(LifeSiteNews) – People’s Party of Canada (PPC) leader Maxime Bernier said the best response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats of punitive tariffs is to not “retaliate” tit for tat, as all other parties have suggested, but rather to get serious about border and immigration control to quell the drug trade.
“The stupidest thing our government can do, however, to deal with this crisis is to impose the same kind of tariffs ‘dollar for dollar’ against U.S. imports,” Bernier said in a recent email sent to his supporters as well as to LifeSiteNews.
According to Bernier, Canada should get serious about cracking down on illegal drugs and “impose a complete moratorium on immigration to answer Trump’s immediate concerns about Canada.”
Canada was last week given a 30-day reprieve from 25 percent tariffs by Trump after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised in a call to increase border security and crack down on fentanyl at the border.
Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo announced that after talking with Trump tariffs on Mexico have been delayed for no less than one month as well.
Bernier noted that when it comes to tariffs it’s “important to understand that the 25% tariffs announced by President Trump today are NOT imposed on Canada – they will be paid by American consumers and businesses who buy goods imported from Canada.”
“Tariffs are a tax, and Americans who will have to pay more or go without our products will be the first to suffer.”
He said it’s best not to “retaliate” against “Trump’s actions with our own tariffs on imported U.S. goods, as the Trudeau government has already announced with the support of all the other establishment parties – including the Conservatives – and the provincial governments.”
All of Canada’s mainstream opposition political parties as well as some MPs have advocated for counter-tariffs, including in some cases extreme retaliatory responses such as taxing Tesla 100 percent, as advocated by Liberal MP and leadership candidate Chrystia Freeland.
Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre said Canada needs swift imposition of “dollar-for-dollar” counter-tariffs against the United States.
Poilievre observed that even if one believes “in tariffs,” “how is it possible to put a 25-per-cent tariff on Canada and only a 10-per-cent tariff on China? In what strategic mindset does that make sense?”
As noted by Poilievre, “If it’s to do with fentanyl, the fentanyl is coming from China. It’s killing our people, too. We both have to do more to stop it. But we can do more if we do it together.”
On February 1, Trump put in place an unprecedented 25 percent tariff on all imports from Canada and Mexico, which are paused for now. Canadian oil and gas exports, as well as electricity exports, which the U.S. imports with abundance, were also subject to a 10 percent tariff as well. Of note is that Trump enacted only a 10 percent tariff on goods from China.
Trump claimed that the tariffs come in response to “the drugs, fentanyl, and everything else that have come into the country” from Canada and Mexico as well as “massive subsidies that we’re giving to Canada and to Mexico in the form of deficits.”
Free trade needs to be ‘renegotiated,’ Bernier says
Bernier noted that because of the tariffs Canadian exporters of goods will either “lose clients, contracts, and sales, and will be forced to cut down on production and lay off workers. Or they will lower their prices to keep market shares and will see their profits diminish.”
“Because 75% of our exports go south of the border, our economy will for sure be very negatively impacted by this,” he noted.
He also said that Canada needs to renegotiate North American free trade as well as “reduce our dependence on the U.S. market,” and “immediately implement an ambitious plan to tear down interprovincial trade barriers and help our impacted exporting industries find alternative markets in other countries.”
Bernier also said Canada needs to enact tax reforms and get rid of excessive regulations and unleash Canadian energy without by dumping “excessive regulation.”
“In short, instead of adopting a suicidal strategy to confront Trump, we must do what we should have done a long time ago to strengthen our economy and our bargaining position. The transition will be rough, but not as much as complete bankruptcy and disintegration,” he said.
Last week, Canada’s leading taxpayer advocacy group told LifeSiteNews in response to Trump’s recent tariffs against the nation and Trudeau’s counter-tariff response that they “don’t help people” and just make everything more expensive for families. The group said what needs to be done to help families is for the Trudeau government to “cut” taxes at once.