Canadians don’t want pain from Trump tariffs to land on one province

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OTTAWA — After Premier Danielle Smith fell out with provinces and federal Liberals over asking Alberta to bear the cost of using oil exports to fight U.S. tariffs, a new Postmedia-Leger poll shows most Canadians agree that no province should have to bear an unfair retaliation burden.

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Asked how they would feel if their own province were harmed by retaliatory measures more than others, nearly two-thirds of respondents Canada-wide (64 per cent) said that no province should take a significantly bigger hit than others.

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Leger vice-president Andrew Enns said he was most struck by the absence of strong regional differences of opinion.

“Everybody is sort of going, ‘Well, this is Team Canada, we should all be sharing the pain,’” said Enns.

Enns says the findings “speak somewhat positively to national unity.”

“There’s a sense of fairness across the board,” said Enns. “We aren’t seeing some parts of the country looking to throw others under the bus at this stage of the game.”

Those in Alberta (71 per cent) and Quebec (69 per cent) were most likely to say their provinces shouldn’t suffer disproportionate pain, followed by Atlantic Canada (63 per cent), and Ontario and British Columbia (61 per cent each).

Fifty-six per cent of those in Manitoba and Saskatchewan said no individual province should be disproportionately harmed by retaliatory measures. Twenty-three per cent indicated they were ambivalent, or had no opinion.

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Trevor Tombe, an economist at the University of Calgary, says that fairness is easier in theory than practice.

“It would be very difficult for the federal government to construct a retaliatory package with proportional effects across the provinces,” said Tombe. “Given the vast economic diversity Canada has across regions.”

Only twenty-three per cent of those surveyed nationally said they’d be fine with their own province being disproportionately impacted, so long as the response was in Canada’s best interest.

Federal officials, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, have indicated that all options are on the table in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to bring in cross-border tariffs as early as this weekend.

Divisions over the possible responses have already flared up between provinces and federal leaders.

Smith has been especially vocal in insisting that retaliatory measures do not include an oil and gas export tax or cutting off the flow of petroleum into the states.

While Liberal leadership candidate Mark Carney is calling for Canada to cut off power exports to the United States in a trade war, Quebec Premier Francois Legault said last week that any retaliatory action that involves cross-border energy exports should require the consent of the province or provinces affected.

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Prime Minister Trudeau met with Canada’s premiers virtually on Wednesday to discuss the ongoing threat of U.S. tariffs.

The polling was done online between Jan. 24 and 26 with a sample of 1,527 Canadians. For comparison purposes, a probability sample of this size yields a margin of error no greater than 2.51 per cent, (19 times out of 20) for the Canadian sample.

National Post
rmohamed@postmedia.com

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