A roadmap to a Canada taken seriously again

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“Make Canada serious again,” is the motto of former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole. As slogans go, it may not be a good thing. But for Canadians looking for a way out of the current trade imbroglio with US President-elect Donald Trump, it is appropriate.

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Watching sparks fly between Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre, including the prime minister’s accusations that the leader of the Official Opposition is not Canadian for not joining Team Canada’s response to Trump’s tariffs, I’m curious to understand how It was for the conservatives. , and especially O’Toole, watching the Liberals negotiate the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) for the first time.

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“Every time I criticized the strategy undertaken by Mrs. Freeland and Justin Trudeau,” explains O’Toole, “they said to me: ‘You are Team Canada, you are being disloyal.’”

O’Toole was the opposition’s official Foreign Affairs critic when the USMCA was negotiated (the Canadian negotiating team was led by Chrystia Freeland in her role as foreign minister). And in July 2020, just before O’Toole’s election as Conservative leader, the USMCA came into force.

“At one point,” laughs O’Toole, “I debated Catherine McKenna (former Environment Minister) about her progressive agenda and called it ‘virtue signaling’. Gerald Butts (Trudeau’s principal secretary at the time) accused me of using an ‘alt-right’ word until I showed him that I had used the term ‘virtue signaling.'”

“I’m a patriot,” O’Toole reflects somberly. “I never liked it when people said that I am not on the side of my country. I want our country to win. “I want us to be smart.” We both remember Freeland and Trudeau giving speeches, in Washington and New York, launching the liberals’ progressive agenda, knowing full well that Trump had just pulled out of the Paris climate accords and “was not renegotiating NAFTA to become more environmental or indigenous.” in the future”. I agree, right?” O’Toole adds.

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“So they rolled the dice,” O’Toole concludes, “thinking that Canada was not America’s main concern, but China was.” Ultimately, a bilateral agreement was negotiated between the United States and Mexico and Canada had the opportunity to accept it, O’Toole explains. “People forget,” he says, shaking his head at the memory.

O’Toole wasn’t the only one frustrated by that experience. In his 2023 book, No trade is freeRobert Lighthizer (leader of the US team negotiating the USMCA) describes relations between Canada and the United States as being at the lowest point in our history. And O’Toole reports: “Lighthizer says, ‘We weren’t serious.'” Lighthizer likes Chrystia Freeland, O’Toole is quick to add: “And she’s very nice. I like it too. But she wasn’t serious.”

Trump has made clear that he wants American workers back, and he is willing to impose heavy tariffs on his trading partners to achieve that end. O’Toole takes this seriously, especially at a time when globalization has a weaker pulse. The 51-year-old former military officer now runs a global risk firm, ADIT North America, with offices in Montreal, Toronto and Mexico City, “which performs due diligence through on-the-ground human intelligence in 140 countries,” he says. .

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“The advice I’ve been giving my clients for the past few months,” O’Toole reports, “is that Donald Trump would probably win the election and would probably return to a controlled trade environment with tariffs. And if Canada and the EU were not aligned on electric vehicle policies on steel and aluminum emissions and trade issues, if we were not aligned on security issues from Huawei to the South China Sea to Taiwan, then, increasingly, “We were going to be cajoled through the use of trade restrictions or tariffs.”

I catch up with O’Toole, via Zoom, at the end of his work day in the UK, where he works. As it happens, our conversation is scheduled for the same night that Trudeau and a small entourage (Katie Telford, his chief of staff, and Dominic LeBlanc, Canada’s public safety minister) fly to Florida to join Trump and his much larger delegation for dinner. at Mar-a-Lago. Could this be a spark – of what might be called “seriousness” – on the part of our prime minister?

“The Prime Minister… with his socks… and Care Bear economics,” used his brand to great effect in his early days, O’Toole admits, and “beat me in 2021,” he smiles. But all of this is catching up, O’Toole says.

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What will it take for Canada to be seen as credible and trustworthy, I ask once again. Applying Trump’s metrics, the question is $100 billion. O’Toole has a list of issues ready for more serious engagement with the Trump administration. And, interestingly, the topics that come up in that tete-de-tete between Trump and Trudeau over dinner (border security, energy, trade and the Arctic) are remarkably similar to O’Toole’s list.

As a military veteran, it is no surprise that O’Toole is prioritizing Canada’s investment of two per cent of GDP in NATO, as quickly as possible. “How many debates have we had in this country about how to achieve our Paris goals?” O’Toole poses. “Well, there is a goal that has been around for decades and that is much more tangible than the Paris goals. It is 2% of NATO.”

And O’Toole wants us to focus on the North. “’We the North’ needs to be more than just the Toronto Raptors’ playoff slogan,” O’Toole says. “It has to be who we are as a country, and to defend our sovereignty, we have to have a presence.” He continues: “We could make a strong impression by saying: ‘We will own the North, the North of Canada.’ The Northwest Passage is Canadian and we are going to have a presence there to make sure the world knows it.’”

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For a couple of reasons, O’Toole also recommends Canada’s offer to help finance construction of the Keystone XL pipeline: “First, it has political symbolism…it was canceled by Obama during the Trudeau government. “Trump revoked it and then Biden canceled it on his first day in office.” And second, O’Toole suggests, use this symbolic pipeline to drive a broader debate about energy security in North America.

As Canadians await Trudeau’s next steps in Ottawa’s plan to engage with the Trump administration, it is useful to assess what is feasible in a managed trade environment where tariffs, sanctions, emissions standards and human rights – a broad range of issues – restrict “free” trade. Given what’s at stake, O’Toole hopes the differing views on the plan won’t be misinterpreted, this time, as disloyalty or crude partisanship.

“I really tried to be Team Canada,” O’Toole says. And I think he’s serious.

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