Although U.S. President Donald Trump has shredded Canada-U.S. trade talks over an Ontario government anti-tariff advertisement, Canadian politicians all the way from the municipal to the federal level are backing Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s approach and won’t say the ad was a mistake.
“I support the premier’s approach,” Brampton, Ont., Mayor Patrick Brown said in an interview on Rosemary Barton Live on Sunday. “Sometimes you need to throw a rock in a pond to get a splash. He’s got a reaction. It’s got a lot of coverage.”
“I’m glad our premier had the courage to call out the U.S. president on inconsistencies,” Brown told host Rosemary Barton.
Ontario’s advertisement uses the late U.S. president Ronald Reagan’s own words to send an anti-tariff message to American audiences.
It appears to have struck a nerve with U.S. President Donald Trump, who first cut off trade negotiations with Canada on Thursday evening over the advertisement and then promised to increase “the Tariff on Canada” by 10 per cent on Saturday afternoon.
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Trump claims the ad is fraudulent and fake. The president and his advisers have also argued Canada is trying to influence an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case which will decide whether U.S. tariffs that Trump imposed on Canada for national security purposes were constitutional.
In an interview on Face The Nation airing Sunday morning on CBS, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Ford “seems to have come off the rails a little” and argued that the advertisement is “interference in U.S. sovereign matters.”
B.C. Minister of Forests Ravi Parmar told Barton on Sunday he thinks Ontario’s ad was effective and it “woke the president up.”
Parmer also said his government will run its own anti-tariff ads next month to defend British Columbia’s forestry industry, but it won’t be as expansive as Ford’s ad campaign.
“We certainly appreciate the hard work that Premier Ford is doing. We’re going to be very measured in our approach,” Parmar said.
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Prince Edward Island Premier Rob Lantz said on Sunday that Ford “has been a very strong voice for Ontario” and very effective at communicating Canadians’ frustrations with the tariffs.
“His ad was very clever,” Lantz said. “But he’s decided to pull it and I respect that and now we can continue to move forward.”
At the federal level, Liberal House leader Steven MacKinnon said in an interview that aired Sunday morning “Doug Ford’s on Team Canada. He’s maybe our first line setter. He’s been an incredible patriot.”
MacKinnon, who spoke with Barton before Trump’s latest tariff threat, added that he’s “loath to criticize” Ford for anything.
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On Friday, Ford said he will pull the ad from U.S. screens after this weekend. The ad aired during Saturday night’s World Series game, meaning millions more Americans saw the clip since it first began running in mid-October.
In a statement posted to social media that day, Ford said his province’s intention “was always to initiate a conversation about the kind of economy that Americans want to build and the impact of tariffs on workers and businesses.”
“We’ve achieved our goal, having reached U.S. audiences at the highest levels.”
As things stand, Canada must now navigate how to get U.S. discussions back on track and stave off Trump’s latest tariff threat. Despite the president’s social media post, it remains unclear whether he’s actually followed through on the promise or will follow through later.
Brian Clow, former deputy chief of staff to prime minister Justin Trudeau, said on Sunday that Carney “should be trying to find Donald Trump” in the hallways of a summit they’re both attending right now in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
“Ontario’s now done the thing that the president wants,” Clow said. “The ad will be pulled in the next 24 hours. So that gives the prime minister something positive to say to Donald Trump.”
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In his social media post Saturday afternoon, Trump argued the “Advertisement was to be taken down, IMMEDIATELY, but they let it run last night during the World Series, knowing it was a FRAUD.”
Frank McKenna, a former Canadian ambassador to the United States, said on Sunday it’s possible Canada was getting too close to a deal and Trump wanted to “push us off the puck a bit.”
One of Carney’s objectives on this Southeast Asia trip is seeking out stronger trade ties with countries in the region to ease Canada’s reliance on U.S. trade. McKenna said the prime minister is “doing the right things” to push the U.S. to acknowledge how much it needs Canadian trade.
Likewise, Brown said Carney has been collaborative with the United States “but at some point, if we don’t have a partner in these trade talks, you can’t get a deal done. And you have to look at other alternatives.”
