Trudeau advised to focus on the economy ahead of 2024 Trump Mar-a-Lago dinner
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was advised to press U.S. President Donald Trump on the close integration of the Canadian and American economies — with a particular focus on America’s reliance on Canadian energy and minerals — ahead of his Nov. 29 dinner at Trump’s Florida resort of Mar-a-Lago, according to documents obtained by Global News through a federal Access-to-Information request.
The briefing notes prepared for Trudeau were released days before Trudeau’s successor, Mark Carney, heads to Washington for a White House meeting Tuesday with Trump. It will be Carney’s first meeting with the U.S. president since Carney became prime minister and Trump’s first face-to-face meeting with a Canadian prime minister since Trudeau’s Mar-a-Lago visit.
Carney and Canadian officials will, at the very least, have had more time to prepare for this meeting with Trump – time that Trudeau did not appear to have.
“You go to these meetings well-prepared, understanding the objectives of your counterpart, and always acting the best interests of Canada. And we’ll go from there,” Carney told reporters in Ottawa Friday.
Carney, Trump and officials from both administrations will first meet Tuesday for lunch in the White House and then move to the Oval Office where the two are expected to briefly speak to reporters before continuing their meeting. Carney will return to Ottawa early Tuesday evening.
Carney’s meeting with Trump was announced last week .The Nov. 29 Mar-a-Lago meeting was arranged quickly, never appeared on Trudeau’s public itinerary and only became public after one of Trump’s associates posted a picture of the group dining at Trump’s resort on social media.
The records obtained by Global News show that staff in both the Privy Council Office and Global Affairs Canada only began assembling data and talking points for Trudeau at around noon on Nov. 29, the same day Trudeau flew to Florida.
And while Trump would emerge from that meeting to say his motivation at that time to put tariffs on Canadian imports was stopping fentanyl coming into the United States from Canada as well as reducing illegal migration from Canada, Canadian officials prepped Trudeau to focus on the economic harm that across-the-board tariffs would do to the U.S. economy and only paid passing concern to either drugs or migration.
“In 2023,” the note said, “a bad weekend along the Mexico bordeer was more than the whole year along the Northern border” so far as apprehended migrants were concerned.
The briefing note also reminded Trudeau that Canada had imposed a visa requirement on Mexican visitors and that, after the visa requirement was imposed, the number of Mexicans travelling to Canada in 2024 dropped to 8,000 from 24,000 in 2023.
The briefing note also reminded Trudeau that 0.2 per cent of all fentanyl seized by U.S. authorities came from its northern border.
It was at the Mar-a-Lago meeting that Trump first mused to Trudeau about Canada becoming a 51st state. There is no mention in the unredacted portion of briefing notes released to Global News that refer to Trump’s views on acquiring new territory for the United States, be it Canada or Greenland.
Most of the 29 pages of notes provided to Trudeau as he boarded the Royal Canadian Air Force jet to Mar-a-Lago focus on economic issues. That said, government censors blacked out much of the information in the records released to Global News. An entire page titled “Canada–The Key Partner For U.S. Trade” as well as significant parts of the document related to the border, to “energy/critical minerals” and to “trade and tariffs” were all redacted.
Still, much that is in the unredacted parts of the records released to Global News is almost certain to form part of Carney’s case when he meets Trump Tuesday.
Trudeau, for example, was encouraged to remind Trump that Canada and the U.S. are “each other’s top supplier of energy,” the briefing note read, and that 70 pipelines and 35 transmission lines cross the border.
The briefing note said that Canada provides more crude oil to the U.S. than Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Iraq combined. And that a 25 per cent across-the-board tariff on Canadian imports, including Canadian energy, would cause gas prices in the U.S. to jump by between 25 cents and 75 cents per gallon.
The briefing note given to Trudeau is full of the statistics Trudeau in November and Carney this week could use to make his case to Trump, namely that:
- 71 per cent of U.S. imports of potash, a crucial fertilizer used by American farmers, come from Canada, along with
- 50 per cent of America’s imports of refined zinc
- 23 per cent of all aluminum
- 21 per cent of all U.S. imports of uranium
The note goes on to say that six U.S. states sourced more than half of their imports from Canada and that Canada was the top supplier of merchandise imports for 22 U.S. states. With 98 per cent of its imports coming from Canada, Montana is the most exposed to Canadian imports followed by Vermont (70 per cent) and North Dakota (67 per cent), the briefing note says.
But while Carney will have had more time to prepare for his first meeting with Trump as prime minister, Carney, on Friday, downplayed expectations for the meeting.
“We do not expect white smoke out of that meeting. There’ll be white smoke probably later somewhere else in the world this month, but do not expect that,” Carney said. “We’ll see how progress goes. It’s important to get engaged immediately, which has always been my intention — has always been his intention — and I’m pleased to have the opportunity for quite a comprehensive set of meetings.”
Dominic LeBlanc, then the minister for public safety, also attended the Mar-a-Lago meeting. When Global News asked the Department of Public Safety for any briefing notes or other records prepared for LeBlanc ahead of that Florida dinner, the department responded that “no records exist.”
LeBlanc is currently in Carney’s cabinet as the minister for intergovernmental affairs with a key focus on the Canada-U.S. relationship. It’s not clear which officials will accompany Carney at his meetings Tuesdays.
The records prepared for Trudeau also included biographies of Doug Burgum, Mike Waltz and his wife Julie Nesheiwat, and Dave McCormick and his wife Dina Powell McCormick — all of whom attended the Mar-a-Lago dinner.
Burgum, then the Governor of North Dakota, would become Trump’s Secretary of the Interior. Waltz would be named National Security Advisor, a post he just left.
Dave McCormick had just been elected as a senator from Pennsylvania.
Both Dina Powell McCormick and Nesheiwat worked as advisors in the White House during Trump’s first administration.
Howard Lutnick, who would go on to become Trump’s commerce secretary, was also at that dinner as was Trudeau’s chief of staff Katie Telford.
globalnews
