The influential leader of the Canadian province of Ontario seeks Trump, Musk says at the meeting that the US ‘needs us as we need them’
OTTAWA-After President-elect Trump Reflecting on using “economic power” to gain Canada as the 51st country during his press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded on social media that “there is no way Canada could become part of the United States State.”
But as Trudeau announced on Monday his plan to resign as prime minister after the Liberal Party he leads chooses his successor, the biggest resistance to Trump’s bid to annex Canada — and his planned 25% tariffs on exports from the country — came from the prime minister’s most populous Canadian province, Ontario.
Doug Ford, a former businessman and Trump-like conservative who has been Ontario’s 26th premier since 2018, said in an interview with Fox News Digital that the president-elect’s targeting of Canada is both “crazy” and “ridiculous.”
He said the bilateral focus should be on “strengthening” what the Canadian government calls almost trillion dollars two-way trade relationship to “make the US and Canada the wealthiest and most successful jurisdiction in the world”.
Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario, speaks to members of the media as he arrives for a meeting in Ottawa, Canada, on February 7, 2023. (James Park/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
At a news conference in Toronto on Monday after Trudeau’s resignation announcement, Ford rebuked Trump for “counter-offering” his idea of Canada as the 51st state.
“How about we buy Alaska and add Minnesota?” said the premier at Queen’s Park, Ontario’s legislature.
Ford jokingly told Fox News Digital that he heard from Canadians after the remarks that he should have chosen “somewhere warmer, like Florida or California.”
“California never votes for him anyway,” he added.
At his press conference on Monday, the Ontario premier said that “under my watch” the annexation of Canada “will never, ever happen.”
Ford is also taking Trump’s threat of tariffs seriously.
President-elect Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speak before a NATO meeting in Watford, Hertfordshire, England on December 4, 2019. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, file)
Last month, his Progressive Conservative government launched a multimillion-dollar U.S. advertising campaign on television and streaming apps, touting Ontario as an “ally” to create “more workers, more trade, more prosperity, more security.”
“You can count on Ontario for the energy to power your growing economy and for the key minerals essential to new technologies,” the 60-second ad says.
Ford said 25% duty to Canadawhich Trump plans to implement on his first day in office on January 20, would hurt millions of American and Canadian workers.
“Nine million Americans produce products just for Ontario every day,” he said. “The problem is that China is sending goods to Mexico, and Mexico is putting on the made-in-Mexico label.”
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy head the Department of Government Efficiency. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Ontario is prepared to take retaliatory measures “that will really send a message to the U.S.” in response to the imposition of U.S. tariffs, said Ford, who was involved in renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement during the first Trump administration but now wants Canada has separate agreements with the USA and Mexico.
“It’s unfortunate because retaliation is not good for any country,” he said, noting that Ontario is the largest exporter in 17 states and the second largest in 11 others.
“The last thing I want to do is hurt those people,” Ford said. “I want to create more jobs in the US, more jobs in Canada. And we can do that by getting tougher and putting tariffs on places like China.”
As an example, he said that “someone in Texas who bought a GM pickup made in Oshawa, [Ontario] could pay between 50,000 and 60,000 dollars”, and with the tariff, “he would pay about 70 thousand.”
“It just doesn’t make sense,” Ford said.
Tractor trailers drive across the Ambassador Bridge border crossing from Windsor, Ontario to Detroit, Michigan on February 14, 2022. (Geoff Robins/AFP via Getty Images)
He would like to have a face-to-face meeting with Trump and said he has contacted US senators and governors to make that happen. A meeting with SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk – whom Trump has named to co-head the proposed “Department of Government Efficiency” with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy – is also on Ford’s wish list.
Ford said Trump “doesn’t realize” that Ontario is the U.S.’s third-largest trading partner, at about $344 billion in 2023, “split equally down the middle.”
Ontario’s premier said he wants to send more electricity and critical minerals to the U.S., which “needs us as much as we need them.”
TRUMP REACTED TO TRUDEAU’S RESIGNATION: ‘MANY IN CANADA LIKE TO BE THE 51ST COUNTRY’
In 2012, the prime minister and his late brother Rob, who was mayor of Toronto at the time, met Trump, along with his daughter Ivanka, when they were in the city to open the former Trump International Hotel and Tower, now unaffiliated with The Trump Organization and known as The St. Regis Toronto.
Ford, who ran the Toronto-based family business Deco Labels & Flexible Packaging before entering city politics as a city councilor in 2010, considers Trump a “smart operator” and a “smart businessman.”
The future president “knows about Ontario,” the premier said.
“Not one senator, not one governor, not one congressman or businessman has said that Canada is the problem,” said Ford, who opened the Deco branch in Chicago in 1999.
He said Trump was not targeting such others American allies like the United Kingdom and France, but “wants to target” America’s “closest friend”, Canada.
“I’m not too sure if it’s personally against Trudeau, but Trudeau is on his way out, so I hope we can have a better conversation,” said the Ontario premier, who added that he would consider running for federal politics in the future.
Trump announced on Monday on Social truth that “the United States can no longer tolerate the huge trade deficits and subsidies that Canada needs to survive.”
Doug Ford campaign at Cambrian College in Sudbury, Northern Ontario on April 11, 2018. (Steve Russell/Toronto Star)
“Justin Trudeau knows this and has resigned,” said the next, 47th American president.
But Trudeau is still prime minister, and Ford and the premiers of the other nine provinces and three territories will meet with him next Wednesday in Ottawa to discuss the issue of Trump’s tariffs.
Despite his departure as prime minister sometime in the next two months, when the next Liberal leader is expected to be chosen, Trudeau should not think he is “free” and that Canadian prime ministers will “hold their feet to the fire” to ensure Canada is ready to respond to inevitable and punitive trade measures by the Trump administration, Ford said.
He chairs the Federation Council – a gathering of Canadian prime ministers, which keeps Canada-US relations first and avoiding US tariffs “priority”, according to a statement released last month.
“Canada and the US form one of the largest integrated markets in the world, with more than 3.5 billion Canadian dollars [about US$2.4 billion] goods and services that cross the border every day. The US sells more goods and services to Canada than it sells to China, Japan and Germany combined.”
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To ease Trump’s concerns about border securityThe Ford government launched “Operation Deterrence” on Tuesday to crack down on illegal crossings, drugs and guns — 90% of which enter Ontario from the U.S., the premier told Fox News Digital.
On the drug front, he said his government is also working with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to identify the source of fentanyl’s ingredients – and whether they came from “China, Mexico or the US.”
Last month, the Trudeau government released its own plan for border security.
