COLUMN: On Parliament Hill – Trudeau, Freeland, and Carney made Canada vulnerable to Trump tariffs

There has been much discussion in recent days of President Trump’s threat to levy 25 percent tariffs on Canada.

(A tariff is a tax to be paid on particular imports or exports.)

President Trump believes the United States to have an “unfair” trade deficit with Canada (that Canada is selling more goods to the U.S. than they are buying from the U.S.). While this is, in fact, not the case, that reality doesn’t seem to matter to President Trump and is unlikely to stop the president, who is well known for his love of using tariffs, from pressing his advantage.

The U.S president also sees Canada’s weakened state after nine years of Justin Trudeau, both economically and politically (doubly so now that Trudeau is a lame duck).

Given that the country is largely without a leader right now, efforts to stop these tariff threats have been unsuccessful and the proposed date of Feb. 1 looms large.

While the future is of chief concern for Canadians, it is important to recognize how we got here.

The reality is, Canada is economically vulnerable (and thus unable to effectively absorb or combat tariff threats) as the result of three people and one very bad decision they all agreed on. Justin Trudeau, and the two main contenders seeking to replace him: Chrystia Freeland, and Mark Carney and the decision to essentially shut down Canada’s energy sector.

From his first days in office, Trudeau has waged war on the main driver of Canada’s economy. He cancelled previously approved energy projects that would have brought Canadian oil and gas to the coasts for export overseas. He appointed radical environmentalist Steven Guilbeault to be his environment minister and has given him free reign to wreak havoc on Canadian industry.

Liberal red tape, taxes, and their anti-energy agenda have been driving investment away from Canada for nearly a decade. Bill C-69 the Impact Assessment Act (the no more pipelines bill), the emissions cap, “clean fuel” regulations, the carbon tax, promises of “net-zero”, and their “Just Transition” or “Sustainable Jobs” plan (Bill C-50) combined were nothing short of an all-out assault on our energy sector, threatening the very foundation of our economic prosperity. Legislation dressed up as environmental stewardship that was designed to decimate the sector responsible for driving innovation and advancements in alternative energy—killing hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process.

As his deputy prime minister and finance minister, Chrystia Freeland moved in lockstep with Trudeau, championing this anti-energy, anti-pipeline legislation—including the carbon tax she now conveniently (if not unbelievably) claims to oppose.

Since 2015, their Liberal government has blocked or cancelled 16 different energy projects, costing Canada’s economy more than $176 billion dollars.

Moreover, when other countries (Germany, Japan, Greece, etc.) begged Ottawa to export our top quality liquid natural gas (LNG), the Trudeau Government refused, stating there was “no business case for doing so.” This is stupefying as Japan is the world’s fifth largest consumer of LNG and Germany is number eight. Both currently import a significant percentage of LNG from Russia.

And what of Mark Carney, now poised to become the new Liberal leader?

For years he has served, first unofficially then officially, as Trudeau special economic advisor. He was in Trudeau’s ear, one of the three people to whom Trudeau listens—the others being Chief of Staff Katie Telford and Gerald Butts who gave Canadians Justin Trudeau and is now running Carney’s leadership campaign to replace him.

Carney has strongly supported Trudeau’s anti-pipeline agenda—at least in Canada. Carney’s hypocrisy is perhaps worse than the others as at the same time he opposed resource development in Canada his company was investing billions in pipelines in Brazil and the Middle East.

In his book, Carney praised the Trudeau carbon tax as the “model for the world”.

In short, Mark Carney is no friend of Canadian pipelines or our energy sector and he has been a consistent voice in the ear of Trudeau and Freeland as they worked together to shut it down.

Why is this so important to understand?

Because it is these three people and their ideological choice to shut down and land-lock Canada’s energy sector that has left us vulnerable to Donald Trump.

The United States is the world’s largest consumer of oil and gas.

The Canadian Energy Centre reports, 60 percent of their crude oil, 52 percent of petroleum-based imports, and a whopping 99 percent of their natural gas imports come from Canada. Overall, Canada sends about 81 percent of its crude oil exports to the United States.

Anyone in business will tell you if you only have one main customer your business is vulnerable.

There are only two commodities on which retaliatory tariffs could see a significant impact on the Americans: Oil and gas.

However, our lack of diversification in who we sell to, coupled with the fact we still need American refineries to process that oil to make it usable (and that doing so would also hurt Canadians particularly those in our energy sector), doing so would be a double-edged sword.

In short, had the Liberals allowed approved pipeline projects to proceed, Canada could sell our energy products to the world rather than almost exclusively to the U.S.

If they had allowed industry to build domestic refineries to finish our own product, we would not be reliant solely on our neighbor to the south.

But they didn’t.

Now, the Americans have us over a barrel; and, if the Trump tariffs come, Canadians know exactly who to thank.