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Canada's New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh takes part in a press conference before Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, on Dec. 16, 2024.
A (brief) spring election freeze? Not so fast
Will they or won’t they? It’s been a lot, watching and waiting to see if Canada will face an early election this spring. When Justin Trudeau announced in January that he’d resign in March, launching a leadership race to replace him as Liberal Party leader and prime minister, a spring election seemed certain. Now, maybe not.
The country isn’t due for a vote until October of this year, but the Conservative Party, way up in the polls, is begging for one. And, until recently, it looked like they’d have the backing of the New Democratic Party.
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has been saying his party would defeat the government and force an election “at the earliest opportunity,” no matter who is leading it. But then Singh said the New Democrats could work with the Liberals to pass legislation to help individuals and businesses hurt by Donald Trump’s impending tariffs.
“I will be voting against the government at the earliest opportunity,” he said Tuesday, before contradicting himself. “If the Liberals are serious, though, about a plan to support workers, call the opposition leaders together. Discuss that plan with us.”
It was confusing.
On Thursday, he clarified himself, saying he thinks Trudeau should recall the legislature immediately to pass a support package for Canadians who’ll suffer from Trump tariffs. Then, in March, the NDP will vote down the government alongside the Conservatives and send the country into an election.
He may not get the chance. Mark Carney hinted that should he win, he might call the election early himself. But if Trump does indeed press ahead with tariffs on Feb. 1, Trudeau may see it fitting to bring back the legislature, however briefly, to pass an aid package in the dying days of his government.Can Liberals get a boost?
Before Trump makes a serious move on tariffs, Canadian Liberals are to choose a new leader, who will face Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre in an election soon after. At that point, Canadians will decide who should manage the country – and its difficult new relationship with its southern neighbor.
All the polls show Poilievre with a decisive lead, but issue polling is giving the Liberals faint hope that they might turn things around.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeausaid Tuesday that Canada would respond with a “very strong” dollar-for-dollar retaliatory package. A poll from Ipsos for Global News finds that 82% of Canadians agree that Canada should retaliate. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievrehas said Canada should do so, but his position is more delicate, since about half of Canadian Conservatives like Trump.
He is demanding that Trudeau recall Parliament so that MPs can debate tariffs and other elements of the response. Trudeau won’t do that because Poilievre would move a non-confidence vote, which could send Canadians to the polls in the middle of a Liberal leadership race.
The same poll that showed support for retaliatory tariffs found that three-quarters of Canadians want an immediate election, but they will have to wait. Voters in Ontario will likely get the chance to express their views sooner as Premier Doug Ford is expected to call an election there as early as next week. He hopes to capitalize on his Captain Canada image and lock down votes before the federal election scrambles electoral preferences.An Amazon warehouse in the Lachine neighborhood of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on Jan. 22, 2025.
Hard Numbers: Amazon to close unionized Canadian facility, Pentagon sends troops to border, Quebec’s new AI infrastructure fund, Freeland abandons capital gains tax
1,700: On Wednesday, Amazon announced it will close all Quebec facilities in the next two months, cutting over 1,700 jobs and outsourcing deliveries to smaller contractors. The company claims the decision is for cost savings, not related to the recent unionization at its Laval warehouse — Quebec's only unionized Amazon workforce in Canada. The CSN union federation denounced the closure as nonsensical. Workers at the Laval facility, who were seeking a $26 per hour wage, received news of the closure through an email to their union lawyer.
1,500: The Pentagon is sending 1,500 troops to secure the southern US border. The move comes two days after Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders – including one declaring a national emergency – to increase military presence at the border.
1 billion: Quebec-based Novacap Investments has successfully closed a $1 billion digital infrastructure fund, predicting that the rapid growth in AI will keep the demand for digital infrastructure high. To put this sum in perspective: Canada only raised $1.56 billion in private equity funds in the first 11 months of last year. The fund exceeded its initial $750 million target despite challenging market conditions, and it aims to invest around $100 million each in 10 regional companies providing connectivity and data services.
19 billion: Despite previously championing the tax increase as finance minister, Chrystia Freeland plans to abandon the Canadian government's capital gains tax hike policy if she wins the Liberal Party leadership race to replace Justin Trudeau. Freeland's shift against the tax hike – the policy would have generated CA$19 billion over five years – comes in response to Donald Trump’s policies and the risk of investment flowing to the US.
Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre; Mark Carney, former Governor of the Banks of England and Canada; and Canada's former Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland.
Hot heads, cold comfort: How Trump is upending the race in Canada
There’s an old saying: “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” With the changing of the guards in both the US and Canada, where are these two countries headed?
The short answer? They’re headed for a hot trade war, one made hotter by Donald Trump’s threats to take over Canada by escalating counter-threats from patriotic Canadian leaders who are locked in their own election cycle. The political barometer is rising.
This has upended conventional wisdom about the political landscape in Canada, where the Liberals are in a leadership race (former Banks of Canada and England Governor Mark Carney announced his leadership bid in Edmonton today), and a federal election is likely to kick off at the end of March.
Just weeks ago, it was all about Justin Trudeau and his legacy. The Conservatives, led by Pierre Poilievre, have been up in the polls, with a lead ranging from 20 to 25 points. That may well hold, but the election is no longer only about Trudeau. It is also about Trump’s threat to take over Canada and which leader has the best response.
Outside threats have a way of healing some internal divisions and, already, we’ve seen two long-time former prime ministers, Stephen Harper, a conservative, and Jean Chretien, a Liberal, speak out forcefully against Trump’s threat. That catalyzed all political leaders to boost their own tough patriotic talk aspolls show the vast majority of Canadians reject Trump’s expansionist dream.
A common outside threat doesn’t help an opposition party looking to focus on domestic issues, but it also creates new internal divisions.
For example, Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford believes Canada must retaliate against the US with every weapon possible, including cutting energy supplies, while Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says cutting off energy exports will spark a national unity crisis. She wants it off the table. Smith went to visit President-elect Trump in Mar-a-Lago to get an exemption for Alberta energy, where she was joined by the self-appointed champion of Trump’s Canadian union strategy, Kevin O’Leary.
Will Poilievre side with Smith on the energy issue, and if so, does that risk being linked to O’Leary, who openly supports an economic union between the US and Canada? Or, will a new Liberal leader side with Ford and drive the old East vs. West internal tensions at a time when unity is needed?
The Canadian federal election cycle and the Liberal leadership race are now being driven by three factors:
Change. The Economy. And Trump.
All of Canada’s leadership candidates are pitching themselves as a change from Trudeau, especially the Liberal contenders, which is a harder case to make than it is for Poilievre.
On Monday, Mark Carneysoft launched his campaign on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” calling himself an “outsider” and talking about his long economic experience in dealing with serious disruptions like the 2008 financial collapse. (Disclosure: Carney is a close family friend, and Diana Fox-Carney is an adviser at Eurasia Group, our parent company). Former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland is also expected to launch her bid, with reports saying she will try to position herself as a change candidate by scrapping the carbon tax, a policy she long championed that has become controversial.
So defining yourself as a change candidate is vital. When it comes to the economy, inflation and home prices are still crucial to the domestic agenda, but will these drop back as the impact of the Trump tariffs is felt? Expect the tariffs to dominate the economic agenda if they come next week.
Does changing the focus of the upcoming federal election to an outside threat change the current polls? That will be the most critical question in the next Canadian federal election. Trump is now the most disruptive and important political figure in Canada, and every day he makes that more clear.
For example, as the California fires raged, the president-elect talked covetously about water from Canada, claiming – erroneously – that water from Canada would have prevented the California fires. “When I was President, I demanded that this guy, the governor (of California), accept the water coming from the north, from way up in Canada,” Trump told Newsmax, likely referring to the Columbia River. “It flows down right through Los Angeles … They would have had so much water they wouldn’t have known what to do with it. You would have never had the fires.”
Like Trump’s claims about the US subsidizing Canada to the tune of $100 billion – most recently debunked by economist Jim Stanford inthis report from the Center for Future Work – this is provocative but false. The Columbia River flows through Washington state and parts of Oregon before emptying into the Pacific Ocean, but it never reaches Los Angeles. And this water issue isn’t some new thing either. In 1961, the US and Canada signed theColumbia River Treaty, a treaty that has been under renegotiation since 2018. Those 15 rounds of negotiations have never included bringing water to LA.
Still, these kinds of jabs, taunts, and threats make Trump the leading opposition figure in Canada, the person changing the direction of politics. Every leader in Canada – whether they like it or not – is now forced to run primarily against Trump, not Trudeau.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks after signing an infrastructure agreement in Montreal, December 16, 2016.
Trudeau’s Darkest Hour
This is Justin Trudeau’s darkest hour.
Even as he shuffles his Cabinet tomorrow, it will not shuffle his political future. This is the endgame.
Eventually, all successful politicians turn into Dorian Gray — gazing into the mirror and seeing a reflection of beauty they believe voters will find irresistible. All the while, however, somewhere under a parliamentary staircase, a portrait of their political face is being ravaged by time, scandal, and betrayal. That is the bargain leaders inevitably make as they fight to stay in power.
There was President Joe Biden earlier in the year, still seeing the reflection of a robust man ready to govern for another four years despite the fact that he couldn’t get through 40 minutes of a presidential debate. He had to be pried out of the presidential limo by the Jaws of Pelosi.
In 2015, former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper thought he too saw another big election win in the mirror, but instead, insulated from reality inside his powerful prime minister’s office, he suffered a stunning defeat. The wheel of change is not partisan, but it is powerful.
Trudeau is now seeing the real portrait for the first time. After nine years in power, down 20 points in the polls, he has long refused to look, but his once trusted Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland just swiped the picture from under the stairs, waved it around publicly, and then lit it on fire.
It’s hard to imagine a more shambolic ending. Freeland was told by the PM — on a Zoom call, no less! —that she was going to be replaced as finance minister right after she presented the Fall Economic Statement (a kind of mini-budget in Canada) that would reveal the government blew past its own key deficit target by more than CA$20 billion. In other words, “Please wear this fiscal mess and let me move on to a new thing.”
How was that ever going to work? Naturally Freeland refused, but she didn’t simply quiet-quit and go gently into that good political night. Instead, just hours before she was set to deliver the FES, she chaos-quit with a controlled rage, rage-against-the-dying-of-light letter, dismissing Trudeau’s entire economic agenda as a self-serving “political gimmick.”
It blew the government apart.
It’s hard to declare winners and losers in this carnage, as everyone in the government is a casualty. The PM is now facing an open revolt by a growing number of MPs. Wayne Long, an outspoken Liberal, went on CTV’s ‘Power Play’ to say Trudeau is “delusional” and claimed that up to 40 MPS want him to resign, though that number has yet to be confirmed. Still, his sentiments were reflected in comments MPs told me, one saying bluntly, “I hope he announces he is stepping down.”
Freeland herself says she is running again, which basically kicked off the next leadership race, and she is likely the front-runner. But, as the saying goes, “The hand that wields the knife shall never wear the crown.” Freeland delivered four budgets for Trudeau, and even if she rightly fought back against the $1.6 billion goods and services tax holiday boondoggle, that hardly adds up to the over $20 billion overage on her own targets. If Canada is facing a fiscal reckoning and an angry electorate, isn’t Freeland as responsible as Trudeau? Would Canadians be able to disaggregate the two?
All this could not come at a worse time for Canada, now under direct threat from President-elect Donald Trump. He promises devastating 25% tariffs on Canada the day after he is inaugurated, and, with a hyena’s nose for weakness, he has persistently and publicly tormented Trudeau with the threat of making Canada the 51st state.
Pause on that for a second because it is unprecedented in Canadian-US history, unless you want to go back to … 1812, before Confederation. What started out as a Trump taunt is starting to look more like a Trump trial balloon. Trump’s son Eric has amplified the idea on social media, and now, on places like Fox News, taking over Canada is a topic of genuine debate.
With Trump, the first question is always: Do we take him literally, or seriously, or both?
And the lesson people have learned in the last eight years is: both.
Even as government officials have dismissed the threat as a joke, others are taking it seriously. Ontario Premier Doug Ford is showing up on American news programs defending Canada and threatening to cut off energy exports.
Trump trades in three currencies: power, fame, and loyalty. A lame duck leader of a foreign country who has only one of these three may come to Mar-a-Lago for dinner, but he might well end up on the menu.
The best hope Canada has is for the 35 state governors who depend on Canada as their top trading partner to act as de facto proxies for Canada, and push back against tariffs that will hurt their workers and economies.
Now what?
A few paths:
One, Trudeau stays and runs again after tomorrow’s Cabinet shuffle. There are no polls or signs that would suggest this is the most productive path, but, until he leaves, it has to be an option.
Two, Trudeau leaves, prorogues parliament, and the leadership race kicks off. The rules around that election will be crucial for the Liberal Party.
Can Liberals afford to take three months to elect a leader while Trump launches trade tariffs and the Conservatives consolidate their lead in the polls? It is not advisable.
On the other hand, can they afford to do a short 30-35-day process, in which case very few Canadian voters and new candidates will get involved? That might not end up injecting any fresh blood into the party at all. The Democrats tried it in the US and ended up with a frothy Kamala Harris campaign start and a miserable end.
There are few good options for the leader and the party right now, but if the government falls on a confidence motion in the new year, then the race is one with Trudeau at the helm, which is exactly what the opposition parties want most of all.
Nothing can happen until the prime minister decides what he will do.
It’s coming on Christmas, as Joni Mitchell once sang, the day the prime minister was born, but instead of seeing a star in the sky, even he knows this is his darkest political hour. The only guide he has might be those portraits of other prime ministers that hang in the halls of Parliament, each of whom has had to ask the same impossibly hard question: When is my time up?
Only a few of them got to choose their own answer.
FILE PHOTO: Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau listens to Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland during news conference in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, May 31, 2018.
Is Trudeau about to take a walk in the snow?
Canadians might not be feeling quite so superior about dysfunctional American politics after watching this week’s fiasco in Ottawa unfold like an episode of “Veep.” The resignation on Monday of Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s finance minister and deputy prime minister, sparked the most chaotic day in Canadian politics in decades.
Freeland was due to deliver a mini-budget known as the fall economic statement at 4 p.m. Yet, at 9 a.m., the finance minister rocked the Canadian capital when she revealed she was quitting the Cabinet, disbanding the double act that has led Canada for much of the past nine years.
In a searing resignation letter, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s chief lieutenant and ally said that the country faces a grave challenge, with the incoming Trump administration threatening 25% tariffs on all Canadian exports to the US.
She said Canada needs to keep its fiscal powder dry and not spend it on “costly political gimmicks,” referring to the sales tax holiday and US$175 per person thinly veiled electoral bribe that Trudeau promised — against the better judgment of his finance minister and her department.
Most damaging of all, Freeland crystallized the nagging sense, felt by many people, that Trudeau is more focused on his own future than on that of everyday Canadians.
“They know when we are working for them, and they equally know when we are focused on ourselves,” she said.
Coming from someone who has worked so closely with the prime minister, it was devastating stuff, and it has left Trudeau badly wounded — perhaps fatally — as other dissidents in the ruling Liberal Cabinet and caucus consider their next move. One Liberal member of Parliament said between 40 and 50 of 153 caucus members actively want Trudeau to resign, a feeling that was strengthened after the party was trounced in a by-election in British Columbia on Monday.
Trudeau said he will take the Christmas break to consider his options, which appear limited. The left-leaning New Democratic Party has helped prop up the minority Liberal government, but its leader, Jagmeet Singh, has also called for the prime minister to resign.
When Parliament resumes in late January, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party will seek to table a vote of no confidence in the government at the first opportunity, and it looks like it will have the votes in the House of Commons to send Canada to its 45th general election.
Freeland’s bombshell was designed to cause Trudeau maximum inconvenience.
Finance officials were forced to put the mini-budget on hold until they could determine who should deliver it.
Poilievre stood in the House of Commons during the daily question period and asked, “A question for the finance minister: Who are you?”
The government’s own order of precedence suggested the industry minister, François-Philippe Champagne, would assume the duties of finance minister, but he was unaware of that reality when confronted by journalists and is said to have refused to read out a document he had no role in drafting. The next person in line, Randy Boissonnault, was forced to resign from the Cabinet last month, adding to the tragicomic mood.
By the day’s end, Trudeau had persuaded the public safety minister, Dominic LeBlanc, to assume the role of finance minister, and he was sworn in in time to table the fall economic statement in the House of Commons.
It all felt like governing by improv, led by a prime minister in office but not in control. Nobody seems to have been more surprised than Trudeau by Freeland’s resignation, but he really should not have been. In her letter, Freeland said the prime minister told her last Friday that he no longer wanted her to serve as finance minister and offered her another position.
It has since been reported that in an hourlong Zoom call, he told her that she would be replaced as finance minister by former central banker Mark Carney; he asked her to be the point person for Canada-US relations but not as the minister of global affairs, a job held by Mélanie Joly. (Carney has not commented on his intentions, nor has he been named as Freeland’s successor.)
It is perhaps just as well for Canada that Freeland declined and offered her resignation.
The now-former finance minister is not popular with the incoming US president, a point Donald Trump made in a provocative post on social media late on Monday.
“The Great State of Canada is stunned as the finance minister resigns, or was fired, from her position by Governor Justin Trudeau. Her behavior was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals which are good for the very unhappy citizens of Canada. She will not be missed!!!,” Trump wrote.
Freeland attracted the president-elect’s ire during his first term in office, when she appeared on a panel at a summit in Toronto called “Taking on the Tyrant,” against a backdrop of a rogue’s gallery of autocrats, including Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Bashar al-Assad and … Trump.
The then-president subsequently said, “We don’t like their representative [Freeland] very much.”
Trump’s reelection has proven to be the catalyst for the crisis that has hit the Canadian government. Trudeau and Freeland were simpatico for much of the government’s nine years in power — a free-spending Thelma and Louise, intent on pioneering feminist and social justice policies, even if they risked driving off a fiscal cliff (Canada’s debt has doubled under Trudeau).
But Trump’s threat of tariffs and his repeated references to Canada as the “51st state” have created existential panic in a country that sends three-quarters of its exports south of the border.
Trudeau and LeBlanc headed to Mar-a-Lago resort to pay tribute to the president-elect, only to be humiliated when it was leaked that Trump had said Trudeau could be governor if Canada joined the US as a state. If it was a joke, Canada isn’t laughing.
Trudeau has proven to be very New Testament in his approach to Trump, turning the other cheek, even while promising to retaliate to tariffs if necessary. More aggressive leadership has been assumed by a Trump-like, Old Testament, eye-for-an-eye politician, Ontario Premier Doug Ford. He has said that if Trump imposes sweeping tariffs, his province will suspend electricity exports to several northern states and block American alcohol sales to the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, the world’s largest alcohol purchaser.
Trump was at it again on Tuesday evening, saying “many” Canadians want Canada to become the 51st state because they would save on taxes. “I think it’s a great idea,” he said. His former security adviser John Bolton told the CBC that Canadians shouldn’t over-intellectualize the tweets. “I think he’s just mean” and is trying to humiliate Trudeau, Bolton said.
From Canada’s point of view, the most encouraging thing about the social media post Trump made after Freeland’s resignation was his mention that there may be a deal to be had. The president-elect has made clear his belief in tariffs, what he calls “the most beautiful word in the dictionary.”
He believes that the US is “subsidizing” Canada because it has a trade deficit that is largely the result of oil prices that have doubled in the past four years (60% of US crude imports come from north of the border). But the president-elect can’t ignore the belief held by two-thirds of Americans that his tariff plan will add to the rising cost of living.
Trump’s other concern is over porous borders in the north and south that are leaking migrants and fentanyl. However, as Canada’s ambassador in Washington, Kristen Hillman, pointed out, the 24,000 illegal migrants and 43 pounds of fentanyl intercepted at the northern border represent 0.6% and 0.2%, respectively, of the totals. Ottawa allocated an additional US$900 million for a “comprehensive” border security package in Monday’s fiscal update.
Canada has also indicated its willingness to be deputized in the trade war against China. The federal government said it will bring in more tariffs on Chinese solar products, critical minerals, semiconductors, and natural graphite, having already imposed 100% duties on Chinese electric vehicles and a 25% levy on steel and aluminum.
But it may be down to Ford and other provincial premiers like Alberta’s Danielle Smith to secure exemptions from the blanket tariffs Trump has promised.
It looks very likely that around the time Trump takes office, the ruling Liberal Party will be either embroiled in a messy leadership race or fighting a general election. In that case, the odds are that Trudeau, if he is still on the scene, will be too distracted to be an effective captain of Team Canada.
Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during news conference with Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, May 31, 2018.
Trouble in Freelandland?
There appears to be some tension behind the scenes between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his indispensable right-hand woman – Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chyrstia Freeland.
The trouble started on June 24, when the Liberals lost a by-election in what had been considered a safe Toronto seat. After the loss, rattled Liberals started to quietly suggest that Freeland, who represents the adjoining riding, should be replaced. On July 11, the Globe and Mail reported that senior people in Trudeau’s office were thinking of doing that. This resembled a leaked story that preceded the resignation of Trudeau’s last finance minister, Bill Morneau.
Trudeau is trying to recruit former Bank of England and Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney, who may or may not be interested in Freeland’s job, which leaves her in an awkward position. On Sunday, Trudeau met with Carney to try to convince him to join the government, the Globe and Mail reported. Liberals hope Carney would be better able to communicate the government’s economic message, but some are skeptical about whether he would be anxious to climb onto what looks to be a sinking ship.
“The position looks like a poisoned chalice for Carney, who would be joining a deeply unpopular government that looks likely to be booted out of office at the next election,” said Eurasia Group analyst Graeme Thompson. “If he does take up the role of finance minister, it would likely be as a stepping stone towards a leadership campaign to replace Trudeau at the Liberal Party helm.”
Freeland, meanwhile, said Tuesday that she had a long conversation with Trudeau last Friday and that she still feels she enjoys his confidence. On Thursday, Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan was preparing to announce his departure, which means Trudeau will need to shuffle his cabinet. Trudeau is holding a cabinet meeting Friday as pressure mounts for him to show he has some kind of a plan for a comeback.
Canada's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland takes part in a press conference in Ottawa, Canada, on Jan. 29, 2024.
Canada’s threatened tax on tech giants risks trade war
Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland plans to unveil the federal budget on April 16, a release that will be keenly watched north and south of the border. Big Tech companies, in particular, will be looking for clues about when Canada will implement its long-promised digital services tax.
Justin Trudeau’s cash-strapped Liberal government hopes to raise up to $2.5 billion over five years by imposing a 3% tax on companies like Alphabet, Meta, Uber, Amazon, and Airbnb. First promised in the 2021 budget, the Trudeau government said it would implement the tax on Jan. 1, 2024, retroactive to 2022.
Aside from raising much-needed funds, targeting tech giants has the additional benefit for Trudeau of being popular politically. His government has already whacked Alphabet and Meta with its Online News Act, forcing them to share revenues with Canadian news publishers (Meta responded by removing news links from Facebook in Canada), and its Online Harms bill, which compels social media platforms to regulate harmful content or face punitive fines.
Freeland says the digital tax is a “matter of fairness,” given that tech giants have been booking their profits in low-tax jurisdictions.
A move by OECD countries to implement a global minimum corporate tax rate of 15% has gained traction, but US opposition persuaded a majority to vote for a year-long delay last summer. Freeland said she preferred a multilateral approach but that Canada is prepared to move forward alone.
US trade representative Katherine Tai has warned that the Biden administration considers the tax discriminatory and will retaliate with tariffs.
A letter from Senate Finance Committee chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Ranking Member Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) in October said that any retaliatory steps would have bipartisan support.
Those threats seem to have registered with Freeland. In her fall economic statement, she removed the Jan. 1 deadline, while introducing legislation that would allow the federal government to implement the tax later. The budget may indicate whether Canada still plans to go it alone and risk Washington’s wrath, or wait for a new multilateral effort.