Trudeau makes case for NAFTA before California lawmakers
SIMI VALLEY, California — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took direct aim Friday night at a key anti-trade talking point from U.S. President Donald Trump, saying that trade couldn’t be reduced to something akin to the score in a hockey game.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to tear up the free trade pact between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, believing that a trade imbalance is to blame for the loss of millions of jobs.
In a speech at the Ronald Reagan presidential library on Friday night, Trudeau ran through a series of statistics to show how much Canada buys from the United States, and how much of Canadian oil and energy products flows south of the border.
But the prime minister, speaking in a building named for the president who signed the landmark Canada-U.S. free trade deal, said the sum total of North American free trade couldn’t “be reduced to a balance of trade statistics or a tariff rate.”
“Simply put, if trade between Canada and the U.S. is a bad idea, then there are no good ideas,” Trudeau said during the speech to local and state legislators.
Trudeau stood on the ground floor of the Air Force One pavilion, his back to a large wall of windows providing a view of the surrounding hills. Overhead was a massive symbol of American diplomacy: the presidential plane that carried Reagan and six other presidents.
The Liberal leader’s fullthroated support of the free trade that Reagan trumpeted will cause a shakeup among American conservatives, particularly thinktanks that have influence over President Donald Trump’s policies, said Sean Speer, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
After the speech, Trudeau’s motorcade was involved in a crash that left a number of people injured. The accident happened just after the motorcade left the Ronald Reagan presidential library.
California Highway Patrol confirmed that one of their officers was taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
Local broadcaster KABC reported that two other people, a woman and her son who were in an SUV that was hit after turning left in front of the motorcade, were also taken to a Los Angelesarea hospital with undetermined injuries.
KABC said Trudeau was not injured, and that his motorcade continued on its way.
SAN FRANCISCO — Opposition to Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline has followed Justin Trudeau to sunny California, where protesters demonstrated Friday outside the hotel where the prime minister was holding meetings with top state officials.
About a dozen protesters made up of local climate-change activists held signs demanding Trudeau reverse his decision on the project, chanting antipipeline slogans from across the street.
Three of the protesters briefly got inside the hotel and demonstrated with their backs up against the wall directly outside the room where Trudeau met with California Gov. Jerry Brown.
Trudeau has given no indication he’s willing to back down from the project, pledging to get it built one way or another. One of the protesters, Vanessa Butterworth, said Trudeau must to back up his talk about protecting the environment and climate by rejecting the Kinder Morgan pipeline.
“If you want to be a real climate leader, you’re going to have to live up to your Paris agreement and say no to Kinder Morgan or the communities are going to shut it down,” said Butterworth, who is from Toronto.
The message was different than the one Trudeau received inside the stately hotel first from Brown, and then his deputy Gavin Newsom, who is a favourite to replace Brown at the end of the Democrat’s term.
During staged photo-ops, Brown said his state and Canada had much to do while the White House was “temporarily missing in action in terms of climate action.” Newsom thanked Trudeau for his leadership “at a time when that’s not lost on many of us in the political sphere out here.”
California and more than a dozen other states have moved ahead with carbon pricing schemes, including a cap-and-trade system with Ontario and Quebec. Brown said he wants to forge other agreements with various provinces, and push for growth in zeroemission vehicles.
Tensions around the development of the controversial $7.4-billion pipeline project escalated last week when the B.C. government announced plans for more consultations on oil spill readiness and a limit on increased diluted bitumen shipments until it can be confident of response measures.
Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer asked for an emergency debate on the pipeline impasse, but deputy Speaker Bruce Stanton told him the issue does not meet the criteria.
“The House of Commons should discuss all options in order to put an end to this crisis,” Scheer said in French in the House of Commons.
During question period, Kim Rudd, the parliamentary secretary for the minister of natural resources, said Canada won’t let B.C. kill off the pipeline.
“Any decision by the B.C. government to limit the flow of bitumen through the pipeline would be outside the province’s jurisdiction,” Rudd said.
Protester David Turnbull, with Oil Change International, said Americans are also worried about what could happen to the waters along their western coast if Kinder Morgan is built.
“The Kinder Morgan pipeline, if it was built, would increase the tanker traffic along the West Coast, including in the United States along Seattle’s bay as well,” Turnbull said. “We’re concerned that the Kinder Morgan would both imperil our climate and also imperil our coast lines as well.”