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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and then-US President Donald Trumpshake hands before a meeting at Hyderabad House in Delhi, India, on Feb. 25, 2020.
India hopes Trump will lean its way
Last month, the Trudeau government expelled Indian diplomats after revealing allegations of assassination plots that Canadian officials linked to the highest levels of the Indian government. India denies the allegations and complains bitterly about a lack of security cooperation in dealing with what it sees as threats from Canadian Sikhs who are seeking an independent homeland in India.
On Wednesday, Canadian police confirmed that last month they arrested a man India calls a terrorist on gun charges.
The hostility between Canadian Sikhs and Hindus turned violent in the suburban Toronto community of Brampton earlier this month, leading to an angry denunciation from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. India is now hoping Modi’s friend Trump will put Trudeau in his place and resolve the impasse in India’s favor.
But there is an active US prosecution of an Indian intelligence official over a plot to kill Sikh activists in both Canada and the United States. Trump is unlikely to turn a blind eye to that, says Jamie Tronnes, executive director of the Center for North American Prosperity and Security.
“Anyone who is looking for a foothold to do foreign interference that involves violence on citizens of a country on that country’s soil should be deterred strongly by the United States, particularly under Trump,” she says. “He is strong on national security, and he is not going to tolerate murder-for-hire plots on American soil.”
On the other hand, Trump tends to be motivated by transactional concerns, and India has a lot of leverage in the global chess match between China and the United States.
Trudeau’s former right-hand man thinks Trump 2.0 ‘will be harder’
When Donald Trump shocked the world by getting himself elected in 2016, Gerald Butts was the principal secretary to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He was also a key member of the Canadian team that managed the tumultuous but ultimately successful negotiation of the USMCA, sitting across the table from Trump, Peter Navarro, Steve Bannon, and Robert Lighthizer. He is now vice chairman and a senior advisor at Eurasia Group, which is the parent company of GZERO Media.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You were in the Office of the Prime Minister the last time Trump was elected. How is this different?
Butts: On the positive side, it’s not as much of a shock. The most salient fact of the first Trump presidency was that it happened. So everybody had to have a plan for it happening again. That’s the upside. The downside is you’re going to be dealing with a much more emboldened Trump who’s got a broader electoral mandate and whose ambitions on the economy are much more comprehensive than they were the first go-round. He campaigned in 2016 basically saying to the Great Lakes blue-collar worker that he was going to bring their jobs back from Mexico, the jobs that the Clintons sold to Mexico. And this time he’s got a much more ambitious agenda. It’s rebalancing global trade and a mass deportation plan that will make labor more expensive in the United States.
If you add those two things together, along with probably increased defense spending on an already large deficit, it’s hard to see how those things don’t cause inflation.
It seems odd that inflation is what eroded Biden’s brand, but Trump’s two key promises are both inflationary.
They don’t see it that way, of course. I think that that’s the conventional economic view. And I do think that what will inevitably be an inflated defense budget beyond the PBO’s 3% estimate is also going to be part of this, part of the inflationary pressure that Trump brings to bear.
As policymakers have learned over the past couple of years, because most of them had never had to deal with it before, inflation is a government killer. It’s the grim reaper for incumbents, and it’s mowed down governments of all political stripes all over the world.
Speaking of which, the Trudeau government generally gets good marks for handling Trump the first time, which you had something to do with. A lot of people are worried that it’s going to be a little harder this time, in part because of the relationship between the president and the prime minister. Do you think that that’s important?
Its importance is overblown. I think you’re right that it will be harder. I think that has more to do with the relative political standing of the government and the time of the mandate. If you’re dealing with Trump at the end of your first year, when you’re in the 40s in the polls, with almost a 50% approval rating, that’s one thing, because those two things add up to political capital that you have to invest.
If you’re dealing with it in year 10, when you don’t enjoy those polling numbers, that means you have less political capital to invest. And by definition, Trump is a problem that requires political capital to solve.
They have a very difficult task ahead of them, don’t they?
They really do. I never like to tell my former colleagues how to do their job, because the truth is, when you don’t have all the information they have, it’s hard to make judicious calls. Only they know how prepared they are to deal with undocumented people showing up at a Canadian border point. I don’t know that. Unless you do, it’s hard to say how you would deal with that issue either in the public or in bilateral negotiations with the Trump administration.
I do think that’s potentially the biggest problem they’re going to have to deal with because I wouldn’t say the cross-partisan consensus on immigration in Canada is gone, but it has been weakened by recent events.
On trade, what’s the best guess on whether Trump is going to exempt Canada from a new tariff policy?
I think if the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, then he will only grant exemptions in return for something. The question is, what can the government offer that he wants that will get that exemption? And I have no idea.
Cross-border trade is high frequency and very large. We’d feel the impact of tariffs sooner, and they’d cover more of our economy than any country except maybe Mexico.
Traditionally in Canada, all governments are afraid — because of the strength of our dairy lobby — to do much about the supply-managed dairy industry. (Canada’s politically powerful dairy farmers have long exerted political pressure to protect their industry from American imports.) In this situation, do you think that that’s the kind of thing the politicians may have to think about in a new way?
That’s definitely possible. I mean, my view is if you’re going to take that kind of risk, get some bigger economic reward for it. We’ve been simultaneously having this conversation yet again about Canadian productivity. And one of the big problems with Canadian productivity is that our firms and sectors like digital services face no competition. So the companies are big, bloated bureaucracies that deliver some of the most expensive services in the world. I’d be tempted to use the crisis presented by the Trump administration to fix some things about the structure of the Canadian economy that badly need fixing.
On the energy transition, all of these big bets on battery plants in the United States are legislated tax credits that Trump cannot get rid of, but the whole managed auto manufacturing sector is losing an enthusiastic ally for EVs in Biden. What does that do to the enormous subsidies Trudeau and Champagne have put on the table for EV manufacturers?
I think that may be literally a trillion-dollar question. That’s going to be a super-challenging file to manage with Trump. It’s coming at a time where the global industry is electrifying, and that process is being led by the Chinese. The Americans think the proper response to that is to create large tariffs that will keep the Chinese out of the American market because they’re kind of running the 1970s playbook. I think the response from the Chinese is going to be: “We don’t need to be in the American market. China is twice the size of the United States auto market, and we’ll take the rest of the world while you guys double down on inferior technology that the rest of the world is turning away from.”
It’s a very complicated situation. They’re already losing out to Chinese and Korean producers, and this could just accelerate that process.
So I’d be very worried if I were working on this part of industrial policy in North America because the companies have a weaker hand to deal with than the government seems to think they do.
And for Canada, there’s an extra challenge in that the Canadian economy is so integrated with the American economy that it may not be possible to set a different course.
That’s right. It may be that the American automotive market, like the American economy itself, is so large that subnational economies like California and New York — which together are larger than Canada — can keep going the way they’ve been going, and the Canadian industry basically follows them. But I think that’s challenging. It’s super challenging for a small but important producer like Canada, especially on the parts side.
Let’s close with a little optimism. What do you see as an upside of this election for Canada?
I think it’s the persistent structural problems in the Canadian economy that are not going to be solved in the absence of a crisis. Maybe Trump is the crisis that the Canadian economy needs to solve those problems.
House of Commons in the Canadian Parliament building in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Green fund controversy halts government business in Ottawa
The government has provided initial documents on the program, but the Conservatives want more handed over to the Commons so they can share them with federal police. The government argues sharing more documents would be illegal and prefers that the matter be studied by a House committee.
Why it matters? Since the Conservative demand falls under parliamentary privilege, most House business is on hold until it’s resolved. But the government can’t end the stalemate without the support of at least one other opposition party, the NDP or Bloc Quebecois, to join them in ending the showdown. But neither wants to do so.
The Conservatives are happy to let the scandal drag on, delaying the government’s agenda and painting them as crooked ahead of a federal election that’s due by October 2025. The showdown indicates an increasingly dysfunctional legislature and weak government, and it suggests that the coming months won’t be as productive as the Liberals would hope – and the country would expect.
Trump 2.0 is set to upend US-Canada relations
Donald Trump is returning to the White House. Winning the presidency, along with control of the Senate and possibly the House of Representatives, means Republicans have a long runway for policy reform — which is making Canada nervous as the Trudeau government stares down possible challenges from the next administration on trade, defense, immigration, and more.
Trump’s tariff threat looms large
Sitting atop Canada’s pile of worries is Trump’s threat to impose a minimum 10% tariff — and possibly as high as 20% — across the board on US imports, which would drive consumer prices higher in the US and could cost Canadian trade partners billions. Canada will try to finagle an exemption, but there is no guarantee it’ll succeed.
If slapped with tariffs, Canada may be forced to retaliate with its own protectionist measures, ensuring a trade war. Roughly CA$3.6 billion in goods move across the border daily, and nearly 80% of Canada’s exports go stateside.
But tariffs aren’t the only trade concern. Trump, who views trade agreements through the lens of zero-sum power politics, says he will (once again) negotiate the US-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement, which comes up for review in 2026. During his first term, the Republican leader replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement with USMCA, which caused considerable headaches for the Trudeau government. Canada made concessions during the renegotiation, including increased market access for the US to Canadian dairy and stricter rules of origin for automobiles — criteria to determine if enough North American production has gone into a vehicle to grant it preferential tariff treatment. During the process, Trump called Justin Trudeau “two-faced” and a “far-left lunatic.”
Pressure to spend, border woes, freshwater demands — oh my!
Canada will also face growing pressure from the Trump administration to increase its defense spending and NATO commitments.
Days ago, former US Ambassador to Canada Kelly Craft gave a sense of just how urgent the spending boost might have to be. This summer, Canada released a plan to grow its share of defense spending to the NATO target of 2% of GDP by 2032. Craft says that’s not fast enough. But to hit that target, Canada would have to doubleits defense spending in the next seven to eight years, which might be tricky if the country is hurting from a trade war with its biggest trading partner.
During the election, Trump also said he would begin a program of mass deportations. The costly idea is a stretch, but as the CBC’s Evan Dyer argued in July, even the notion of such a program could cause problems for Canada, with concerned migrants in the US moving north ahead of a possible deportation blitz.
During the first Trump administration, and into the Biden administration, a growing number of irregular crossings were a challenge, leading to a renegotiated border deal in 2023, which tightened border security.
Trump has also talked about going after Canadian freshwater to solve US water shortages. Canada is one of the world’s largest sources of freshwater — with roughly 20% of the global total. Trump has floated the idea of diverting Canadian water to the US, particularly to drought-prone California.
The president-elect recently touted the idea on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and in September, he said British Columbia has “essentially a very large faucet” that could be turned on “one day” to divert water flows south to California. But there isn’t that much spare water to divert, and the flows are already governed by the Columbia River Treaty — another deal that might be up for (further) review.
All public smiles and reassurances, for now
The first Trump administration was rough for Canada, and the Trump-Trudeau relationship was … not warm. In January, Trudeau warned that a second Trump presidency would be “a step back” for Canada. “It wasn’t easy the first time, and if there is a second time, it won’t be easy either,” the prime minister said.
Indeed it won’t. Some in Canada may be hoping the pain won’t arrive until the 2026 free trade renegotiations, but that’s probably wishful thinking.
“The headaches may come much sooner than the USMCA negotiations," says Gerry Butts, vice chairman and senior adviser at Eurasia Group. “Trump’s immigration and tariff policies will put pressure on an already strained Canadian consensus about immigration and cause swift damage to the economy.”
Nonetheless, Trudeau was quick to congratulate Trump on his second win, emphasizing that the relationship between the US and Canada is “the envy of the world,” and saying, perhaps more in hope than in anticipation, that he knows he and Trump “will work together to create more opportunity, prosperity, and security for both of our nations.”
Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly noted that Canada has been preparing for either a Democrat or Republican “for months” through networks in the US and globally. She was joined by several Cabinet ministers who at least feigned hope that things would work out given the deep ties between the two countries.
Graeme Thompson, a senior analyst with Eurasia Group’s global macro-geopolitics practice, isn’t convinced the rosy picture the Canadian government is painting reflects reality. “Trump doesn’t care about historic ties; he couldn’t care less.”
Thompson says the relationship between the US and Canada is now as fraught as it has been in a century. But, he notes, Canada is still better off vis-à-vis the US than every other country in the world, which is something at least.
How to manage a forever crisis
The challenge for Canada now is navigating the second Trump administration, particularly as the Trudeau government, down in the polls, faces its own election a year from now — if not sooner.
Canadians prefer the Conservative Party leader over Trudeau when it comes to handling Trump, but for now, the job is Trudeau’s. The plan this time seems to be similar to last time: Rather than going all-in on the White House itself, Canada will work with the Trump administration by lobbying statehouses and governors, especially along the border states, along with Capitol Hill and industry. The government has also reestablished its Cabinet committee on US-Canada relations, chaired by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland.
Thompson says Canada has an advantage in managing the Trump administration because of the country’s deep familiarity with the US and close connections nationally and at the state level. But history and expertise aside, there’s no guarantee there won’t be challenges and pain for Canada — especially on trade and defense — despite the rhetoric.
“It’s really hard to see how this is not more challenging than at any other time,” Thompson says. “I think that for the next four years, we can expect that any grievance or opportunity to take a hard line to gain something that presents itself, that’s the line the Trump administration will take.”
FILE PHOTO: Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, with Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly, and Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs Dominic LeBlanc, takes part in a press conference about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's investigation into "violent criminal activity in Canada with connections to India", on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada October 14, 2024.
The clock is ticking on Trudeau
When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s plane touched down in Honolulu on his way back from a summit in Laos last Friday, reporters on the plane learned that a caucus revolt was underway in Canada.
While they were in the air, the Toronto Star had reported that dozens of backbench Liberal MPs were trying to figure out how to make the prime minister step down to make way for a new leader. It is no wonder why. Trudeau has been in power since 2015 but appears determined to lead his party into another election, despite polls that show a huge Conservative advantage.
Monday was Canadian Thanksgiving, so much of the political class spent the weekend exchanging feverish gossip about the behind-the-scenes plotting. Would Trudeau be forced to step down, making way for a new leader? Could the opposition bring him down in the House, sending the country to an election? Who are the plotters? Why aren’t they speaking openly?
On Tuesday, one MP did. Sean Casey, a backbencher from tiny Prince Edward Island, said it is time for Trudeau to go.
“The message that I’ve been getting loud and clear — and more and more strongly as time goes by — is that it is time for [Trudeau] to go. And I agree,” he told the CBC.
On Wednesday, CTV reported that MPs plan to ask Trudeau to step down at a high-stakes caucus meeting next week, and on Thursday, CBC reported four ministers announced they will not seek re-election. It’s not clear how it will end, but signs indicate there is growing pressure for Trudeau to go.Canadians manage to give Modi a headache for a change
For years, Justin Trudeau’s government failed to manage foreign interference in Canadian politics, with officials struggling to explain how they failed to see or act on intelligence reports. It got so bad that frustrated Canadian spies started leaking damaging tidbits, forcing the prime minister to call a public inquiry.
Canada has one of the world’s highest proportions of foreign-born citizens, which leads to lively grassroots diaspora politics, but it has failed to set up adequate protections against outside influence. It is only now setting up a foreign agent registry, for example, and the gaps appear to have been taken advantage of by foreign powers, particularly China and India.
Trudeau has been accused of turning a blind eye to Chinese interference and being too close to separatist Canadian Sikhs, while his Conservative opponents are accused of being too close to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Trudeau and his officials have been on the defensive for years, struggling to explain their inadequate measures while trying to rectify them. But on Monday, his team showed a sign of progress as it took a series of carefully orchestrated steps designed to push back at Modi.
First, Canada announced it had expelled six Indian diplomats, including High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma. In New Delhi, after being summoned by India’s Ministry of External Affairs, Canadian Deputy High Commissioner Stewart Wheelertold Indian journalists that Canada had provided “credible, irrefutable evidence of ties between agents of the government of India and the murder of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil.”
Next, senior Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers said they had “evidence pertaining to agents of the government of India’s involvement in serious criminal activity in Canada,” including “well over a dozen credible and imminent threats to life.”
Then, a steely-eyed Trudeau held a news conference outlining the allegations and complaining that India had failed to cooperate with Canadian police and public safety officials. “We will never tolerate the involvement of a foreign government threatening and killing Canadian citizens on Canadian soil,” Trudeau said.
Finally, officials worked the phones, giving off-the-record details to national security reporters in Ottawa and Washington, adding lurid details to the broad picture already laid out by the police and politicians.
Speaking off the record, Canadian officials told journalists that Indian diplomats have been forcing Indian Canadians to spy on one another, using money, visas, and threats for leverage, then sending the information back to India, where a senior official “authorized the intelligence-gathering missions and attacks” on people Modi wanted to be targeted. An unnamed Canadian official told the Washington Post that the senior official in India was Amit Shah, Modi’s right-hand man.
India denounced the “preposterous imputations” and blamed “vote bank politics,” Indian shorthand for Trudeau’s reliance on Sikh Canadian voters. India has often accused Canada of being soft on Sikh separatists, alleging that it harbors terrorists, blaming the Canadians for ignoring Indian warnings that might have prevented the 1985 Air India bombing that killed 329 people.
On their face, the Canadian allegations seem too outlandish to be true. Officials allege that the attacks in Canada were carried out by thugs controlled by famous gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, who is directing assassins on behalf of his masters in the Modi government even while he sits in a Punjab prison cell. The targets include supporters of an independent Khalistan and other people who have gotten on the wrong side of Modi.
India has been demanding evidence of criminality since September 2023, when Trudeau accused Modi of being behind the murder of Canadian Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was gunned down by a hit squad outside a temple in British Columbia that June. Back then, India scoffed and falsely accused Trudeau of being coked up, acting as though Canada was making up lies.
Going to see Uncle Sam
But last November, an indictment was unsealed in New York that revealed Indian national Nikhil Gupta, acting on behalf of Modi’s government, had allegedly tried to hire a hitman to kill Nijjar’s lawyer, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. India’s bumbling 007s made two big mistakes. Pannum is an American citizen, so the Americans could hardly let that slide. And the hitman Gupta tried to hire was actually an undercover Drug Enforcement Agency officer.
Gupta is now in a US prison, and officials in Canada and the police must now have a thick dossier linking India to other assassination attempts, including that of Nijjar.
Sushant Singh, a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and a lecturer at Yale University, says Modi can’t afford to be seen to have angered Uncle Sam.
“There will hardly be any damaging political consequences for Mr. Modi unless the United States decides to pursue its case very very strongly and embarrass India,” says Singh.
“Then it would make a material difference to how Mr. Modi is perceived.”
Trudeau showed his cards just as Indian officials were arriving in Washington this week to help the Americans with their inquiries in the Gupta case, maximizing the impact and embarrassing Modi on the world stage.
One of the most surprising things about the whole affair is that India seemingly did not dial down its activities after Trudeau called them out last year: Canadians allege that a recent attack against a popular singer was linked to Indian intelligence.
What does this mean for Modi?
So far, it’s a murky, inconclusive mess. The Canadians, of course, have proved nothing, and Trudeau’s back is to the wall as he’s facing growing pressure at home to step down as Liberal Party leader. In testimony at the inquiry on Wednesday, he went after his Conservative opponents, linking them to foreign interference, which lends credence to Indian allegations that he is just trying to save his own skin.
But allies have not expressed skepticism about the evidence the Canadians have shared. The US State Department seems unimpressed by India’s failure to cooperate with Canadian authorities, as do the UK and Australia.
Experts think this is a headache for Modi, but it is unlikely to blow up the significant strategic and trade relations between India and its Western friends.
“The US is likely to deliver a clear message to India about interfering in the internal affairs of allied democracies, especially Washington’s trusted Five Eyes partners,” says Graeme Thompson, a senior analyst at Eurasia Group.
“But it’s also going to seek to contain the fallout from Delhi’s dispute with Ottawa with an eye to the bigger strategic prize: alignment with India as an essential partner to counter China.”
Behind the scenes, Canada’s allies can be expected to twist arms to try to get the Indians to call off their hit squads. If they don’t, they can expect police and intelligence agencies to keep a close eye on their diplomats, even while military and economic ties grow stronger.
Canada accused of being an unreliable ally in the Middle East
Canada’s Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly told the United Nations General Assembly on Monday that Ottawa supports the creation of a Palestinian state and will officially recognize such an entity “at the time most conducive to building a lasting peace and not necessarily as the last step of a negotiated process.”
For more than 70 years, Canada and the United States have been in lockstep on policy in the Middle East. But Canada has been indicating for some time that it is preparing to join countries like Spain, Norway, and Ireland in unilaterally recognizing Palestinian statehood.
Despite pressures from within the Democratic caucus, that is not the position of the Biden administration. President Joe Biden has said he believes a Palestinian state should be realized through direct negotiations between the parties, not through unilateral recognition.
An early 20th-century Canadian cabinet minister, Sir Clifford Sifton, once said the main business of Canadian foreign policy is to remain friendly with the Americans while preserving the country’s self-respect.
That friendship has been tested in recent times.
Last December, Canada voted in favor of a cease-fire in Gaza that did not condemn, or even mention, Hamas. The US voted against the resolution.
For two decades, Canada has voted against UN resolutions that it felt unfairly sought to isolate Israel. Yet in May, it abstained on one that proposed to upgrade Palestine’s rights at the UN to a level short of full membership. Again, the US was one of only nine countries that voted against it.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has criticized his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu’s opposition to a future two-state solution – a frustration shared by the Biden administration. But Canada has gone a step further by saying that the peace process cannot indefinitely delay the creation of a Palestinian state.
Tensions were heightened in August when Joly announced new restrictions on the sale of defense equipment to Israel, suspending 30 export permits and blocking a deal to sell Quebec-made munitions to the US that were intended for Israel.
The move drew the ire of Netanyahu, who said it was unfortunate Joly took the steps she did as anti-Israel riots were taking place in Canadian cities.
It also attracted the attention of Sen. James Risch, the ranking member of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. “It is disappointing to see our allies make domestic political decisions intended to hamstring our shared ally, Israel,” he wrote on X.
Graeme Thompson, a senior analyst at Eurasia Group, and a former policy analyst at Canada’s Global Affairs department, said Risch’s comments reflect a “habitual disappointment” about Canadian foreign policy in Washington.
“By now, expectations are so low that it is hard to be disappointed by anything. People have come to the conclusion that Canadian foreign policy is about grandstanding and domestic politics, rather than national interests,” he said.
Risch was one of 23 bipartisan senators who wrote to Trudeau before the prime minister traveled to Washington for NATO’s summit in July saying they were “concerned and profoundly disappointed that Canada’s most recent (military spending) projection indicated it will not reach the 2 percent commitment this decade.”
At the summit, Canada’s ambassador in Washington, Kristen Hillman, said there remains “a strong recognition that Canada is a steadfast ally in all aspects.” But that rosy view was not reflected in the comments made by US policymakers. House Speaker Mike Johnson described Canada’s promise to get to 1.76% of GDP on defense spending by 2030 as “shameful.” “Talk about riding on American coattails,” he said.
Even Biden’s extremely discreet ambassador in Ottawa, David Cohen, referred to Canada as “the outlier” in the alliance.
Eurasia Group’s Thompson agreed with Risch’s assessment that domestic politics are at the root of a shift in foreign policy that moves away from traditional support for Israel and does not view security spending as a priority.
He said the debate in the ruling Liberal Party is similar to the one playing out in the Democratic Party in the US – but is at a more advanced stage because it has the blessing of the leader, Trudeau.
He noted the base of support for the Liberals has moved from ridings with large Jewish populations in Toronto and Montreal to ridings with large Muslim populations in the suburbs of both big cities. Trudeau has tried to walk a fine line between both communities, often failing to please either of them.
His Liberals are trailing the Conservatives by around 20 points in most polls, and the opposition party leader, Pierre Poilievre, is pushing for a general election.
The Liberals are relying on the support of the left-leaning New Democratic Party and separatist Bloc Québecois to keep them in power. Both of those parties are highly critical of Israel and strongly supportive of a Palestinian state.
A debate in the Canadian House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on the recognition of a Palestinian state last week reflected the realignment of foreign policy. The committee voted in favor of a short study, after which a recommendation to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state will likely be made to the government. The Liberals on the committee voted alongside the NDP and the Bloc, arguing that for a two-state solution, you need two states.
The Conservative foreign affairs critic, Michael Chong, said that unilateral recognition would break with the long-standing position of the successive Canadian governments and would isolate Canada from its allies, including the US.
“To veer from that path rewards violence and authoritarianism,” he said.
The committee vote has not yet drawn a response from Washington.
That does not surprise Derek Burney, a veteran Canadian diplomat who served as Ottawa’s ambassador in Washington from 1989 to 1993.
He said Canada’s view has become inconsequential to its allies. “I’ve never seen a time when we were more irrelevant than we are now. We are nowhere on the global scene. We are nowhere in Washington because we have nothing to contribute or to support what the Americans are trying to do,” he said.
“Nobody knows what we stand for, or stand against. We don’t count. It’s a sad fact of life.”
FILE PHOTO: Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau waits for the arrival of NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at Rideau Cottage, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada June 19, 2024.
Live from New York, it’s the Justin Trudeau Show
Embattled Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took a break Monday from important business at the United Nations General Assembly to appear on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” Trudeau, who is under pressure at home to vacate his office, Joe Biden-style, before an election he seems certain to lose, enjoyed a friendly welcome.
Trudeau and Colbert bantered about maple syrup, bacon, softwood lumber tariffs, and Americans buying cheaper pharmaceutical drugs in Canada.
“We’re happy to try and help you out, but it would be really easier if you guys had universal health care,” Trudeau joked, getting a round of enthusiastic applause.
But a report released Wednesday revealed that Canadians are increasingly unhappy with their own strained health care system, and 73% support major reform, including greater private delivery.
Trudeau acknowledged the difficulty he faces at home, where voters are blaming him for cost-of-living concerns: “People are taking a lot out on me for understandable reasons.”
He signaled, though, that he is not looking at getting out of the way: “People are sometimes looking at change, but the reality is I deeply believe in continuing to fight climate change and continuing to invest in people, continuing to be there to support people. And I’m going to keep fighting.”