Carney promises new trading relationships, can’t handle U.S.

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Mark Carney showed up at Gorman’s Mill in West Kelowna, B.C., on Tuesday promising to change Canada’s trading relationship. If we judged that promise based off his promise to strike a deal with Donald Trump, he’d get an automatic fail.

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Still, he wants us to believe that he’s going to turn things around and magically not make us reliant on the United States.

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“Nearly 90% of Canadian lumber exports currently go to the United States, leaving us disproportionately exposed to their trade actions,” Carney said.

For steel and aluminum, roughly 90% of those exports head to the United States and in both categories, they are currently subject to a 50% tariff. According to data released by Statistics Canada on Tuesday, steel exports are down 41% since January and aluminum exports are down 38% over the same time period.

We also have high tariffs on automotive parts and finished products as well as tariffs on copper and softwood lumber.

“As we shift from reliance to resilience, Canada’s new government will ensure the industry can transform to seize new opportunities in Canadian and international markets,” Carney said on Tuesday.

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That’s a lovely thought but hard to do in reality.

Under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, Canada went from free trade agreements with five countries in 2006 to 51 countries in 2015 and still, most of our exports were headed to the United States. The free trade agreement with the European Union includes 27 countries and 10 of them have yet to ratify the deal as they try to work out issues with Canada.

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Meanwhile, Britain, which left the European Union in 2020, has cut off trade talks with Canada because we refused to allow them to export the same amount of cheddar to Canada as they did when they were part of the EU. When everyone else can get along and strike trade deals, but you are left standing alone, maybe you are the problem.

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That isn’t a message that Carney’s “Elbows Up” crowd will want to hear, but it might be reality.

For a decade now, I’ve been hearing that Canadian trade negotiators go into meetings expecting everything and offering nothing. And of course, on the commodities that the world wants — oil and gas — we have been unwilling to help them.

When Germany, Japan, Greece and other allies showed up looking to buy liquefied natural gas from Canada, former Liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau said there was no business case to export the commodity. Now, the EU has pledged to buy $750 billion worth of LNG from the United States over the next few years.

Even if the deal doesn’t materialize as promised, it will still be worth more than what Trudeau and the Liberals delivered to us. Carney, now the man in charge, isn’t willing to pivot away from Trudeau’s policies in a strong enough way to fully unleash the Canadian economy, which is what is needed if he is to succeed.

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If Carney truly wanted Canada to compete against the United States economy, he would repeal Bill C-69, he would do away with the West Coast tanker ban, he would scrap the federal emissions cap on the oil and gas industry and more. That he won’t do any of these things tells you that he’s not really interested in making us competitive, he just wants to make it look like he’s interested in seeming to be somewhat competitive.

He’s willing to settle for “good enough,” which isn’t what any Canadian should be willing to settle for.

Canada’s economy is in peril, in part because of Carney’s “Elbows Up” mentality and his inability to negotiate a deal. It’s also in peril because he won’t act boldly enough to unleash Canada’s own potential to the point that we don’t have to rely on the United States as much as we do.

If our PM were smart, and I think he is, he would seek the best deal possible with the United States while also doing everything he could to unleash Canada’s economy to compete on the world stage.

Sadly, he’s not taking either action and that leaves us all in peril.

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