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BlackBerry says its adjusted net income for the quarter amounted to a profit of three U.S. cents per share, same as 2024

The former Treasury chief also criticized Trump’s particular form of protectionism. 'It’s not even good mercantalism,'

Ian Lee, associate professor, Sprott School of Business at Carleton University, talks with Financial Post’s Larysa Harapyn about how the Great Depression is ‘a great case study’ when it comes to understanding current trade tensions .

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• Email: lharapyn@postmedia.com

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Dennis Mitchell, chief executive and chief investment officer at Starlight Capital, talks with Financial Post’s Larysa Harapyn about what strategies are best for investors amid trade uncertainty and volatile markets .

• Interprovincial trade is silver lining in Trump's trade war
• Tariffs put auto sector in 'dire straits'
• Election campaign all about rescuing the Canadian economy

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U.S. President Donald Trump is scheduled to unveil reciprocal tariffs today on America’s trading partners, including Canada, in what he calls “Liberation Day.”

The measures are meant to even things out with those who, in Trump’s eyes, have unfairly taken advantage of the U.S. in trade, but the size and scope of new levies were still being discussed Tuesday.

When they are unveiled at 4 p.m. they have the potential to upend the global trading system and send seismic waves through markets, industries and economies around the world.

Join the Financial Post as we bring you the news as it happens.

Click here to go straight to today’s tariff news.

• U.S. stock tumble on tariff announcement
• Trump lists tariffed nations
• Trump announces tariffs
• Conservatives reveal tariff pushback plans
• The tariff aftermath: Find out what’s next at our live Q&A tomorrow
• Canadians weigh auto tariff escalation
• Stocks climb ahead of Trump announcement
• U.S. lists its trade beefs — and the LCBO is one of them
• Auto tariff anger boils over in Windsor
• Doug Ford pushes to shut Mexico out of trade deal
• Teslas are quickly becoming a hot potato — too hot to hold
• Stocks down on tariff jitters
  
• What’s happening with those 25% blanket tariffs
• Carney returns to Ottawa

What tariffs are already in place

Today’s actions will come on top of tariffs Trump has already imposed.

On March 12 the U.S. imposed 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum imports.

On March 26, Trump signed an executive order to impose 25 per cent tariffs on all cars and light trucks imported to the U.S. The tariffs will come into effect on April 2 and collection will begin on April 3.

What new tariffs might Canada face

Trump has said he would not just target tariffs imposed by other countries but also non-tariff trade barriers.

In Canada these could include the digital sales tax , the goods and services tax (GST) and the dairy supply management system.

Trump has further claimed American banks aren’t allowed to do business in Canada, which could present grounds for reciprocal tariffs as well.

What is Canada doing about it

If the U.S. doesn’t remove all tariffs against Canada, the Canadian government has promised retaliatory tariffs on another $95-billion worth of taxable U.S. goods, on top of the $59.8 billion already in place.

Trump is also facing opposition within his own country. A bipartisan group of U.S. Senate lawmakers are set to vote in the next few days on a resolution to challenge the president’s national security justification for tariffs against Canada.

Could Canada come up with a deal to avoid reciprocal tariffs?

If Canada and other countries were to curb what the Trump administration perceives as “unfair” trade practices, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said the reciprocal tariffs will not go into place.

“Going into April 2, some of our worst trading partners in terms of the way they treat us have already come to President Trump offering substantial decreases in very unfair tariffs,” Bessent said.

Tariffs live blog

• Reality check on Trump's ‘Liberation Day’ trade beefs with Canada
• Tariff tracker: Here's where things stand today

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The United States is “unreliable to the point of hostility” and Canada, in particular, can no longer depend on its neighbour to respect agreements and come to our defence, a new report from top business leaders warns.

“The United States, under President Donald Trump , has become an unreliable partner,” the report from an expert group on Canada-U.S. relations said. “Its longstanding allies can no longer be confident that America will respect its commitments to come to their defence or respect its economic agreements. That is particularly true for Canada.”

The report, from the expert group co-chaired by Perrin Beatty, former chief executive of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce , and Fen Osler Hampson, professor of International affairs at Carlton University, is excoriating in its criticism of the Trump administration.

It accuses the president of shattering decades of built-up trust and established norms between the two countries on Jan. 20, 2025 — inauguration day — “when annexing Canada became the official policy of the new administration,” a reference to Trump’s comments that the U.S. neighbour would be better off as a 51st state .

The authors go on to say that Trump has flouted the principles or fairness and the rule of law and write that it is questionable that any new trade deal with the U.S. would be of any value.

“Even if we can negotiate an extension of CUSMA (Canada-United-States-Mexico Agreement) and the withdrawal of tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, what is the worth of Donald Trump’s signature?” they said.

They accuse Trump of a lack of “moral constraint” and argue that any future dealings with the U.S. will be guided by the “whims of one man.”

Trump’s threat are harmful for the all countries, but they are especially bad for Canada, given our proximity with the U.S., the report said.

After laying out their views on the state of affairs, the report’s authors offer measures to “mitigate Canada’s risk” of depending on the U.S., and a series of recommendations on how to negotiate with the U.S. on tariffs , the border and security.

Among the major recommendations is the creation of a federal government level “situation room” to advise the prime minister.

Currently, U.S. affairs are addressed across more than 10 federal departments and agencies including the Privy Council Office, the Department of Finance, Canada Border Services Agency and many others.

The “situation room,” would have a streamlining effect, pulling together senior officials from across the government to create “a single, strategic operational focal point” that would co-ordinate responses to developing issues and crises on the U.S. front.

It would also gather input from provinces and unions and have a mandate to model for worst-case scenarios based on Trump’s actions and their potential effects on Canada’s economy and security.

“It should be designed not just for firefighting but also for anticipating the next crisis and where future problems are likely to emerge. In other words, its role must be predictive, prescriptive and, where possible, preventive to head off a crisis before it occurs,” the authors said.

Looking ahead to the coming renegotiation of CUSMA, which is slated to begin in July 2026, the authors stressed that Canada should not rush to begin negotiating.

Instead, Canada should wait for the pressure of job losses , rising inflation and stock market malaise to mount, possibly forcing Trump to pull back on tariff threats.

Mid-term elections in the U.S. could potentially provide a check on Trump and give Canada some bargaining power.

Tariffs of some kind are likely and the authors reminded that prior to the first free trade agreement in 1988, Canada’s “overall” tariff rate was seven per cent while the U.S’s was five.

“Returning to a pre-FTA world will undoubtedly affect our prosperity, but it is a world we have lived in and survived before,” the report said.

Correction: Perrin Beatty was incorrectly identified as chief executive of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in an earlier version of the story. He is the former CEO. Candace Laing is the current chief executive.

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Canadian oil prices have been unexpectedly resilient so far this year despite escalating trade tensions with the United States , with the discount on Canada’s benchmark heavy oil, Western Canadian Select (WCS), shrinking last week to its narrowest gap since 2020.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to impose tariffs on Canada since his re-election last November initially put pressure on Canadian crude prices. But since early March, when he exempted Canadian goods covered under the Canada-United-States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), and amid fresh U.S. sanctions on rival heavy oil exporter Venezuela, demand for Canadian heavy crude has been particularly strong. — Meghan Potkins, Financial Post

Keep reading here.

 

• U.S. President Donald Trump to unveil reciprocal tariffs on trading partners at 4 p.m. in what he calls “liberation day.”
• Today’s Data: U.S. ADP employment change for March and factory orders for February
  
• Earnings: BlackBerry Ltd., PetSmart LLC

• Here’s a reality check on Trump’s potential ‘Liberation Day’ trade beefs with Canada
• Why Canadian oil is sold to the U.S. at a ‘discount’ and have tariffs made things worse?
• Trump’s tariff threats revive long-dead idea that Canadian auto sector can go it alone

Many beginner investors may be falling for “investment myths,” which can lead to bad financial decisions, limit their ability to grow wealth over time and even discourage them from entering the market. Keep reading here to find out what how to avoid these typical missteps and build wealth.

Are you worried about having enough for retirement? Do you need to adjust your portfolio? Are you starting out or making a change and wondering how to build wealth? Are you trying to make ends meet? Drop us a line at wealth@postmedia.com with your contact info and the gist of your problem and we’ll find some experts to help you out while writing a Family Finance story about it (we’ll keep your name out of it, of course). McLister on mortgages

Want to learn more about mortgages? Mortgage strategist Robert McLister’s Financial Post column can help navigate the complex sector, from the latest trends to financing opportunities you won’t want to miss. Plus check his mortgage rate page for Canada’s lowest national mortgage rates, updated daily.

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Today’s Posthaste was written by Gigi Suhanic with additional reporting from Financial Post staff, The Canadian Press and Bloomberg.

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• Why these economists think the 'worst is over' for the Canadian dollar

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We continually hear from various levels of government about the latest programs, subsidies and other plans to deal with the housing crisis, but they always target symptoms, not the cause. And the source cause of Canada’s housing issues is straightforward: excess taxation and intense regulation on construction, which limit supply and elevate cost.

We tax and regulate the things we want to discourage: cigarettes, alcohol, gas and surprisingly, housing. In 1980, when I added a 10×10-foot breakfast addition to my 1940s home, a permit cost $25 and took one day. Today, one would be exposed to public hearings, thousands of dollars for architects, lawyers and consultants and a process of a year or more.

Housing in Canada is in crisis because demand has simply outpaced the supply of new homes. Peak housing starts occurred in 1976, when 273,000 new homes were delivered — to a population of some 23.5 million people. Today, with 41.5 million Canadians, we are still below that peak. It is why Canada has the fewest homes per capita in the G7, 25th in the Organization of Economic Co-operation Development (OECD).

Prices rise when demand exceeds supply, . It’s a law of economics. Added to this imbalance is the cost burden of excess taxation and regulation on new home construction, which gets passed on to the buyer or renter.

Today in Toronto, about one third of the cost of all forms of new housing is taxes, fees, levies, etc., from all three levels of government, while purpose-built apartment buildings get an HST exemption. If all these charges on construction were waived, required rental rates would drop by one third, making many stalled residential projects viable and adding new supply at a reduced cost. When new supply is added, the price of older rental stock also drops.

The concept of waiving development fees, taxes and levies on construction has raised the concern of pressure on municipal finances, but this is largely a timing issue. The creation of resultant property tax income streams is more valuable to municipalities than one-time development charges.

By waiving one-time taxes and fees on new housing, we can accelerate construction and expand our property tax base to generate far more tax income than with underdeveloped land. In many countries, municipalities will provide tax increment financing to incent construction to realize the resultant property tax benefit, which continues forever.

In Toronto, it is exactly the opposite: high taxes on construction stall the creation of new housing to everyone’s detriment, putting the focus on one-time fees versus the far greater multi-generational income streams from enhanced property taxes.

Regulations also have a leading role in reducing supply and increasing cost. A typical project takes three or four years from land assembly to construction start, with entitlement costs in the millions and millions more for the delays. All of this adds cost borne by the homebuyer or renter.

The federal election has brought a sharp contrast in approach by the Conservatives and Liberals. The Conservatives have focused on eliminating taxation and addressing regulation to unleash the private sector, which has the scale, skills and capital to execute.

By giving the industry permission to build and reducing the construction cost burden, the private sector will respond with far greater new home supply delivered. This will result in accelerated supply with reduced cost of new incremental housing, which will impact everyone as new supply is delivered at competitive cost, another law of economics.

The Liberals have announced that they intend to get into the development business to build housing. Do we really want the federal government, with its regulatory overburden, becoming a developer? If one looks at the disastrous state of their housing initiatives on our military bases and Indigenous reserves, perhaps the federal government should focus on finishing that promise first.

So, if we want housing that is more affordable, voters need to send a clear message to our politicians. Let’s unleash our world-class development industry, not have the government try to recreate it. Let’s give permission to the thousands of developers across the country to get at it, with a simple three-step course of action:

1. Eliminate all taxes, levies and fees on the construction of all forms of new housing.
2. Overhaul the regulatory process to give permits within six to nine months.
3. Incent builders to build, with the aim of expanding the property tax base.

The good news is that our housing crisis is a result of bad public policy. The better news is that it can be fixed with enlightened policies that unleash Canada’s world-class development industry. Change is needed — now.

• Canada not alone as dissatisfaction with housing costs
• To solve housing affordability, Canada must fix productivity

Jon Love is the executive chair and founder of KingSett Capital.

On April 2, the United States is scheduled to unveil reciprocal tariffs on a wide array of trading partners, including Canada. Dubbed “Liberation Day” by U.S. President Donald Trump , the measures are meant to even things out with those who, in Trump’s eyes, have unfairly taken advantage of the U.S. with tariffs and other non-tariff barriers.

So far, there are conflicting reports of how the tariffs will unfold, with some administration officials publicly indicating they will be rolled out country by country and other reports pointing to the possibility of a flat levy of 20 per cent on products from virtually every country.

Aside from steel, aluminum and autos, which are already facing separate tariffs, here are the issues the U.S. has singled out as problematic in their trade with Canada that could factor in to the Liberation Day announcement, and what economists and trade officials have to say about them.

The trade imbalance

What Trump says: He has been widely disparaging of the trade relationship with Canada, repeatedly lamenting that the U.S. subsidizes Canada to the tune of US$200 billion.

Reality Check: There seems to be little explanation for the US$200 billion subsidy figure — firstly because a trade deficit isn’t a subsidy and secondly because the deficit is only US$100 billion. The imbalance in trade, with Canada exporting more to the United States than we import from them, is mostly due to Canada’s exports of oil, natural gas and electricity. According to Statistics Canada, energy products alone made up one third of Canada’s exports to the United States in 2022. The figures also fail to account for services, the flow of human capital and the myriad other ways our economies are intertwined, to mutual benefit.

Dairy

What Trump says: Canada imposes tariffs on U.S. dairy that are greater than 200 per cent, thereby “ripping off” American farmers. Canada “has been ripping us off for years,” he declared from the Oval Office on March 7.

Reality Check:  While tariffs applied to U.S. dairy imports above a tariff-free quota are indeed 200-per-cent-plus — higher than the U.S. applies for its above-quota volumes — the U.S. does not even export the full amount of tariff-free dairy product to Canada . “To be clear, no U.S. entity pays these high tariffs currently, and it is difficult to see a situation in which one would — they still have existing quota room!” analysts at CIBC Capital Markets said in a March 26 note.

Moreover, they said, the US$1 billion of U.S. dairy exports to Canada annually are “extremely lucrative” for U.S. farmers because Canadian consumers pay much higher prices than those in the U.S. This is the result of Canada’s dairy supply management system, developed more than half a century ago. The system does not prioritize cost-cutting and efficiency since marketing boards pay farmers mainly based on their cost of production plus an inflation adjustment.

In addition, there has been less consolidation in Canadian farming, resulting in higher production costs in Canada. These higher costs are passed onto Canadian consumers of dairy products from both Canada and the U.S. “In a perverse way, Canadian consumers are indirectly subsidizing U.S. dairy farmers,” the CIBC analysts wrote.

Lumber

What Trump says: He has lumped his anger about dairy and lumber tariffs together, threatening to act immediately on unfair treatment by Canada. He also said the U.S. does not need any Canadian lumber.

Reality Check: There is far from enough lumber produced in the U.S. to meet building demand, according to industry groups, which have said about 30 per cent of softwood lumber used in the U.S. comes from Canada. They warned new tariffs would push up building costs and potentially make homes less affordable. What’s more, Canadian producers already pay duties when they export wood to the United States.

According to the National Association of Home Builders, a new tariff on softwood lumber products from Canada would come on top of an effective 14.5 per cent duty rate that is already in place. A 25 per cent tariff, if imposed by Trump, would push the effective Canadian lumber tariff to nearly 40 per cent.

“The lumber piece is particularly egregious given the already punitive and unjustified anti-dumping and anti-subsidy (countervailing) duties in place on Canadian lumber flowing into the United States,” William Pellerin, a partner in the international trade practice at law firm McMillan LLP and former deputy director at Global Affairs Canada, said after Trump’s March 7 threats.

The digital services tax

What Trump says: Tariffs must be levied on Canada in retaliation for digital sales taxes on technology companies whose services are available to Canadian consumers. The U.S. administration says these taxes penalize American companies and appropriate the American tax base. “Only America should be allowed to tax American firms,” Trump said in a White House statement.

Reality Check:  Affected companies such as Google parent Alphabet Inc., Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc., Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. have lobbied against this type of tax for years, arguing that they should not pay taxes in countries where they don’t have a physical presence. But the list of countries imposing such taxes, which includes France, Britain and several European Union nations, has been growing.

Canada’s digital tax regime went into effect last June, retroactive to 2022. Digital companies that earn more than $1.1 billion worldwide are subject to a three per cent tax on Canadian revenues above $20 million. American companies will pay US$500-million a year in digital sales taxes in Canada, according to the White House. This is seen by some trade experts as a potential bargaining chip for Canada to show it is not unwilling to make some concessions.

• Why Canadian oil is sold to the U.S. at a 'discount'
• Don’t give up on the U.S. market just yet
• Trump goes oh-for-three on trade knowledge

The banking sector

What Trump says: Canada “doesn’t allow American Banks to do business in Canada,” which upsets him because Canadian banks have a large footprint in the United States.

Reality Check:  U.S. banks don’t have a huge presence in Canada, particularly relative to Canada’s six large banks , which dominate most business lines. But they are allowed to set up in Canada and have, indeed, established toeholds here over the years, particularly in investment banking and advisory services. As of February, there were 16 U.S bank subsidiaries and branches operating in Canada, with about $113 billion in assets, representing about half of all foreign bank assets in the country, according to the Canadian Bankers Association.

That said, a combination of strict regulations and the concentration of large domestic players makes it cumbersome and expensive to expand into retail banking in Canada. In order to become a traditional deposit-taking retail bank that can accept deposits of less than $150,000, a U.S. bank has to set up a Canadian subsidiary, which is required to have its own capital and liquidity structure separate from the U.S parent.

By contrast, Canadian banks, such as Bank of Montreal, Toronto-Dominion Bank, and Royal Bank of Canada, can and have purchased billion-dollar U.S. retail banks with extensive branch networks across America.  

• Email: bshecter@nationalpost.com

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Canadian oil prices have been unexpectedly resilient so far this year despite escalating trade tensions with the United States , with the discount on Canada’s benchmark heavy oil, Western Canadian Select (WCS), shrinking last week to its narrowest gap since 2020.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to impose tariffs on Canada since his re-election last November initially put pressure on Canadian crude prices. But since early March, when he exempted Canadian goods covered under the Canada-United-States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), and amid fresh U.S. sanctions on rival heavy oil exporter Venezuela, demand for Canadian heavy crude has been particularly strong.

Still, on the eve of Trump’s planned reveal of reciprocal tariffs against its global trading partners, there are still plenty of questions about how U.S. tariffs could impact cross-border energy trade.

Here, we take a closer look at the pricing of Canada’s key benchmark crude and how tariffs are influencing prices for Canada’s largest export product to the U.S.

What is Western Canadian Select?

WCS is the main benchmark crude for Western Canada and the definitive price marker for the heavy barrels produced from the vast oilsands deposits in northern Alberta.

It is considered a heavy, sour crude oil and typically trades at a lower price than light, sweet crude types that are easier and cheaper to refine, such as West Texas Intermediate (WTI).

WCS was launched in the early 2000s by a handful of large oil companies in Western Canada that were trying to sell more heavy barrels to Midwest refineries. At the time, producers were churning out dozens of different streams of crude oil of varying quality.

“They had all these relatively small streams of heavy crude and it was very difficult to market those streams,” Jeff Kralowetz, vice-president of business development for commodity research firm Argus Media Ltd., said.

The producers got together and decided to blend around 20 different grades of conventional heavy oil, synthetic crude and diluted bitumen from the oilsands at the largest oil storage hub in Canada in Hardisty, Alta., he said. The barrel they came up with closely resembles Mexico’s heavy crude benchmark, Maya.

“Which was important because at the time, Mexican Maya crude was one of the main heavy crudes available at the Gulf Coast,” Kralowetz said. “They wanted to compete head-to-head with it, so they created a blend that looked a lot like it.”

Canada’s push for U.S. market share spectacularly paid off. U.S. imports of Canadian crude have doubled since 2009, while imports from Mexico and Venezuela have declined.

C anada now supplies around four million barrels per day to the U.S., roughly half that country’s total crude imports.

Why is the U.S. able to buy Canadian oil at a “discount”?

You’ll often hear federal Conservatives and politicians in Alberta complain that Canadian oil is being sold to the U.S. at a discount, fetching lower returns than it could get on global markets. That isn’t wrong, but it’s not the whole story.

Heavy oil, such as WCS, which also has a high sulphur content, is considered a lower-quality crude and will always trade at a discount to lighter grades since it requires more costly refining and processing to produce valuable end products like gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

There is, however, a profitable upside for refiners that invest in the necessary upgrades to handle heavy sour crudes since heavy feedstocks are cheaper and can yield a greater range of refined products.

Canada’s barrels are also largely landlocked, with most production being far from North America’s key transport hubs and refineries, and its lower price reflects higher transportation costs and Western Canada’s limited access to global markets.

As a result, WCS trades at a lower price than WTI and that difference is known as the WCS-WTI differential.

There have also been painful periods for the Canadian oilpatch when production has outpaced available pipeline capacity, resulting in oil supply gluts that have cratered prices.

Pipeline bottlenecks in 2018 led to the WCS-WTI differential exploding to more than US$40 per barrel, prompting the Alberta government to impose a curtailment order on production to bolster prices.

On Canada’s side of the border, blowouts in the differential result in a painful contraction of revenues and economic activity, while American refiners enjoy windfall profits as their margins are boosted by dramatically cheaper crude inputs.

Currently, there isn’t a shortage of takeaway capacity in the Canadian oilpatch due to key export pipeline expansions completed in recent years, such as the Enbridge Line 3 replacement project in 2021 and the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion (TMX) in 2024.

Heading into the U.S. election last November, Canadian oil producers were enjoying the novel sensation of having plenty of pipeline capacity and consistently narrower discounts on their barrels coinciding with the start-up of TMX last May.

Canada’s only direct outlet to global markets outside the U.S., the TMX expansion more than doubled non-U.S. oil exports in the second half of 2024.

That has helped shrink the spread between WCS and WTI, which has consistently hovered between US$10 and US$15 per barrel in the months following TMX’s start-up after years of it averaging more than US$18.

“When you only have one buyer, that buyer has a lot of leverage over your price,” Kralowetz said. “The completion of TMX in May was a big step. You automatically had an improvement or a narrowing of the discount.”

How are U.S. tariffs impacting the price of WCS?

Oil market analyst Rory Johnston said the best way to spot the impact of U.S. tariffs on Canadian crude prices is not by looking at the relatively tight WCS-WTI differential, but at the spread between the price of a barrel of WCS in Hardisty, Alta., versus the price WCS fetches once it reaches Houston.

The Hardisty-Houston price gap reflects the transportation costs associated with bringing a barrel of WCS from Alberta to complex refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast, and it ranged between US$6 and US$8 per barrel in the months before Trump’s election, according to a recent analysis by Johnston in Commodity Context.

Anything in excess of that geography-related differential baseline since the U.S. election can reasonably be chalked up to a tariff-related penalty on Canadian barrels, Johnston said.

The tariff penalty started rising after a newly re-elected Trump began threatening tariffs on Canada and Mexico on social media, Johnston said, and then exploded in January.

“We got the biggest run-up initially following Alberta Premier Daniel Smith’s visit to Mar-a-Lago the week before inauguration, when she came out and basically said, ‘Guys, (tariffs) are happening and crude is not going to get exempted,'” Johnston said, noting the WCS Hardisty-Houston differential reached US$12.40 per barrel at market close on Jan. 31, nearly US$5 per barrel in excess of the pre-election baseline. “At that stage, the market was essentially pricing the risk of a 25 per cent tariff.”

But Trump’s subsequent decision to reduce tariffs on Canadian crude to 10 per cent, as well as his postponements and vacillations over the implementation of tariffs since then, has recently led to a collapse in the tariff penalty as markets seem to largely be discounting the risk of tariffs being applied to Canadian crude at all.

“After that (CUSMA) exemption a couple weeks ago, that’s when the market really started to just discount the risk of tariffs on Canadian crude in total, so now we’re basically at almost zero risk,” Johnston said.

The overall WCS-WTI discount fell below US$10 a barrel last week, the narrowest margin since 2020.

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Markets may be reflecting a belief that Canadian oil exports, so deeply integrated into the U.S. economy, are likely to continue to be exempt from tariffs, Johnston said.

But that may be an overcorrection, he added, given the current state of tensions between Canada and the U.S. and Trump’s looming reciprocal tariffs.

“I would personally say the risk remains higher than zero per cent,” he said. “But it also confirms this initial prior thought everyone had going into this that maybe Trump will tariff lumber or autos or something, but he’s not going to tariff crude. That’s crazy.”

• Email: mpotkins@postmedia.com
X: @mpotkins

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A bipartisan group of U.S. Senate lawmakers are set to vote on a resolution to challenge U.S. President Donald Trump’ s national security justification for tariffs against Canada .

“The president has justified the imposition of these tariffs on, in my view, a made-up emergency,” said Democratic U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, to reporters in Washington. “The emergency is being invented to do the tariffs, to do the taxes on everyday Americans. Why? So, they can use the tariff revenue to give a tax cut to billionaires.”

On Feb. 1, Trump justified the 25 per-cent tariff on Canadian goods and the 10 per-cent tariff on Canadian energy, based on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which authorizes the president to regulate imports during a national emergency under the National Emergencies Act. The White House’s rationale is the flow of fentanyl crossing the Canadian border meets that threshold.

During the 2024 fiscal year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized 43 pounds of fentanyl in the Northern border area compared to 21,900 pounds at all U.S. border areas.

Kaine, who is from Virginia, said the resolution aims to “turn off” the Canadian emergency declared by Trump, with the vote set to happen either Tuesday or Wednesday. The resolution is co-sponsored by U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky.

The resolution requires votes from all Democratic senators and four Republican senators to pass. U.S. Sen. Susan Collins from Maine told reporters on Monday she plans to back the resolution. Collins has previously expressed her concern over tariffs, pointing to the level of integration between Maine and Canada’s economies.

“Republicans aren’t willing to stand up to the president,” said Kaine. “They’ve said they’re concerned about tariffs, OK fine, you’re concerned now we’re giving you a vote.”

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner said they are asking “four republican senators to actually go on record what they have all said privately.”

Some republican lawmakers have publicly voiced concerns about tariffs and the impact they have on their constituents, they include U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley from Iowa, U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran from Kansas and U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell from Kentucky.

On Tuesday, Trump urged Republican senators to vote against the resolution.

“We are making progress to end this terrible fentanyl crisis, but Republicans in the senate MUST vote to keep the national emergency in place, so we can finish the job, and end the scourge,” he said, in a social media post.

If the resolution passes, it would then be sent to the U.S. congress, which holds a Republican majority. Trump also has the power to veto the bill, but Kaine said a bipartisan vote might convince the White House to rethink its tariff strategy.

Trump is set to impose country-by-country reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday to roll back what he views as “unfair trade practices.” Canada and several countries have promised to retaliate with their own countermeasures.

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• Email: jgowling@postmedia.com

The president will announce the new duties at 4 p.m. Wednesday

Charles Napier Sturt — I want you to remember this name. Sturt was a British army officer who contributed much to the mapping of the Australian interior. He and other members of an official 1844 expedition risked their lives trying to find a freshwater inland sea deep in Australia’s desert regions. So sure was Sturt of the sea’s existence that the expedition included a boat and some sailors to pilot it (!). The idea, of course, turned out to be an illusion.

Sturt’s story has a useful lesson for Canada in 2025. While we navigate the changed regional and global trading landscape created by the upheaval south of the border , Canada too must avoid steering a course guided by convenient illusions or comforting mirages.

And that is why I feel I must, with due respect, address the growing chorus of Canadian economists, elected officials, think-tanks, pundits and others who have been hyping one specific response to the American tariff threats : pulling down Canada’s “ interprovincial trade barriers ,” which, they claim, would add as much as $200 billion annually to our domestic economy . If true, that sum is greater than the anticipated impact of the Trump tariffs.

What are these barriers? A recent RBC report defines them as “the many factors that impede access to a provincial market for businesses or workers from another province.” Per RBC, these include “regulatory and administrative differences such as variations in licensing recognition, safety certifications, and technical standards.”

A potential $200 billion annual economic boost sounds too good to pass up. But this is where, upon closer inspection, the hype begins to fade. The $200 billion figure is itself an estimate. As CIBC’s economics team recently commented about this issue , “Remember that economists don’t really have the ability to measure each of these barriers and do a study of them one at a time. So, they naturally look for some roundabout methods to estimating the (cost of the) barriers.”

CIBC continued: “And essentially these (estimates) revolve around trying to explain trade flows, looking at the size of the markets and their distances, and then looking at what isn’t explained and essentially assigning that to a trade barrier.”

Thus, the “estimating” behind this $200 billion figure is really a projection of the results that may (or may not) materialize after particular barriers are removed.

That is, the estimate is a theoretical take on how much internal trade Canada should ideally have.

This is a bit like Charles Sturt’s dogged insistence that somewhere in the middle of Australia there “should” have been a freshwater inland lake.

There’s another very sound reason to question the urge to put interprovincial trade barriers at the top of Canada’s economic “to do” list. When it comes to improving our economic resilience, there are other opportunities we should immediately focus on, with objectively larger upside potential. Significantly, they all involve putting energy into diversifying our products, not just markets.

To improve our current poor terms of trade, for example, we need more high-margin, Canadian-made products and more value-added exports from our natural resources sold in more markets. We must also reform our tax code to support the creation of entrepreneur-led companies in the innovation economy and develop strategies to help new companies scale up, increasing our stock of valuable intellectual property and maintaining control of crucial data.

Chasing zombie issues distracts us from focusing on where our public policy and public discourse needs to go. Specifically, how do we build a resilient, sovereign, higher value-added economy that reflects our human and natural potential?

This kind of economy starts with sovereign digital and communications infrastructure, value-added energy and critical mineral solutions, and shrewd import substitution — underpinned by transparent spillover analysis for all public sector investments. So why aren’t we talking about these goals with the same vigour?

Is there a lot of latent internal economic dynamism that can be unlocked? Yes. Should we be trying to unlock it with smart policy changes? Definitely. Right now, chasing new shiny objects while we need to dramatically shift how Canada governs its economy is a luxury we cannot afford.

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Taking down interprovincial trade barriers that date back to Confederation and have survived wave after wave of previous reform attempts — we will get to those in due time. For today, our most pressing task is to position a small, open economy like Canada’s for success in highly contested global markets, which means thinking beyond our relatively small internal market and focusing on where the biggest growth potential resides.

This is a time to commit ourselves to big goals — to build big, not small.

John Ruffolo is the Founder and Managing Partner of Maverix Private Equity, a private equity firm focused on technology-enabled growth and disruption investment strategies and Co-Founder and Vice Chair of the Council of Canadian Innovators.

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United States President Donald Trump and Mark Carney agree on at least one thing: both think their country’s auto sector can survive American tariffs . But the Liberal Leader said Canada’s auto sector would need to be reimagined to achieve that.

“We can sustain an auto industry with the U.S. having tariffs with access to other markets,” he said during a March 27 press conference. “Provided we engage very deliberately in partnership — government, business, labour — to reimagine the auto sector.”

It’s an idea that’s gaining traction in policy circles as the U.S. seeks to undo the decades-long integration of the two countries’ auto sectors that was cemented by the 1965 auto pact.

The pact was not a free-trade agreement, but it created a duty-remission scheme that allowed U.S. automakers to offset tariffs in Canada by increasing the Canadian content in their vehicles. It came about because policymakers viewed Canada’s auto sector as too small to survive on its own, with domestic manufacturers unable to achieve the economies of scale necessary to be competitive.

Designed to ensure Canada’s auto sector survived, the pact led to a tight integration with the U.S. so that parts and vehicles could cross the border multiple times before being finished for the consumer market.

But Trump’s tariffs threaten to upend the industry’s six-decade-old model. Around 85 per cent of the vehicles manufactured in Canada are exported to the U.S. and they would likely no longer be competitively priced if the tariffs are implemented.

Scheduled to start being collected at midnight on Thursday, the tariffs will apply a flat 25 per cent tax on all finished vehicles not manufactured in the U.S. But in a twist that would essentially reverse the two countries’ integrated auto sectors, the tariffs on the finished car will be reduced based on the value of any auto parts that were made in the U.S. There could be additional 25 per cent tariffs on auto parts made in Canada at an unspecified date.

That’s led some analysts to question whether there have been enough changes in technology, trade and the economy in the six decades since the auto pact was signed that Canada’s auto sector could survive on its own.

Their premise is that Canada has the capacity to make as many vehicles as its consumers purchase each year, which is around two million vehicles.

“There’s certainly a strong economic argument to be made that we actually don’t have net exports in vehicles to the U.S.,” Bentley Allan, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University and a principal at the Ottawa-based Transition Accelerator think tank, said. “It’s pretty much an even trade, so let’s just bring all those exports of auto parts and autos back over on this side of the border.”

The idea is that existing auto manufacturers in Canada would continue producing the models already being built or planned to be built here, which includes sedans, SUVs, sports cars, minivans and pickup trucks such as the Honda Civic and Toyota RAV4.

If Canada could produce a half-dozen models that account for the majority of vehicles purchased here, and imports from other countries account for the remainder, then it could work, Allan said.

But that would require radical change in the way the auto sector currently works since some auto parts reportedly cross the borders of Canada, Mexico or the U.S. as many as eight times during vehicle assembly. That’s partly why there were an estimated 2.5 million truck crossings in 2023 on the Ambassador Bridge, which separates Windsor, Ont., and Detroit — the two countries’ respective auto-sector capitals.

Trading treaties

The original North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) eliminated nearly all tariffs on trade between Canada, Mexico and the U.S. This changed under the 2018 Canada-United-States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), which penalized automaker s that do not meet minimum thresholds for how much work on a vehicle is carried out by workers earning a minimum hourly wage of US$16. It also added regional content requirements for how much of the vehicle must be built in North American plants.

In apparent violation of that agreement, Trump is now erecting 25 per cent tariffs on vehicles built in Canada, in addition to existing tariffs on steel and aluminum, and he has put in reciprocal flat-rate tariffs on most countries’ products.

To survive those trade barriers, vehicles built in Canada will need to use as many domestic auto parts as possible, Carney said at his Mar. 27 press conference. By “backwards integrating” domestic steel and aluminum into auto production, the auto sector could start moving away from its U.S.-based export model, he said.

“We’re going to have to make some big changes, but we can make those big changes,” he said. “We do have options; we do have agency; we do have power.”

Building out the domestic auto supply chain could also attract investment in the domestic industry. In the meantime, Carney proposed creating a $2-billion Strategic Response Fund to aid the auto sector during this transformation.

There are, of course, risks and consequences to be considered. For example, auto exports sold into the U.S. bring U.S. dollars into the economy, which affects the value of the Canadian dollar.

Mexico is also a net exporter of auto parts to the U.S. and will be looking for other markets such as Canada for its products. But Canada will need to absorb the vehicles it currently exports, so that relationship may face some tension.

If the tariffs do bring Canada’s auto production to a halt, i t would amount to $330 million in losses and two per cent in production volume for each week of closure, with losses growing over time, according to analysts at Oxford Economists.

The tariffs alone are likely to spur more than 2,000 layoffs and reduce auto exports in 2025 by six per cent or $550 million, they said in a note on Monday, and those figures double if Canada imposes parallel 25 per cent counter-tariffs on U.S. vehicles and auto parts.

Another transformation in progress

The trade war arrives with the auto sector already in the midst of a major transformation: automakers are seeking to transition to producing battery electric vehicles instead of mainly internal combustion engine vehicles. Achieving the necessary economies of scale and building the required supply chains for this change is expected to be expensive and time-consuming, taking at least a decade.

The federal government as well as the Ontario and Quebec provincial governments have already committed as much as $52.4 billion to be distributed over the next half-decade or so in the form of tax credits, production subsidies and other support to automakers and battery companies that have agreed to invest $46 billion in an electric vehicle supply chain.

Allan said he initially thought the governments’ EV strategy cost too much money for the number of jobs it created, but changed his mind in the current context; with Trump pulling the U.S. back from the EV transition and talking about cancelling investments in the EV supply chain, it suddenly makes a lot more sense.

“We can’t start deleting things that are helping us diversify our trade at this moment,” he said, “especially not clean energy future opportunities.”

Based on a Transition Accelerator analysis, investments in Canada’s EV supply chain are already showing up in export tables. For example, Canadian battery exports to the U.S. were valued at $1.4 billion in 2024.

The analysis said EVs and EV parts exponentially grew over the past three years, a sign that the nascent industry is finding momentum, even though only a small number of EV supply chain projects have received government support or been built yet.

There is another factor lurking in the background: Canada’s current export-based model of auto manufacturing has led to a sector in decline, one that is shedding manufacturing capacity and running a trade deficit.

In 2024, auto production in Canada was just under 1.3 million vehicles, a 55 per cent decline from the peak of 2.9 million vehicles manufactured in the early 2000s, according to DesRosiers Automotive Consultants Inc., a research firm. By contrast, Canadians purchased almost 1.9 million vehicles in 2024.

Part of the reason for the trade deficit is that some auto plants in Canada are closed for retooling, but auto production here has been in decline for a decade and hit a nadir in 2021 at 1.1 million vehicles, according to DesRosiers.

“One of the things that we really have to seriously look at is this question of how you maintain some sort of proportionate representation in that sector of the economy,” Stephen Beatty, who retired as corporate counsel to Toyota Canada Inc. last year, said. “We’re not the cheapest place to make things, and we aren’t the biggest marketplace. As a result, there are these forces that pull automotive away from Canada.”

Beatty said that despite Trump offering multiple reasons for imposing his tariffs, including fentanyl trafficking and border security, he believes his real goal is to repatriate manufacturing to the U.S.

That would be a drastic departure from accepted policy that Trump embraced during his first term in office, when his administration signed CUSMA and envisioned all three countries working together to produce automobiles.

Even that free trade agreement marked a shift away from globalization and toward regionalization.

But Beatty pointed out that CUSMA ushered in a rules-of-origin model that encouraged companies to manufacture in North America and laid out how to determine where a vehicle is manufactured, given that it was likely assembled using parts manufactured in multiple countries.

The rules of origin, he said, were a departure from the auto pact’s “duty-remission” scheme, even if both were aimed at integrating North America’s auto market.

“If I look at what the U.S. administration is saying these days,” Beatty said, “it’s kind of a throwback to the type of trade thinking that was in place in the ’60s when you wanted to link import and export benefits, and there may be scope … to return to some elements of that in a negotiated deal.”

One factor at play is that China’s auto sector in 2024 produced more vehicles than any other country for the first time and, importantly for global trade, its exports have rapidly grown to six million vehicles in 2024 from one million vehicles in 2020, according to the U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations.

That competitive threat to other countries has not gone unnoticed in either the U.S. or Canada, which both enacted 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese EVs in 2024. Nevertheless, there are lingering concerns and questions about how long such tariffs could persist and whether Chinese EV makers could set up factories in Mexico, essentially creating a backdoor to bring vehicles into the lucrative U.S. market.

How to preserve North American vehicle manufacturing is likely to generate more and more noise if tariffs cripple the domestic sector and China expands its reach.

“Cars have always been interesting because they are the apex of good in a manufacturing chain,” Allan said. “It’s an anchor for your broad-based manufacturing capabilities.”

Vehicles are complex combinations of bent steel and aluminum, rubber and plastic, but they increasingly contain semiconductors, software and even artificial intelligence programming — the components of a modern economy.

Tellingly, the intergovernmental economic forum known as the G7 , which helps set global policy priorities amongst some of the world’s largest economy countries and which Canada joined in 1976, has never included a nation that lacked a vehicle manufacturing sector.

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In Canada, vehicles rank as the country’s second-largest export, valued at $51 billion, so a collapse could send ripples through the economy at a time when the total impact of all the Trump tariffs — which include orders targeting all Canadian goods not compliant with CUSMA, steel and aluminum as well as a flat reciprocal tariff rate — could trigger an economic recession.

Against that backdrop, everyone from Ontario Premier Doug Ford to Carney is saying Canada needs to figure out a solution to control its economy.

“You cannot have the entire auto chain come to a crashing halt; that will send ripples through the economy,” Beatty said. “It has to continue and companies have to do their best to minimize the impacts and try to squeeze margins anywhere they can up and down the supply chain, but some of it will get passed on.”

• Email: gfriedman@postmedia.com

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The sale is subject to certain customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval

The latest iconic restaurant brand to falter in the face of stubborn inflation and Americans’ fading interest in eating out

The Canadian Urban Libraries Council also called on the government to exempt books

Every Canadian I meet is in a flurry about the impact of potential tariffs that change in scope and size with the wind. What do we do to cope? Be calm, be confident, focus on facts.

The negotiating approach of the U.S. administration is to upset opponents. Don’t let that happen. We control how we feel, no one else.

Tariffs have been imposed, removed, imposed, removed, imposed with some qualifiers. Don’t panic every time a new announcement is made, it might even change that very day.

Second, let’s take a minute to restore our confidence in our great country.

Canada is today in an enviable position, poised on the precipice of an era of exceptional growth and prosperity. Why do you think the U.S. is interested in acquiring us?

We have an abundance of critical minerals and fresh water, and an electricity grid that is more than 80 per cent green, meaning things we make here don’t carry a heavy carbon footprint.

We have a great education system and our student scores consistently track strongly in international comparisons, consistently ahead of the U.S.

We have freedom of speech and a society that values women and diversity in all its forms.

We are one of the few global centres to be considered a world leader in both manufacturing and technology, notably AI, which is powering our world-leading advanced manufacturing businesses, which make products the world can’t do without.

We are highly productive. What, you say? Canadian business productive? Yes. Canadian productivity stats reported to you do not reflect the productivity of Canadian business because they include workers who do not generate sales, such as government and not-for-profit workers. They reflect our overall demographics. If we exclude those workers from the calculation and just look at Canadian business you can see a strong and steady growth in productivity, up more than 50 per cent over the past 25 years. Canadian manufacturing productivity growth has outpaced that of the U.S. steadily over the past 15 years.

It is up to us to unlock Canada’s prosperity potential. Governments must reduce regulatory burdens to accelerate time to market, reduce personal and business income taxes to make us more globally attractive to talent and investment, and reduce heavy government bureaucracy. Our politicians seem to understand these imperatives given both parties are currently campaigning on some version of this strategy.

And finally, we need to focus on the facts as we enter negotiations with the U.S. to come up with winning solutions.

Let’s look at the automotive industry as an example.

The U.S., with by far the largest auto sector on the continent, employs 50 per cent more workers in the automotive industry than the next largest employer, Mexico. That means if production declines, it hurts American workers more than any other country. Way more.

The U.S. produces 9.9 million vehicles a year, 66 per cent of North America’s total. The population of the U.S. is 67 per cent of all North America.

Mexico produces 4 million vehicles a year, 26 per cent of North America’s total. The population of Mexico is 25 per cent of all North America.

Canada produces 1.2 million vehicles a year, 8 per cent of North America’s total. The population of Canada is 8 per cent of all North America.

Seems reasonable.

The automotive industry in North America is highly integrated. Parts often cross the border six or seven times in some form or another before pulling into your driveway as a new vehicle. We are all enormously reliant on each other. Mexican-built vehicles have 40 per cent U.S. content. If you shut down Mexican auto imports into the U.S., that is approximately US$72 billion of U.S. parts not being made and about 360,000 American workers out of work.

You can’t unscramble the eggs. The cost is enormous, the timeframes are lengthy and the payback is zero.

Shifting suppliers for a highly engineered part or sub-assembly cannot happen quickly. It takes 12 to 18 months and significant investment for the new supplier to tool up and do all the required testing and validation. Meantime, automakers are paying tariffs of 25 per cent. No way does that math work.

Shifting production saves nothing and brings no additional revenue. Where is the payback for business? Avoiding tariffs that could go away tomorrow? Or, sorry, was that yesterday?

Let’s look at vehicle assembly as an example. The U.S. administration certainly appears to want to make all the vehicles in North America in the U.S.

Notwithstanding that Canadians and Mexicans buy vehicles, too, and might just want to have some production, let’s just explore this idea.

The cost to build a plant to make 250,000 vehicles is US$2.5 billion to US$5 billion and takes two to three years to get to production. For five million vehicles that would be US$75 billion. Three years from now, vehicles are rolling off the line in the U.S. Three years and 294 days from now, a new administration will be taking office in the U.S. No reduced cost, no additional revenue, no payback.

Instead, let’s focus on how we can instead build and sell more vehicles globally. North America buys 19.2 million cars and the global market is 89 million, meaning 80 per cent of the world’s automotive sales are outside of North America — let’s target that.

What if Mexico made the highest labour content parts of the car, Canada made the most energy intensive parts of the car (remember our 80 per cent clean energy grid), the U.S. made the rest of the parts, and we split up vehicle production fairly (maybe by population). Tap into world leading North American technology to drive amazing innovation into those cars. Then we might just have the most innovative, leading edge, lowest cost and greenest cars in the world.

In the end it is collaboration that drives prosperity, not divisiveness. When did you ever strengthen a chain by breaking it?

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Let’s collaborate in North America and win together and then we will all be more prosperous.

In the meantime, Canada, let’s stay calm, let’s be confident, and above all let’s focus on facts.

Linda Hasenfratz is the executive chair of the board of Linamar Corp.

The Canadian dollar has had a tough year so far, but the worst could be over, according to economists.

Desjardins Group is scrapping its forecast that the loonie would sink to 67.56 cents U.S. this year and now predicts it will hold between 70.92 and 68.96 cents U.S. over the next three months.

Why the change? This year there has been a shift and suddenly the Federal Reserve is “out-doving” the Bank of Canada .

Recession risks are rising in the United States and the Fed on March 19 signalled that growth was becoming more of a concern, even referring to the impact of tariffs on inflation as “transitory.” 

Inflation, on the other hand, popped up frequently in remarks at the Bank of Canada’s meeting March 12.

“The Bank of Canada has turned cautious on the pace of rate cuts, while the Fed waits for hard data. Yield spreads may narrow, especially if the U.S. labour market cracks,” said Desjardins chief economist Jimmy Jean and foreign exchange strategist Mirza Shaheryar Baig.

Narrowing the spread between the interest rates of two central banks would bolster the Canadian dollar.

Meanwhile, the appeal of the U.S. dollar as a safe-haven has been rocked by the policy upheaval of Donald Trump’s new U.S. administration. 

“With a made-in-America recession lurking, the U.S. dollar is unlikely to hedge risky assets as it did in the past,” said Jean and Shaheryar Baig.

While the Canadian dollar has held fairly steady against the greenback, it has “depreciated significantly” against other currencies, which should help Canadian exporters find new markets outside North America, they said.

The loonie could appreciate even further if economic reforms to boost productivity now being proposed in the federal election bear fruit.

“Bringing more of Canada’s vast resources to international markets would also increase demand for the Canadian dollar,” said Desjardins.

Bank of America’s forecast for the Canadian dollar is even higher at 71.42 cents U.S., mainly because of their “sanguine view” on tariffs.

They expect the March equity flight from risk to reverse, oil to average US$66 and markets to reprice the Bank of Canada terminal rate higher as tariff tensions de-escalate.

“Tariffs do not need to fully unwind this year for USD/CAD to fall to our forecast,” said economist Carlos Capistran.

“A gradual shift toward constructive communication between U.S. and Canada on trade terms, making February 1 the peak tariffs panic moment for the year, should still drive USD/CAD meaningfully lower, in our view.”

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The budgets of seven of Canada’s 10 provinces are out and according to an estimate by National Bank of Canada the combined deficit adds up to $32 billion, double the forecasts for this fiscal year made a year ago.

“The budgetary tone, unsurprisingly, has shifted massively relative to prior guidance, tariff risks front and centre,” said National economist Warren Lovely.

The provinces are now focused on downside risks with tariff, slower growth and lower oil price scenarios hinting that the red ink could grow to about $40 billion this fiscal year, which would be a record shortfall for the group, he said.

Ontario’s budget will have to wait until after legislature resumes April 14, as will the federal budget which is on hold until after the April 28 election.

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McLister on mortgages

Want to learn more about mortgages? Mortgage strategist Robert McLister’s Financial Post column can help navigate the complex sector, from the latest trends to financing opportunities you won’t want to miss. Plus check his mortgage rate page for Canada’s lowest national mortgage rates, updated daily.

Financial Post on YouTube

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Today’s Posthaste was written by Pamela Heaven, with additional reporting from Financial Post staff, The Canadian Press and Bloomberg.

Have a story idea, pitch, embargoed report, or a suggestion for this newsletter? Email us at  posthaste@postmedia.com .

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