Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Nov. 24 that a call with the White House’s economic advisor impressed upon her that the Liberal government needed to take action to end last winter’s cross-country protests and blockades.
“That one conversation was a seminal one for me, and it was a moment when I realized, as a country, somehow, we had to find a way to bring this to an end,” Freeland said about her Feb. 10 call with Brian Deese, economic advisor to U.S. President Joe Biden.
Freeland was testifying before the Public Order Emergency Commission and she was asked to comment on the call.
Freeland said that Deese is Biden’s most important adviser on economic issues and that he was extremely difficult to reach in general and prior to the events.
“It was a real effort to develop a relationship and a dialogue with him, and always an effort to get them on the phone, to get him to answer an email,” she said.
Freeland explained this as a “good thing” showing that the U.S. is not worried about Canada, rather than Canada being a minor player that can be easily ignored.
But on that date, Deese was the one who called, which impressed upon Freeland that the U.S. administration was worried.
Freeland sent a summary of the call to her staff, and she wrote that the U.S. was “very, very, very worried. If this is not sorted out in the next 12 hours, all of their north eastern plants will shut down,” in reference to the automotive industry.
Freeland recalled how Canada was worried about U.S. protectionism in the context of supply chains and the issue of electric vehicle incentives proposed in the American Build Back Better bill.
She said that problems at Canadian borders would fuel more protectionism from the U.S. which would severely impact the Canadian economy.
“The danger was, were we in the process as a country, of doing long term, and possibly irreparable harm to our trading relationship with the United States.”
Freeland says she asked Deese to set up a call between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Biden, who she called a “very, very busy guy” as the “most important elected leader in the world.”
Her call with Deese was on Feb. 10, and the call between country leaders took place the next day.
“The president and the prime minister spoke on the Friday [Feb. 11] and then, as you know, we made an announcement on the Monday,” said Freeland in reference to the invocation of the Emergencies Act on Feb. 14.
By the time the act was invoked, the blockade at the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor had been cleared.
