Poilievre’s comments came hours before Trump announced a sweeping round of tariffs on foreign imports
Poilievre’s comments came hours before Trump announced a sweeping round of tariffs on foreign imports
Poilievre’s comments came hours before Trump announced a sweeping round of tariffs on foreign imports
TORONTO — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Wednesday he has not reached out to anyone in U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to ensure that he “does not divide Canada’s voice.”
Poilievre delivered a speech to a crowd gathered in a Bay Street tower in downtown Toronto, which included fellow Conservative MPs and strategists, along with business and industry stakeholders.
The audience represented a change for Poilievre, who is pitching himself to voters as the candidate best focused on daily cost-of-living struggles. He’s made direct appeals to those in the trades and members of the working class, with messages that include “boots not suits.”
For Wednesday’s speech, he was introduced by Ontario Francophone Affairs Minister Caroline Mulroney, who evoked the legacy of her late father and former Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney, saying he was an early supporter of Poilievre’s when he first entered Parliament as an MP at age 24.
In his speech, Poilievre extolled the elder Mulroney as the founder of free trade in Canada, given his negotiation of a free trade agreement with Canada, the U.S. and Mexico in the late 1980s.
“Boy, I wish I could pick up the phone and seek his advice right now,” Poilievre said.
But one area in which Poilievre has chosen not to follow in Mulroney’s footsteps is when it comes to establishing relations with the White House before taking power.
While still serving as Opposition leader before the 1984 election, Mulroney travelled to Washington to meet with then-U.S. president Ronald Reagan.
Poilievre has not, however, followed suit.
“I’ve been operating with the rule of one prime minister at a time,” Poilievre told reporters after his speech.
While he disagrees with former prime minister Justin Trudeau and Liberal Leader Mark Carney, who was elected his successor by party faithful last month, Poilievre says he has been “very careful not to do anything to divide Canada’s voice when communicating with the executive branch of the United States government.”
“So that’s why I have not contacted anyone in the U.S. executive administration,” he said.
“I’m doing my homework, and I’ve built a plan.”
Poilievre did not answer a question about whether he has employed Jamil Jivani, the party’s candidate and incumbent in Durham, to speak to the Trump administration, given Jivani’s reported personal friendship with Vice President JD Vance.
Vance and Jivani met while attending Yale law school together. Since Trump’s successful election last November, Jivani has travelled to Washington several times to meet with Vance, including to attend the inauguration in January.
Poilievre dedicated most of his speech on Wednesday to outlining his plan for how he would navigate the Canada-U.S. relationship.
Trump has already imposed 25 per cent tariffs on steel and aluminum entering the U.S., including from Canada, which has retaliated.
The current trade war and Trump’s comments around annexing Canada have dominated the federal election campaign and heightened voters’ anxieties. Both Poilievre and Carney have been pitching themselves as the leader best suited to go up against Trump.
Voters are set to go to the polls April 28.
With the race now in its second week, Poilievre has largely stuck to campaigning on his message of affordability, bucking calls to focus more aggressively on Trump which have been coming from some within his own party as well as top Ontario Progressive Conservative strategist Kory Teneycke, who recently delivered Ontario Premier Doug Ford his third majority win.
Poilievre spent Wednesday emphasizing policies he says would boost Canada’s economy, such as building pipelines, expediting approvals for other major energy projects and launching a loan program for businesses hurt by U.S. tariffs, in the face of an increasingly unreliable trading partner.
At one point he told the crowd: “A resume is not a plan,” referring to Carney’s experience as the top central banker of two countries — Canada and the United Kingdom.
The Liberal leader has largely centred his campaign around having the personal background necessary to deal with Trump.
During his speech, Poilievre pledged that, should he become prime minister this month, his first order of business would be to tell Trump he is prepared to jump-start negotiations of the Canada-United States-Mexico free trade agreement (CUSMA).
“CUSMA must be renegotiated anyway next year. Why wait? Why not get it done now? Why not end the uncertainty that is paralyzing both sides of the border and that is also costing us jobs today?” Poilievre said.
The free trade agreement Canada signed with the U.S. and Mexico, which was renegotiated at Trump’s demand during his first term in office, is set to be reviewed in 2026.
Poilievre said part of his proposal to Trump would be for both countries to pause tariffs while renegotiating the deal.
While Carney has not mentioned the deal specifically, he has pointed to a need to reset the partnership after his first call with Trump last week.
“We will have comprehensive discussions of the broader economic partnership after the federal election. But this is the start of negotiations,” he said at the time.
“We will see what the United States does on the second of April,” referring to an expected reciprocal tariff plan by the U.S., which Trump has dubbed “Liberation Day.”
Speaking at his own campaign event, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh rejected Poilievre’s suggestion about CUSMA, saying Trump can’t be trusted not to violate another agreement, as federal leaders all say the president has done already by hitting Canada with tariffs and threatening even more.
“What’s the guarantee that he would follow a next agreement if we cave on this one? I think it sets a very bad precedent … a bad negotiating precedent.
“How do we trust somebody who negotiated and signed an agreement and then says preemptively, without any reason, without any provocation, they’re just going to tear it up unilaterally?” Singh said.
National Post, with files from Catherine Lévesque
staylor@postmedia.com
Get more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what’s really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here.