As we move closer to the U.S. election, CTVNews.ca will be examining the relationship between Canada and the U.S. in a series of features.
While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took a measured tone when talking about Donald Trump during his first presidency, the Canadian leader has been a little more direct since.
“It wasn’t easy the first time and if there is a second time, it won’t be easy either,” Trudeau told the Montreal Chamber of Commerce in January. “There are clearly issues where I do not agree at all with Mr. Trump.”
Citing topics like climate change, Trudeau said another Trump presidency would be a “step back” and a win for a type of populism “that reflects a lot of anguish and fury … without necessarily providing solutions.”
‘We were able to manage Mr. Trump’
There were tense moments between the ideological opposites during Trump’s four years in the White House, particularly when Trudeau and other NATO leaders were caught on camera apparently mocking the president, and when Trump slapped hefty tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum in 2018.
“Obviously, Mr. Trump represents a certain amount of unpredictability, but we will make sure we’re pulling together and preparing for any eventualities,” Trudeau said in January. “We were able to manage Mr. Trump by defending Canadian interests and showing we can create economic growth on both sides of the border.”
On the campaign trail, Trump has pitched a new 10 per cent tariff on all imports to the U.S. In the face of potentially more protectionism, Trudeau recently announced a renewed “Team Canada” engagement strategy to push the benefits of continental free trade to stakeholders across the U.S.
“We worked directly to put pressure on the American administration to highlight that this was something that was hurting them, every bit as much as it was hurting us and we got President Trump to lift those tariffs,” Trudeau told reporters in May. “The best argument as to why Canada shouldn’t be hit with tariffs or punitive protectionist measures is that it would hurt American jobs as well.”
‘An assault on democracy’
Trudeau and the Liberals have also tried to draw parallels between Conservative Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre and Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement, which has fuelled debate on issues like abortion and transgender rights.
“What we’re seeing from these MAGA conservatives is an approach on going back on fundamental rights in ways we shouldn’t be seeing,” Trudeau said in a 2023 year-end interview with The Canadian Press. “We may think to ourselves, ‘This will never happen in Canada and this is just the Liberals bringing up the usual fear that they do.’ I’m sorry, it wasn’t ever supposed to happen in the United States either, and yet it did because of MAGA conservatism. The threat is real.”
Trudeau took another thinly-veiled swipe at Trump when speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York last year.
“You guys are the greatest democracy in the world,” Trudeau said in April 2023. “Right now, it’s not just that it’s being taken for granted by so many citizens, it’s actually being devalued.”
The prime minister was even more direct in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which aimed to reverse the outcome of the 2020 presidential election in favour of Trump.
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shakes hands with then U.S. President Donald Trump during a meeting at the G7 leaders summit in La Malbaie, Que., on June 8, 2018. (Justin Tang / THE CANADIAN PRESS)
“What we witnessed was an assault on democracy by violent rioters, incited by the current president and other politicians,” Trudeau told a news conference at the time in a rare public rebuke. “As shocking, deeply disturbing, and frankly saddening as that event remains — we have also seen this week that democracy is resilient in America, our closest ally and neighbour.”
Trump has in turn hurled insults at Trudeau, calling him “weak” and a “far left lunatic.”
‘A place of mistrust’
“The relationship between Trudeau and Trump is poor,” political scientist Aaron Ettinger told CTVNews.ca. “If Trump is elected and Trudeau remains prime minister, they would be restarting the relationship from a place of mistrust.”
Then President Richard Nixon and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau talk in Trudeau’s office in Ottawa in this Apr.14, 1972 photo (Chuck Mitchell / THE CANADIAN PRESS)
Ettinger is an associate professor at Carleton University who specializes in U.S. foreign policy. He says personal dynamics between U.S. presidents and Canadian prime ministers have always mattered, and have ranged from warm relations between Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan to frosty feelings between Richard Nixon and our current prime minister’s father, Pierre Trudeau.
“If the two get along, then cross-border cooperation is easier,” he said.
“But that doesn’t mean that poor personal relations will gum up the works. There is an enormous inter-governmental architecture below the leadership level that makes the North American relationship work.”
U.S. President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrive for a news conference March 24, 2023, in Ottawa (Andrew Harnik / AP Photo)
Ettinger describes Trudeau’s relationship with U.S. President Joe Biden as “constructive but not particularly chummy.”
“They don’t need to be best friends for the U.S.-Canada relationship to work,” he said, “they just need to avoid interpersonal acrimony.”