A new question of voting: how should Canada call the United States?
In these disorienting days, Canadian leaders are responding to a real time in a deeply uncertain world.
The day when the President of the United States launched a global commercial war, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith chose to look on the positive side. The United States, she he wroteHe had decided to “support the majority of the free trade agreement … between our two nations”. And while some rates have remained in place, “it seems that the worst of this tariff dispute is behind us”.
At least two parts of this last comment could be contested: the “worst” is truly “behind us” and that the challenge that tackles Canada is equivalent to a “tariff dispute”. But since previously declared Hope That the current conflict between the United States and Canada can be on pause until after the federal elections, it is not surprising that it jumped to the minimum of comfort to be found for Canada in Donald Trump’s Wednesday announcement.
On the contrary, during a demonstration in Kingston, in Ontario, the conservative leader Pierre Poirianvre criticized what he called “another unfair attack” from the United States on the Canadian economy. The president, said Poilievre, “betrayed the most expensive friend of America”.
But the phrasing of Poiievre could raise another question: is it still right to describe Canada and the United States as friends? Do we share values, interests and goals? Do the United States even see someone as a friend? Would it be more precise to say that we are now simply close?
(In a Interview with CBC Frontburner This weekJason Stanley, an American scholar in fascism that is moving to Toronto, said that both Canada and Ukraine are now “delimited by autocratic dictatorships”.
Thursday morning, Prime Minister Mark Caryy spoke with journalists in Parliament Hill and underlined the Stark language Used a week ago When he said that the “old relationship” with the United States-a-based on the integration of our economies and close safety and military cooperation “-now” finished “.
“The global economy is basically different today than yesterday,” said Carney.
Prime Minister Mark Carney, speaking of Ottawa on Thursday, also said that the latest tariff actions of President Donald Trump mean the end of the historical commercial relations of Canada with the United States, but has argued that the United States are still the main ally of the security and defense of Canada.
In so many words, it seemed to suggest that the The old world was dying and a new world was struggling to be born.
There is a general agreement that Canada must act urgently in response to what is happening in the United States. But Carney’s statements indicate what could be a division in the way in which liberal and conservative leaders see – or at least speak – the turmoil that is taking place.
Postilvre explains his approach
In a speech staged on Wednesday morning, hours before Trump announced his latest rates, then he said that as Prime Minister he would have proposed to the president to accelerate a review and renegotiation of the Mexico Agreement of the United States (Cusma). And while this happened, both Canada and the United States would agree to suspend their rates against each other.
It is not clear that Donald Trump is inclined towards such a good faith show – he imposed The rates during the Cusma negotiation in 2018 and even maintained taxes on imports for a while after Canada and the United States had agreed on a new commercial agreement.
Perhaps in May, when Purilievre would hypothetically be able to make his offer, economic pain in the United States would be such that Trump would have sought an excuse to go back. But if Trump considers rates as a permanent appointment of the new economic and fiscal agenda of his country, the notion of trade without rates with the United States could now be a pious desire.
Then he said that in any renegotiation he would take a series of “red lines”. He would have said, he said control over “our border, our safety, our resources, our farmers, including our farmers managed by the supply, our fresh water, our car workers … our sovereignty, our laws, our currency, our dollar, our land, our waters, our sky, our culture, our official languages … our resources and our indigenous rights”.
In all honesty, it is difficult to imagine any candidate for offices in Canada that is elected with a promise to surrender to Canadian control over one of these things.
But the conservative leader said he would have something to offer to Americans: increased defense expenditure. More specifically, Poilievre said that “any extra (governmental) revenue generated by the trade enlarged with the United States will go directly to our armed forces”.
The conservative leader Pierre Poerievre, speaking from Kingston, Ontario, on the 12th day of the election campaign, reacts to the large rates of the President of the United States Donald Trump announced on Wednesday.
Now there is a widespread agreement on the need to spend more in the Canadian army – and then he has committed himself to spending an amount equivalent to two percent of Canadian GDP. But is it possible that trade expanded with the United States provides such an increase? And is the trade with the United States expand something to which Canada should still target?
In His “Canada First” speech in FebruaryPoinevre said the United States had two options.
In the first, the American administration could carry out “an attack not caused” on the Canadian economy, weakening both countries, forcing Canada to “search for friends everywhere” and allow “our enemies” to become stronger. On the other hand, Canada and the United States could “trade even more”, cooperate to counteract threats such as Fenanil and “team against unjust commercial practices of other countries”.
The offer of Poiilievre had something in common with what the former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau he had previously suggested – that if Donald Trump was really interested in inaugurating a new “golden age” for the United States, then the president should try to “collaborate” with Canada on things such as critical minerals, energy and other resources. The premier of the Ontario Doug Ford also launched “AM-CAN Fortress“propagated as” renewed strategic alliance “between Canada and the United States.
But then does he still believe that the second option is on the table?
Carney says that the order of the old world is “finished”
In his response on Thursday morning, Carley resisted the possibility that the era of an integrated automotive sector, which dates back to Automatic pact of 1965 – It could still be saved, but has doubled the idea that something has changed.
“The global trade system anchored in the United States on which Canada has relying since the end of the Second World War – a system that, although not perfect, has contributed to providing prosperity for our country for decades – ended up,” he said.
“Our old relationship of integration constantly in -depth with the United States is finished. The 80 -year period in which the United States embraced the cloak of global economic leadership, when it falsified alliances rooted in trust and mutual respect, and supported the free and open exchange of goods and services, is over.”
Carney said this was a “tragedy”, but a “reality”. And he said that Canada, under his government, would have “assumed a leadership role in the construction of a coalition of similar countries” who believe in the values of international cooperation and free trade.
As a question from journalists to further explain his vision of the Canadian-American relationship, Carley said that the United States are “our most important security ally”, even if he also said he would try to diversify the sources of the Canadian military equipment. But it must be there, he said, “a renegotiation and a reaffirmation of which elements of the commercial relationship, commercial relationships, stands”.
In question this week: Canada shoes the last wave of global Trump rates, but can already be falter with some sectors, can a victory be considered? As the moves of the President of the United States are moving the federal election campaign. And the controversial candidates are launched by the vote.
He underlined that “part of what our relationship (that) was based on … a degree of integration between our economies, our trade is getting closer and is finished”. On the contrary, he resisted the suggestion, floated in some environments, to pursue a Customs union with the United States. As a general approach, said Carney, approaching the United States would transport “enormous risks”.
While then also supports the reduction of Canada’s dependence from the United States, Carney’s language – together with some of its political proposals, including New investments in the automotive sector – It is definitely more clear.
At the same time, that Canada towards other countries would not be difficult to reorie it would not be difficult – if it were, probably some previous prime minister would have done it. Now has passed over half a century from Mitchell Sharp “Third option“It was briefly a point of charm.
The rhetorical differences between Carany and Poilievre could speak with a new division into Canadian public opinion. According to the Angus Reid Institute80 % of liberal supporters think that Canada should “play hard ball” with Donald Trump. But 50 % of conservative supporters think that Canada should try to negotiate for lower rates.
It is now consolidated that no Canadian leaders are interested in being governor of the 51st American state. But the next three weeks of this federal election campaign could concern the beginning to answer the broadest question of how Canadians should think of their neighbor and the world beyond this continent.
