Former prime minister Jean Chretien said Canada had every right to retaliate the way it did in the ongoing trade war with the United States, adding it should hit back even harder by imposing taxes on major exports and using the money to bolster our infrastructure, including a pipeline “from Alberta to Quebec.”
Chretien, 91, took to the stage Sunday evening at the Liberal Party leadership convention in Toronto where Mark Carney was elected in a landslide to become the party’s new head, and Canada’s next prime minister, replacing Justin Trudeau.
After touting the Liberal Party’s past accomplishments including medicare, the Charter of Rights, putting Indigenous rights into the Constitution, toughening gun control laws and making same-sex marriage legal, Chretien addressed the “elephant in the room” – the “long and fruitful” friendship between Canada and the U.S. that is now “falling apart before our eyes.”
He said in French that a friendship long characterized by mutual respect and trust has now given way to “wariness and more and more open hostility” by the Trump administration towards Canada.
Hitting ‘where it hurts’
He congratulated the Trudeau government as well as Canada’s premiers for the way they have reacted to the “completely unjustified” tariffs imposed on us by the U.S.
“If necessary, the governments altogether can consider going further,” he said, by hitting America “where it hurts, by imposing an export tax on oil, gas, potash, aluminum and electricity.”
He said Canada could then use the money from the export tax to build infrastructure needed in Canada, “for example, to build a pipeline for natural gas from Alberta (to) Quebec.”
Chretien called the U.S. the most powerful country in the world that has been built upon a rules-based order that has brought us peace and prosperity.
Trump has decided to ‘throw it all out the window’
“It has allowed all of us to sleep well every night, and Donald Trump has decided to throw it all out the window,” he said, calling upon the next prime minister and premiers to continue working together to stand up and meet the challenges that Trump is creating for the world.
Chretien then brought up a lesson from history that could serve as inspiration today: During the Treaty of Paris, in 1776, American negotiators, including Benjamin Franklin, spent a year in Montreal trying to convince the people of Quebec to join the American Revolution. “And he was told by the Francophones, ‘non, merci.’”
In an exclusive interview with CTV Question Period in January, Chretien had appealed for the Liberal Party to go back to the “radical centre” to help its electoral fortunes. When Carney took the stage to accept his victory, he thanked Chretien for his years of service as prime minister for 10 years, between 1993 and 2003.
“You still know how to raise the Liberal party up like no one,” Carney told Chretien from the stage. “You showed us how to stand up. You inspired my family to become Liberals, including my father, to run as a Liberal candidate in Alberta in 1980.”
“Some elections are tougher than others,” said Carney.
