Canadian politicians and business leaders unite in face of trade threats

Share

Who doesn't love a good movie that features an unlikely team of misfits banding together to win out over an imposing foe, perhaps on the gridiron or the battlefield?

This week, Canadian politicians and business leaders have followed the script to a T in the trade arena as they invaded Donald Trump's America to spread the message that punitive measures would hurt both countries.

We should remember this moment. As a country, we are susceptible to bouts of squabbling over issues that are often quickly forgotten – whether it's business versus labour, left versus right or province versus province.

But faced with a potentially huge problem from without – in this case, a tax on exports threatened by the country's most important trading partner – we briefly shed our provincial ways and teamed up for a common cause.

Yes, the border-adjustment tax is likely to crop up again in deliberations in the U.S. Congress. But, standing beside Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the White House, the U.S. President appeared convinced by Canada's message that trade is mutually beneficial.

The most drastic measures he alluded to were tweaks.

Tweaks to a $2-billion-a-day trade relationship are to be expected as new leaders learn the ropes, as technology advances and industries go through evolution and dislocation. Although, to be fair, there was no definition of tweak.

The idea of a border tax and any other changes to the U.S. relationship has caused major worries in Alberta, which exported $80.6-billion of stuff across the border in 2015, with nearly 80 per cent non-renewable resources. Indeed, government figures show Alberta has the highest per-capita exports to the United States among the provinces and territories.

The concerns spread to investors, who since December, according to Toronto-Dominion Bank, have lopped as much as $10-billion from the market capitalization of oil and gas companies as they sold off shares.

What followed was another fascinating study in bringing together leaders who, less than two years ago, would never have been aligned, given their philosophical differences.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley called top brass from the energy, agriculture, lumber and manufacturing sectors to meetings with relatively short lead times to help hone a strategy on trade with the United States. It's a Team Alberta ingredient in the Team Canada recipe.

On Friday, Ms. Notley sat down with 16 senior executives from such major energy players as Cenovus Energy, Suncor Energy, Shell Canada, Encana and Enbridge, as well as smaller companies, including Seven Generations Energy, Perpetual Energy and Frog Lake Energy Resources.

The group provided intel and advice to the NDP Premier, who travels to Washington later this month to spread the gospel that putting burdens on the province's export-exposed industries would penalize the United States – including refineries and motorists in Milwaukee, Wis., Detroit and Toledo, Ohio.

"If you polled the room, I'm not sure who they'd all vote for, but maybe they aren't all NDP voters," said John Zahary, president of Frog Lake, which is owned by the Alberta First Nation of the same name. "The reality is that the Premier understands very well that we trade across the border and mostly what we export is oil and gas, so we better have a good oil and gas relationship."

Certainly, this week's meeting between the U.S. President and Prime Minister had an Oscar Madison-Felix Unger air to it, as leaders with sharply different politics and styles on everything from immigration to refugees to multinational trade pacts shook hands for the first time. Mr. Trudeau has emphasized that Canada will keep its doors open to newcomers, a sore spot for Mr. Trump, although the PM said he would not lecture another country on the issue.

It was quickly apparent that co-ordination and groundwork with key cabinet officials before the fact helped prevent any controversy after other leaders have become targets for the Donald's wrath, such as Mexico's Enrique Pena Nieto and Australia's Malcom Turnbull.

It's a rare thing for so many fractious parts of Canadian society to put differences aside for a little while. Given the new President's propensity to lob diplomatic salvos around the world, the good-cop approach could pay off.