Dominic LeBlanc at Intersect 2026.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Dominic LeBlanc, Canada’s minister responsible for trade talks with Washington, said there are red lines Ottawa won’t cross to reach a successful renewal of the continental free trade agreement, but he remains optimistic a comprehensive deal can be reached with the United States.
In an interview at The Globe and Mail’s Intersect conference in Toronto on Wednesday, Mr. LeBlanc said Canada won’t give ground to U.S. demands around French-language labelling rules and dairy supply management.
Read the latest updates from the Intersect 2026 conference
The U.S. has complained about both issues – alongside others such as Canada’s Online Streaming Act, the removal of U.S. alcohol from provincial stores and Buy Canadian policies – in the lead-up to the review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. U.S. officials have said the resolution of these grievances is necessary for the renewal of the trilateral agreement.
“We’ve been very clear with them. We’re not going to limit, reduce, negotiate those language requirements, the cultural exemption. We’re not going to reopen supply management and have a discussion around quotas in the supply managed sector,” Mr. LeBlanc said in his most candid comments to date about the state of the trade talks.
At the same time, Mr. LeBlanc said Ottawa has “solutions to most of what the Americans raise, and we’re happy to sit down and go through that with them. But it’s got to be part of a larger, more comprehensive arrangement.”
The six-year review of the free-trade agreement is scheduled to take place on July 1.
However, Mr. LeBlanc said he does not expect negotiations to be wrapped up by that date – echoing similar comments by U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, the top trade official in U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.
If the three sides don’t agree by July 1 to extend the agreement for 16 years, it will stay in place but will enter a period of annual reviews for 10 years, after which the deal will expire.
“July 1 is the date prescribed in the treaty. But there’s nothing stopping the three countries from agreeing at some subsequent date to extend the agreement another 16 years,” Mr. LeBlanc said, adding that he and his team are prepared to work through the summer on the issue.
U.S. demanding concessions before USMCA talks can start, sources say
The key goal in the trade talks for both Canada and Mexico is getting relief from the sectoral tariffs – known as Section 232 tariffs – that Mr. Trump has placed on a range of industries, including steel, aluminum, automobiles and wood products.
Earlier this week, Mr. Greer told his Mexican counterparts that they should expect some level of these tariffs to remain even after the USMCA review is over, according to Reuters reports.
Mr. LeBlanc said he has heard similar things in private from his U.S. counterparts.
“They say that the sectoral tariffs, to some extent, will remain in place. I think we should be realistic – they have not taken anybody to zero, made a deal that takes those tariffs to zero,” Mr. LeBlanc said.
But he said there might be room to lower the tariffs, or come to some sort of quota arrangement that would allow a certain quantity of metals or automobiles into the U.S. at a lower rate. He said Ottawa and Washington discussed these sorts of arrangements in October, before Mr. Trump ended the talks in anger over an advertisement by the Government of Ontario that criticized tariffs.
“They have in the past shown some willingness to talk about that. They decided to interrupt those conversations. We say to them, we’re absolutely ready to resume the discussion where we were in October,” Mr. LeBlanc said.
“And if you look at global circumstances around energy security, you look at what’s happening in the Middle East and the price of gas in the United States and Canada’s potential to be an increased energy partner with the Americans, I’m convinced in all of those different moving parts there is an opportunity to come to a deal with the United States that will, we hope, significantly reduce the difficult headwind that those sectoral tariffs represent.”
First, however, Canada needs to get back to the negotiating table.
Canada’s trade team has re-engaged with their U.S. counterparts over the past month, but Washington and Mexico City are much further along in their bilateral discussions.
This week, Mr. Greer travelled to Mexico City for talks with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, and both country’s trade teams are having technical discussions about bilateral irritants as well as core USMCA issues such as automobile content rules.
Mr. LeBlanc said the U.S. preference was always to start with bilateral discussions and the final arrangement will likely involve two separate bilateral deals – hopefully built around the core trilateral USMCA. This echoes recent comments from Mr. Greer, who said he wanted to maintain the “load-bearing pillars” of the trilateral agreement while negotiating “separate protocols” with Canada and Mexico.
Mr. LeBlanc said that his team is prepared to get into deeper bilateral talks with the U.S., but added that Ottawa would not pre-emptively offer up a number of concessions to get the ball rolling.
“We’re not going to make a series of concessions or agree to a series of things that aren’t in the interest of the Canadian economy, Canadian businesses, Canadian workers, just to get to a table and have a statement appear on a website in the United States to then receive a whole second list of things that they’re going to want,” Mr. LeBlanc said. He noted that Canada already gave ground last year to U.S. demands that Ottawa scrap its digital services tax and remove retaliatory tariffs on American goods.
“We’re not going to have the salami sliced all the time, and find ourselves in a position where the deal that’s offered is not in Canada’s interest. The Prime Minister has been very firm, and properly so, that we want a comprehensive arrangement that deals with the sectoral tariffs, that commits to a process, ideally a renewal of the trilateral arrangement. And we believe that all of that’s possible.”
He said Canada is happy to discuss structural changes to the USMCA, such as tightening the rules of origin for automobiles and other manufactured products, which determine how much of a product must come from inside North America to trade tariff-free. The U.S. has made clear it wants stricter regional content rules and other measures to reduce inputs from non-North American countries, especially China, into continental supply chains.
“If the U.S. wants us to work together on those kind of issues, they certainly won’t see any resistance from us,” Mr. LeBlanc said.
When it comes to more bilateral issues, the minister said a number of U.S. concerns are more at the provincial level. These include provincial bans on U.S. liquor, and procurement restrictions that exclude U.S. companies from provincial government tenders.
“We have said to them, you know what – if you want the Premier of Ontario or the Premier of Quebec or the Premier of British Columbia to change those policies, you have to give them some relief or some path to a better outcome on softwood lumber in the case of British Columbia, on steel and automobiles in the case of Ontario, aluminum and softwood lumber in Quebec.”
He added: “We’ve said to them very firmly, the Government of Canada is not going to ask the provinces to do this unless you put them in a better position economically than they’re in now.”