Canada’s premiers are urging Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to increase border security and defense spending to calm the concerns of US President-elect Donald Trump, and the leader of the largest province called the federal government “slow to react” and “stuck on the defensive.”
Ontario’s Doug Ford said after a meeting of the premiers and the prime minister on Wednesday that he has been lobbying the Trudeau government for months.s to show that Canada cares about the economic and security concerns of the United States. He said it simply hasn’t moved fast enough.
“I expressed my hope that this afternoon’s meeting is the beginning of a more proactive approach by the federal government, including demonstrating that it is serious about securing our border,” Ford said in a statement. Failure to do so, he said, risks the “economic chaos of Trump’s tariffs.”
The forceful statement, delivered after a meeting that Trudeau hoped would unify the prime ministers under the banner “Team Canada” to oppose the tariff threat, underscores a key challenge for the prime minister during a second Trump administration. While Trudeau was new to the job and relatively popular the first time around, that is no longer the case, and he faces a group of prime ministers with their own complaints about his policies.
Ford was joined by Quebec Premier Francois Legault, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew, who made statements demanding stronger government action.. Legault, for his part, has long-standing concerns about immigrants entering his province from the U.S., while Smith took the opportunity to criticize Trudeau’s emissions cap on the oil and gas sector.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc emerged from the premiers’ meeting to reiterate that they plan to reinforce border security. LeBlanc said that will include investments in law enforcement and local police, but did not provide specific dollar amounts or timelines.
More “visible and public measures” are needed at the border, LeBlanc said. ““The plan is here, it will evolve and we will reassure Canadians and Americans that people are in place.”
“Now is not the time to fight among ourselves,” Freeland said. “There was really strong agreement among every single person on the call that this is a challenge. “The way we meet that challenge and the way we serve Canadians is by being strong and smart and united and playing for Team Canada.”
Trudeau called the meeting this week after several provincial leaders raised the alarm about Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico unless for countries to stop the flow of fentanyl and undocumented migrants across their borders, although these problems are largely limited to the Mexico crossing.
On Wednesday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke by phone with Trump and told him that her country was already preventing migrants from reaching the US border. Trump later posted on Truth Social that Sheinbaum “agreed to stop migration through Mexico and into the United States, effectively closing our southern border.”
Approximately an hour later, Sheinbaum published in X that in the telephone conversation he told Trump that “Mexico’s position is not to close borders, but to build bridges between governments and people.” He also explained that Mexico’s strategy so far involves “attending to migrants and caravans before they reach the border” and “respecting human rights.”
Trump has not released anything about his phone call with Trudeau earlier this week.
Canadian prime ministers called for more spending on law enforcement. Alberta and Ontario leaders pledged to use local police forces to bolster border security, and Manitoba Premier Kinew He said that the federal government had informed him that he would receive new resources.
Kinew also pressed Canada to devote at least 2% of its gross domestic product to the military, a goal it accepted as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. On Monday, Trudeau reiterated in a speech that the country would meet that goal by 2032.
Ford and other prime ministers have called for Canada to negotiate a bilateral trade deal with the United States if necessary, which would effectively exclude Mexico from the current structure of a tripartite regional agreement due to its economic relationship with China. While Trudeau has also expressed concern about Mexico’s trade with China, he has said he prefers to maintain the trilateral agreement and views Mexico as a “solid partner.”
