Windsor West MP Brian Masse held a live telephone town hall from Washington Tuesday night to discuss recently imposed U.S. tariffs and concerns from residents in his riding about trade relations.
Masse, the vice-chair of the Canada-United States Inter-Parliamentary Group, is meeting with American lawmakers this week, but made time to answer questions from locals about changing trade conditions.
When asked whether Americans realized the negative impact this would have on their own lives, Masse said his discussions with congress showed that the political pressure to reverse the tariffs is not there yet.
"The American public, they haven't experienced the effect of the tariffs at the moment," he said. "The congressional representatives we met with today were saying that they're still hearing from many of their constituents that Donald Trump just hasn't had enough time yet. So the American people to date have not felt the pain just yet. Unfortunately, we shouldn't have to get there, but it appears that that needs to be some of the process that takes place."
Canada responded to the US tariffs on Tuesday with retaliatory 25 per cents tariffs on American goods.
Along with that, Masse said the federal government should also look at eliminating the toll for Canadians to cross the Gordie Howe Bridge, but still charge Americans. He noted that the Ambassador Bridge has been raising rates for a long time, and but fees for the new border crossing will be handled by Canada.
Beyond how to hit back at the U.S., Masse said there's measures that can be on the Canadian side to reduce the tariff's impact, like pushing for more local procurement.
The border critic for the federal NDP said the nation needs to do a better job supporting its own production, pointing to local EVs as an example.
"The province of Ontario under Doug Ford used to have a $5,000 EV subsidy and he got rid of that. The federal government got rid of, last month, another $5,000 dealer EV subsidy. So the Windsor-built minivan went up $10,000 just because we didn't support it. The point being, we can control those things and increase the sales and distributions if we bring it back," he said.
He also said there needs to be more emphasis on interprovincial trade, saying its been a soft-sell in Ottawa but it needs to go to a hard sell.
While Donald Trump and his tariffs were top of mind at the town hall, concerns over the president's right-hand man Elon Musk were also addressed.
Masse explained his recent motivation to call for an investigation into Musk's platform X, after the billionaire used the social media site to campaign for his preferred political candidates.
He said the EU was able to secure amendments to the platform and was hopeful Canada could do the same.
"I'm pushing on the Canadian side for a review of this given Elon Musk's, not only his behaviour which is really questionable, but also the way that your exposure is done. So with that, I was able to get the Privacy Commissioner to do an investigation; that's step number one. Second part is to eventually get a Digital Bill of Rights for Canadians, so if you are going to give up your personal privacy, you get to do so with informed consent. And lastly is to make sure that X is not infiltrating our current systems."
Masse will be in Washington for a few more days, and will deliver opening remarks Thursday morning at the Great Lakes Congressional Breakfast.
