Conrad Black: This is an opportunity Carney, don’t squander it

Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks during a press conference addressing the trade situation with United States in Ottawa on Saturday, Aug. 22, 2026. Photo by HYUNGCHEOL PARK /Postmedia

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The current trade dispute with the United States will become a real crisis if President Trump doesn’t come to his senses (quite possible), before the imposition of our retaliatory tariffs on Sept. 8. The unprecedented explosiveness of this controversy comes from the fact that Donald Trump has clearly stated that he does not believe that Canada is a serious country. He recognizes that we have a civilized and commendable population and that Canada is a treasure house of resources of all kinds, but he is unaware of any significant distinction between Americans and English-speaking Canadians. He considers, not without some reason, that we have been an incoherent nationality whose modus operandi has been a dishonorable freeloading on the Americans for national defense, and absolute commercial dependence upon the United States as if we were states of the American Union, while only masquerading as an independent country.

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We could manage that more easily if most Canadians didn’t recognize that there is an element of truth in it, and if the real distinctions between the ethos of this country and that of the United States were less subtle. Trump’s view is false but not unfounded, and he is striking very close to the core civic sensibilities of many Canadians. It is fashionable to dismiss Trump as a boob, and his public personality sometimes invites that. He is a very perceptive and habitually undiplomatic person and he offends Canadians by his rudeness and by the great power that he disposes. This is what makes his snideries so hurtful.

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We have had important and complex economic controversies before, including in the development of John A. Macdonald’s National Policy of a transcontinental railway and the promotion of Canadian manufacturing behind protective tariffs in the 1880’s and 1890’s, and Wilfrid Laurier’s proposed reciprocal trade agreements with the United States in 1911, and R.B. Bennett’s deathbed conversion to an unconstitutional imitation of President Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1935, and the free-trade election between Brian Mulroney and John Turner in1988. But none of these really questioned Canada’s raison d’etre. As I wrote in this space last week, this is only the second time in our history that the leader of an important foreign country has effectively challenged the integrality of our country when we had no allies to assist us, the previous occasion being the intervention of the president of France, General Charles de Gaulle, in 1967, when he publicly urged Quebec to secede while visiting this country ostensibly to help us celebrate the centenary of the independence of our confederation.

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The prime minister should produce a national policy that defends the irreducible requirements of Canadian sovereignty. These include shrinking the public service gradually from its present obscenely bloated size (over 10 per cent of the entire population), slashing our taxes to competitive levels so we can reverse negative capital flows and promote economic growth, the heavy-handed use of federal fiscal influence on the provinces to strengthen the quality of education, incentivize investment in this country, make Canada a single market, get rid of supply management (that is the only legitimate American complaint against us), accept private medicine and assure an increase in the number of doctors, and build the tangible strength and distinction of the Canadian nationality. In such a program, he would deserve and should receive the support of all.

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This is precisely why we must see the present challenge as an opportunity. Our vulnerability is highlighted by the fact that the leader of the separatist Parti Québécois, which appears to be leading the polls for the imminent Quebec election, has declared that he will not hold an independence referendum until Trump has left office: a perfect exposure of the nonsense and obsolescence of the independentist option in Quebec. There is no chance when Quebecers fear that their own secession would propel Canada into the arms of the U.S. Quebec wants a strong Canada. And so do the rest of us.