Editorial

August 26 2026

Team Canada must act

The collapse of Canada-U.S. trade talks last week ended any lingering hope that the old relationship could simply be patched up and restored.

Prime Minister Mark Carney sent Canadian negotiators home after saying Washington’s final demands were uneconomic, unfair and unreliable – that the United States had “asked too much and offered too little.” Ottawa will now match the new 50 per cent U.S. tariffs dollar for dollar.

The immediate political response has been striking. Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston said Canada can no longer trust or rely on the United States as it once did. P.E.I. Premier Rob Lantz stressed the importance of the Team Canada approach, while New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt urged residents to support local businesses. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, one of Carney’s sharpest critics, has also called for Canadians to stand united against the tariffs and said he wanted to speak with the prime minister about protecting Canadian workers and businesses.

That unity matters. The harder question is what we do with it.

Buying Canadian, vacationing at home and supporting local businesses are useful acts. But they do not carry the weight of a national economic strategy. If Canada is serious about becoming less vulnerable to Washington, governments must make it even easier to trade, work, build and invest across this country.

There has been real progress. Ottawa has removed all 53 of its exceptions under the Canadian Free Trade Agreement. The federal Free Trade and Labour Mobility in Canada Act is now in force. Governments have moved toward mutual recognition of goods and better labour mobility. The Maritime provinces have adopted their own measures to reduce barriers.

Still, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business reported last month that 69 per cent of small businesses had noticed no meaningful improvement in doing business across Canada over the past year. Regulatory differences, licensing, transportation and logistics still add costs, and services remain a major unfinished piece of the internal-trade puzzle.

Houston put it plainly after meeting with the other premiers: “We can’t have tariffs within our own country [when] we’re trying to deal with these threats from outside of our country. We can’t shoot ourselves in the foot here.”

There are no literal tariffs between provinces, but he makes a good point: Canada cannot argue that it must become more self-reliant while tolerating needless obstacles inside its own borders.

And self-reliance means more than regulation. It means roads, ports, rail, energy links and other infrastructure capable of moving Canadian goods across a vast country at competitive cost. It means building new markets abroad without neglecting the enormous market we already have at home.

The trade fight with the Trump administration may yet change course. But Canada has already learned something it should not forget if it does.

Team Canada cannot be a slogan reserved for moments of crisis. Our prosperity – our ability to determine our own economic future – depends on walking the talk. This is the time to prove we mean it.