OTTAWA — Word came unexpectedly in January 2017 that President Donald Trump wanted to talk to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Officials scrambled to connect the two leaders and racked their brains: what urgent matter had they not foreseen?
Trudeau had already had a friendly congratulatory call with the newly inaugurated Republican president. Trump, who campaigned on ripping up the North American free trade deal and forcing Canada and all NATO allies to spend more on defence, riffed on Trudeau’s famous father, the former prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau.
When the call was patched through, tension quickly evaporated.
A jovial Trump told Trudeau it was his first time on Air Force One and he was trying out the new secure phone line, marvelling at the technology.
If politics is personal, not all personal calls are politics. No official readout from either office shows their phone chat. Yet Trump was impressed with his new ride. “Beautiful. Great plane,” Trump said, according to the media pool report.
It was an early sign theirs would be no ordinary relationship.
It had highs and lows. It was marked by very public disagreements, and an oddly personal connection that appears to have survived those turbulent years and the gap since Trump was in power.
Trudeau’s call to Trump after the July assassination attempt against the Republican candidate was described as genuinely warm, even though the two hadn’t spoken since Trump left office in 2021. U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, while golfing with Trump, had been texting with Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, and relayed Trudeau’s wish to speak to Trump, with two sources describing the call as extraordinarily friendly.
Yet the impulsive Trump challenged Trudeau — and Canada — in ways that frequently threw the prime minister’s team for a loop, according to several sources who were part of Trudeau’s inner circle through the tumultuous time and who spoke to the Star on a background-only basis.
The Liberals believe if Trump wins, it will be messy, fraught and rocky. They also believe the many relationships formed then — and the lessons learned — could come in handy once more.
But is this an era where the Canada-U.S. relationship thrives because personalities align, the way it did when Brian Mulroney forged strong ties with Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, or when Bill Clinton and Jean Chrétien clicked?
Whatever the public impression may be of a relationship, the reality is prime ministers and presidents can get things done when their political interests line up.
Stephen Harper and George W. Bush signed a seven-year softwood lumber deal not because of any ideological alignment; Conservatives say Bush pushed it over the line because he appreciated Harper’s military stance on Afghanistan.
Trudeau, Trump and Mexico’s president signed a new North American trade pact despite all the public flare-ups. It comes up for review in two years. What happens next is anyone’s guess.
“There’s no question that a personal relationship matters,” said David MacNaughton, who was Canada’s ambassador to Washington from 2016 to 2019. “Having said that, I think sometimes people put too much emphasis on it.”
MacNaughton was an integral part of the Trudeau team that began outreach to Trump’s circles well before the 2017 inauguration, and in some cases even before the election, to establish connections with Trump’s family members, advisers and business associates that they leaned on in later difficult discussions.
But friendly ties are no guarantee, he said in an interview. MacNaughton recalled that when Trudeau was invited to the White House by then-president Barack Obama for a state dinner, the buzz was all about the “bromance” between two progressive leaders. MacNaughton, who had just become ambassador, said he thought Canada could strike a new deal on U.S. tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber after the previous one had expired.
The ambassador met three times with Obama’s U.S. trade representative, who finally told him, “‘This president is not going to do anything on softwood lumber.’”
“I said, ‘Why?’ and he said, ‘Because he’s in legacy mode, and what he wants to have done is he wants the Trans-Pacific Partnership (trade deal) to get through Congress. In order to do that, he’s gotta get key senators onside and a couple of senators he needs onside are against any deal with Canada on softwood lumber. So it ain’t happening.’
“No matter how warm and friendly and cosy the relationship,” MacNaughton said, the U.S. will do what “the president thinks is the right politics or the right thing for the country.
“A personal relationship can help push things over the line if it’s close, or stop really bad things from happening, but it isn’t the be-all and end-all.”
No matter who wins on Tuesday — Trump or Kamala Harris — and no matter who is Canadian prime minister throughout the next president’s four-year term — Trudeau or Pierre Poilievre — MacNaughton said Canada has to understand the “substantive reasons” the U.S. takes positions it does on important matters like trade, defence and security.
The same sentiment would apply if Harris wins the election. He said American Democrats are more protectionist and isolationist now than at any time in recent history, and no Canadian politician should fail to heed their concerns.
No surprise that a senior Conservative source, with knowledge of how Conservatives dealt with the U.S. under Harper and how they might approach a Trump or Harris administration, agrees.
“Personalities do matter. Competency, backbone, charm, all of those things matter, yeah. But at the core of it, competency is the most important part. That’s where I think Harper and Bush got along. Harper and Obama got along,” at least to a certain extent. “They had a professional relationship, and they worked at it,” the insider said.
As for whether a Poilievre-led government would get along with Trump or Harris, the Conservative insider said it would take a “level-headed and adult approach” to the relationship, no matter the stripe of the administration, or ideological affinities, if any, adding there are far fewer now between Canadian Conservatives and the Republicans than in Mulroney’s day.
“I don’t think American demands will change between administrations. Tone might be different, but demands don’t change. National interests tend to be pretty evergreen.”
Poilievre has not met either presidential candidate, nor has he attended any political conventions in the U.S., his office said.
Harris lived with her mother in Montreal for a time, but Trudeau and she didn’t know each other then. As vice-president, Harris hasn’t visited Canada, but the pair has met on a number of occasions, in Washington and elsewhere.
Two weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, Trudeau and Harris crossed paths in Poland and sat down at her hotel for a meeting at a critical time when Western allies were trying to align the NATO response to Russia’s aggression. It went an hour over time. Most recently, they met on the sidelines of the Service Employees International Union convention in Philadelphia in May.
According to a Canadian official, Harris said it was a “nice surprise” and showed they both support the North American labour movement. They talked about Haiti, and military issues, with Harris noting she knew Canada was “focused on the Arctic.” When Trudeau said Canada was ratcheting up defence spending from 1.3 per cent of GDP to 1.7 per cent, she said ”‘that’s good to hear.’” (That is still shy of NATO’s targets for all allies — and still a sore point for Trump.)
Harris told the Canadians the election fight was important to her. It was three months before Joe Biden’s disastrous performance at the election debate upended the presidential campaign, leading to his withdrawal, and her nomination.
An official recalled her analysis was Democrats were “going to win, but it’s going to be bloody difficult,” pointing to how aggressive Trump and the MAGA movement were in their ongoing denial of the 2020 election result, and how they represented “‘unapologetic threats to democracy.’”
At Wednesday’s Liberal caucus meeting, a source said, ministers and MPs were instructed not to talk about the U.S. election before the outcome is known. Brian Clow, Trudeau’s deputy chief of staff, delivered the same message to ministerial chiefs of staff, telling them to ensure people make “absolutely no comment whatsoever” in social media posts or news stories, saying, “we have to work with whoever is elected.”
The stakes are obviously high. The Liberal government has ramped up efforts to get ready for any outcome.
Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s ambassador in Washington, and two cabinet ministers were tasked in January with leading the outreach effort, supported by a special group at Global Affairs Canada.
Hillman’s team has been criss-crossing the states, talking to governors, local officials and federal representatives. Premiers, business and union leaders were integral to Canada’s charm offensive last time, and will be again as needed.
In an interview, Hillman said the relationship between political leaders is important insofar as they need to be able to talk to each other and do business together. But she emphasized the Canada-U.S. relationship is deeper and broader than just at the top. It relies on strong cabinet minister relationships with counterparts, and at other legislative levels of government.
“We have relationships at a political level across this entire country. We have relationships with governors, with senators and they represent constituencies across the whole country,” she said. “And this is not a parliamentary system — the executive must have the support of Congress in order to fulfil its legislative agenda. And so we pay a lot of attention to building relationships and common purpose, yes with the administration, but also with our allies in Congress.”
It pays off. Hillman had prime spots at both the Democratic and Republican national conventions this summer, seated with the extended family of Harris’s spouse Doug Emhoff in Chicago, and attending key Republican events at the Milwaukee convention, including a small gathering where the keynote speaker was Donald Trump Jr., and another with Trump’s former energy secretary.
During the last Trump administration, the Trudeau government’s strategy deliberately focused on responding only to what Trump did, not to everything he said. But a key lesson learned was that Trump almost always did what he said he would do, several officials said.
Expect the same this time around.
It’s how the Liberal government believes it survived even Trump’s infamous blow-up at Trudeau after the G7 meeting in Charlevoix in 2018.
None of the Canadians — Liberal or Conservative — who spoke to the Star this week would state who they expect to win Tuesday’s election.
MacNaughton’s hope is that it will be a clear result whatever the final tally, and that the world does not see a close result and ensuing uncertainty that in 2000 required a Supreme Court ruling to settle the George W. Bush-Al Gore battle.
“I think we can deal with either eventuality from a presidential point of view,” he said. “But what would be terribly, terribly challenging for the world would be something where the result is legitimately unclear for some period of time.”
