Trudeau meets rivals as he seeks united front in face of Trump tariff threat
Quoted in The Guardian, Dec. 3, 2024
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“Coordinating Canadian leaders to conduct extensive outreach in the US – which worked well during Trump’s first term – will be harder this time, because an election is looming in Canada, because Trudeau is behind in the polls,” said Roland Paris, a former foreign policy adviser to Trudeau and director of the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.
“Discord at home makes this advocacy campaign tougher, but that’s the situation that we face now. It’s a different moment in the political life cycle of this government.
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Paris cautioned too much against playing domestic politics with a sensitive trade relationship.
“Party leader leaders in Canada are going to have to be careful, because if they’re perceived to be working against the national interest in pursuit of their partisan objectives, then that could blow up in their faces too.”