Prime Minister Mark Carney has been evasive and unreliable, if not blatantly self-serving, when it comes to discussing his negotiations with Washington. We learned that when his government lied about the reworked Gordie Howe Bridge negotiations earlier this summer.<\/p>\n
However, the federal government’s own disregard for the truth does not automatically validate the version of events put forward by the Americans. Taking what Donald Trump’s officials say at face value is crass credulity at the worst possible time.<\/p>\n
Let there be no question about whether Carney was right to walk away from the latest eleventh-hour revisions to the Canada-U.S. trade deal. The White House wanted Canada to agree to permanent, supposedly\u00a0favourable, tariffs while effectively ceding our own freedom to strike deals abroad.<\/p>\n
Alan Beattie of the\u00a0Financial Times\u00a0wrote<\/a>, “There were reports that the U.S. wanted exclusive access to Canada’s critical minerals \u2026 and that the US wanted to pull Canada more tightly into its trade orbit by restricting Ottawa’s right to sign deals with other countries.”<\/p>\n Canada is a trading nation, and accepting economic vassalage would end that status, as would giving the Americans more power over our natural resources.\u00a0Therefore, no deal was absolutely better than a very, very bad deal.<\/p>\n It is old news at this point, but Carney\u00a0still bears<\/a>\u00a0responsibility for trying to conceal the true extent of the mess that was the Gordie Howe Bridge renegotiation in July. The original agreement involved Canada financing the\u00a0$6.4 billion cost<\/a>\u00a0of the bridge between Michigan and Ontario, with Canadian governments being\u00a0permitted\u00a0to recover those costs before dividing revenues.<\/p>\n Then, at the last second, before the bridge was due to open, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick\u00a0blocked its opening<\/a>\u00a0and demanded a richer American share.<\/p>\n Carney claimed that the original bargain had been preserved,\u00a0saying<\/a>, “We are sharing after Canada is paid back.” He later insisted that “any sharing of toll revenue won’t happen until all of the debt is repaid.”<\/p>\n The released agreement revealed a vastly different story: net revenues\u00a0would be divided<\/a>\u00a0for 15 years before Canada had recovered the construction debt, while Washington gained leverage over major toll changes.<\/p>\n Carney gave a false account of a concession muscled out of him by a foreign government. Even if it was merely the result of gross ignorance of his own agreement, it is a black mark on Carney’s record. However, this apparent dishonesty does not make Howard Lutnick or any of his compatriots into honest men.<\/p>\n Rather, the bridge deal is the clearest evidence that the current American administration is not, and has never been, a good-faith actor. Washington waited until the project was finished and ready to open before turning the opening into a hostage situation, demanding new\u00a0concessions\u00a0and offering nothing to Canada in return.<\/p>\n Now, the same strategy has been used in trade negotiations. Both sides agreed that they had a tentative deal in place, with industry groups kept informed and President Trump even announcing that the agreement was ready for final review.<\/p>\n Then, in the final hours of negotiations on deadline day, it\u00a0fell apart\u00a0<\/a>due to a combination of differences over automobiles, French-language provisions, and, most critically, Canada’s sovereign ability to negotiate trade with other countries.<\/p>\n Washington claimed that it was Canadian demands for lower tariffs on trucks that sank the deal, which Carney acknowledges<\/a> was part of the disagreement, if not the decisive factor. Politico has reported clashes within the Trump administration and said that U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer disagreed with Lutnick on policy issues related to the failed trade agreement.<\/p>\n Carney does not need to be given a free pass for Canadians to understand\u00a0a very clear\u00a0pattern of predatory renegotiations, in which a deal is\u00a0nearly complete, only for Lutnick to demand ridiculous or impossible terms that Canada is then expected to accept.<\/p>\n