According to Canadian government sources<\/a>, the U.S. wanted to scale back rules requiring streaming platforms to give Canadian-made content more prominence in Canada, including French-language content. The U.S. did not target Quebec\u2019s French-language product rules in the final stages of the talks, contrary to what Fr\u00e9chette had told reporters. She had not yet been briefed by Canada\u2019s negotiating team when she spoke Saturday afternoon, one of the sources said.<\/p>\nThe issue over French went on to become a flashpoint after the talks collapsed and the two countries imposed billions of dollars in additional tariffs on each other\u2019s goods.<\/p>\n
Trump, too, denied the U.S. had targeted French. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer acknowledged French-language issues arose during the negotiations, but said they were \u201cthe farthest thing from a red line.\u201d<\/p>\n
Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc welcomed on Thursday what he described as Washington\u2019s retreat from its positions on French-language labelling and Canadian-content discoverability rules, suggesting the clarification could open the door to renewed negotiations. <\/p>\n
\t\tEditor\u2019s Picks\t<\/p>\n
Lutnick said he had spoken to LeBlanc at least \u201c10 times\u201d over the past month and to Carney twice during the final 24 hours of the negotiations, exchanging text messages, too. He said he has known Carney since the prime minister worked at Goldman Sachs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a deal. We shook hands. The president announced it,\u201d he said. \u201cEverybody was positive. Canada made the decision, for political purposes, that they wanted to walk away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lutnick predicted \u201ca plane full of Canadian negotiators\u201d would return after the election.<\/p>\n
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, which is the federal agency responsible for American trade policy, has previously singled out Quebec\u2019s Bill 96 \u2013 requiring French to appear on products sold in Quebec \u2014 in its annual report on barriers faced by U.S. exporters, citing concerns about its effect on trademarks. U.S. officials even raised the law at the World Trade Organization in 2024. Though in its latest annual report, the U.S dropped mention of the bill.<\/p>\n
In March, the U.S. Trade Representative also identified Bill 109 as a potential trade barrier. That regulates how French-language cultural content is made available and promoted online.<\/p>\n
The Gazette reached out to the Prime Minister\u2019s Office for comment on Lutnick\u2019s remarks but did not receive a response before publication.<\/p>\n
Later Thursday, Trump repeated his claim Canada had been \u201cripping us off for a long time on trade\u201d and also signed an order he said renamed Lake Ontario \u2014 one of the Great Lakes on the Canada-U.S. border \u2014 \u201cLake America.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump also suggested he might rename the Atlantic or Pacific oceans.<\/p>\n
Do you have a story? Write to me: hnorth@postmedia.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, a close ally of President Trump, accused Prime Minister Mark Carney Thursday of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1028220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[2147,33466,50,140321,403479],"class_list":["post-1028219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-canada","tag-french-language","tag-news","tag-news-videos","tag-quebec-elections"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117169709925012264","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1028219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1028220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1028219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1028219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1028219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}