Kenneth Frankel, president of the Canadian Council for the Americas: ‘Some people have called Trump’s actions the Ukraineization of Canada’

Canada is in turmoil. Newly inaugurated Prime Minister Mark Carney is about to call snap elections for next month. And the campaign, which has not officially started, will be defined by the country’s most pressing matter. On April 2, Donald Trump has said he will set new tariffs on a wide selection of products from Canada and elsewhere, while also repeating over and again how nice it would be to make his northern neighbor the 51st state. Kenneth Frankel, president of the Canadian Council for the Americas, spoke with EL PAÍS from New York via a video call to discuss the current temperature of Canadian politics, the tariff dispute which has morphed into an existential threat, and the future outlook for his country.

Question. Prime Minister Carney has been dealt the tough hand of dealing with Trump’s continuing aggression. How would you describe the situation he’s facing?

Answer. It’s existential. This 51st state stuff is not viewed in Canada as a joke, but part of a plan to first cripple Canada economically and then make it easier for them to try and take it over one way or another. Mark Carney became prime minister last Sunday and as far as we understand, he still has not spoken to Trump. Traditionally, the first conversation or the first visit would be to Washington. He said he’ll speak to him when the conditions are appropriate. Instead, where did Mark Carney go at the beginning of this week? France and England. What’s he talking about? Economic ties, diversification, and everything related to further integration. Also, about security issues.

Q. And internally the reports are he’s going to call elections on Sunday, what’s the situation like there?

A. Donald Trump has had an effect on Canadian politics unlike anything anyone has seen before. If you look at the polling of the [governing] Liberal Party in December, it’s like 16%, and now they’ve overtaken the opposition Conservative Party. That’s a 20 point difference in a few months. The elections are going to be called for April 28. So we’ll see how that goes. Trudeau ended up leaving office with a much higher approval rating than he had enjoyed for many, many years because the country actually liked the way he was dealing with Trump. And Carney is a serious player. He knows world finance, he knows corporate office, and he knows public sector finance through his work in the Canadian Central Bank and then in England.

Q. And the Conservatives? How are they talking about how they would deal hypothetically with Trump now that has become the central issue?

A. This phenomenon has caught the Conservatives flat-footed, because the campaign up till now was based on the carbon tax: “Ax the tax.” They wanted an election on the unpopular carbon tax. But the major Liberal candidates, even during the campaign for the Liberal leadership, all said, day one, I’m getting rid of the carbon tax. So now they see the Liberals gaining momentum with this battle about the existence of Canada. The question now is who’s the best person to negotiate and protect Canadian interests? The Conservatives have more recently pivoted to say that they will be tough with Trump. We’ll see if Canadians believe that.

Q. Was there a set-out plan beforehand to deal with Trump, his bullying, and his tariffs? Or is it impossible to plan for something like this?

A. There was definitely planning on the economic front. Not publicly, of course, but even before the election, contingency planning. When you see Canada come with specifically targeted countermeasures, that didn’t happen overnight. They went state by state, industry by industry. It didn’t just come out of the air that they were going to do orange juice, which is going to affect Florida, right? There was a complete mapping of where these things were coming from. Having said that, I don’t think many people fully understood the enormity of what was coming.

Q. The claims that Canada is not doing enough to stop the flow of migrants or fentanyl into the U.S. is factually disputable… how can Canada negotiate when the other side is making such claims?

A. The facts are just the opposite of what he says. So once you get past that, you say, what’s really going on here? No one could imagine the attacks on Canadian sovereignty, but for Canadians, there is no other explanation: every time he says “I want their minerals, I want the 51st state,” that’s real, they believe him. Or he wants to create an empire. If you look at a map of the United States, Canada, and Greenland, it looks like a whole big mass that would set up nicely for an empire. And when he’s launching misinformation bots about the trade war that Canada has started, you see all this coming together. Some people have called Trump’s actions the Ukraineization of Canada. Canada plans on going strong against that.

Q. How would that play out?

A. For example, when the Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, a conservative who just won reelection, threatened to cut off all the energy that flows from Ontario, that would have basically shut off three states in the U.S. Then, all of a sudden, he was invited down to the White House to have a conversation. So the feeling in Canada now is if you’re going to go, maybe don’t go incrementally, you go strong right up front. When you frame it as an existential fight, then the question is you do what you have to do.

Q. Obviously, avoiding a full-blown trade war is the priority, but is there anyone seeing that this situation could force a diversification of trade and perhaps end up strengthening Canada?

A. One of the main words in Canada right now is diversification. So there are efforts to look abroad to develop new channels where necessary. Having said that, 75 [percent] or whatever number you want to pick these days, depending on how you calculate it with intermediary goods, of Canadian exports go to the U.S. It’s an economic relationship with all kinds of entanglements. So the answer is, yes, diversification, but I don’t think anybody has the illusion that Canada can exist without serious commerce with the U.S. Certainly not in the short or medium, and one would say probably the long term as well. Another remedy that’s talked about is to break down longstanding internal barriers for trade among Canadian provinces.

Q. Does Canada have a strong hand to play then if they acknowledge they will still need trade with the U.S.?

A. Canada, and this is something they’ve done for a number of decades now, realizes that in order to have influence in what happens in Washington, it’s really important to have influence in the states all throughout the country. And so there’s been concerted efforts over a period of years to develop very good personal, economic, political, relationships with the separate states. Canada has a famous map, that it revises every now and again, that shows what is the biggest trading partner for each state. I don’t know the exact number lately, but it was like 35 out of the 50 states where the leading partner was Canada. So the conversations that have been going on even now are not just in Washington, but with governors.

Q. Are there any voices looking to turn down the heat of the confrontation?

A. Everybody understands that in the heat of battle, sometimes things can get hyperbolized a little bit. But in this case, this is coming from people who are very level-headed, including statesmen and diplomats. They are saying the relationship will never be the same again. And Canada has left itself vulnerable to these things, or more vulnerable than it could have been if it had not taken certain decisions on its integration with the U.S. market. Everybody understands that too. But it’s time to start growing up, becoming more independent, and spreading around some of the risk and vulnerability.

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