‘They’ve got bigger sticks’: Alberta think-tank CEO talks tariff tactics

Gary Mar on Alberta Primetime, March 12, 2025

Canada West Foundation CEO and former politician Gary Mar joins Alberta Primetime host Michael Higgins to discuss how Canadian leaders are handling the Trump trade war.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Michael Higgins: Doug Ford is pressuring his provincial counterparts to ramp up retaliation on the Trump tariffs, including an export tax on Alberta oil.

Interestingly, Ontario suspended its surcharge on electricity 24 hours after implementing it.

What’s your take?

Gary Mar: Well Michael, I’ve just recently recovered from a novel orthopedic procedure on my neck, which is called tariff whiplash.

The things that have happened just in the last few days have been happened rapidly, lots of changes - tariffs on, tariffs off.

Premier Ford making threats to put an export tariff on electricity and then taking it off.

It’s just going in all kinds of different directions.

MH: Is there any structure to what’s playing out? Something that points to a way forward?

GM: I think in the medium term, the answer is yes. In the short term, not really.

I would say that Premier Ford’s suggestion that we put an export tariff on oil doesn’t work particularly well - and the reason is because he wanted the tariff on electricity.

But if you add up all the electricity exports from Canada going into the United States, it’s about $4 billion a year. And it comes from British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba.

But if you’re asking about oil, it’s not $4 billion a year. It’s more like $150 billion a year. So it’s not really an equivalent kind of tool to be using as Premier Ford suggests. I’m much more supportive of Premier Smith’s approach to this.

I would say that the good news is we’ve only got 201 weeks left of Donald Trump to deal with. The bad news is, we’ve got 201 weeks of Donald Trump to deal with – and we better figure out what our short term tactics are and what our long term strategies are.

I’d say the good news is that the premiers and the federal government are working on both.

This isn’t going to end really soon, but what we’re seeing in the United States is Americans starting to push back on the impact that the tariffs have had on them in terms of the cost of living, and we’ve seen markets roiling.

Mr. Trump says he doesn’t look at what the markets have done, but the Trump bump that took place after he was elected - all those gains have all been erased and we’re in negative territory.

The markets clearly are looking for a little more certainty in terms of the policies of the U.S. government. We’ll see how much longer Mr. Trump can last with internal dissent, even among members of the Republican Party and the American public that are pushing back on the effects of some of these tariffs.

MH: What has been the impact of the Doug Ford-Donald Trump dynamic – the rather quick review that came from the White House? How much of a turning point does that represent?

GM: I don’t think very much.

Because the threat of a tariff always provides you with more leverage than a tariff that you announced that you’re going to put on and then you withdraw.

The reason why he withdrew was because Mr. Trump promised even bigger tariffs on steel and aluminum if Mr. Ford carried them out.

I guess what Premier Ford got out of it was a meeting with Secretary of Commerce, [Howard] Lutnick coming up later this week. I think that’s fine, but that certainly doesn’t fix the issue of actually having an end point. It starts the discussions about it.

In any kind of a protracted trade war between the United States and Canada, Canada loses in that war of attrition.

The United States, you know, they’ve got more sticks, and they’ve got bigger sticks. So we can’t sort of last in that kind of tit-for-tat kind of war for any length of time whatsoever.

The good things that the premiers are doing is they’re connecting with the governors, with elected people in the United States who actually care about how these tariffs are affecting Americans.

We’ve got delegations of people meeting with chambers of commerce and with governors and CEOs that are our customers down in the United States, and they’re starting to speak up.

MH: We’re putting a lot of focus on Doug Ford, many looking at him as the de facto point person.

What about the ball now being in Mark Carney’s court? At what point foes the prime minister-designate fit into this conversation?

GM: Like Mr. Ford, he came out swinging hard against the president of the United States. It’s not clear to me that that’s the best strategy.

By reason of comparison, I look at what the president of Mexico has done. In many ways, they’re in the same situation as Canada, but they’ve done so without threatening the president of the United States. They’ve gotten the same breaks that we’ve gotten in terms of postponing the implementation of tariffs.

When I look at world leaders that have done a good job, I’d look at, you know, President Macron of France. I think about the prime minister of Japan, I think about Keir Starmer, the prime minister of Great Britain, and I think about Gloria Sheinbaum, the president of Mexico. There’s something to be learned from that.

One hopes the kind of tough talk that you may want to have as part of an election campaign in Canada is not the same kind of thing as what might make sense in terms of negotiating an end to these tariff threats with the president of the United States.

As I say, we’ve got another 201 weeks to deal with them. So we may not like them, we may not like his policies, but we shouldn’t be attacking him personally.