The Canada-U.S. trade war keeps bubbling like a pot of hot water on a stove, with President Donald Trump taking another swipe at his northern neighbour on Tuesday.

The rhetoric remains at Def Con 1 levels, with the president saying on social media that Canada is “destroying itself by allowing millions and millions of people into the country, essentially unchecked.”

Amid the treadmill of taunts, tariffs and more tumult, how should Canadian business operators make sense of the moment while planning for the future?

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Canada’s former ambassador to the United States, Kirsten Hillman, says business leaders need to make decisions and ensure their companies are becoming more diversified and resilient during this period of uncertainty.

“We will find a new equilibrium in our relationship with the U.S.,” said Hillman, who will speak Thursday at the annual Global Business Forum in Banff.

“We will always work with the Americans. We will work in non-economic ways . . . they will remain our No. 1 trading partner, in my view, for a very long time, if not forever, and that is good for Canada,” she said in an interview.

“But what has shifted is that now we need to think about where it makes sense for Canada to be deeply integrated with the United States — and where it makes sense for Canada to structure ourselves in a way where we are more diversified, resilient, because that’s what the U.S. has done.”

Hillman, who grew up in Calgary and went to Western Canada High School, received the Doug Mitchell Award for Global Business Leadership on Wednesday evening. The award recognizes a leader who demonstrates........

© Calgary Herald