Canada’s new Prime Minister has called a national election to be held on April 28th. The move comes at a time of strained relations between the U.S. and Canada over tariffs. North Country interests are carefully watching the political duel and the implications for cross border trade.
The tariff issue upended initial polls showing Canada’s Conservative Party leading Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals. A CTV, Globe and Mail and Nanos Tracking poll ending April 1st now shows the Liberals leading the Conservatives 45 to 37 percent, with four other parties receiving less than 10 percent voter support.
SUNY Plattsburgh Center for the Study of Canada Director Chris Kirkey says the shift is due to the trade war.
“The overriding issue is the nature of Canada’s engagement with the United States. You know, there’s been a widespread and deep sense of resentment about everything from tariffs to Canada being the 51st state, etcetera. Canadians just find President Trump’s approach to be ill timed and unwelcome. As a result, that has sort of catapulted the nature of how Canada should engage with the United States to the forefront of the election,” explains Kirkey.
The regional economy is intertwined with Canada. North Country Chamber of Commerce President Garry Douglas often refers to the area as Montreal’s U.S. suburb. He notes the Canadian campaigns could have economic ramifications for cross border relations.
“It’s going to inevitably stir the pot particularly with some strains of anti-Americanism potentially in both parties in reaction to the last couple of months. That’s going to harden feelings by Canadians towards the U.S., which we’re already very concerned about in terms of damage to the very unique and very special people-to-people relationship between Americans and Canadians,” Douglas says. “That’ll just leave us with more damage and probably a longer timeline to kind of let things heal and hopefully get back to normal at some point.”
But Kirkey doubts normalcy is in the cards as he cites Prime Minister Carney’s comment that the traditional economic relationship between the U.S. and Canada is “over.”
“Unless something dramatically changes this whole world that we took for granted and all of its positive features in the Canada-U.S. relationship are, as Mr. Carney says, over. They’re not interested in deeper integration or continued integration. They’re looking at how do we do things differently,” Kirkey contends. “The Chamber of Commerce, the County Legislature, the city of Plattsburgh should be convening a sort of how do we do things different here.”
February data from the Champlain Port of Entry shows a decline in Canadian visitation to the region. Douglas attributes it to the exchange rate because the numbers reflect traffic before tariffs were implemented.
“Compared to February of 2024 it’s down 16 percent. We reckon most of that is attributable to the very bad exchange rate which has hit about 70 cents on the dollar for Canadians.” Douglas adds, “There are some beginnings in that number of a notion of a boycott of the U.S. We think more of that will be seen when we have March numbers because it was March when the tariffs actually hit and more of that reaction, in terms of I’m unhappy with the U.S. I’m not going to spend money there, probably will worsen those numbers when we have March numbers.”
President Trump was set to announce a new series of reciprocal tariffs on a number of countries Wednesday in a move he is referring to as Liberation Day.
