Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre reaffirmed that Canada will remain a sovereign nation amid renewed calls for the country to become the 51st U.S. state and Donald Trump’s recently declared 25-per-cent tariff on Canadian steel and aluminum exports to the U.S.
According to the Associated Press, on the way to the Super Bowl game Sunday President Trump told reporters on Air Force One he plans to impose steel and aluminum import tariffs against many countries, including Canada, which was recently granted a 30-day reprieve on previously threatened comprehensive tariffs.
In an interview with Fox News that aired before the Super Bowl, the recently re-inaugurated U.S. president said his threats to annex Canada were a “real thing” and that “Canada would be much better off being a 51st state.”
During a press conference Monday, Poilievre pledged again to rebuild Canada’s military presence in the Arctic and ensure Canada would never become America’s 51st state.
“We are a proud, sovereign and independent country. We are a patriotic people, and we will defend our future and our independence,” Poilievre said. He added if Trump slaps tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, “(w)e will retaliate in kind with matching tariffs on American aluminum and steel, all of the proceeds of which will be given back to our steel and aluminum industry, and any surplus will be given in tax relief for our people.”
He called Trump’s tariff threats a “wake-up call” that the “Carney-Trudeau-Liberals” have destroyed Canada’s economy over the last nine years, leaving it in a weakened position amid trade talks.
“The Carney-Trudeau Liberal policies that doubled housing costs, doubled food bank lineups, doubled our national debt and sent half a trillion dollars out of our country to the United States were wrong before. They are absolutely dangerous now,” Poilievre said.
Last week, Liberal leadership candidate and former central banker Mark Carney told CTV News he would impose an industrial carbon tax on “large polluters” and “big companies,” naming steel manufacturers as an example.
Poilievre said the combination of Trump’s tariffs and Carney’s carbon tax hikes would be an “existential disaster” for the Canadian economy.
“Can you imagine what it would do to our country if at the same time, Donald Trump hits our steel industry with a tariff mark, Carney brings in a massive new carbon tax?” he said. “My friends, there will be no steel making in Canada, and we will lose the most fundamental strategic building block of an economy and frankly, our national security.”
He linked Carney, as Trudeau’s advisor, to many of the economic issues facing Canada.
“Mark Carney has been in charge of our economy for the last five years when he became Justin Trudeau’s advisor,” he said. “And what has been the result? Doubling the debt, printing $700 billion of inflationary cash, destroying the purchasing power of our money, shutting down pipelines that would have made us less reliant on the Americans so that they get all our oil and all our gas.”
He said Carney’s “radical environmental agenda sought to deliberately defund Canada’s energy sector.”
“That has been Mark Carney’s radical agenda that Justin Trudeau has been implementing dutifully over the last five years, this agenda was wrong before. It is an existential threat to every Canadian job now,” Poilievre said.
Carney’s campaign did not respond to True North’s requests for comment.
Poilievre vowed if elected, he would take Canada in the “exact opposite direction.”
“These radical policies have not worked in the last nine years, and they will be a catastrophe if they are allowed to continue for a fourth term of the Carney-Trudeau Liberals,” he said. “That’s why we need a strong, Canada first, common sense, a Conservative government that will, yes, axe taxes, build homes, fix budgets and stop crime, bringing home production and paychecks by repealing anti-energy laws.”
He said that his government would “unapologetically build pipelines, big mines, LNG, and liquefaction plants” that would pass a “bring it home tax cut” to “bring back” half a trillion dollars that the “Carney-Trudeau Liberals” have “given” to the Americans, via their anti-energy policies.
Canada’s premiers have been responding to Trump’s proposed tariffs too.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford was on CNBC Monday, saying the tariff would hurt both Canada and the U.S., and vowed a proportionate retaliatory response against the United States.
“America loses, Canada loses. I’ll tell you who wins is China,” Ford said. “China is sitting back laughing, and the whole world’s laughing, watching two of the closest allies in the world go at each other. It just doesn’t make sense.”
In recent weeks Ford has been advocating against a trade war with the U.S. and in favour of a strengthened trade relationship, though has expressed the need to retaliate against Trump’s tariffs.
“I know that America needs our critical minerals because China has cut them off. Who has the critical minerals? Ontario and across the country need our energy and oil. They need our electricity,” Ford said. “Ontario keeps 1.5 million lights on in New York, in Michigan and Minnesota, and the list goes on and on and on, and we need each other, and we’re stronger together.”
