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LILLEY: Canada on carving board as trade talks have stalled with U.S.

Canada is currently on the menu as the United States, Mexico negotiate trade deal without us

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Based on Mark Carney’s view of today’s world, Canada is on the menu rather than at the table. That’s the only way to view what has happened over the last few months as trade talks between Canada and the United States have stalled, but talks between the U.S. and Mexico have been progressing.

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Donald Trump’s chief trade negotiator Jamieson Greer was on Fox Business on Wednesday to describe the situation.

LILLEY: Canada on carving board as trade talks have stalled with U.S. Back to video

“This week, we are having our first formal negotiations with Mexico on the USMCA (known in Canada as the Canada-U.S. Mexico Agreement or CUSMA) and we are doing it just as the president said,” Greer told host Maria Bartiromo.

“We’re having talks separately with Canada, but we’ve moved along with Mexico. Canada is behind on this.”

U.S., Mexico negotiating without Canada

Canada has been behind on this for some time.

“If we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” Carney famously said during a January speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

It seems we are currently on the menu as the Americans and Mexicans negotiate without us. This same thing happened back in 2017, when the Canadian side played hardball and the Americans and Mexicans negotiated a deal without us; one we signed onto at the last minute with very little input.

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Sure, the prime minister’s point person in cabinet, Dominic LeBlanc, went to Washington two weeks ago to meet with Greer. While there, he even introduced Canada’s new Ambassador Mark Wiseman and chief trade negotiator Janice Charette to Greer.

Still, there are no formal talks and there haven’t been since shortly after Carney’s trip to Washington on Oct. 7.

Plenty of irritants for Trump

Shortly after that, Trump announced that he was calling off trade talks, citing the anti-tariff ad that Ontario was running on American TV stations featuring former president Ronald Reagan. Trump claimed, falsely, that the ad lied about Reagan’s views on tariffs and was meant to influence the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on tariffs.

The ad was an irritant for Trump, but there was so much else going on at the time that was also putting sand in the gears of Canada-U.S. relations.

Carney’s proclamations on recognizing a Palestinian state and threatening to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu were irritating Trump, who sees Israel as a great ally of the U.S. There was also what the White House saw as unfair treatment of U.S. auto firms when Industry Minister Melanie Joly reduced import quotas for General Motors and Stellantis over production decisions the companies made.

Since then, Carney has taunted Trump, given speeches against him and generally did everything he can do to ensure that those trade talks don’t resume.

‘Good deal for Canadians’ promised

This isn’t what Mark Carney promised Canadians.

“I know the president, I’ve dealt with the president in the past in my previous roles when he was in his first term and I know how to negotiate,” Carney said during the Liberal leadership race that made him PM.

During the election campaign that followed, Carney promised a deal.

“We are going to get stronger. We are going to wait this out. They are going to come to the table and we are going to negotiate a good deal for Canadians,” he said in March 2025 just after the campaign began.

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First, his government floated the idea in late May that a deal was imminent, that something would land by the G7 meetings in mid-June. Trump arrived at those meeting in Kananaskis, Alta., and said a deal could be reached quickly, but nothing emerged.

Then there was a promise of a new deal by July 21, which was later revised to Aug. 1. Both dates came and went without a deal and now nothing is in sight.

Some Canadians will be happy there is no deal. There is a feeling among some that their hatred of Trump should mean we abandon the U.S. Economically, that is not possible and the thousands of people losing their jobs due to tariffs and uncertainty can’t afford for us to drop our biggest trading partner.

Judging Carney just by his words and his promises, he is failing Canadians. And that is putting Canada on the menu rather than at the table.

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