Canada premiers urge Trudeau to boost border security amid US tariff threat

By Melissa Shin and Laura Dhillon Kane 

Canada’s premiers are urging Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to step up border security and defence spending to assuage US President-elect Donald Trump’s concerns, with the leader of the largest province calling the federal government “slow to react” and “stuck on its back foot.” 

Ontario’s Doug Ford said after a meeting of the premiers and prime minister on Wednesday that he has been pushing Trudeau’s government for months to show that Canada cares about US economic and security worries. He said it simply hasn’t moved quickly enough.

 

“I expressed my hope that this evening’s meeting is the start of a more proactive approach from the federal government, including by showing that it takes the security of our border seriously,” Ford said in a statement. If it doesn’t, he said, it risks the “economic chaos of Trump tariffs.”

 

The blunt statement, sent after a meeting that Trudeau hoped would unify premiers under a “Team Canada” banner to oppose the tariff threat, underscores a key challenge for the prime minister during a second Trump administration. While Trudeau was new to office and relatively popular the first time around, that isn’t the case anymore — and he faces a coterie of premiers with their own grievances about his policies.

 

Ford was joined by Quebec Premier Francois Legault, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew, who all made statements demanding stronger action from the government. Legault, for his part, has long-standing concerns about migrants entering his province from the US, while Smith took the opportunity to criticize Trudeau’s emissions cap on the oil and gas sector.

 

Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc emerged from the premiers’ meeting to reiterate that they plan to boost border security. LeBlanc said that will include investments in law enforcement and local police, but did not provide specific dollar amounts or timelines.

 

There is a need for more “visible and public-facing measures” at the border, LeBlanc said. “The plan is here, it will evolve, and we will reassure Canadians and Americans that the people are in place.”

 

“Now is not the moment to squabble among ourselves,” Freeland said. “There really was a strong agreement among every single person on the call that this is a challenge. The way we meet that challenge and the way we serve Canadians is by being strong, smart and united and by playing for Team Canada.”

 

Trudeau called the meeting this week after multiple provincial leaders raised the alarm over Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico unless the countries stop the flow of fentanyl and undocumented migrants over their borders — even though these issues are largely confined to the Mexico crossing. 

 

On Wednesday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke by phone with Trump, telling him her country was already preventing migrants from reaching the US border. Trump later posted on Truth Social that Sheinbaum “has agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border.” (Trump has not posted about his phone call with Trudeau earlier this week.)

 

The Canadian premiers all called for more spending on law enforcement. Alberta’s and Ontario’s leaders each pledged their province’s police forces to the cause, and Manitoba’s premier, Kinew, said the federal government told him he would receive new resources.

 

Kinew also pushed Canada to spend at least 2% of its gross domestic product on the military, a target it agreed to as a member of NATO — and a demand that Trump has renewed recently. On Monday, Trudeau reiterated in a speech that the country would meet that target by 2032.

 

Ford and other premiers have called for Canada to negotiate a bilateral trade deal with the US, effectively cutting Mexico out due to its economic relationship with China. While Trudeau has also raised concerns about Mexico’s trade with China, he has said he prefers to keep the trilateral trade deal currently in place and sees Mexico as a “solid partner.”