‘Canada burned the bridges’: U.S. ambassador doubts tariff deal feasible before new year

U.S. ambassador Pete Hoekstra says Canada’s trade ad ‘burns bridges’ with the U.S. Mike Le Couteur reports.

The U.S. ambassador to Canada doesn’t foresee a new security and economic deal between Canada and the United States — which could see the reduction or full removal of tariffs amid an ongoing trade dispute — before the new year.

“We have stopped negotiations with Canada,” Pete Hoekstra said in a keynote address to the Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers and Business Canada on Monday. “I don’t see any way that there will be an agreement before American Thanksgiving.”

“I’m not sure what it’s going to take to get people back to the table in a constructive and positive mode,” he added.

Hoekstra’s comments come just days after U.S. President Donald Trump said he is terminating trade talks with Canada and increasing levies on Canadian goods by 10 per cent in response to an anti-tariff ad by the government of Ontario which featured the voice of former Republican U.S. president Ronald Reagan.

Ontario has since pulled the ads, effective Monday.

Government sources had told CTV News that Canadian officials were hopeful there could be movement on a steel and aluminum deal by this week’s APEC Summit in South Korea.

And, speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Malaysia on Monday, Prime Minister Mark Carney said talks “had been making progress” on affected sectors like steel and aluminum until the Ontario anti-tariff ad created waves.

Hoekstra said while he is not part of the negotiating team, he is in frequent contact with U.S. officials who are. He said if not by this week, he’d heard indications a deal could be reached by American Thanksgiving at the end of November.

“They were confident it would happen before Thanksgiving, that we would have a deal on steel, aluminum, energy, which would include both oil and uranium,” he said. “So, that’s where we were on Thursday.”

“The answer was, ‘oh, yeah, absolutely, we’ve ironed out most of the major issues, most of the major hurdles,’” he also said.

Now, with very little time between American Thanksgiving and the Christmas holidays, Hoekstra said, it’s unlikely a trade deal with Canada will take any priority until the new year.

‘Canada burned the bridges’: Hoekstra

Asked by event attendees whether he sees any way to get negotiations back on track, such as an apology for the ad, Hoekstra said: “No.”

Speaking more broadly about the state of negotiations, Hoekstra laid the blame at Canada’s feet for the soured relationship.

Hoekstra has previous expressed his distaste for what he’s called “anti-American” sentiment in Canada, and on Monday pointed to some provinces removing U.S. liquor from store shelves and Canadians being discouraged from travelling south of the border as examples.

He also said the ad amounts to foreign interference, with the U.S. Supreme Court set to start hearing arguments on the legality of Trump’s tariffs on Nov. 5, as well as some gubernatorial and state legislative elections happening next week.

“Canada burnt the bridges with America,” he said. “Donald Trump did not slam the door.”

“Donald Trump could do the only thing that a leader of a sovereign nation could do when a neighbour, another sovereign nation, decided to interject itself into American politics,” he added. “Canada slammed that door shut all by itself.”

‘Mission accomplished’: Ford

Speaking to reporters at Queen’s Park on Monday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said both Carney and his chief of staff, Marc-André Blanchard, saw the ad prior to it airing.

Ford also said the ad accomplished what he’d hoped, surpassing a billion impressions and reaching American voters.

“Mission accomplished, it was done,” he said. “They’re talking about it in the U.S., and they weren’t talking about it before I put the ad on.”

“We achieved our goal, and our goal is to make sure that we get a fair deal, not a one-sided Donald Trump deal, but a fair deal for the people of Ontario and Canada,” he also said.

Ford said the intention was never to “poke the president in the eye,” but rather to “inform the American people.”

Asked whether he believes he owes an apology for derailing negotiations, Ford said his job is to fight for workers in at-risk sectors in Ontario, and he believes that despite word of an imminent deal, some sectors — namely autos — have “slipped to the side.”

“If it wasn’t the ad, he’d look out the door or the window, President Trump say, ‘Oh, the leaves have turned colour, let’s stop,’” Ford said. “Believe me, President Trump is not putting a deal together to benefit Canada. It’s our job. It’s the prime minister’s job to get a deal that benefits all of Canada.”

“It’s not about the ad, it’s about finding every excuse in the world not to get a deal,” he also said.

With files from CTV News’ Stephanie Ha