President Trump’s war on Canada is intensifying — from high tariffs and import bans to public personal attacks. How Canadians view Trump’s trade war — and the future of U.S.-Canada relations.

Guests

Mayor Jody Stone, Mayor of Stanstead, Quebec, Canada.

Mayor Rick Ufford-Chase, Mayor of Newport, Vermont.

Chrystia Freeland, Former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada.

Bruce Heyman, Former U.S. Ambassador to Canada.

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Transcript of Full Broadcast

The version of our broadcast available at the top of this page and via podcast apps is a condensed version of the full show. You can listen to the full, unedited broadcast here:

Part I        

ANTHONY BROOKS:  I’m Anthony Brooks in for Meghna Chakrabarti. This hour, the disintegration of the U.S.-Canada friendship and what it will take to save it. And we’re going to start super local, close to the ground, to get an idea of what this feels like for the people most affected. Joining us now are two mayors from two small towns on either side of the U.S.-Canadian border.

Jody Stone is the mayor of Stanstead, Quebec in Canada, home to about 3,000 people, right across the border from Derby, Vermont. And Mayor Stone, welcome to On Point. It’s good to have you.

JODY STONE: Hello Anthony.

BROOKS: Hi there. Nice to talk to you again. And Rick Ufford-Chase, he’s the mayor of Newport, Vermont, with about 4,000 residents, less than 10 miles from the Quebec border.

Mayor Ufford-Chase, welcome to you. Welcome to On Point.

RICK UFFORD-CHASE: Hello, Anthony. It’s good to be with you. It’s good to be with you.

BROOKS: Now, I met you both last year for a story that I was doing up there for NPR. Give us a sense of how historically connected your two communities have been. And Mayor Ufford-Chase, I’ll start with you.

UFFORD-CHASE: These communities have been intimately tied together for many generations.

The family ties here are very strong. The French Canadian surnames here are prevalent in our community, and we share a lake which has bound these two communities tightly together for many decades. So that lake runs across the border. It starts here in Newport and finishes just north of where Mayor Stone is in Magog, Quebec, about 30 miles long, and it really does tie these two communities tightly together.

BROOKS: And I love the name, by the way, Lake Memphremagog. Did I pronounce that phonetically correctly? Yeah, terrific name. Mayor Stone, there in Stanstead, Quebec, add to that. How do you view the sort of historical connections between the communities on both sides of the border?

STONE: If I did it in one word, it’d be inseparable.

We’ve been working together for decades. We share services, water, sewer, mutual aid with fire departments. I don’t think we could do things necessarily without each other. That’s how tied in we are. Those communities.

BROOKS: And when I visited last year, I got the sense that moving back and forth across the border used to be as simple as a trip to the corner store.

But since the start of this trade war, what’s it like now Mayor Ufford-Chase? What’s it like now?

UFFORD-CHASE: I think it’s still a relatively quick and easy process for most people most of the time. I think what’s challenging for people and what slows them down in terms of their interest in trying to cross the border at this point are two things.

One is that there’s a lot of uncertainty for people. They don’t know what they’re going to be asked if, they don’t know what they’re gonna confront when they get to the border, and the questions that they’ll be asked, and there’s anxiety about crossing it. But what’s even more important at this point is the fact that there’s been such a disrespect from our government toward Canada that very few people from Canada are trying to cross the border and come into the United States right now.

And, on this side of the border, it hits us pretty hard, but I would say there’s a grudging respect for the folks who are making that decision.

BROOKS: So talk a little bit about the effect on your community, Mayor. What does that look like, the fact that Canadians don’t wanna come down to Newport, Vermont as often as once upon a time?

UFFORD-CHASE: So I’m located about six miles as the crow flies from where Mayor Stone is sitting in his office, I assume, this morning. And, we have depended for generations, and especially in the last, I’d say 15, 20 years, on the Canadian traffic to help our Main Street thrive.

We have a short season where the weather is perfect and it’s fabulous to visit in Newport from about June through October, and normally our Main Street is full of cars with Quebec license plates and bicyclists who come from Quebec. And this year I’m sitting right above our downtown natural food store, and the hit that they’ve taken on their business the last two summers has been tremendous.

It has a real impact on us.

BROOKS: And Mayor Stone there in Stanstead, Quebec, what are you hearing from your fellow Canadians in these border towns? Are they choosing to stay away from the U.S., essentially boycotting the U.S.? Is that what’s happening?

STONE: It’s the only real leverage we have is to boycott to spend as little money as we can in the U.S.

Unfortunately for us it affects our neighbors directly. It’s not something I think anybody here wants to see happen, because obviously if Newport is thriving, it’s good news for Stanstead, it’s good news for Magog and vice versa. So I think the sooner this gets settled and we can try to come back to a normal relationship or somewhat of a normal relationship, it’d be better for both sides.

And it would be better for me and Rick, we can really talk about things that people want when we talk about culture or events, things like that. That’s what we wanna talk about. We don’t wanna be talking about tariffs any longer.

BROOKS: I understand. Mayor Stone, last year you told me when I was up there that the rift between Canada and the U.S. felt like a couple going through a breakup after a betrayal.

And you said Canadians felt a sense of mourning about this. The rift since then has only gotten worse. So how would you describe how your Canadian neighbors are feeling about all of this today? How they’re feeling about the U.S.? Does it still feel like, does it still feel like that sense of mourning?

STONE: Yeah, it just is an extended sense of mourning. At some point we need to heal, we need to move on, we need to move forward. I agree that things will never, ever be the same. But can we s- you know, can we come up with a solution that can be acceptable on both sides without all this rhetoric and all these nasty words that are being said about either side of the border?

I think we’re all ready to say, “Look let’s find a solution that that works for everybody so that the people on the ground, like me and Rick, that are working hard to make our communities better can really get to do what we’re supposed to be doing every day.”

BROOKS: And Mayor Ufford-Chase there in Vermont, what’s your reaction when you hear Mayor Stone talk about this rift, this sense of mourning?

You understand it, I assume.

UFFORD-CHASE: I do. It makes me deeply sad, and I agree entirely with Jody’s assessment. We had been working before all of this craziness started a year and a half, two years ago, we had been working quite closely together on trying to do things that would really promote a very vibrant region, both in terms of outdoor recreation and arts and commerce.

And we want to be doing that work together. And the ridiculous thing about this is that no one up here can really understand it. Folks in my community, who are not known for their liberal tendencies, I might add, just see this as an unforced error. We’re bewildered by why in the world this could possibly be considered a good idea.

And we’re a microcosm, I would say, in addition to that to what the broader relationship between Canada and the U.S. can and should look like. We every day have relationship with one another that is positive, and we’re working hard to try and maintain that through this very difficult time.

BROOKS: When I visited your communities last year I heard, I think I talked to you about this Mayor Ufford-Chase, that representatives from both sides of the border were making plans to meet to affirm your historically close friendship. Has that continued to happen? And if so, what does that look like?

UFFORD-CHASE: Absolutely. We had a meeting, a gathering of about probably 30 of us who were mayors from both all across Vermont and different locations in Quebec. This was now a little over a year ago, I think. And that gathering was fabulous. We gathered in Granby, Quebec and held a press conference, and also talked about the things that we have in common and the things we should be working on together.

And in the last six months, I’ve sat with Jody and with our colleagues in Magog and in Sherbrooke to continually keep saying to one another, “We understand on the U.S. side why people have been so deeply hurt by this. We have no argument with that. How do we maintain the most positive relationship through this until we can get to the other side?

BROOKS: And Mayor Stone, in Quebec, Prime Minister, your Prime Minister, Mark Carney, calls what’s happening a rupture. And a rupture sounds almost permanent. Does it feel like that to you, or do you feel that this rupture is not permanent? Can it be repaired?

STONE: I would say is there’s definitely something that’s going to be permanent.

In any relationship and I’ll come back to personal relationships between two people, if a betrayal happens the betrayal could probably be healed at some point, but there is always gonna be that scar. And I believe that scar is what’s gonna, is gonna last. And how deep or how wide that scar is gonna be will depend on how our politicians at the federal levels will solve this.

But again, it’s not with using nasty words that we’re moving anything forward. I feel it depends on how our leaders really come to a resolution on this. But no, there will be, in my opinion, an everlasting scar. But at the local level we’re working extremely hard that we don’t want that to affect our communities.

UFFORD-CHASE:  If I could just add to that … I appreciate Jody’s kind of metaphor with a personal relationship. If someone has been betrayed or badly hurt in a relationship, and that has any chance of healing, it means a redefinition of the relationship and a greater level of respect.

When this all began, which is really not just this most recent time, but a year ago and the negative language and the attacks on Canada began from our side, I saw things like, “We love Canada,” bumper stickers and things. We went here in Newport and created our own bumper sticker that says, in French, “Canada, we respect you. Vermont.” And the reason the word respect is so important is because that’s the fundamental thing that’s been broken here, is the sense that Canadians … have just been unbelievably disrespected.

Part II

BROOKS: We’re talking about America’s deteriorating relationship with Canada, what we’re losing because of it, and whether it can be restored. Chrystia Freeland has a lot to say about this. She was deputy prime minister of Canada from 2019 to 2024, and a cabinet minister for a decade starting in 2015.

She renegotiated NAFTA with the first Trump administration, and has joked that under Trump, America is like an unreliable boyfriend. In fact, the title of her political memoir is Unreliable Boyfriend: An Insider’s View of Dealing with a Chaotic Superpower, Plutocrats, and Other Complicated People. And Chrystia Freeland, welcome to On Point.

It’s great to have you.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: It is great to be with you.

BROOKS: So as someone who negotiated with the first Trump administration, did you see this breakdown in the American-Canadian relationship coming? Does any of this surprise you?

FREELAND: It appalls me, but it doesn’t surprise me. We saw it coming, and we had a dress rehearsal in the first Trump administration, and there were some really terrible moments.

The good news, Anthony, is the story then did have a happy ending.

BROOKS: Say more about that.

FREELAND: In the first Trump administration the United States did impose illegal and unjustified tariffs on Canada. The United States did threaten to tear up the trade agreement. We were called all kinds of names.

The president called me toxic and a nasty woman, and he told the prime minister he was gonna destroy the Canadian economy if we carried on standing up for ourselves. So it was pretty rough, but at the end of the day, we got a deal, and what I learned from that experience is, we had a three-part playbook for dealing with the unreliable boyfriend.

Part one was find areas where you can agree, and work on that together. For us, one of the things was, let’s find ways to preserve high-paid manufacturing jobs in Canada and the U.S. We both have high labor standards, high wages, and so we did, we put novel things in the deal to preserve those jobs.

Second thing was we called it the donut strategy, and what the donut strategy meant was the president is an important person, but he’s just one person, and there are hundreds of millions of other Americans. And we worked really hard to make the case for Canada from coast to coast in the United States because we believed, and I think this is still true today, we have a win-win relationship, a mutually beneficial relationship, and we thought, and I think this is still true today, that Americans get that, too.

So we wanted to talk directly to Americans. Final point, Anthony, was do not capitulate. We didn’t capitulate then. I think that trying to appease Trump is just asking for more punishment.

BROOKS: I want to ask you just personally what was it like to be on the receiving end of that kind of personal attack? As you mentioned, he called you toxic.

He called you a nasty woman, said you don’t like America very much. What was it like to be in that role as a sort of diplomatic negotiator and have to receive that kind of attack?

FREELAND: I won’t lie to you, Anthony. There were times when it was unsettling, and like after all, it’s the president of the United States who’s an important person.

And that can be scary, and I do … and that is something that can have an impact on you personally in the rest of your life. The fact that the president doesn’t like you, some people will, if not hold that against you, say we can’t have her do this because of that. But two things really made it okay.

One was I really knew I was doing the right thing, and I’m not the kind of person who thinks everything I do is right. I’m more, like I was raised Catholic. I’m more like constantly assessing, am I sinning or not? But in this case, I knew I was doing the right thing. And then the second thing was Canadians knew that we collectively were doing the right thing, too, and I had a huge amount of support from the country.

BROOKS: Got it. So Chrystia, there was a time when the notion of casting Canada as an American adversary was literally a grist for a joke. And as I said at the top of the show, with real existential threats facing our world, why on earth would America choose to pick a fight with Canada? But here we are.

So I’m wondering how you explain this, in the sense that, and I know it’s unfair to ask you this, but how do you explain Trump’s animosity toward Canada?

FREELAND: I’m glad that you start from the premise that it is absurd. This was actually the whole plot of a South Park movie.

BROOKS: That’s right. And the great song Blame Canada.

FREELAND: And the whole thing was it’s a joke, ’cause why would we ever have a fight with Canada? What I think, Anthony, makes it worse is right now, today, even as the United States is beating up on Canada, or as the U.S. administration is beating up on Canada, it is snuggling up to Vladimir Putin.

In what universe is the Kremlin and Russia a better friend of the United States than Canada?

BROOKS: In fact, on that point, you’ve compared the Trump-Canada relationship to Putin’s relationship with Ukraine. Can you explain that a little bit?

FREELAND: I want to be very careful not to push that comparison very far at all because America is not Russia.

And claims on Canadian, challenges to Canadian sovereignty are being made, and we have to take that seriously. But of course, Russia is currently waging an illegal criminal war against Ukraine. And Ukrainians are dying. So we have to be careful. But actually, there was a political scientist at the U of T published a piece explaining that part of how Russia gets to the place where it invades Ukraine is it has this notion of the near abroad.

And that had existed in Russia for a long time, and the idea was, countries that are our neighbors, their sovereignty doesn’t quite count. And this U of T political scientist kind of warns that’s why you have to take your sovereignty really seriously. That’s why Canadians have to take their sovereignty really seriously, because when your neighbor starts challenging it, that can be the first step towards something really terrible.

BROOKS: And in fact, Canada has been subjected to pretty explicit territorial claims by Trump, who had called it the 51st state, referring to your prime minister as a governor. You’re talking about that kind of thing, and more I imagine.

FREELAND: Exactly. No. Two prime ministers have been referred to as governors.

Canada has been repeatedly referred to as the 51st state, and repeatedly we’ve heard from this administration, “Look, if only you would join the United States, then all these pesky tariffs would go away.” That’s really explicit, and when the president first started saying this, some people including inside Canada, including officials, laughed it off as a joke.

I think that was a real mistake, and I’m glad that Canada isn’t doing that anymore. But I want to say to you, Anthony, and to your listeners I think it’s really important for Americans to speak up. It’s important for Americans to say, “This does not represent me,” and it’s important for them to say that to influence their own government, but also because we Canadians need to know, is this just the view of the White House, or is it something that Americans more broadly support?

Personally, I don’t think that this is what Americans believe, and there’s actually some opinion polling that shows, and this is shocking, Anthony, that Americans are more supportive of Canada’s tariffs against the United States than of American tariffs opposed on Canada. That to me gives me some hope in America.

FREELAND: Yeah, I’ve looked at probably the same kind of polling you’re talking about, that a majority of Americans blame the Trump administration for all this and oppose Trump’s tariffs on Canada. I want to play a cut of President Trump talking about his grievance with Canada. Here he is earlier this month at a rally in … Alaska, where he repeated some of his attacks on Canada.

DONALD TRUMP: Canada, I don’t know if anybody … Does anybody like Canada? They have ripped us off for years, but no longer. You notice? No longer. No longer. They’re not ripping us off.

BROOKS: Trump has stated that America’s been treated very unfairly by Canada, that it’s been difficult to deal with. Do you buy any of that?

Is there any part of Trump’s case against Canada that you think has merit?

FREELAND: It’s extraordinary for me, Anthony, to hear him say that, because since 2019 our relationship has been governed by a trade deal that the Trump administration negotiated with Canada, led by me. I was there when the president in 2018 signed that deal, and he said it was the best deal ever.

So if there’s a problem in the Canada-U.S. relationship, which there is not, but if there were a problem, it would be Donald Trump’s fault.

BROOKS: Now, your prime minister, Mark Carney, has responded pretty decisively to the Trump administration. After the trade negotiations collapsed, he suspended talks, and when the Trump administration imposed 50% tariffs, Carney responded with dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs.

Is that the right approach?

FREELAND: 100%. It’s what we did in 2018. It worked then. It will work now. I just wish that America’s other traditional allies would join Canada, because they also are facing abusive, illegal tariffs. They also have had threats made to their sovereignty. An, I really would like America to straighten itself out.

I would like us to get back to a win-win relationship. But the only way to get there is to make clear that the current behavior is unacceptable. So Carney has called this a rupture, and he’s been very clear about looking for friends elsewhere. I know you can’t speak for all of your compatriots, but do most Canadians think that way?

Do most Canadians, do you think, see this as a rupture that can’t be put together, put back together, as opposed to a bad moment, a spat between old friends?

FREELAND: Something that makes me really sad, and is not something I ever thought I would see in my lifetime, is opinion polling in Canada that shows that Canadians see China as more trustworthy than the United States and see the United States as more of a security threat than China. That is shocking to me. I think that most Canadians know Americans. Like we are, we have the world’s longest unmilitarized border. Pretty much every Canadian has an American friend, maybe a relative, maybe someone you do business with.

And we know lots of really good Americans. What I think is hard for Canadians to understand is, first of all, how President Trump was elected a second time. The first time you could understand. You could say like they didn’t really know how he was gonna be. But the fact that he was elected a second time is significant.

And I think the other thing is that is being watched very closely, not just in Canada, but around the world, is are Americans standing up to this administration and saying, “I oppose this.” And that applies to America’s treatment of Canada. I would say even more so it applies to what I think is the absolutely shameful behavior we’ve seen in the past few days towards Ukraine.

America today, the U.S. administration is siding with Putin against Ukraine and is actually helping Russia to kill Ukrainians. And that to me is such a betrayal of everything the United States has stood for, and by the way, also runs entirely counter to the national interest.

BROOKS: And what about you? Do you view this as a rupture?

And when I hear rupture, I hear irreparable harm and division that would be very difficult to put back together. Or are you confident that eventually … And let me even suggest, we mentioned that polling, which suggests that most Americans oppose Trump’s treatment of Canada.

We’re heading toward an election where there’ll probably be some kind of rebuke of the current administration. Does that improve, would that improve Canadians’ view of the U.S.?

FREELAND: It would make a very big difference. Anthony, one thing that I learned in politics and also as a journalist who covered the collapse of the Soviet Union is things can change much more quickly than you imagine.

We all have a bias towards thinking that the situation that prevails today will prevail forever. But there are hinge moments in history. So I think never say never is an important attitude to have. And I also, and I write about this in my book, I say that hope actually is a strategy.

I don’t know what America will choose. I know what I hope America will choose, and I also know what would be the better outcome for Canada, for all of America’s traditional democratic allies, and for the United States itself. And that would be for the U.S. to choose again to join team democracy, to choose to rebuild its alliances with its traditional allies.

I think that’s in the U.S. national interest, and it would be in the national interest of us all, because the reality is, authoritarians are on the march. Russia is, even as we speak, killing Ukrainians. And I have really castigated the U.S. administration for siding with Putin. But China, of course, is providing so much more support to Putin.

Putin could not continue the war without Chinese support. So we need to be together to stand up for democracy in the world.

Part III

BROOKS: Joining me now is Bruce Heyman.

He was U.S. ambassador to Canada from 2014 to 2017 under President Barack Obama. He’s now the CEO of Power Sustainable, a Canadian headquartered investment management firm investing in, on both sides of the border. Ambassador Heyman, welcome to On Point. Thank you for joining us.

BRUCE HEYMAN: It’s good to be with you, Anthony.

BROOKS: I want to start with asking you, as a former ambassador and as someone who’s obviously got a foot on both sides of this border, to talk about the value of this alliance. You’ve called the U.S. and Canada the closest of friends. So from your time as ambassador, what’s the most important aspect of this partnership that people might take for granted?

HEYMAN: So I think most Americans fundamentally underestimate the importance of Canada to their own lives, and we share much more than a 5,500-mile border. We share one of the world’s most deeply integrated economic relationships, a continent-wide security partnership, and generations of cooperation built on trust.

And Canada isn’t just a country we trade with, it’s a country we build things with, we produce things with, we defend ourselves with, and we depend upon every single day. And here’s what concerns me most. We’re putting at risk something that took many generations to build. And even if we reverse the tariffs and the political rhetoric tomorrow, rebuilding the trust could take years.

And so this isn’t just a Canadian problem, it’s an American problem, and Americans need to understand what’s at stake.

BROOKS: I think you were listening along when I was talking to Chrystia Freeland, the former deputy prime minister of Canada, in the previous break.

And she really talked about, if there was one word that I took away from her was almost this sense of betrayal and disbelief on the part of Canadians that this is happening. What’s your response to that and what you heard her say?

HEYMAN: So I had the opportunity to work across the table with Chrystia, and I value her perspective and viewpoint as I do today.

I think betrayal is the right word. There’s all these old sayings about trust, come in footsteps and leave in horseback, and come in drops and leave in a river. The reality is that Canadians viewed us over a long period of time as your trusted friend, ally, neighbor, and more than that, it’s family.

And so I think her words, and from my experience in traveling across Canada today, I think her words accurately describe the feeling that many Canadians have, which many Americans don’t fully appreciate. Many Americans look at our president and now have become used to his rhetoric in some way, shape, or form.

And the use of words that the president has used to Canadians does feel like a betrayal of a friendship and a deep partnership that has existed for many generations, in fact.

BROOKS: Ambassador Heyman, I wanna play a couple of cuts of tape the first from President Trump, and then hear from Prime Minister Carney.

So here’s Trump re-upping his attacks on Canada. Just this past Wednesday at a rally in Bullhead, Arizona, he told the crowd that Canada will, quote, “End up being the 51st state.” Here’s President Trump.

TRUMP: Canada treats us very badly. They always have. Not anymore. It’s a whole different ballgame now Trump is in town. They ripped Canada … Canada ripped us off with tariffs. They would charge us tariffs. They would never talk about it. Like on milk, they’d charge you nothing for the first two bottles, so they put it down no tariff. After that, they’d charge you 409%. Anything past two bottles, they charge you. They are brutal, and we don’t take that crap anymore.

They’re all … Their car companies are all moving into America. They’re all coming in, otherwise they have to pay massive tariffs. And they’ll end up being the 51st state, ’cause it’s the only way it works. We don’t need them, but they need us.

BROOKS: And here’s Prime Minister Mark Carney speaking last January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he said we’re now in a new world order.

MARK CARNEY: We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically, and we knew that international law applied with varying rigor depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.

This fiction was useful. An American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes. So we placed the sign in the window, we participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.

This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.

BROOKS: Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada speaking there last January in Davos, Switzerland. Ambassador Heyman, I have two questions about two particular things that each of those leaders said. Let me start with Trump.

“We don’t need them, but they need us.”

HEYMAN: Your reaction? That’s completely a misunderstanding of the relationship. So let’s just think this through. The United States from an energy perspective across all different aspects of energy, we import between four and five million barrels a day of oil from Canada.

That represents more oil than we import from all the other countries in the world put together. But it’s not just oil. Hydro, electricity, much of the East Coast and central part of the country, a lot of electricity and energy comes into the United States from Canada. Uranium, we talk about reigniting nuclear plants.

A third of the uranium comes. Oh, our farmers, and I know many people in rural America listen to your show. Potash, critical component for fertilizing much of our breadbasket in our country, nearly 90% of the potash to fertilize our crops comes from Canada. So much that we have relies on it. But what Americans miss, and he- here’s an important point, because some Americans say, “How is it we have such a large trading relationship, and we don’t actually remember what we bought which said Canada on it?”

I may have maple syrup or I may have a Canada Goose jacket or something like that. The reality is what Canada provides the United States are the components to almost everything that we have. If you have your home, wood in your home. If you have your car, aluminum in your car. If you turn your car on, whether it’s electric or gas, much of that energy may have come from Canada.

It’s the components of what we build together, and so it is an important distinction that we actually make things together. We’re an integrated economy. And so when there are tariffs that go on, those tariffs are passed on to every American, and you don’t naturally see it, because it becomes a little piece everywhere throughout the economy.

And so it’s unfortunate.

BROOKS: And let me ask you about the key line in that cut we heard from Prime Minister Carney. He says, “Let me be direct. We’re in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.” I’ve come back to this word rupture a couple of times, a few times this hour. The reason why I want to bring it up again with you, do you see this as a permanent rupture rather than a temporary political drama that will pass? How do you view that?

HEYMAN: So I think Prime Minister Carney is right to describe this as a rupture. Something fundamental has changed in the relationship between the United States and Canada. For generations, Canadians believed whatever disagreements we might have, the United States would remain their most reliable friend, ally, and economic partner.

That assumption has been shaken. But here’s what I would distinguish between a rupture and a permanent separation. Our countries are just simply too interconnected, as I just described … economically, geographically, culturally, from a national security perspective, to go separate ways. We share a continent.

We share extraordinary economic relationships. We make things together. We power industries together. We defend North America together. So is the relationship permanently broken? I don’t believe it has to be, but it has permanent damage that I think could be long-lasting. And because even if the tariffs disappeared tomorrow, the questions Canadians will be asking, “Can we trust the United States not to do this again?”

And that’s a much harder question to answer.

BROOKS: Understood. If you were advising the White House today, what’s the very first thing you’d tell them to do to mend this rift, to fix this rupture, to get this relationship back on track? I understand and appreciate the point about trust, and this is broken trust that’s going to have an effect long term, but there’s something that could happen today.

What would it be?

HEYMAN: When I served as ambassador, I saw firsthand how much trust existed between our countries. And look, we’ve had disagreements, sometimes serious ones. But there was an underlying confidence that we were working toward a common future, and that’s been damaged. So my advice would be, let’s take the rhetoric down, let’s talk behind closed doors, and if there are things that we need to work on together, let’s do that because we, Canadians and Americans have demonstrated an ability to do that.

You had Chrystia Freeland just on talking about, we just renegotiated the NAFTA agreement, the USMCA, with the Trump administration. It’s possible to get things done. So I would encourage people, let’s take this rhetoric down and let’s get behind closed doors and let’s start negotiating the things that are important.

BROOKS: And let me turn that question around. What should Canada be doing right now to protect itself and maybe to invest in what Chrystia Freeland was just talking about, to invest in the idea of hope that things can, if not get back to where they were, get to a much better place with the United States?

HEYMAN: So I think Prime Minister Carney is doing the exact right thing for Canada going forward. He’s bringing in foreign capital and domestic capital to rebuild infrastructure in the country, to make it significantly more competitive in the new world economy, and I think that’s important. I personally, as someone who’s been in the investment world for many decades and now works in Canada with an investment firm, I think what Canada offers is one of the most attractive investment opportunities that I’ve seen globally over my personal career.

I think what’s going to happen here is Canada’s going to get stronger, more effective, and be able to produce things and do things, not just for North America, but for the world. And I think that will make Canada a much stronger partner going forward, and that actually gives me hope and every reason to believe that we can build a new alliance together that will be strong and perhaps even stronger going forward.

But I think the prime minister’s doing absolutely the right thing, and I’m deeply supportive of that from an investment perspective.

BROOKS: And I want to come back and ask you about something that Chrystia Freeland was also talking about, and that is America’s ability essentially to compete with growing threats around the world, whether it’s China, whether it’s Russia, whether it’s the idea, as she said, of authoritarianism being on the march.

If the U.S. fails to fix this relationship, what does that mean for America in a global sense, in its sort of place in the world and its sense of security going forward?

HEYMAN: We should all think about it this way. In the post-World War II world, the United States as a leader economically, militarily, worked, though, what made us strong in my personal belief, and I think many people who are listening today, what made us strong are the allies that we had around the world and those allies come together and we think of the world in terms of multilateral relationships. What the president is doing today is putting America in a place where we’re thinking of ourselves unilaterally, and he believes we’re stronger alone than stronger with our partners and allies.

I think that needs to shift, and I think if we’re going to tackle some of the large global problems in the world and opportunities that exist with AI, which gives you both the risk and opportunity, that it’s better to do it with partners and allies around the world. Pandemics, climate change, the things that affect the world altogether, and then we have authoritarian leaders that are imposing their will on neighboring countries, we talked about that with Chrystia and Ukraine, that these are the kinds of things that are better handled with partners and allies.

And then we talk about our next-door neighbor, and Canada only borders one country. Three oceans, one country. They have 40 million people, and of 40 million people, 80% of them live within 150 miles of the U.S. border. It makes no sense that we shouldn’t have them as our best friend, ally, and by the way, family.

There are some one million Americans living in Canada today and some one million Canadians living in the U.S. There are more Americans living in Canada than perhaps any other country in the world outside the United States. We’re family. We marry each other. We have children together. And that opportunity of thinking of a strong bilateral relationship will only make us stronger in the world going forward.

BROOKS: Mr. Ambassador, one more question. We have about 30 seconds left. As someone who served as U.S. ambassador to Canada, did you ever imagine that this day would come, that there would be a major rift with our closest neighbor and ally to this degree?

HEYMAN: One of the greatest moments of my ambassadorship was welcoming the prime minister to a state dinner with President Obama, and then in return, President Obama speaking before the Canadian Parliament, where he stood up and said, “The world needs more Canada,” and I watched every member of Parliament, regardless of party, standing and cheering.

I never could have imagined this and especially being where we are. But I’m an optimist, and I do believe that courses will correct, time will pass, and we will be in a better place going forward.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.