I created this site in 2020 as a place to share ideas and perspectives shaped by a long career in public policy, strategic planning, communications, association management, government, and politics.
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Food belongs on the kitchen table, not the negotiating table
President Donald Trump’s new tariffs on Canadian goods make exceptions for energy, potash, critical minerals and certain other products. Fresh produce and most foodstuffs have not been granted similar protection.
A reciprocal food carve-out must be Ottawa’s first objective in negotiations with the White House. Before bargaining over individual industrial sectors, Ottawa should seek a bilateral exemption covering food and agricultural products, preserving the uninterrupted movement of perishable goods regardless of the broader trade dispute.
The objective is to prevent a trade dispute from becoming a farm crisis and, ultimately, a grocery-price crisis on both sides of the border.
The administration’s announced exemptions do not include a general carve-out for food or agriculture, even though Canada and the United States operate one of the world’s most integrated food markets.
Fresh produce is particularly vulnerable.
Tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers cannot be warehoused while governments negotiate. Greenhouse production continues throughout the year, crops must be harvested when ready, and shipments must reach retailers quickly. An exporter confronted with a 50 per cent border charge cannot simply store the crop or find another continent capable of absorbing it.
Canada has already seen what even a brief disruption can do.
The Fruit and Vegetable Growers of Canada’s 2025 report, Extraordinary Measures for Unprecedented Times, examined the three days in March during which the United States imposed 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian greenhouse products before reversing course and exempting CUSMA-compliant goods.
Even that short-lived disruption inflicted immediate damage. Ontario greenhouse growers reported approximately $6 million in lost sales – roughly $2.2 million a day – as some 200 truckloads of fresh vegetables entered an uncertain market. Tomato exports, among the sector’s largest, were affected immediately as growers scrambled to honour retail commitments while absorbing losses they had no ability to recover.
If three days of uncertainty produced those consequences, the prospect of a sustained 50 per cent tariff should leave no doubt about what is at stake.
The greenhouse sector’s exposure is exceptional. In 2023, it exported $1.68 billion in vegetables to the United States, which absorbed 99.5 per cent of Canadian greenhouse vegetable exports. Across horticulture, more than 91 per cent of export value went to the American market.
A sustained 50 per cent tariff could make Canadian products commercially uncompetitive overnight. Cancelled orders would create domestic oversupply, depress farm-gate prices and force growers to discard food they had spent months – and considerable capital – producing.
Prolonged disruption would threaten highly leveraged greenhouse operations and permanently reduce Canada’s production capacity. And consumers would eventually pay the price.
Canadian grocery prices were already 4.3 per cent higher in May than a year earlier. Fresh vegetables rose nine per cent and tomato prices increased 45.2 per cent. In the United States, food-at-home prices rose 2.7 per cent over the same period, while fruit and vegetable prices increased 5.3 per cent.
Tariffs would reduce dependable supply for American retailers, while retaliation against U.S. food imports would raise costs in Canada. A measure intended as leverage would therefore compound food inflation in both countries.
Ottawa will understandably seek relief for automobiles, aluminum and other strategic industries. But food cannot simply take its place in line behind them.
Canada’s first negotiating objective should be a reciprocal exemption that removes food and agricultural products from the tariff dispute altogether. Such an agreement would protect consumers in both countries while preserving the integrated supply chains on which North American food security depends.
If Carney and Trump want food on every kitchen table, they must first take it off the negotiating table.
The news last week that Canada and the US had reached a deal that would open the bridge to cross border traffic dripped in irony. A bridge named after the hockey legend whose elbows inspired Canada’s rallying cry against Donald Trump opening only after Ottawa accommodated Washington’s bully tactics.
But the agreement is also a window into how Mark Carney governs.
Trump blocked a completed bridge that Canada financed even if Ottawa had every factual, legal and moral argument on its side. And it was Washington that went into the corners with its elbows up and Canada that turtled.
The bridge is now scheduled to open on July 27. According to media reports, the settlement gives Washington new influence over significant toll decisions while directing half of the bridge’s future net profits to a 15-year regional economic development fund.
Under the original arrangement, Canada expected to recover its investment through toll revenues before Michigan shared in the profits. The new agreement pushes that recovery much farther into the future, although Ottawa has yet to disclose by how much.
That matters because time is the hidden currency of politics.
Carney has shown that he thinks like an economist and governs like a central banker.
That does not make him apolitical. Quite the opposite. He is deeply political — his approval ratings are evidence of this. But he approaches politics as a continuing exercise in trade-offs, optimization and risk management where the future is discounted and the immediate objective is the priority.
Central bankers operate much the same way. They calm markets, restore confidence, contain shocks and prevent today’s instability from becoming tomorrow’s panic.
But a country is not a balance sheet. Sovereignty, credibility and strategic leverage cannot always be assigned a present value and traded for short-term stability.
Observing Mark Carney increasingly suggests that he treats red lines not as principles to defend, but as obstacles to clear.
Consider the Digital Services Tax. Trump halted trade negotiations. Ottawa quickly rescinded a policy years in the making to restart them. The government openly described the reversal as the price of advancing broader negotiations with Washington.
Last week, Carney became the first Canadian prime minister in 26 years to visit Saudi Arabia, reversing a long period of political distance from a regime whose human rights record remains appalling. His explanation had the polished efficiency of a central bank communiqué: “Engagement is not endorsement.” Lecturing governments from afar, he added, is ineffective.
Each decision can be defended on its own merits. Taken together, Carney’s governing doctrine appears to be this: Address today’s problem; leave the consequences to tomorrow.
Carney often says Canada must deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.
Every concession changes the world as it is. Reward coercion today and coercion becomes more likely tomorrow. Treat every red line as provisional and adversaries learn that Canadian resistance has a price, and enough pressure will reveal it.
That may be the lasting significance of the Gordie Howe bridge agreement.
“Elbows Up” promised that Canada would absorb short-term pain to protect its long-term independence. Carney appears ready to reverse that bargain.
He secures immediate relief by transferring the cost, the precedent and the lost leverage into the future.
The bridge will open. Traffic will move.
The government will declare the crisis resolved and celebrate Canada-U.S. trade.
But a bridge can carry more than vehicles. This one carries a warning.
Mark Carney governs as though the future can always absorb one more political compromise.
Keynes may have been right, after all, in the long run, we will indeed all be dead. But that will be cold comfort for future generations.
