Doug Ford sent a surprising tweet on Tuesday. Surprising enough that I'm bending one of my rules of covering politics — spend as little time as possible discussing tweets. Tweets don't matter. They're not real life.
But sometimes ...
Ford's tweet wasn't just a passing comment on social media. It was a message, and a specific and calibrated one. In it, the premier of Ontario aimed at Mexico, which is as weird a sentence to write as it might have been to read. Here it is, in full, because there's a lot to take in:
Free trade needs to be fair. Since signing on to the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, Mexico has allowed itself to become a backdoor for Chinese cars, auto parts and other products into Canadian and American markets, putting Canadian and American workers’ livelihoods at risk while undermining our communities and doing enormous harm to our shared economic success.
So. Yeah. About that.
On the one hand, it's not a shock to see the premier of Ontario speaking out about the U.S.-Canada trade relationship. The auto sector, entirely reliant on cross-border trade between the U.S. and Canada, is a famously (sometimes infamously) critical part of the Ontario economy. Ford, and any other leader, would be entirely within their right to stand up for it — as many have, including Ford, with large sums of public money. No Ontario premier wants to see this industry threatened or harmed.
But wow. Throwing Mexico under the bus like that is an awfully loud and clear message. I think some inside our federal government won’t object to Ford sending it so bluntly.
It's been only a week since Donald Trump convincingly won re-election as U.S. president. This has largely solved one of the great riddles of early 21st-century history. Was Trump's first election, based on the notion of "America first" or making America “great again" a fluke, or a signal of a new era in American history? It was impossible to say before last week.
The 2024 result largely settled the matter, at least for the foreseeable future. Biden seems like the fluke — a generally well-liked veteran moderate politician being asked to step in and clean up an unprecedented mess. Now that the mess is gone, voters have put Trump back in the White House.
So now what?
I won't pretend to know everything this will mean for the U.S., Canada, or the world. That work will consume much of my time and energy for years to come, and the attention of future historians. But we can begin to say some things with confidence: the post-Second World War era of U.S. global leadership isn't necessarily dead, but it's at least going to change. That will be felt first and foremost in two broad areas: global trade and American military guarantees for its allies.
These are both extremely bad developments for Canada. We have prospered for generations by optimizing our economy to work on the assumption of open trade access to (and close cooperation with) the United States. We have also massively underinvested in our ability to both directly defend ourselves and also to contribute meaningfully to military missions abroad. We did both these things on the assumption that the U.S. would be basically okay with it, and for a long time that worked. Because they were.
That party is over.
If we had been prudent, we would have begun planning for this, and even started making major adjustments in our trade and defence policies, years ago — maybe after 2016, but at least after 2020. But, as ever, we weren't prudent. So now we need to move quickly on both these fronts and more. We're going to have to accept, right now, that we need to make these moves and changes — a lot of what we took for granted was wrong or is now obsolete.
I don't know if the Trudeau Liberals can do it. The policies Canada will need to embrace are not necessarily out of line with traditional Canadian liberalism. They are absolutely and manifestly out of line with Justin Trudeau's vision of Canada and Canadian liberalism. "Justin Trudeau: defence hawk and cut-throat international realist" are not words you are ever likely to read again. Even if the PM was swayed to accept that these pivots were necessary, I'm not convinced his government has the bandwidth or energy for this challenge.
I am very confident that there are members of his government that agree these things must be done. I am also very confident they aren't being taken seriously enough.
And that's where Ford steps in. He's the perfect guy to put out into the public a suggestion like tossing Mexico under the bus to protect Canadian interests. It suits his knack for blunt talk (especially since he won't really have to do anything other than send the tweet) and it will also play well with Ontario's auto sector. I suspect that what he said will be welcomed by those in the Trudeau government, including in cabinet (especially Chrystia Freeland), who understand that the rules have changed.
I don't know if kicking Mexico out of a future U.S.-Canadian trade alliance will work, or if it will be a good idea. I have little doubt that Mexico sees lots of fun and interesting ways to throw us under the bus, too; as an old military-veteran friend once told me, one of his rules of life was “The other guy has a plan, too.”
That's an almost ideal scenario for Trump. He’ll get to play the two once-partners off each other and force both to make their best offer. This is all, sadly, going to be part of the new normal. I miss the old normal already.
Whether or not it's effective, it's damned interesting. Ford is the first Canadian leader to signal, in an overt, public way, that we recognize that the game has changed, and we're willing to adapt to play it. I don't think he'll be the last.
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