Former Québec premier Jean Charest says U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs that could potentially devastate the Canadian economy may have a silver lining, as it’s led to an overdue discussion about Canada’s self sufficiency.
“Who knows, (maybe) one day we’ll thank Donald Trump for this… he’s forcing Canada to have a hard look at ourselves,” Charest told BNN Bloomberg in an exclusive interview on Thursday.
“(He’s forcing us to look at) how we run our economy, how we deal with natural resources, energy and interprovincial trade barriers.”
Charest is a member of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s newly created Council of Canada-U.S. Relations, launched last month in response to Trump’s repeated threats to place 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods entering the U.S.
The council is set to meet alongside other business and trade stakeholders in Toronto on Friday for what Trudeau calls a Canada-U.S. Economic Summit, where tariffs, which Trump said earlier this week won’t be imposed until March 1 at the earliest, will be the headline topic.
“It’s all about mobilization right now, I mean Mr. Trump, whether he thought this would happen or not, has really created in Canada a sense of urgency in regard to how we deal of course with this tariff story and also with his economic agenda,” Charest said.
“It’s not just about tariffs, it’s about his growth agenda, which includes reducing corporate income taxes, continuing to reduce personal income taxes, deregulating, reducing the size of government – all of this will have a huge impact on Canada that we need to understand and address.”
Charest said Friday’s summit is an opportunity to bring together leaders from across the country to examine Canada’s position within the global trade network, and its economy’s reliance on its southern neighbour.
‘We could move rapidly’
The presence of interprovincial trade barriers is one issue Charest said Canada should be looking at in order to improve economic productivity and efficiency, an issue that needed addressing long before tariffs were on the table.
“We can make real, real progress… let’s look at sectors in which we could move rapidly like the recognition of qualifications in trades for example, there’s a lot of barriers between our respective provinces, we could move very rapidly on that,” he said.
“(But) I think we’re more at the roadmap time right now, and we can move, I just want to make sure that we also check our expectations and get things done as opposed to just announcing things.”
Charest added that the threat of tariffs has led to bold ideas to improve Canada’s self sufficiency in areas like energy, however he urged Canadian leaders to focus on getting things right in the planning stage to ensure they actually get done.
“It’s like, (more) pipelines, yes by all means let’s do it, but let’s figure out the roadmap to get from point-a to point-b and execute on it, get it done, which is the mindset we should bring to this meeting,” he said.
Charest said that while Canada has lots of work to do domestically, it’s important to keep having conversations with leaders in the U.S., and to stress the importance of the trade relationship between the two countries.
“One thing we need to continue to do in the very short term is double down on talking to our American neighbours,” he argued.
“The most credible people with Donald Trump are his own business leaders, small business leaders, governors or legislators, congressman, senators… they are the ones we need to talk to so that they speak up and speak to the very vital relationship between Canada and the U.S.”
