Ontario Premier Doug Ford speaks to reporters as federal Finance and Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc looks on following a meeting at the Ontario legislature in Toronto on Jan. 14.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
Ontario’s Doug Ford issued a dire warning on the eve of a meeting between the country’s premiers and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Canada’s response to Donald Trump’s tariff threat, estimating the U.S. president-elect’s plan could cost as many as 500,000 jobs in his province alone.
The premiers’ Council of the Federation, of which Mr. Ford is currently the rotating chair, will sit down with Mr. Trudeau in Ottawa on Wednesday to hash out what the country will do to counter Mr. Trump’s vow to impose economically crippling tariffs on Canadian goods – with less than a week to go before he takes office.
Canada’s possible responses include imposing its own retaliatory tariffs on U.S. products. The federal government is also not ruling out restricting the flow of energy to the south – despite objections from Western premiers and a warning from Alberta’s Danielle Smith that this would cause a national unity crisis.
Mr. Trump will be sworn in on Jan. 20 and has threatened 25-per-cent tariffs on all Canadian goods until the country stops illegal migration and drug smuggling at its border with the U.S. He’s also repeatedly referred to Canada as the “51st state,” called Mr. Trudeau its “governor,” and said he would use “economic force” to try to annex Canada, while claiming a trade imbalance with Canada is a subsidy and vowing to renegotiate the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade deal.
On Tuesday, Mr. Ford told reporters that if Mr. Trump makes good on his threatened tariffs, Ontario estimates that 450,000 to 500,000 Ontarians “at the max” could be thrown out of work. Neither Mr. Ford nor his office would provide details about how the estimate was calculated. Federal Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc, who met with Mr. Ford on Tuesday, also declined to reveal any estimates.
Mr. Ford has repeatedly said Ontario, with its large manufacturing industry, has the most to lose from Mr. Trump’s plan. Bank economists have released studies in recent weeks projecting that tariffs as described by Mr. Trump would flatten the Canadian economy, crush growth and cause sharp spikes in unemployment and inflation.
The first minsters’ meeting on Wednesday follows weeks of uncertainty amid a leadership vacuum in Ottawa that culminated last week with Mr. Trudeau’s announcement of his plans to resign. In the meantime, Mr. Ford and other premiers have increasingly taken centre stage in the response to Mr. Trump’s threats – at times contradicting one another.
Ms. Smith, who met briefly with Mr. Trump on the weekend in Florida and who is on vacation until Friday, will attend the meeting remotely.
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And Ontario’s Premier, even as recently as Tuesday morning, has been harshly critical of Ottawa, saying the federal government had done too little to address Mr. Trump’s stated concerns about migrants and fentanyl crossing the Canada-U.S. border.
But by Tuesday afternoon, after a preliminary meeting at Queen’s Park with Mr. LeBlanc, who will also attend Wednesday’s summit, Mr. Ford had changed his tune.
Fresh from an hourlong chat with Mr. LeBlanc, Mr. Ford described Ottawa’s border plan – $1.3-billion in spending over six years for extra RCMP personnel, choppers and drones, announced last month – as “phenomenal.” He urged federal Public Security Minister David McGuinty to better publicly sell the plan.
Ontario’s Premier has suggested he would spend tens of billions of dollars in a pandemic-style rescue package to keep businesses and workers afloat in the face of the U.S. tariffs. He has also not ruled out calling a provincial election in the coming months, a year ahead of schedule, to earn him a new mandate to do so, something Ontario’s opposition parties say would be a self-serving distraction for Mr. Ford in a time of crisis.
On Tuesday, Mr. Ford said he expected Ottawa to chip in with financial aid in the face of the tariffs. And speaking alongside Mr. Ford after their meeting, Mr. LeBlanc said the federal government would work with Ontario and other provinces and territories to support those affected.
“I think people need to know that we’ll work together as we always have with provinces and territories to support businesses and workers,” said Mr. LeBlanc, who also praised Mr. Ford for having “stood up for the Canadian economy, for workers across the country” in recent weeks.
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Meanwhile, businesses and unions across Canada are banding together to form a new group that will confer with Ottawa and the provinces as the country faces Mr. Trump’s trade threats.
The Canada U.S. Trade Council (CUSTC) will be guided by a number of counsellors, including former senior Canadian government trade negotiator Steve Verheul, former Quebec premier Jean Charest and former federal industry minister James Moore. The steering committee of CUSTC will be led initially by the CEOs of the Aluminium Association of Canada and the Canadian Steel Producers Association, the group said in a statement Tuesday.
Its membership, which is still growing, includes companies and labour groups that represent steel, aluminum, forest products, oil and gas, agri-food, dairy, chemistry and banking as well as broader industry groups such as the Business Council of Canada, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters.
“Given the very seriousness of this moment and the existential threat to Canadian jobs and our economy, we see it’s important for Canadians to pull together and work together during these difficult times. We must put workers and the country first,” Lana Payne, national president of Unifor, which is one of the unions involved, said in a statement.
While neither Ottawa nor the Ontario government would expand on the expected economic impact of the Trump tariffs, there is no question they would severely damage the Canadian economy – as well as harming the American one.
If Mr. Ford’s estimate of 450,000 to 500,00 job losses in Ontario alone came to pass, it would massively increase his province’s unemployment. Ontario already had 662,500 unemployed in December, 2024, according to seasonally adjusted figures from Statistics Canada, with a 7.5-per-cent jobless rate.
Bank of Nova Scotia chief economist Jean-François Perrault said in an interview that Mr. Ford’s job-loss estimate sounded in the ballpark of the numbers his team had calculated for a report late last year estimating the likely impact from U.S. tariffs, and Canadian retaliation, at different levels.
If the U.S. imposed 25-per-cent tariffs on all Canadian goods as Mr. Trump has repeatedly threatened, and Canada responded in kind, by the first quarter of 2027, this country’s gross domestic product would be 5.6-per-cent lower, the Scotiabank report says. The unemployment rate across Canada would jump three percentage points by just the end of this year, with inflation jumping 4.1 percentage points.
Without retaliating by putting matching tariffs on U.S. goods, Canada would see its economy shrink by 2.7 per cent, with unemployment up two percentage points. The U.S. would suffer as well: Just its own tariffs on Canadian goods would slice 0.9 per cent off its GDP and send unemployment up 0.4 percentage points, the report says.