Notes for remarks by High Commissioner for Canada in the United Kingdom, Ralph Goodale, at the Cambridge Canadian Club

Cambridge University, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Good evening everyone. Thank you for your kind invitation to be with you once again this year. Greetings and good wishes from the Government of Canada.

In April of this year, I will pass the 4-year mark in my tenure as Canadian High Commissioner in the United Kingdom. In diplomatic terms, that means my time here is coming to an end. For tonight, I thought I might “look back” just a bit at what the past four years have been like, but mostly “forward” at a major challenge unfolding on our horizon.

Looking back, there are two principle observations that stand out:

First, the relationship between Canada and the UK - both under the previous Conservative governments and now under Labour - is rich and deep and highly functional. It works well because it does not depend on politics. It is rooted in our two countries’ lengthy lived experience with one another, the respect and trust we have accumulated over so many years, and the values we have promoted and defended together in the world for a very long time.

Our instincts on important issues are typically much the same. And that may be of even greater value now, in the wake of things evolving in the United States.

Secondly, London is a big and busy post for Canada - our oldest diplomatic mission, the second-largest in the world. In terms of political relations, diplomacy and foreign policy; defence, security, intelligence and law enforcement; trade and investment; immigration; consular affairs; and simply Canadians visiting (for every reason from official business to tourism), Canada House is a bustling place.

When I first arrived here in April of 2021, the big issues were BREXIT and COVID, followed by the evacuation from Afghanistan and then AUKUS. The UK also hosted a G7 Summit in Cornwall that year, and CoP26 in Glasgow.

In 2022, Putin launched his full-scale, illegal war of aggression against Ukraine. Canada opened two sets of trade negotiations with the Brits. That was the year of Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee but also, sadly, her passing, a State Funeral and the accession of HM King Charles III. And in amongst all that, the UK government had three Prime Ministers - Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.

In 2023, we celebrated the 25th Anniversary of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement, and then the new King’s Coronation, including an historic audience for Indigenous leaders from Canada. Negotiations concluded to bring the UK into the TransPacific Partnership with Canada and 10 others. But tragically also that year, Russian brutality continued in Ukraine and another major war erupted in the Middle East, following a horrific terror attack by Hamas.

In 2024, the destruction in Ukraine and the Middle East raged on, while election fever took over in other places (including the UK, the EU and the US). Indeed, people in more than 100 countries went to the polls at some level last year, with uneven and sometimes destabilizing outcomes. As fascinating as Canadians find the election of a new British government (Keir Starmer's big Labour majority), it is the return of Donald Trump in the United States that has seized attention worldwide.

In the modern history of North America, virtually all US Presidents from both parties have had very good things to say about Canada, from Eisenhower and Kennedy to Clinton, Obama and both George Bushes. They have spoken eloquently about unity between the US and Canada, about trust and respect, about candour and honest effort between two equal, independent, free and sovereign states - states that share vital common interests and face a troubled world together.

President Ronald Reagan once said that: “We’re more than friends and neighbours and allies; we are “kin” who together have built the most productive relationship between any two countries in the world.”

He also warned against those “… who are ready to declare a trade war against our friends - weakening our economy, our national security and the entire free world.”

Our two free, equal, independent and sovereign countries, are both fortunate to have each other “next door”. But as former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau once observed, for us, it’s like a mouse sleeping next to an elephant - she’s a great companion, but you’ve got to be alert to every twitch and grunt.

Watching from up close, Canadians are familiar with the convulsions that overtake America from time to time - right from the very beginning with its War of Independence. Some years later, when the newly created US Congress made its first official Declaration of War, it was against … Great Britain and her Canadian colonies in 1812.

For several decades, Canada was the northern terminus for the “Underground Railroad” providing refuge for former slaves escaping from the South. While our Confederation was being “negotiated” in the 1860s, Americans were fighting a Civil War, largely over that issue of slavery. Through the last half of the 19th century, Canada built a transcontinental railway, deployed the precursor of the RCMP, and stimulated an influx of immigrant settlers largely to assert our sovereignty and prevent American incursions into our Northwest Territories.

The 20th century began with a free trade deal being proposed between the US and Canada, but it was sharply rejected in the election of 1911. Cross-border economic collaboration flourished in the 1950’s and 60s with the joint construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway, and then the Canada-US Auto Pact. But a comprehensive bilateral free trade agreement had to wait for the late 1980’s. 

Meanwhile, Canadians had been fully engaged in two World Wars, defending freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law, years before we were joined by US allies. We stood shoulder-to-shoulder in Korea. In Suez, Canada brought the world the concept of international peace-keeping. With the US, the UK and others, we became ardent post-war advocates of multilateralism, and architects of institutions like the United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO, as well as vital alliances like the Five Eyes, NATO and NORAD.

Canadians have witnessed recurring American struggles with isolationism from time-to-time, with the fanaticism of Joe McCarthy, and the agony of Vietnam. We’ve been rock-solid partners in national security, including the rescue of US diplomats from Tehran, and the response to terror in New York on 9-11. We resisted being pulled into Iraq (and we were right), but punched far above our weight in Afghanistan. Today, we collaborate daily on Ukraine, the Middle East, in Latvia and in multiple situations around the world.

All this, to make the point that Canadians are very familiar with the tug and turmoil of our big neighbour. We are close allies, partners, friends and indeed family. But we are not Americans and we do not want to become Americans.

Indeed, we’re pretty proud of the fact that we’re a less polarized, more accommodating, more inclusive society, with lower rates of violence and a deep commitment to the rule of law through our Parliamentary democracy. We have a Triple-A credit rating, with the lowest debt-ratio in the G7, a secure, prudential banking system, and some of the best brains in the world on emerging technologies like AI. We have less child poverty, greater life expectancy, a higher quality of life more broadly shared, and a healthcare system where the first thing they check is actually your pulse, not your credit card.

None of this is cause for smugness or self-satisfaction, but it was certainly encouraging - indeed, exciting - to see how Canadians responded in recent days when we were collectively attacked … when our sovereignty was challenged … when the “economic force” of illegal, 25% US tariffs was threatened against us.

Canadians were provoked and angry. And we came together, more vocally and more tangibly, than we’ve seen in a very long time. Spontaneous outpourings of national cohesion and fervour were on open-line shows, in social media, among the Premiers, business leaders and unions, at hockey games, across political, geographic, demographic and economic lines. It was really quite remarkable.

The border between Canada and the United States runs nearly 9,000kms, from coast-to-coast-to-coast - the longest, most secure, most profitable, un-militarized international boundary in the world. There are some 200 mutual ports of entry. Close to 400,000 people move back-and-forth across that border every single day, together with more than $3 billion in two-way trade, every single day. That adds up to more than a trillion dollars annually.

That huge volume of trade is also remarkably well balanced. Canada has a surplus on energy sales to the US. The Americans run surpluses on manufactured goods, and on services sold to Canada. They also have a big advantage on bi-national investment - Canadian investments in the United States exceed US investments in Canada by more than $220 billion.

About 70% of our exports to the US feed into American supply chains, creating millions of American jobs. Going the other way, Canadians buy more goods and services from the Americans than do the British, the French, the Japanese and the Chinese combined. Canada is the largest export market for 36 US states, and we’re in the top-three export markets for 46.

Obviously, applying tariffs to this big, intimate, complex and highly successful relationship would be counterproductive for Canada, yes, but also for the Americans, driving up US costs and prices, damaging competitiveness and killing jobs.

At the last moment, the across-the-board 25% tariff threat against Canada was hoisted for 30 days (to March 4th) to see if President Trump is content with his economic situation with Canada. That raises a key question - what are these tariffs truly designed to accomplish? The rationale changes from time to time - from drug interdiction to stopping illegal migrants, from raising revenue to combatting a trade deficit. But none of those excuses can be justified on any sound factual basis. Not against Canada.

We have to assume this is really all about applying leverage and seeking control - an exercise in economic coercion, “might makes right” - and Canadians are properly concerned about our energy supplies, our other natural resources like potash and nickel, our critical minerals and fresh water, not to mention our fundamental sovereignty.

Beyond the rhetorical outrage expressed by Canadians, and spontaneous things like boycotting US travel and products, the government responded to the broad tariff threat in five ways that appear to have had some impact:

First, we have been pounding focussed, fact-based messages into the US Administration, both Houses of Congress, State capitals, Mayors and local governments, corporate and union leaders, community organizations and US media, laying out the very real damage that would be done to America by Mr. Trumps tariffs, and by Canada’s promised retaliation. It would be a painful self-inflicted wound. And totally unnecessary.

Secondly, we made it clear that there would indeed be Canadian retaliation against at least $155 billion of American products - far beyond orange juice and bourbon.

Thirdly, we got to work on support measures for Canadian businesses and workers to cushion them from the worst effects of a trade war. There would still be damage, but there would also be government backing.

Fourth, we refreshed our focus on diversifying Canadian trade beyond the United States. Canada’s trade diversification strategy has been in place since 2017. It now involves 15 agreements accessing 51 countries and two-thirds of the world’s GDP. Here in the UK, we have a good free trade agreement already in place - 99% tariff and quota free. We will try to make it even better.

Fifth, the federal government and the provinces are working with business and labour to make the Canadian economy more productive and resilient, regardless of what the United States might do. That involves regulatory improvements; reducing interprovincial trade barriers; advancing science, technology and innovation; building infrastructure; and tax measures to enlarge and accelerate investment in Canada.

While the immediate tariff threat against Canada last week was averted, at least for a month, the whole problem came back again this week with more US tariffs announced, beginning with steel and aluminum coming from everywhere in the world, effective March 12th.

Canada is the biggest exporter of these two products into the United States. American buyers want our supplies on fully competitive market terms for everything from defence to shipbuilding, from energy to auto-manufacturing. The fantastic business relationships and supply chains we have developed across North America in these sectors make both our countries more competitive and more secure.

In response to this latest threat, we will obviously strive to avoid implementation. Facts and logic are on our side. But if it comes to that, the Canadian government has been crystal clear - we will stand up unequivocally to defend our workers, our industries and our country. We will push back, and we’ll be ready for March 12th. And thereafter.

While retaliation and support measures are on stand-by, all the other actions to bolster our economy need to go full steam ahead. We also need to keep pounding our messages into US audiences, because our best advocates in Washington will ultimately be Americans themselves.

We say that with eyes wide open - because trust once broken is hard to repair.

We also need to stay close to our other friends and allies around the world - reminding them that Canada may be the canary in the coal mine right now. But they could well be next, and we need to find ways to support one another.

Most importantly, Canadians must stick together. All the spontaneous rallying, the national cohesion, the Canadian pride and solidarity that we have seen in recent days is truly impressive. We need to keep it that way. Strong, united and absolutely determined to keep Canada, Canada.