In anticipation of President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs labeled as “Liberation Day,” Canadians are preparing for potential economic impacts. Maxime Bernier, a prominent Canadian political figure, envisions this event as an opportunity to usher in a new chapter of tariff-free relations between Canada and the U.S.
Bernier, a former foreign affairs minister and current leader of the right-leaning People’s Party of Canada (PPC), expressed to Fox News Digital from Halifax his belief that now is the right moment for Canada to eliminate all tariffs imposed on the U.S.
He emphasized that the 25% tariffs imposed by the Canadian government in response to President Trump’s tariffs are not benefiting Canadians and should be reconsidered.
New Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a statement following his March 28 call with the president – the first contact between both leaders since Carney was elected Liberal leader by his party nearly three weeks before – that Canada would implement retaliatory tariffs in response to Wednesday’s U.S. “trade actions.”
Canadians hold an “Elbows Up” protest against U.S. tariffs and other policies by U.S. President Donald Trump, at Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto on March 22, 2025. (REUTERS/Carlos Osorio)
In the statement released following his recent conversation with Trump, Carney said that both leaders “agreed to begin comprehensive negotiations about a new economic and security relationship immediately following the election.”
Conservative strategist Yaroslav Baran, who served as communications chief for Harper’s successful Conservative 2004 leadership campaign, and director of war room communications for the Harper-led Tories during the 2004, 2006 and 2008 federal election campaigns, told Fox News Digital that under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), “trade in goods and services ought to be tariff-free” between Canada and the U.S., excluding carveouts on the Canadian side for dairy, eggs, poultry and softwood lumber.
However, Baran added that he “can’t see the removal of all Canadian tariffs on U.S. products as long as the U.S. has tariffs on Canadian products.”
Vehicles in line to cross into the United States at the Canada-U.S. border in St-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Quebec, Canada, on Thursday, March 6, 2025. President Donald Trump exempted Canadian goods covered by the USMCA from his 25% tariffs, offering major reprieves to the U.S.’ two largest trading partners. (Graham Hughes/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Bernier acknowledged that while Trump’s tariffs will hurt Canadian exporters to the U.S., “the solution is to have a more productive economy with real free-market reforms” in Canada through such measures as lowering corporate taxes, promoting internal trade and fostering growth in the country’s oil and gas industry, all of which are featured in the PPC’s election platform that includes the establishment of a “Department of Government Downsizing” to abolish “ideologically motivated programs that promote wokeism,” not unlike the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency.
The PPC leader also said that Canada should be willing to “put everything on the table” under the USMCA “right now” and before the trilateral trade deal is scheduled for a joint review next year.
According to Bernier, that should include ending the “cartel” of supply management that sets quotas and prices, and protects Canada’s dairy, poultry and eggs sectors from foreign competition, which he described as “a communist system” that finds Canadians paying twice the price of those agricultural products than Americans do in the U.S., and which also imposes duties – ranging from 150% to 300% — on U.S. imports of the same products beyond limits agreed to but yet to be reached under the USMCA.
During the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 2018 that led to the USMCA, the first Trump administration sought to have Canada’s supply management system eliminated.
