LILLEY: CBC isn’t telling you the truth on trade talks with USA

National broadcaster isn't alone in failing to tell you the truth on cross-border trade talks.

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Published Apr 22, 2026  •  Last updated 22 minutes ago  •  3 minute read

President Donald Trump speaks outside the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, April 13, 2026, in Washington. Photo by Alex Brandon /AP

The headline from the CBC made it sound like the Trump administration was engaged in a street-level shakedown of their closest ally and neighbour.

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“Washington demanding ‘entry fee’ from Ottawa before trade talks: sources,” CBC’s headline read.

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The story ran online, on radio and on TV all day, making it sound like the Americans wanted a cash payment to start negotiations. On social media, people just saw the headlines, which means they were left with the false idea that the Yanks were telling us to pay up or something bad might happen.

Given that the Trump administration has launched the Trump Gold Card that will grant wealthy investors a visa to live in the U.S. for $1 million, the idea of a shakedown may not be far-fetched. In this instance, though, when it comes to Canada-U.S. trade negotiations, it’s not happening.

You wouldn’t know that from the way this story is presented, and you’d also be left with some other false impressions as well.

National media is telling you half-truths at best

Canada’s national media is not doing a good job or presenting a fact-based reality to the public on the issue of trade talks.

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In the CBC story claiming the Americans wanted an entry fee, they also claimed that Canada had already given the United States concessions and got nothing in return. They pointed to the Canadian government rolling back some retaliatory tariffs last September and to scrapping the Digital Services Tax.

The tariffs the Carney government rolled back last year were on consumer goods like food, coffee, furniture, and appliances. The Americans had imposed tariffs on our steel, aluminum and autos while we responded with tariffs on those goods coming from the U.S.

We also imposed $30 billion worth of tariffs on consumer goods that the Americans had not tariffed.

Their announcement of a 25% tariff on virtually everything on March 4, 2025, was clarified by March 6 to make clear that CUSMA compliant goods were not subject to the American tariffs. By that point we had already imposed our counter tariffs on CUSMA compliant goods, and we didn’t lift them.

We kept them on until September 2025 in violation of CUSMA.

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Digital Services Tax was a CUSMA violation

As for the Digital Services Tax, this was a measure that had been opposed not only by the Trump administration but the Biden administration before it. The DST is a clear violation of Article 19 of CUSMA, a point both Democrats and Republicans had made as the Trudeau government was passing it into law.

The DST was supposed to come into effect on June 30, 2025, with a big retroactive payment owed by tech giants like Amazon, Apple, and Meta. In the days leading up to the implementation, Canada and the United States were in deep negotiations on tariffs.

The American side asked Carney’s team to pause implementing the tax as a show of good faith.

They refused.

Trump announced that due to this move, trade talks with Canada were called off indefinitely. On Sunday, June 29, just minutes before the tax was supposed to come into effect, the Carney government announced they would kill the tax completely.

All they had to do was pause it on Friday, maybe even use it as leverage later on, but they refused and tried to look tough — a move that backfired.

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So no, we haven’t given concessions to the Americans, we’ve taken two moves that saw us live up to the existing agreement, the one we want them to live up to.

There never was a demand for an ‘entry fee’

There is no demand for an entry fee, but the Americans would like the Canadian side to offer something, like allowing American booze back on the shelves, to get talks going. The Americans have never taken Canadian booze off the shelves, and more Crown Royal is still sold in Texas than all of Canada.

In 2024, Canadian exports to the US amounted to $419 billion USD, our next biggest market was China at $21 billion USD. We can’t pivot away from that kind of market overnight; we need to stop playing games, get to the table and get a deal.

Sadly, it seems that the Carney government, and most Canadians, would rather fight Trump than get a deal that will protect Canadian jobs.

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