LILLEY: Mark Carney still the wrong man to fix Canada-U.S. relations

It tells us something about the state of our country, the state of our economy, that the whole of our political system in Canada was fixated on a single phone call with the American President on Friday.

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Mark Carney, the Liberal Leader and Prime Minister, had a call with Donald Trump early in the day to talk tariffs and the Canada-U.S. relationship.

After saying a day earlier that the relationship with the United States was over, Carney put out a statement after the call saying the two countries would start new trade talks shortly.

“The President and myself had a very productive and constructive discussion today, and we made progress today,” Carney said during a press conference at the Port of Montreal.

Trump also issued a statement calling the conversation productive, and he made comments in the same vein while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office. What he didn’t do was promise to exempt Canada from any tariffs on April 2.

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“Well, absolutely,” Trump said when asked if he would impose tougher tariffs on Canada if we retaliate against the April 2 tariffs.

Then, Trump spoke positively about Canada for the first time in months.

“We had a very good conversation. Mark called me this morning at 10 o’clock. He’s going through an election, and we’ll see what happens,” he said.

Later in the same news conference, Trump went off on the importance of tariffs, especially in the auto sector, and he repeated his determination to bring manufacturing back to America. Bottom line, Trump will move ahead with the tariffs, he said nice things about Carney, the man he has endorsed in this election, but no gains were made, just a promise to talk after the election.

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It’s important to remember that Ian Bremmer, the head of political consultancy company the Eurasia Group – also the employer of Carney’s wife, his campaign manager Gerry Butts and his star Toronto candidate Evan Solomon – has said Ottawa will fold to Washington after the vote.

Bremmer now says he made those comments yesterday by assuming Poilievre would win. His whole job is determining risk for companies based on political changes and he has three friends tight with Carney – he’s either really bad at his job or is embarrassed that he got caught saying Carney would fold to Trump.

It’s a legitimate question about whether all the tough ‘elbows up’ talk is really just about trying to use the threat of Trump and tariffs to score political points and get votes from anxious Canadians.

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Objectively, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has the superior plan for reacting to Trump. It’s not just the tariffs that pose a threat to Canada; it’s also the transformational changes Trump wants to bring to the American economy.

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Poilievre has a plan to deal with both threats.

He wants to repeal Bill C-69, which stops pipelines for oil and natural gas from being built. It also gets in the way of mining projects like The Ring of Fire in Northern Ontario. He was the first federal leader to talk enthusiastically about tearing down internal trade barriers that stop us from trading inside the country and point out that it has been easier to trade with the Americans than between provinces.

Poilievre wants to speed up the approvals for building homes and infrastructure. He also wants to seek out new markets for products the Liberals have blocked, like liquefied natural gas, which is in high demand in Europe and Asia.

Carney talks a good game with discussions of trade corridors, but he doesn’t talk about pipelines. He’s still wedded to his “net-zero” ideology that would leave our natural resources in the ground.

If you are voting in this election on the issue of dealing with Trump and tariffs, Carney is the wrong man.

Poilievre not only has the policies that will fix what the Liberals have broken in immigration, housing, the economy – he also has the right policies to deal with the Trump threat.

Choose change this election, but choose wisely.

blilley@postmedia.com

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