U.S., Canadians cities are on the same page, Ottawa councillor says

Now more than ever, the connection between Canadian and American cities is vital, Councillor Tim Tierney said, as tariff talks reach a stalemate between the two countries.

The Ward 11 Beacon Hill-Cyrville city councillor attended a conference in Salt Lake City last week for the National League of Cities’ City Summit. He was there in his capacity not only as an Ottawa councillor but as vice-president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

“We’ve never really been part of their conferences until the whole tariff thing came up,” Tierney told CityNews in an interview. “Now our connections are vital.”

One of the outcomes of the conference is a memorandum of understanding, which states that the cities are supporting the other during this time, despite what the upper levels of government are doing. Unlike in Canada, there are political stripes in American cities, but Tierney said many of his counterparts in the U.S. are “fed up” with what has been going on.

“We won’t be the bluster, we won’t make any off-hand remarks like what we’re dealing with the last couple of days,” he said.

Prime Minister Mark Carney was asked Sunday during the G20 summit in Johannesburg when he last spoke to U.S. President Donald Trump. Carney said, “Who cares?” and added he doesn’t have “burning issues” to discuss with Trump right now. The prime minister has since said it was a “poor choice of words.”

The tensions between Trump and Carney seem to be at an impasse, with Trump ending any conversations between the two in late October after he saw anti-tariff ads funded by the Ontario government. Premier Doug Ford refused to remove the ends, prompting Trump to “terminate” conversations.

What followed has been a month of continued tariffs and unrest between the two formerly close allies.

This type of back-and-forth banter has not been helpful to municipalities, Tierney said.

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“We don’t care about that. We’re focused on just trying to be a part of the solution,” he said.

Part of the reason for Tierney’s visit was to help educate American counterparts on how detrimental tariffs are to trade between Canada and the U.S., and the economic impacts. Daily trade between the border sits at US$2.5 billion, with 8 million American jobs tied to Canada.

The U.S. imports more energy than it exports to Canada, meaning that with tariffs, energy will be more costly to Americans.

Tierney said that conversations with politicians on both sides of the aisle included city-specific struggles like tackling housing and aging infrastructure; however, both topics were shadowed by tariffs.

“They’re doing things down there, but it all requires a lot of our materials and vice versa. We need some things that they offer,” he said.

One example is fire trucks; Canada doesn’t make the vehicles, and for the U.S., building homes with lumber became more expensive, making the margins for creating affordable units even thinner.

“Now tariffs is a part of almost every discussion,” Tierney said.

With files from David Baxter, The Canadian Press