Team Canada approach necessitates a different captain at the helm

With US President-elect Donald Trump threatening tariffs against Canada, Justin Trudeau's current political enfeeblement makes him unfit to lead Canada's response to the incoming Trump administration.

It only took one social media post from U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to upend the bilateral relationship that Canadians have taken for granted with Americans.

Trump recently pledged to impose a 25% tariff on all imported Canadian goods and products, as a consequence of what he sees as a lax Canadian border in the flow of both drugs and illegal migration. Such tariffs would be catastrophic for the Canadian economy, which has already been hobbled after nearly a decade of fiscal mismanagement by Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government.

Since then, Trudeau and his cabinet ministers have urged for a “Team Canada” approach to face the U.S. challenge, a rallying cry for all provincial premiers, federal opposition parties, and business leaders to work in common purpose. There remains one problem with this approach: Trudeau himself.

As previously documented in this newsletter, Trudeau has simply become a weakened prime minister at this late stage of his government.

Having been plagued by abysmal polling numbers, where nearly three quarters of Canadians surveyed want to see him leave; internal challenges to his leadership within his own party; and, only months now remaining in his current term, has culminated into increasingly desperate efforts to maintain his hold on power.

Case in point - shortly following Trump's threat, Trudeau frantically went down to Mar-a-Lago in a move likely designed to assuage Canadians’ concerns, but instead has had the opposite effect, resulting in nil commitments from Trump to pull back the looming tariff threat, alongside a dose of ridicule aimed at Trudeau by the incoming president. The full details of this infamous meeting is even less flattering to Trudeau than described here.

One can imagine how differently Trudeau might have handled this situation if he were governing under a fresh mandate, rather than being on the tail-end of a dying government. Incidentally, the recently elected president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, who was also on the receiving end of the tariff threat for the same border reasons, responded in a more confident and deft manner that did not require a panic meeting on Trump's turf. Undoubtedly, Trump took notice of the two reactions.

And yet, on the heels of the Mar-a-Lago trip, Trudeau has attempted to bring the provincial premiers onside to his cause with a couple of First Ministers conferences, but they too have left these gatherings with little confidence in Trudeau's ability to meet the moment.

This can be evidenced by the contrasting tactics several premiers have taken thereafter, whether it is Ontario Premier Doug Ford invoking his own threats of cutting energy exports to the U.S. and embracing retaliatory tariffs, or Alberta Premier Danielle Smith creating her own border patrol services and emphasizing the need for diplomacy with continued energy production unabated to the U.S. - the overall lack of tactical coherence as a country is startling, and undermines the very concept of a Team Canada strategy. But more so, it is the lack of federal leadership that truly compromises the greater cause for Canada.

Meanwhile, Trudeau seems dangerously intent on inflaming the situation from the sidelines, making reckless comments about Americans having attacked women's rights by not electing Kamala Harris as president, and insinuating they may come to regret voting for Trump. As Ford summed up, these comments were “unhelpful,” and he conveyed as much to Trudeau in private as well.

Desperation and recklessness abound, yet Trudeau is devoid of any concrete plans on how to proceed. And even if a plan were to materialize prior to Trump's inauguration, execution has never been this government’s strong suit.

Trudeau is a deeply enfeebled leader, and Trump preys upon vulnerabilities. Canada can ill-afford to be in such a position once the new U.S. administration is sworn in, especially as it can be argued Trudeau’s damaging policies around immigration and drugs have brought Canada to this critical stage.

To reinforce the matter, Abacus Data’s latest survey shows that 74% of Canadians believe Trump’s dislike of Trudeau is a more salient factor than experience itself, while 45% prefer Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre to deal with Trump versus only 21% for Trudeau, which also mirrors the broader party support. It is clear that any purported Team Canada approach requires a captain with a popular, if not emboldened mandate.

In other words, Canada will need to have an election as soon as possible.

A new mandate is required to have the legitimate authority to negotiate on behalf of Canada, even if that results in Trudeau being re-elected, at least Canadians will have decided which option is best equipped to handle the Trump administration, and more importantly, with the requisite runway to match.

As a further illustration of the fractured nature of the federation to properly deal with Trump’s second term, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe has also publicly called for the need to have a federal election. At the federal level itself, Poilievre has already politically seized on the various provincial stratagems due to the void of federal leadership, noting “Nature abhors a vacuum.”

Though it might be tempting to chalk up these calls for an election to mere conservative political talking points, part of the logic to do so has cut across party lines.

It is worth reflecting on the context of the 1988 Federal Election, where it was then Liberal leader John Turner, who had instructed the Liberal dominated Senate to withhold passage of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement until the election, despite Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives having a majority government, arguing no mandate was given by the Canadian people in the previous election for Mulroney to pursue such monumental change. That is to say, Turner believed the electorate needed to have a say for any consequential policy direction.

Even Trudeau himself had put forth the same rationale for calling the 2021 Federal Election in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that the pandemic responses and the required corresponding directions were never on the ballot in 2019, and should be decided by Canadians in an election he considered, the “most important since the Second World War.”

Given the scope and severity of what Trump's prospective actions could mean for Canada, how can this situation not similarly warrant a need for an election? For Trudeau, this perspective has now become inconvenient, proving once again he will always exploit what is politically expedient for his sake, ahead of what is good for the country.

Consider for a moment, a future Poilievre government asking for its own Team Canada approach to another crisis of Trudeau's making, the re-emergence of Quebec separatism. What could Canadians expect from their former prime minister in such a scenario? Would he be drawn to the cause of Team Canada under Poilievre, as he is expecting others to do for him now?

In Trudeau's own words, “if there came a point where I thought Canada was really Stephen Harper's Canada…maybe I'd consider making Quebec a country.” It would seem Trudeau may have lost the moral authority to captain this country long before Trump’s (re)arrival.