In the news today: Carney meeting with cabinet committee in Ottawa

By Canadian Press on April 11, 2025.

Here is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to bring you up to speed…

Carney meeting with cabinet committee in Ottawa

Prime Minister Mark Carney has suspended his election campaign yet again to deal with the fallout of U.S. tariffs.

Carney is expected to chair a meeting this morning with his cabinet committee on Canada-U.S. relations and national security.

U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly reversed course on his trade war Wednesday by pausing his so-called “reciprocal” tariffs for 90 days, keeping in place a universal 10 per cent tariff, as well as 25 per cent duties on steel, aluminum and automobile imports to the United States.

U.S. tariffs on Canada have not changed.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is also in Ottawa today, scheduled to speak at the Broadbent Institute’s 2025 Progress Summit, while Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is set to hold a press conference in St. Catharines, Ont., in the morning.

Here’s what else we’re watching…

NYC sightseeing helicopter plunges into river, killing 6, including family of Spanish tourists

A New York City sightseeing helicopter broke apart in midair Thursday and crashed upside-down into the Hudson River, killing the pilot and a family of five Spanish tourists in the latest U.S. aviation disaster, officials said.

The victims included Siemens executive Agustin Escobar, his wife, Mercè Camprubí Montal, a global manager at an energy technology company, and three children, in addition to the pilot, a person briefed on the investigation told The Associated Press. The person could not discuss details of the investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Photos posted on the helicopter company’s website showed the couple and their children smiling as they boarded just before the flight took off.

The flight departed a downtown heliport around 3 p.m. and lasted less than 18 minutes. Radar data showed it flew north along the Manhattan skyline and then back south toward the Statue of Liberty.

Video of the crash showed parts of the aircraft tumbling through the air into the water near the shoreline of Jersey City, New Jersey.

Most Canadians say tariffs will affect them

A new poll suggests 60 per cent of Canadians say they will personally feel the effects of U.S. tariffs — and most believe Canada should fight back.

The poll, which was conducted by Leger for the Association of Canadian Studies, also says that most respondents report their level of trust in Americans has dropped to levels not seen since U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term in office.

Trump has imposed tariffs on Canada and countries around the world, and has threatened to increase them if those countries insist on retaliating with tariffs of their own.

Jack Jedwab, president and CEO of the Association for Canadian Studies, said Canadians “feel there’s a serious rift in our relations with the United States.”

The poll surveyed 1,631 people from April 5 to 6. Leger said it can’t assign a margin of error to the poll because it was a panel survey.

Tariffs bite small Canadian food companies

As tariffs on Canadian goods and retaliatory levies filter through supply chains, industry insiders say some smaller Canadian food manufacturers may not be able to weather the storm much longer.

“I think you may see some companies just not making it,” said Michael Graydon, CEO of the Food, Health & Consumer Products of Canada association.

U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed tariffs on goods coming from Canada and Mexico, though he’s made any products compliant with the Canada-United States-Mexico trade agreement exempt from levies. Canada, in turn, brought in retaliatory tariffs on a wide swath of American goods.

Many business owners that rely on sales to the U.S. breathed a sigh of relief at that exemption, said Graydon.

“The challenge for these same companies, though, is a lot of the ingredients they’re using to manufacture their products are coming from the United States, and they’re now caught up in the retaliatory tariffs,” he said.

Duty-free shops see business drop ‘off the cliff’

A group of duty-free shop owners says sales are plunging as Canadian travellers steer clear of the U.S. amid anger over tariffs and annexation threats.

Frontier Duty Free Association executive director Barbara Barrett says sales are down between 40 and 50 per cent across the country, with more remote crossings reporting declines of up to 80 per cent.

She says the mom-and-pop shops, which sell products tax-free ranging from maple cookies to Canadian Club whiskey, were just starting to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic when the trade war struck.

While duty-free stores at land crossings number fewer than three dozen, Barrett says they can be cornerstones of the local economy in rural areas.

Statistics Canada says the number of Canadians returning home by car from the U.S. fell nearly 32 per cent last month compared to March 2024, the third consecutive month of year-over-year declines.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 11, 2025.

The Canadian Press

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