HANNAFORD: So the Yanks are really doing it...

The time for recriminations is not past. An accounting must come for the Liberal government's ten-year maladministration of our country. However, today is not the day for it.Heaven forbid, of course, that Mr. Trudeau should be allowed to define what it means to be Canadian. But, even Canadians who despise everything that he stands for, and whose worldview is closer to that of the US president than that of their own prime minister, must accept that today, Mr. Trump has not acted like their friend.He has in fact, acted like their enemy..'Donald, this is a dumb idea' Trudeau tells the US president.And so today, pointing out everything Mr. Trudeau did wrong to bring us to this moment of vulnerability, can wait. It is instead a day to rally around the flag.All Canadians want to hear at the moment, is that their governments are taking a stand and are willing to fight back — even if they have little to fight with. And all our leaders… the prime minister, Alberta premier Danielle Smith, Ontario’s Doug Ford and Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre… were on message. ‘We can’t stop you, Mr. Trump. But we’re not giving in, either.’And so there has been much talk about having a plan.What is required however, are two plans.One is the short term tactical response, such as we are even now starting to see. True, in the circumstances, fighting back looks like mere brave talk or in the case of suing the US government at the World Trade Organization, as Mr. Trudeau proposes, a Hail Mary pass. (The WTO is consensus-based and has no enforcement mechanism.)There are in fact very few brave substantial actions — such as countervailing tariffs — that do not risk serious substantial consequences. Little is gained by applying a countervailing tariff; it just invites the further imposition of a like amount, as Trump promised on Truth Social this morning.So for all the talk, we remain rather in the situation depicted in the Charles Atlas ad, in which the seven-stone weakling has no recourse when the bully kicks sand in his face.When it comes to longer term strategy however, things are more encouraging. Surprisingly perhaps, time is on Canada's side.Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre today offered a seven point plan to restore Canada's tactical advantage. There was much on there to admire and indeed, had this plan been followed over the last ten years rather than that of Mr. Trudeau, most of the complaints Mr. Trump has used to justify his attacks would be null and void.More generally, tariffs are effective tools when deployed on specific targets for a specific purpose. (Canada's tariffs on US dairy products do indeed protect a domestic dairy industry, as the Americans love to point out.)However when deployed economy-wide, they are a blunt instrument, at best. At worst, they are unpredictable, even destructive.Take for example, the vehicle assembly plants around Windsor-Detroit, where a chassis may cross the border multiple times in the process of becoming a car. Mr. Trump may believe his tariffs will force those operations conducted in Canada, back into the US.Possibly. But one doesn't create auto parts factories on demand. So it is also possible that auto manufacturers, having to choose between the expense of tariffs and the expense task of reworking their entire production process, may change the president's mind with a threat to cease operations on the border, altogether.Bottom line, Trump has yet to see the kind of pushback in his own country, that his actions could release. When he does, he will look for a way out of the minefield he has created.Who knows what that will look like? But, given what we have seen of his methods, the right Canadian response may well evolve as some grand, all-encompassing deal in which in return for terms acceptable to us, we commit to a suite of policies in the areas of defence, border control and free trade. (Seriously, why are we so committed to expensive butter?)No doubt it will have to be messaged as a Trump accomplishment. However, if it gets us through the next four years as an independent country it would, in the circumstances, be a Canadian accomplishment...

HANNAFORD: So the Yanks are really doing it...

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