Surrounded by a friendly labour audience in Vancouver on Tuesday, Premier David Eby talked tough in the face of U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s threat to slap a 25 per cent tariff on all Canadian imports.
“We’re going to stand together, and we’re going to ensure that we negotiate from a position of strength,” said Eby. “That we negotiate hard and we ensure any decisions that are made are in the best interests of British Columbians and Canadians.”
A position of strength.
The line played well for the hyper-partisan, NDP-loyal, Trump-hating audience at the BC Federation of Labour, where the crowd could be relied upon to shout “shame” and applaud on command. But back in the real world, you’d be hard-pressed to describe the Canadian position as anything remotely resembling one of strength.
For starters, nobody saw this move coming by Trump. There was no preparation for 25 per cent U.S. tariffs in the multi-week post-election “transition” effort between the Eby government and the, er, Eby government. Nor did the Canadian government have in place a scenario for such a move, so early, before Trump has even officially taken office.
B.C. has no co-ordinated strategy to work with highly exposed sectors of B.C.’s economy in response. The Canadian diplomatic corps has been caught flat-footed.
Everyone is scrambling. That includes Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has called a snap meeting with premiers on Wednesday to come up with a “Team Canada” approach.
The premiers, already though, are divided.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has publicly advocated for a bilateral trade deal with the United States that would shut out Mexico. Quebec Premier Francois Legault is calling on Trudeau to appease Trump and his “legitimate” concerns about the Canadian border being a gateway for illegal drugs. Ford wants retaliatory tariffs. Legault does not.
Eby, for his part, spent the last few months hammering Trudeau publicly for ignoring and mistreating the province financially, turning him into a punching bag for partisan points.
Trudeau now has to try and herd all these wayward leaders into a unified direction. While he struggles with that, Trump will be essentially unopposed on his end, with Republicans controlling both the House of Representatives and the Senate, able to enact whatever the president says into law.
Trump has a strong mandate from American voters, who elected him decisively into office. In contrast, Trudeau appears to be a lame duck prime minister, walking into a slaughter in the next federal election. And Eby got hit hard by voters in the October election, only squeaking through by a bare majority of 22 votes. Hardly positions of strength.
Already, you can see movement by Eby to respond to Trump’s demands.
“There are improvements we can make on our border,” offered Eby on Tuesday.
“We've called repeatedly for, for example, port police to ensure what comes into British Columbia is not contraband, is not illicit drugs or precursor chemicals. These are things that we can do to make life better here in British Columbia, as well as respond to concerns that have been raised south of the border.”
It was mostly the BC Conservatives, though, who have been talking about port security the last few months.
“Eby’s incompetent BC NDP has turned a blind eye to the booming drug trade at B.C. ports, allowing dangerous criminals to operate with impunity,” Conservative Leader John Rustad said in August.
The Conservative election platform promised to work with the federal government to “reinstate full and reliable funding for the RCMP-led Waterfront Joint Forces Operations, and expand the number of officers on the team.”
The BC NDP platform was entirely silent on the issue.
Rustad ratcheted that up Tuesday, calling on Eby to recall the legislature and pass legislation to fund port policing in the absence of federal dollars. Eby, though, has pushed off any legislative sitting until February.
And finally, it’s hard to claim a position of strength in negotiations when you don’t even know if the other side is serious. Could Trump be bluffing? Does he simply want to see Canadians increase border policing, and then back away from his threats? Or is 25 per cent a number he’s settled on, and he’ll charge forward no matter the economic implications?
Nobody has the foggiest clue in B.C. or Ottawa. And that ignorance is hardly a strength.
“Americans are dependent on what we produce here in Canada,” said Eby. “We are one of the top exporters to the United States, and certainly they're our No. 1 customer as well. We have more in common with Americans than what separates us, and focusing on that and how we can work together to strengthen and support working families across North America is critically important.”
Maybe. But it feels like the B.C. government’s position is less a position of strength than it is plain old wishful thinking.
Rob Shaw has spent more than 16 years covering B.C. politics, now reporting for CHEK News and writing for Glacier Media. He is the co-author of the national bestselling book A Matter of Confidence, host of the weekly podcast Political Capital, and a regular guest on CBC Radio.
