As the United States–Canada trade fight drags, Canadian retaliatory tariffs took effect on September 8. Washington answered on alcoholic drinks, some dairy, and motorcycles. Bridge City News put the file to Kris Sims, Alberta director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Her first sentence is the one every mining payroll should laminate. Tariffs are trade taxes. They make goods and services more expensive on both sides of the line. Retaliation means the inbound crate costs more here. Ian Lee of the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University has been saying the same thing for decades. It is not rocket science. Donald Trump, in Lee’s and Sims’ telling, has already closed deals with a long list of other countries — Sims used “19” and later “more than a dozen.” Canada still does not have one with the customer that clears most of its goods.
That is the story. The theatrics are the expensive part.
Why Booze Is Not a Sideshow
Doug Ford on camera with a bottle is easy to mock. Sims has been through the Crown Royal plant in Gimli, Manitoba. Spirits are not a punchline in the two-way book. She put the United States spirits trade above a billion dollars a year, with a B, for two reasons that still hold. Canadian Club and Crown Royal carry a premium on American shelves. And Canada’s provincial liquor monopolies — Ontario’s LCBO first among them — concentrate purchasing power so a listing fight becomes a trade fight. When Washington tariffs the bottle, it is tariffing a real line item, not a lifestyle accessory.
Polls that show support for Mark Carney’s posture shrink, Sims and the host agreed, when the follow-up is cost: higher taxes, weaker firms, lost jobs. Emotionalism scores cheaply. Lake-renaming clips and map jokes are sugar cereal. Six months of it and you wonder why the household feels terrible. People in autos who want to shove a bully are not villains. They are being used as a backdrop for a government that has not closed a text.
Who Gets Paid to Have a Relationship
Sims put the compensation on the table because it is the taxpayer file. The prime minister’s pay is in the $400,000 neighborhood. Senior political staff under ministers such as Dominic LeBlanc sit well into the $300,000s. Deputy ministers — unelected, permanent — can approach half a million. Embassies in Washington and New York exist to keep the largest customer from becoming a slogan. A year and a half in, there is no deal. Daily two-way trade, in her figure, is about $3 billion. A day. Fail that book and you do not get to call the failure patriotism.
Carney has promised to support firms bruised by the tariffs “as long as it takes.” Sims’ arithmetic is the same one this page used on the bond tape. Federal debt is more than $1.4 trillion on the CTF talking points she used. Interest alone is about a billion dollars a week. Compensating businesses for a tax Ottawa chose is a second coupon. It is the lockdown rhyme: gyms and restaurants that lost their shirts because of a government decision, then waited for a cheque written on the same public book. The auto worker and the wheat farm are not the authors. Governments, plural, are. They could see a second Trump term coming. They staffed for it. They produced elbows.
Short-term support is not a growth model. It is a confession that the strategy is a levy plus a subsidy, financed by a curve that has already started to firm.
Read the Book, or Keep Punching the Bear
Sims’ counsel, hat off, was adult. Sit down. Play the person across the table. The first chapter of the book he put his name on in the 1980s is the method: outrageous demand, bull in the shop, then a deal. Fifty-first-state noise and lake jokes are the demand reel. Treating the reel as the whole movie is how you stay in the loop. Trump’s own contrast — deals elsewhere, retaliation from China and Canada — is a taunt. It is also a mirror. Looking cool at home is not a negotiating position. Sims’ grizzly image is crude and accurate. You do not win a knife fight with an animal that size. You get lunch eaten for a season and you get back to a text. Or you die on camera.
Danielle Smith did the unfashionable thing at the start: she went south, used rooms the eastern press called a betrayal, including a Daily Wire forum, because distribution into the American right is how you reach a White House that does not take dictation from Toronto panels. Ben Shapiro is not a mineral deposit. He is a channel. Alberta understood channels. Ottawa understood YouTube.
Resource families already know the macaroni week. Sims grew up in that downturn. The people who will pay for a year of cheap points are not the deputy minister class. They are the same names this publication writes for when a mine is paused and a mill is rumoured. Act like an ally, she said. Get a deal done. That is not surrender. That is the job description on the $500,000 line.
The Other Ballot
Bridge City News also took Sims to Alberta’s October referendum slate. Question 7 asks whether Alberta should work with willing provinces to amend the Constitution and abolish the appointed Senate. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is campaigning yes. Her reasons were cost and failure. The Senate costs more than $140 million this year in the figure she used. Reform — Preston Manning’s elected, equal, effective chamber; Stephen Harper’s attempt to appoint provincially elected names — died in court. Brad Wall gave up on reform in 2013 and said abolish it. Sims added the spend since that turn at more than $1.5 billion. She cited nearly a million dollars of Speaker-era global travel over three years, including a trip that took in Benin’s sacred forest, as the exhibit of a chamber most voters cannot name. Those numbers are CTF’s ledger. They belong in a taxpayer hour. They belong next to a federal government that is borrowing to look defiant.
Abolition is a constitutional mountain. Waste is not. A country that cannot close a trade text with its largest customer should not lecture the West about unity while it funds a house that does not represent it.
Conclusion
Canadian retaliatory tariffs are a tax on Canadian shelves. American counters on spirits, dairy and bikes are a tax on Canadian export lists. Polls that ignore the second question are a sugar high. Mark Carney can host a summit and promise support for as long as it takes. The curve and the $3-billion day will price the delay. Kris Sims’ Bridge City News hour was not subtle. Do the job you are paid for. Read the method. Stop punching the bear for the clip.
Mining towns have already lived the version of this story that ends in soup. They do not need another year of it so a government can look like it shoved back. Get the text. Then talk about critical minerals as if a customer still existed.
Important information
This article is commentary for Canadian Mining Report readers based on a Bridge City News interview with Kris Sims of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Pay figures, trade totals, debt-service estimates and Senate costs are those cited in that conversation and by the Federation; they can differ from official public accounts. It is not investment, tax or legal advice. The author and publisher accept no liability for actions taken on the basis of this article.