President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Republican governors at Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Fla., Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Evan Vucci
OTTAWA – Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey said Wednesday Canada should make sure the U.S. is aware of its critical reliance on Canadian energy – but should not pull back on those exports just yet.
Furey joined other premiers and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a meeting in Ottawa Wednesday to discuss Canada’s plan to respond to U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s tariff threats.
Trump will be sworn into office for his second term as president on Jan. 20 and has said he intends to impose a 25 per cent import tariff on all Canadian goods the same day.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault said Canada should have options prepared if Trump follows through on that threat, as most premiers expect he will.
Furey said Canada must have a proportional response ready but should not play its hand too early by blocking or limiting energy exports to the U.S.
Both Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith have rejected the idea of any measures that would affect Canada’s energy exports to the United States.
“We should not be considering export tariffs or taxing things that Canadians are producing,” Moe said on his way into the meeting Wednesday.
Furey, whose province is also an oil-producing region, did not close the door to using energy exports as a trade weapon.
“I see energy as Canada’s queen in this game of chess,” he said. “We don’t need to expose our queen this early. The opposition needs to know that the queen exists but they don’t need to know what we’re going to do with the queen.”
Canada is the top supplier of foreign oil to the U.S. and accounts for about one-fifth of its oil supply.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, currently the chair of the premiers’ association known as the Council of the Federation, showed up to the meeting sporting a blue baseball hat with the message “Canada is not for sale” – a reference to Trump’s repeated claims that he wants to annex Canada into the U.S. using “economic force.”
“President Trump wants to devastate Canada,” Ford said. “That’s unacceptable.”
Public Safety Minister David McGuinty discussed Canada’s plans to beef up border security at the meeting Wednesday morning.
Ford called the border plan “phenomenal” on Tuesday, but it doesn’t seem to have deterred the president-elect.
Trump initially said the tariffs were being imposed in response to drugs and illegal immigration crossing the shared border, but has since pivoted to citing the United States’ trade deficit with Canada.
Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc, who is attending the meeting with the premiers, said Tuesday his department and Canada’s major banks have been working on modelling potential job losses from the tariffs. He declined to share that information.
“We’re not going to speculate on what exactly are different scenarios. Next week, we think we’ll know the precise details of what these tariffs will mean to the Canadian economy and of course we’ll be ready to respond from a position of strength,” LeBlanc said Tuesday.
Ford estimated that the tariffs could cost 500,000 jobs in Ontario alone.
Premier Smith met with the president-elect at his Mar-a-Lago resort over the weekend. She is attending the meeting Wednesday virtually, as is British Columbia Premier David Eby.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 15, 2025.
