Trudeau says he's concerned about what a Trump win would mean for climate action
CBC
Asked by the CBC's Rosemary Barton this week about the prospect of Donald Trump returning to the White House, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau initially fell back on the fact that every American administration (Trudeau has now worked with three presidents) brings challenges for Canada.
The Liberal government, he said, was able to work through some "very difficult problems" when Trump was president from 2016 and 2020, including his threat to "rip up" the North American Free Trade Agreement and "a desire to move backwards on climate change" that "was a menace not just to Canada but to the world."
But Trudeau then allowed himself to cast forward — and acknowledged that he could see cause for concern.
"Yes, there's a concern — particularly around the environment, at a time where it's so important to move forward on protecting and building an economy of the future where energy workers, miners, forestry workers across this country — and manufacturing across this country — continues to be successful as we move towards lower emissions," he said.
"A Trump presidency that goes back on the fight against climate change would slow down the world's progress in ways that are concerning to me."
During Trump's four years in the White House, Trudeau's Liberals tended to be highly selective in their public comments about what the American president was saying, doing and tweeting — presumably in the hope of avoiding conflict with the leader of Canada's largest trading partner and most important ally.
A Canadian prime minister commenting on the potential ramifications of a presidential election also risks being accused of undiplomatically wading into American domestic affairs. When Trump declared his intention to run again last November, Canadian officials told CBC News that they intended to withhold comment.
But it's also impossible to deny that next year's vote in the United States could have significant global ramifications — not least for the fight against climate change.
The Trudeau government carefully chose its spots to comment on presidential policy between 2016 and 2020. One of those spots was international climate action.
When Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement in 2017, Trudeau said he was "deeply disappointed" by the decision. Days later, the Liberals marked World Environment Day with renewed vigour.
"If the U.S. administration is going to step back on climate action, Canada is going to step up and do even more," said Catherine McKenna, federal environment minister at the time.
The Liberals also pledged to work with American governors and mayors on actions to reduce greenhouse emissions. (Even before the United States officially left the Paris agreement, Canada had started pursuing separate climate discussions with the European Union and China.)
Perhaps no country can claim that its emissions are a purely domestic matter. That's particularly true for a country with the practical size and potential influence of the United States.
Trump has not sounded any more interested in doing something about climate change since leaving the White House.