford for anything.
Senior political correspondent Rosemary Barton talks to Liberal House Leader Steven MacKinnon about how the ended trade talks with the United States will affect the Canadian economy and what they mean for the upcoming budget. Plus, Canadian dad Zach Robichaud talks about the financial pressures young families face ahead of the federal government’s budget in November. And on Sunday, Scrum, Globe and Mail reporter Ian Bailey, CBC Radio’s The House host Catherine Cullen, and the Toronto Star’s Queen’s Park bureau chief Robert Benzie discuss the challenges you might face in getting a minority Parliament passed.
On Friday, Ford said it will pull the ad from U.S. screens after this weekend. The ad aired during Saturday night’s World Series game, meaning millions more Americans have seen the clip since it began airing in mid-October.
In a statement posted on social media that day, Ford said his province’s intention “was always to start a conversation about the type of economy Americans want to build and the impact of tariffs on workers and businesses.”
“We have achieved our objective, having reached American audiences at the highest level.”
So what does Canada do next?
As things stand, Canada must now find a way to get discussions with the United States back on track and avoid Trump’s latest tariff threat. Despite the president’s social media post, it is unclear whether he actually kept his promise or whether he will follow through later.
Brian Clow, former deputy chief of staff to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, said Sunday that Carney “should be trying to find Donald Trump” in the hallways of a summit the two are attending right now in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
“Ontario has now done what the president wants,” Clow said. “The ad will be taken down within the next 24 hours. That gives the prime minister something positive to say to Donald Trump.”
In an exclusive interview for Canada, senior political correspondent Rosemary Barton speaks with US Senator Tim Kaine about US President Donald Trump ending trade talks over an Ontario government ad featuring a voiceover and a clip of former Republican president Ronald Reagan.
In his social media post Saturday afternoon, Trump argued that “the ad needed to be pulled IMMEDIATELY, but they let it run last night during the World Series, knowing it was a FRAUD.”
Frank McKenna, Canada’s former ambassador to the United States, said Sunday that it’s possible Canada was getting too close to a deal and that Trump wanted to “take us off the record a little bit.”
One of Carney’s goals on this trip to Southeast Asia is to seek stronger trade ties with countries in the region to alleviate Canada’s dependence on American trade. McKenna said the prime minister is “doing the right thing” to push the United States to recognize how much it needs Canadian trade.
Likewise, Brown said that Carney has collaborated with the United States “but at some point, if we do not have a partner in these trade talks, an agreement cannot be reached. And we have to look for other alternatives.”
