Canada's Trudeau urges unity on US tariff threat, some provinces nervous

By David Ljunggren

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday said Canada must stay united against a threat by Donald Trump to impose tariffs but two major provinces quickly called on him to address the U.S. President-elect's concerns.

Trudeau, due to meet the premiers of the 10 provinces on Wednesday to discuss U.S. relations, often notes his Liberal government has four years' experience of dealing with the first Trump administration.

Trump said on Monday he would impose a 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico until they clamped down on drugs, particularly fentanyl, and migrants crossing the border. Such a tariff would badly hit the economy of Canada, which sends 75% of all goods exports to the United States.

"This is a relationship that we know takes a certain amount of working on, and that's what we'll do," Trudeau told reporters. "One of the really important things is that we be all pulling together on this."

The premier of Ontario, the most populous province and the country's industrial heartland, said Trump had good reason to be worried about security of the long shared frontier.

"Do we need to do a better job on our borders? 1,000 percent ... we do have to listen to the threat of too many illegals crossing the border," Doug Ford told reporters.

"We have to squash the illegal drugs, the illegal guns."

Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc told reporters in Ottawa the Canadian government shared U.S. concerns about the border and was ready to provide additional technologies or manpower needed to improve border security.

LeBlanc said the government had agreed to add drones and other surveillance methods at the border and provide necessary personnel to federal police and border authorities.

Canadian law enforcement faces a challenge preventing migrants from crossing the border into the U.S., said Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sergeant Charles Poirier. Until they cross, they have committed no crime.

"It's very difficult to stop that flow of migrants going south for the main reason that the legislative tools at our disposal are geared towards northbound people coming into Canada illegally and not so much people leaving Canada and entering the United States illegally," he told Reuters.

Although dwarfed by crossings at the southern border, the number of migrants apprehended between ports of entry near the U.S.'s northern border has been rising sharply. It more than doubled between fiscal 2023 and fiscal 2024, when the U.S. border patrol apprehended 23,721 people.

INSULTING

Ford, who wants Trudeau to ditch the trilateral U.S.-Canada-Mexico trade deal in favor of a bilateral pact with the U.S., also said any tariffs would hurt both countries.

Trump's comparison of Canada to Mexico when it came to threats to the U.S. was "the most insulting thing I have ever heard", he said.

In another early sign of strain, the premier of the oil-rich province of Alberta said late on Monday that Trump had valid concerns related to illegal activities at the shared border.

Trump's plan does not exempt crude oil from the trade penalties, two sources familiar with the plan told Reuters on Tuesday.

Canada is the world's fourth-largest oil producer and sixth-largest natural gas producer. The vast majority of its 4 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude exports go to the U.S.

"We are calling on the federal government to work with the incoming administration to resolve these issues immediately, thereby avoiding any unnecessary tariffs on Canadian exports to the U.S.," Premier Danielle Smith said in a social media post.

"The vast majority of Alberta's energy exports to the U.S. are delivered through secure and safe pipelines which do not in any way contribute to these illegal activities at the border," said Smith, whose relations with Trudeau are icy.

Former Liberal finance minister John Manley called for calm, noting Trump had yet to take power.

"Don't set your hair on fire yet. We know Donald Trump is a bit of an entertainer," he told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. "You need to stroke his ego and you need to enable him to have some wins."