Prime Minister Justin Trudeau rises during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Nov. 5.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet have been in planning mode for months to prepare for the next U.S. president, but those preparations do not include concessions on defence spending.
Since January, the federal government has been working through the different election outcomes south of the border and ensuring that it is ready whether Donald Trump is returned to the White House or should the Democrat’s Kamala Harris win the presidency. The goal is to avoid a repeat of the 2016 election result when Canada was not expecting Mr. Trump to win and was ill-prepared for the disruptions that followed.
“We are better prepared,” Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne insisted to reporters on his way into cabinet on Tuesday.
“We’ve been preparing for this for months through our diplomatic network across the U.S., but also around the world,” Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said. “This government is going to be able to address issues that are important to Canadians.”
Ms. Joly said she and her colleagues have made in-roads with state and federal politicians on both sides of the aisle and with business leaders ahead of the election.
Since January, a senior government official said Canada has been working to improve its relations with other foreign allies in the hopes of inoculating itself against the divide-and-conquer approach that Mr. Trump took in his first presidency.
That official and a second senior government source said Canada is not just preparing for a new Democratic or Republican administration but also for the potential of violence or unrest should the election results be contested.
However, the second source cautioned that while Ottawa has discussed the possibility of a third scenario of prolonged uncertainty or unrest, it has not been the main focus of the government’s preparations.
The Globe and Mail is not identifying the government officials who were not permitted to disclose the internal plans.
Ottawa would have to double military spending to meet NATO target, budget watchdog says
Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris have both campaigned on protectionist policies, which could pose serious challenges for the Canadian economy. The Republican candidate, though, has increased the risk with a pledge to bring in a 10-per-cent, across-the-board tariff – which the Canadian Chamber of Commerce believes could cost the Canadian economy around $30-billion a year.
Canada’s defence spending is one issue that Mr. Trump will push, according to Mr. Trump’s former ambassador to Canada, Kelly Craft, who told CTV News that Canada’s pledge to meet its NATO spending target by 2032 is “not good enough.”
On Tuesday, however, Defence Minister Bill Blair stood by the eight-year timeline to meet the NATO goal of spending 2 per cent of gross domestic product on defence. The date is years behind most other NATO allies.
“I’ve already shared with NATO, I think, a strong plan to get where we need to be by 2032 and we’re going to do it,” Mr. Blair said.
Defence spending has become more of an irritant in the relationship in part because Canada has let its role as a strategic ally with the U.S. slip, said Andrea van Vugt, who served as foreign affairs and trade adviser to former prime minister Stephen Harper. In years past, the U.S. relied on Canada for energy, but she said almost two decades have passed since that was the case and Ottawa has failed to supplant that with something else.
No matter who is in the White House, for the U.S. to think twice before making decisions that could hurt Canada, Ms. van Vugt said Canada needs to find a new way to make itself indispensable to the U.S.
Canada’s vast reserves of critical minerals should be the foundation for a new strategic partnership but she said Ottawa has failed to clear the regulatory snarls that are hindering that opportunity.
While federal ministers avoided questions on how Canada would handle Mr. Trump’s tariff plans, Mr. Champagne was keen to talk about the opportunity that critical minerals present, likening them to “having oil in the 20th century.”
“The focus of our friends in the United States is about national security. National security and economic security are one,” he said.
In a Tuesday interview U.S. ambassador to Canada David Cohen said he expects critical minerals to remain a “fertile area” for the two countries to work in any future administration.
Mr. Cohen said the two countries are working to remove regulatory barriers, and critical minerals mining regulations are a poster child of that effort.
“The opportunities for Canada and the United States to work together in this space are vast, significant and impactful.”
With a report from The Canadian Press