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Canada’s oil and mineral resources can help alleviate U.S. inflation pressures, but the Trump administration needs to back off its tariff policies against its northern neighbour, the leader of the country’s Conservative Party said.
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In an interview with Bloomberg Television, Pierre Poilievre touted Canada’s “affordable energy” and said he’s spoken with Prime Minister Mark Carney about building a “national reserve of strategic minerals and oil” that allies could tap into.
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“By trading more with Canada, we can bring down your cost of living,” Poilievre said. “We can make sure you’re supplied for, God forbid, a future conflict, and we can ensure that the industrial base of our continent is restored. But we have to do it by working together.”
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A key measure of U.S. consumer prices rose by more than expected last month. The consumer price index, excluding food and energy, rose 0.3 per cent in August from a month earlier, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data out Friday. Overall U.S. consumer prices were up 3.4 per cent from a year earlier.
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Canada and the U.S. tried for weeks to reach an agreement to lower trade barriers, but negotiations fell apart on Aug. 21 and U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration hit hundreds of products from Canada with 50 per cent tariffs the next day. Carney’s government retaliated with counter-tariffs on Sept. 8, which led to the U.S. announcing it will ban imports of a small number of Canadian-made items and restrict Canadian companies from work related to government contracts.
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After negotiations broke down, Carney said his officials had reason to doubt that the U.S. would stick to any deal — stating that the Trump administration’s approach to international agreements was sometimes “written in pencil.” Trump then escalated the tensions, threatening 50 per cent tariffs on Canadian-made vehicles and auto parts and signing an order to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America.”
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Some of Trump’s levies don’t make economic sense for the US, Poilievre suggested, citing aluminum and lumber as examples.
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“America cannot produce enough aluminum because aluminum is boxed electricity” and U.S. power generators are already under pressure from the demands of data centres, the Conservative leader said. “We’ve got a surplus. We can send you the aluminum that you put into your Ford F-150s.”
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The governments of both countries should recognize that they have a common interest in working together to counter China, Poilievre said.
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“America, I think, over about a half century saw a lot of its strategic interests undermined by seeing jobs outsourced over to China and there’s been a natural backlash against that,” he said. “I think that backlash, though, is misdirected in targeting Canada, because we are actually the solution and not the problem.”
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In 2024, Poilievre appeared on track to become prime minister as he carried the Conservatives to a huge lead in public opinion surveys.
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But Trump’s election, his tariff policies and his threats against Canada upended the political landscape. Justin Trudeau resigned as prime minister in early 2025, Carney took over and called an election almost immediately.
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In that election, Poilievre led the Conservatives to their best showing since 2011, winning 144 seats and 41% of the popular vote. But it wasn’t enough to beat Carney’s Liberal Party.
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With assistance from Lisa Abramowicz and Jonathan Ferro
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