Leading Canadian conservative says Ottawa should remove all tariffs as ‘Liberation Day’ arrives

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President Donald Trump talks about his tariff policies and the United States’ relationship with Canada during a press conference with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office.

OTTAWA – As Canadians brace themselves for President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” of reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday, one political leader in Canada believes it could spark the start of a new era of Canada-U.S. relations free of cross-border taxes.

Maxime Bernier, who served as foreign affairs minister in former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government and now heads the right-wing People’s Party of Canada (PPC), told Fox News Digital in an interview from Halifax that it is “absolutely” the time for Canada to remove all tariffs against the U.S.

He said the 25% duties the Canadian government, under then-Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, imposed on the U.S. in early February to counter Trump’s 25% tariffs against Canada “won’t hurt the Americans – it is hurting Canadians.”

New Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a statement following his March 28 call with the president – the first contact between both leaders since Carney was elected Liberal leader by his party nearly three weeks before – that Canada would implement retaliatory tariffs in response to Wednesday’s U.S. “trade actions.”

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President Donald Trump, left, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. (Getty Images)

The PPC leader said that Trump should be told that “the real reciprocal response” to tariffs is “zero on our side, zero on your side.”

Bernier said that instead, Carney and his main rival, Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre, are being “fake patriots using a dollar-for-dollar trade war against Trump” and telling Canadians: “That’s the best thing to do.”

“We cannot impose counter-tariffs,” said Bernier, who also served as industry minister in the Harper government. 

“The Americans are 10 times bigger than us. We won’t win a trade war,” he said, underscoring that retaliation will lead to a recession in Canada.

Former Canadian Conservative politician Tony Clement, who served alongside Bernier in Harper’s Cabinet, told Fox News Digital that “from an economic point of view,” removing Canadian tariffs “makes a lot of sense” and “may come to that at some point, but the public isn’t there right now.”

“From a point of view of the emotional wounds of Canadians created by Trump and his annexation talk and tariffs, I’m not sure that a political voice would survive if it went down that public-policy route,” said Clement, a former Canadian industry minister in the Harper government.

Maxime Bernier, leader of the People’s Party of Canada, meets with his supporters at an election rally in Borden Park on Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. (Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

“The mood of the people is outrage. I’ve never seen people in Canada this incandescently mad at the United States,” he said, who is campaigning in the Toronto area for Poilievre’s Conservative Party ahead of the April 28 general election. “There is complete distrust of whatever Trump says because it can change within 24 hours.”

He said that both Poilievre and Carney have highlighted the importance of removing “the specter of tariffs for a long period of time – if you can trust Trump to be a bona fide negotiator.”

Eliminating Canadian tariffs, without a quid pro quo from Trump, could “show weakness to a bully,” added Clement, who, prior to entering federal politics in 2006, served as a Cabinet minister in former Ontario Premier Mike Harris’ Progressive Conservative government.  

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Canadians hold an “Elbows Up” protest against U.S. tariffs and other policies by U.S. President Donald Trump, at Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto on March 22, 2025. (REUTERS/Carlos Osorio)

In the statement released following his recent conversation with Trump, Carney said that both leaders “agreed to begin comprehensive negotiations about a new economic and security relationship immediately following the election.” 

Conservative strategist Yaroslav Baran, who served as communications chief for Harper’s successful Conservative 2004 leadership campaign, and director of war room communications for the Harper-led Tories during the 2004, 2006 and 2008 federal election campaigns, told Fox News Digital that under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), “trade in goods and services ought to be tariff-free” between Canada and the U.S., excluding carveouts on the Canadian side for dairy, eggs, poultry and softwood lumber. 

However, Baran added that he “can’t see the removal of all Canadian tariffs on U.S. products as long as the U.S. has tariffs on Canadian products.”

Vehicles in line to cross into the United States at the Canada-U.S. border in St-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Quebec, Canada, on Thursday, March 6, 2025. President Donald Trump exempted Canadian goods covered by the USMCA from his 25% tariffs, offering major reprieves to the U.S.’ two largest trading partners. (Graham Hughes/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Bernier acknowledged that while Trump’s tariffs will hurt Canadian exporters to the U.S., “the solution is to have a more productive economy with real free-market reforms” in Canada through such measures as lowering corporate taxes, promoting internal trade and fostering growth in the country’s oil and gas industry, all of which are featured in the PPC’s election platform that includes the establishment of a “Department of Government Downsizing” to abolish “ideologically motivated programs that promote wokeism,” not unlike the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency.

The PPC leader also said that Canada should be willing to “put everything on the table” under the USMCA “right now” and before the trilateral trade deal is scheduled for a joint review next year.

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According to Bernier, that should include ending the “cartel” of supply management that sets quotas and prices, and protects Canada’s dairy, poultry and eggs sectors from foreign competition, which he described as “a communist system” that finds Canadians paying twice the price of those agricultural products than Americans do in the U.S., and which also imposes duties – ranging from 150% to 300% — on U.S. imports of the same products beyond limits agreed to but yet to be reached under the USMCA. 

During the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 2018 that led to the USMCA, the first Trump administration sought to have Canada’s supply management system eliminated.

Christopher Guly is an Ottawa-based journalist and longtime member of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery. He has reported from Canada for several media outlets in the U.S. and the U.K. He can be followed on X @ChristopherGuly