The federal government is launching a more than $6-billion aid package for businesses impacted by U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs and relaxing some employment insurance (EI) rules to help workers.
Steven MacKinnon, Mary Ng and Rechie Valdez — the ministers of labour, international trade and small business — made the announcement Friday afternoon.
“We have tried and tested tools to get our people through the toughest of crises and we will not hesitate to use them,” MacKinnon said.
As part of the supports for businesses, the government is providing $5 billion over two years for exporters to help them find new markets beyond the U.S. and a $500-million loan program through the Business Development Bank of Canada for businesses directly impacted by the tariffs.
Ottawa is also boosting the financing program for the agricultural sector — known as Farm Credit Canada — to the tune of $1 billion.
Employment and Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon says the move to temporarily relax rules for the employment insurance work-sharing program will ‘provide stability to our sectors at a time of great unrest.’ International Trade Minister Mary Ng announced, starting this year, the federal government will be providing $5 billion over two years to ‘help Canadian businesses tackle the challenges imposed on them by these U.S. tariffs.’
The government is also temporarily relaxing rules around a program that allows employees to receive partial EI benefits while working reduced hours. The government says the temporary measures will increase access to the program and lengthen the time that those benefits are typically available.
In a partial climbdown on Thursday, Trump said he is pausing tariffs on some Canadian goods until April 2, offering a reprieve from across-the-board 25 per cent tariffs.
Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc said Thursday that Canada would delay its second round of retaliatory tariffs, worth $125 billion, until April 2. That’s when Trump’s batch of “reciprocal” tariffs is due to be imposed on countries around the world. Canada has currently levied $30 billion worth of U.S. imports.
Minister of Employment and Labour Steven MacKinnon, while speaking in Ottawa on Friday, says that the federal government’s first duty is to not have U.S. tariffs imposed on Canada. MacKinnon added that if the tariffs continue, ‘you can absolutely expect that we would come with further measures to protect our workers.’
Asked by reporters if further measures would be taken to support businesses and workers, MacKinnon said it would depend on how the situation unfolds.
“The ball seems to bounce every day. We have every intention of customizing a response to tariffs or no tariffs as the case may be. Our first duty is to make sure that these tariffs don’t get imposed on Canada,” he said.
MacKinnon noted Trump has employed “chaotic messaging” when trying to justify his tariffs.
“First this trade war was about securing the border and ending drug smuggling. Then it was about migration and the flow of people going south and then, puzzlingly, it was about American banks or the auto sector,” he said.
Trump threatens tariffs on dairy, lumber
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday, Trump threatened to hit Canada’s dairy and lumber industries with additional tariffs.
“Canada has been ripping us off for years,” the president said.
Even though Canada severely restricts access to its dairy market, the volume of U.S. dairy products exported to Canada dwarfs what Canada ships to the U.S. The balance of trade is massively in the Americans’ favour.
Lumber, on the other hand, has been a consistent sticking point in Canada-U.S. relations for years.
The U.S. already imposes anti-dumping duties on Canadian softwood lumber, but Trump is threatening to top those with additional tariffs.
Widespread U.S. tariffs would have a devastating effect on the Canadian economy, with experts saying it would lead to hundreds of thousands of job losses and wreak havoc in key sectors such as Ontario’s auto industry.
American tariffs on all steel and aluminum are still due to come into effect next week. Canada is the leading exporter of both metals to the U.S.
