The former Premier of New Brunswick, and Canada’s Ambassador to the U.S., says Canada’s politicians, business leaders, and diplomats are doing a “masterful” job in keeping cooler heads, even in the face of an “unpredictable” and “erratic” U.S. President and his administration.
Frank McKenna, Deputy Chair of TD Bank Group, will be a keynote speaker at this year’s CADA Summit on Feb. 12, 2020 in Toronto, Ont. As part of his presentation, he will address Canada-U.S. political and economic relations.
McKenna made the comments in an interview with Canadian auto dealer this week. “The federal government and opposition leaders, provincial premiers and Canadian business leaders have been completely aligned, and I think have handled the situation beautifully,” said McKenna. “We are dealing with a very asymmetric set of challenges from the United States. A President who is very unpredictable and a Congress which is somewhat protectionist.”
McKenna said Canadians at all levels have to work hard on building and maintaining the relationships that matter to them — with Governors, businesses, business associations, labour unions and Congress, including the Senate. “We need to maintain a very sophisticated political and diplomatic dialogue with the United States, because there’s a massive amount of irrationality taking place across the border and we have to be on top of that,” said McKenna. “The response from Canada has to be masterful. We need not to alienate the President because he’s capable of inflicting considerable damage.”
While praising the Canadian response to the Trump administration so far, McKenna says Canadians need to continue to build long-term relations with Americans. “We can’t just sit back and take all of this incoming damage without being proactive to try to defend ourselves. It’s a whole new paradigm,” said McKenna. “We are going to have to be more vigilant than we’ve ever before. It’s not every business as usual. The protectionist horses have been let out of the barn and it’s going to be hard to get them back.”
McKenna is directly involved and sits on the boards of several companies with extensive business dealings on both sides of the border, and knows how important Canada-U.S. relations are. “This relationship will have a lot of bumps in the road. It has over 100 years, and it will have more in the future. But it’s a very good bet in the long run to be present in both countries. The U.S. and Canada will, in the fullness of time be a single integrated market as we are today. The prize is worth the fight.”
It’s not just the United States that concerns McKenna. He said Canada is being “sideswiped” by China, and Europe and the U.K. in particular pose challenges.
“We are going to have to work hard at our advocacy to make sure that cooler heads prevail,” said McKenna. “We are going to have to be very nimble and very adaptable and determined as Canadian businesses.”
McKenna was Canada’s Ambassador to the United States in 2005, and is aware of what a pressure cooker that can be. “I was there during an extremely difficult time. We had a softwood lumber dispute ongoing, we had mad-cow disease ongoing, and we had made the decision not to join the United States in the Iraq War. But the disagreements were handled much more respectfully by the Americans. I found we could disagree without being disagreeable overall,” said McKenna.
“The difference now is the tenor. There’s a nastiness and a personality driven leadership that’s extraordinarily hard to deal with. It’s erratic, highly inconsistent and inflammatory. And it’s not just the President. There’s a cabal of people around the President and in other positions of leadership who all are marching to the same tune. Canada really has to have masterful diplomats representing us at this time, and we have,” said McKenna.
McKenna said he’s been impressed with the current federal election campaign, that none of the leaders are taking on President Trump to score points, and risk a backlash.
McKenna will deliver the closing keynote address at this year’s CADA Summit.
TD Auto Finance is the exclusive sponsor of the CADA Summit, and has been since the inception of the event. Early bird registration for dealers ends Oct. 22. Visit: www.cada.ca
