As the threat of Donald Trump's tariffs against Canadian goods looms large, former Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall believes it will be premiers leading the fight.
The timing of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's resignation and prorogation of Federal Parliament leaves some uncertainty on how Canada will deal with the Trump tariffs.
"I would just say that the timing of the reluctance, the stubbornness of Trudeau to do this much earlier," Wall said. "To leave it to this last minute and to now leave the country basically with a lame duck Prime Minister at a time when, in a couple of weeks the President's going to be inaugurated and he's campaigned on and made commitments to tariffs against Canadian imports into the United States... His timing was just incredibly self-serving and selfish that he didn't do this much earlier.
"I think we're going to need the premiers to continue to lead."
Wall cited Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Ontario Premier Doug Ford as those he feels have shown leadership on the file so far.
"There's precedent for it because when Trump was first elected and wanted to tear up NAFTA, we knew we needed some sort of trade agreement to replace it," Wall noted. "We needed to be on the offensive and on the defensive in terms of our position with the US. Premiers got involved. I went down to Iowa and spoke to the state legislature there and agriculture groups, at the request of the federal government. Those were networks and contacts that we had made in my time as premier to try to make the case for the importance of bilateral trade, the importance of Canada, U.S. trade to the United States as well at that time."
While Trump often cites the US having an overall trade deficit with Canada, Wall noted it was a different story for many individual states.
"30 states in the Union had a trade surplus with Canada," he said. "In other words, they exported more to Canada than they bought from us. We needed to use those state provincial relationships with those places in America that understood the importance of trade with Canada as allies to build support for something. There were changes, but we still had the trade agreement, and we need that same approach now."
Trump will be sworn back into office on January 20th.