U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated calls for Canada to become the 51st state aren’t being echoed by other Republicans in Washington, Canada’s ambassador to the U.S. says, though Trump’s allies aren’t disavowing the president’s rhetoric either.
Ambassador Kirsten Hillman says her private conversations with members of the Trump administration and lawmakers on Capitol Hill remain focused on building the Canada-U.S. relationship under Trump and showing progress on border security in order to avoid looming tariffs.
“For me here in Washington, (Canada’s sovereignty) almost never comes up in the substantive conversations that I’m having with the White House,” Hillman told Mercedes Stephenson in an interview that aired Sunday on The West Block.
“People aren’t going to be contradicting their president, of course, but it isn’t part of our everyday work that we’re working on.”
Trump has said he wants to use “economic force” to make Canada join the U.S., citing what he says is a massive imbalance in trade and security spending, among other issues.
His allies like former advisor Steve Bannon have said such talk is actually about pursuing hemispheric control to protect the Arctic and other economic corridors from great powers like China and Russia.
When the issue does come up, Hillman says she makes clear that Trump’s rhetoric “is not at all appreciated by Canadians, and it’s not at all constructive or conducive to actually leading to hemispheric security, to leading to a relationship whereby we are willing and very enthusiastic partners.”
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“Republicans on the Hill … but also in the administration, I think that they see that,” she said.
“But it is a comment that the president keeps making. As you can imagine — and it’s true in any country — there’s no real appetite to have a public debate about something that their president is continuing to talk about.”
Hillman said the conversations she and her team are having with U.S. officials are part of the non-stop, “all hands on deck” approach to shoring up relations with the Trump administration.
While there’s already a relationship with Trump himself and some holdovers from his first administration, she said there are many key people this time around who are not just new to politics and Washington, but also Canada-U.S. relations.
She cited Howard Lutnick, Trump’s new commerce secretary who will oversee trade and tariff policy — who has been openly supportive of broad tariffs and critical of Canadian trade practices — as an example of someone her team is focused on.
“He’s open to understanding our perspective,” she said.
“That has been a big part of the last three or four weeks, is getting all of that data and information in front of the right people at the White House who are in the essential cabinet positions.”
That includes keeping those officials updated on progress the government says is being made on border security, including huge drops in migrant crossings and fentanyl seizures, since imposing new measures at the border.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau raised the decrease in fentanyl seizures during a call with Trump over the weekend, according to the Prime Minister’s Office.
That data may be crucial to staving off Trump’s threat of 25 per cent tariffs on all Canadian goods and 10 per cent on energy exports. Those duties were paused until at least March 4 after Canada made new commitments, including appointing a fentanyl czar and investing in intelligence and policing.
Although Trump has raised other concerns like U.S. banking access in his push for tariffs on Canada, Hillman said multiple officials have repeatedly told her the March 4 deadline “is about demonstrating important results on the border and fentanyl.”
There will be more meetings in Washington on the issue leading up to that deadline, Hillman said, which will include the newly appointed fentanyl czar Kevin Brosseau.
Hillman said it’s important for Canada to take Trump’s concerns seriously as they come up, even as they change or have different motivations behind them, like his tariffs on steel and aluminum or so-called “reciprocal” tariffs on trading partners.
“Canada can only take those … one hurdle at a time,” she said.
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