For all the talk of a nation divided by President Trump’s anti-Canadian rhetoric and a certain premier who won’t put the national economy before her province’s, on the question of tariffs, Canada’s message to Trump’s Washington is very united indeed. It’s so united, in fact, that this week Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seemed to channel Ezra Levant circa 2010.
Remember “Ethical Oil” — the oil-sands advocacy group, the book? “Over the past few years, Canada’s oil sands exports to the United States have displaced 80 million barrels of Saudi oil annually,” Levant wrote in Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada’s Oil Sands. “That’s 80 million barrels less each year from a misogynistic, theocratic dictatorship that has used its oil money to bankroll terrorists.” We shouldn’t compare “oil sands oil to some impossible, ideal standard,” Levant argued, but rather to its “real competitors.”
Well-lettered folks in big cities across the country practically rolled their eyes out of their sockets. Extracting oil from the oil sands is particularly emissions-intensive, they protested, and besides, all oil is unethical and we should be weaning ourselves off of it.
Fast-forward 15 years, and “energy products” still account for nearly a quarter of Canada’s exports. During Trudeau’s tenure as our proudly environmentalist prime minister, Canada’s crude-oil production has soared 62 per cent — from 91 million barrels in June 2016 to 147 million in October last year.
And there was Trudeau on Tuesday making pretty much Levant’s argument. Canada has “all the resources” Trump needs to usher in his new American “golden age,” Trudeau said — from aluminum to lithium to “energy.” He didn’t say the O-word specifically, but it was more than implied when he said, “the alternative for (the Americans) would be more resources from Russia, China or Venezuela.” You don’t mention Venezuela, which boasts the world’s largest proven oil reserves and not much else, if you’re not talking about oil.
This was a pretty good argument in 2010 and it’s a good one now — as are the basic numbers. In October, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, 58 per cent of American oil imports were from Canada, while Mexico — also in Trump’s doghouse — was in second place at seven per cent. While Nicolás Maduro’s Bolivarian-socialist nightmare-state has the most oil reserves, Putin’s Russia is in eighth place and China is in 14th.
It seems to me Canadians might actually be too united against this threat — or at least, too united behind deeply flawed responses
The argument has also worked on Republicans in the past. “Dirty oil and dangerous oil come from rogue regimes,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham told CBC News in 2010 having toured the oil sands. “The oil coming from Alberta in my view is not only acceptably clean, it is safe.” Graham is chair of the Senate’s budget committee, Trump’s regular golfing partner and one of the president’s most appalling lickspittles. Maybe he can do some good and talk some sense.
Back home, it seems to me Canadians might actually be too united against this threat — or at least, too united behind deeply flawed responses. When it comes to tariffs, almost all of us seem to agree on two main points.
Point one: Trump’s promised tariffs will hurt Americans just as much or more than Canadians. Trudeau has said it (including on CNN); NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has said it; Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has said it.
And point two: We must absolutely retaliate against these tariffs, the ones that hurt American consumers just as much or more than Canadians, by imposing our own tariffs … which by our own logic will hurt Canadian consumers just as much or more than Americans. Trudeau, Singh and Poilievre are united on that point as well — which is odd, you might think, and would perhaps be unpopular. Instead only 13 per cent of respondents to an Ipsos poll released Tuesday opposed retaliating.
The logic of slapping a tariff on American orange juice, as has been proposed, is sound as far as it goes. Canada is the biggest market for exported Florida oranges, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. There are OJ alternatives for Canadians: In 2023, 42 per cent of our imports come from Brazil. The five biggest citrus-producing counties in Florida voted between 54 per cent and 78 per cent for Trump. And while they don’t grow much citrus on Palm Beach Island, and it’s unclear how much Trump really cares about any of this one way or the other (he only reiterated the tariff threat to Canada after his inauguration when asked about it by a reporter) it would hit the president close to home.
But paying more for orange juice doesn’t really solve any of our problems any more than it will solve America’s problems to pay more for everything we ship south.
Where we’re not united is on the question of letting the American bastards freeze in the dark, to borrow a phrase. On Tuesday Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet joined Alberta Premier Danielle Smith in opposing the widely mooted notion of restricting cutting off energy supplies to the Americans — his particular interest being hydroelectricity, obviously. “If you break the Americans’ habit of getting energy from Quebec and Canada, once they have found other sources, you will be in a very disadvantageous position to negotiate new contracts,” Blanchet told The Canadian Press.
He called it a “scorched earth” policy — an apt description. But that describes tariff wars in general, which Blanchet supports. Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe joined the skeptics’ caucus on Wednesday as well, telling reporters in Regina that the province supports “very small, targeted tariffs that are there to change the minds of U.S. decision makers,” but not “broad-based dollar-for-dollar … counter-tariffs.”
“Saskatchewan most certainly is not supportive of and would be working actively to ensure that an export tariff couldn’t be applied on Saskatchewan products,” said Moe. He’ll no doubt be branded a traitor the same way Smith has. But we need more questioning voices in this debate, not fewer.
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