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OTTAWA — Public Safety Minister David McGuinty suggested Tuesday that some information about Canada’s upgraded border plan to halt fentanyl and illegal border crossings into the United States may not have flowed to U.S. President Donald Trump until Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke to the president by phone Monday.
Canada first published the $1.3 billion plan in December, weeks after Trump first said he was going to slam Canada with 25 per cent across the board tariffs if Canada didn’t do more to secure its border with the United States.
Canadian ministers, including McGuinty, spent weeks flying back and forth to Florida and Washington, D.C. meeting with Trump aides and members of his cabinet, promoting that plan. Those meetings kept happening until almost the final hour, and videos showcasing Canada’s border efforts were shared with key Republicans.
On Friday afternoon, the day before Trump’s Feb. 1 tariff deadline, McGuinty, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly and Immigration Minister Marc Miller met with U.S. “border czar” Tom Homan. Still the next day, Trump signed the executive order to have the tariffs — 10 per cent on Canadian energy and 25 per cent on everything else — take effect Feb. 4.
Hours after that document was signed, Trudeau addressed Canadians and said he had not been able to speak to Trump since the inauguration on Jan. 20 but would continue to try. That finally happened on Monday, the first call in the morning, and then a second call mid-afternoon. After the second call, Trudeau said the tariffs were on hold for a month in a social media post that outlined Canada’s border plan, including some measures he said were new.
McGuinty said one of those elements is formalizing a Canada-U.S. Joint Strike Force to combat organized crime, fentanyl and money laundering that Canada had proposed “some time ago.” But he suggested not all those details may have made it through to Trump.
“These options were options that we were considering already,” he said. “Not all of them were necessarily floated or known by both of our governments,” McGuinty said.
Canada also committed another $200 million toward its response, which McGuinty said is on top of the money already set aside — raising the total cost to $1.5 billion over six years.
When asked what he thought moved the needle to convince Trump to halt the tariffs, McGuinty pointed to some new measures including appointing a “fentanyl czar” and listing drug cartels as terrorist entities.
“I wasn’t on the call with the Prime Minister and the President, number 1. And number 2, we kept driving and kept the relationship alive. We kept reminding our counterparts in Washington and the White House that we’re making progress.”
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