‘Let’s get a deal’: Former Sask. premier Brad Wall weighs in Mark Carney’s Davos speech

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent speech at the World Economic Forum speech has drawn a significant amount of praise.

But former Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall says that while the prime minister’s speech was well-crafted, it prioritized political messaging over practical trade strategy, potentially putting the country’s relationship with the United States, its largest export market, at risk.

Wall joined guest host Brent Loucks on The Evan Bray Show on Thursday to share his thoughts on the speech and what should be done to improve Canada-U.S. trade relations.

Read more:

• ‘I meant what I said’: Carney says he explained his Davos speech to Trump
• Carney calls on middle powers to band together in World Economic Forum speech
• Carney’s speech to World Economic Forum draws praise, calls for action

Listen to the full interview here or read the transcript below:

BRENT LOUCKS: I just wanted to pick your brain on what’s going on with trade negotiations, mostly with our neighbours to the south, the United States. We know we’ve got the CUSMA review coming up. We harken back to our prime minister’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Lot of talk about him talking about the middle countries, which would include Canada, coming together so that we can find our own path, as opposed to dealing with the big guys, the Chinese, the Americans. What did you think about that speech?

BRAD WALL: Well, it was a very well-written and very well-delivered speech. It’s thoughtful from an international trade perspective. It’s important to give it the credit that it’s due. I just remain concerned that it might have been motivated a lot by politics at home, and it did go over very well at home. The theme of the middle power part of the speech is interesting. I think, broadly, he’s talking about the importance of Canada diversifying our export market away from such a dependency on the U.S. Right now, three quarters of our exports go to that market, to the United States. And that’s also a good message. When we were first elected, we embarked upon a process like it to try to diversify our own export market, Brent. We were the second-least dependent on the United States of all the provinces. B.C. was the least dependent, but even the second-least dependent, as we were, we were still 60 per cent dependent on exports going to the U.S., and so we thought it important to diversify. There were trade missions and a very concerted effort to try to diversify our own export markets, and there was some success, I think. By the end of my time, we were getting close to just above 50 per cent dependent.

So that’s also an important theme that I think the prime minister tried to strike. But there was more than some veiled shots at the U.S., and I think a lot of Canadians like that part because, obviously, (U.S. President Donald) Trump’s been very volatile and not particularly friendly to our country. But you touched on it at the introduction. We are coming up on a review of the current trade agreement we have with the United States and Mexico, CUSMA (Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement) or USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement). That review begins in earnest just later on this year, and the importance of the U.S. market remains right now, it remains a bit of a trade risk, but it’s also still our greatest trade opportunity. This speech kind of took those gratuitous shots at the U.S., led as they are by someone who’s hypersensitive and very volatile at a time when we need to make sure we get a deal of some sort. Maybe it won’t be quite the same as CUSMA is today, but we could have some structured trade and access to that important market. I think it’s got to be the number-one priority for the prime minister, for provinces, for business leaders in Canada. And so that was my concern. It remains my concern, because I know it’s great politics at home, but we have seen what U.S. tariffs do on certain sectors of our economy, in steel and aluminum and in vehicle manufacturing and car parts. We’ve seen layoffs. We’ve seen announcements of relocations of plants into the U.S.

And I think all of us need to remember that most of the sectors of our economy are still covered by CUSMA. What we’ve seen, the dislocation, the job loss, the investment decline in the sectors where there are tariffs, could easily happen in other sectors of our economy if we don’t have a trade deal and all of a sudden, tariffs are applied across the board. So let’s get a deal. Maybe it’s frustrating that we can’t be more plain spoken when it comes to this president, but it’s the reality right now, so that’s my concern about that speech.

That sort of language, the middle-power alliances, hasn’t been sort of repeated. Neither have these gratuitous shots at at the U.S. been repeated. And there was the call between Carney and Trump afterwards, and sort of a different report out about what happened on the call. Brent, we should – all of us; business leaders, premiers and the federal government – be focused on on the review for CUSMA, on getting structured trade and as good a deal as we can possibly get, because our economy is so dependent on it – 75 per cent dependent on it in terms of exports.

The inroads that we’re making or attempting to make with China, getting the canola tariff, it appears, lifted for the most part, and meat as well. We’re looking at more and more trade with India on some of the agricultural products here. Is that going to be enough to fill the gap if we lose a bunch of exports to the U.S.?

WALL: It’s important for the country, but it’s really important for Saskatchewan. I was talking about the diversification effort we made in terms of export markets. We focused on those markets that you’ve referenced and others, but Asian markets, southeast Asian markets, and we saw significant progress, and not just canola or not in the case of beef and its inclusion in this tariff agreement with China, but pulse crops as well. It’s just a long list and a very important list for us, so that has to be an ongoing process. It shouldn’t have started at the speech at Davos. Provinces should have been working on this, and we certainly were. We certainly tried to, and I know Premier (Scott) Moe is doing the same. Other provinces should be doing the same, but his speech at Davos kind of intimated that we could somehow replace, or get close to replacing, 75 per cent of our exports to the U.S. by some sort of middle-power alliance with countries that are geographically a lot further away. It’s not realistic. Yes, let’s diversify, but let’s remember that the U.S. trade market is a risk for us right now, but it remains, and will be for the foreseeable future, our greatest trade opportunity.

Do you think Mark Carney is more of a conservative than any other Liberal prime minister we’ve seen?

WALL: Well, I think he’s certainly more of a progressive conservative, if I can use that term. The Conservative Party has even changed a little bit over the last while, but I would say that. He starts with removing the carbon tax. He goes ahead and adopts the GST rebate on new homes, which is a Conservative policy from the campaign.

We stopped, sort of, with the obsession around environmental issues, and he seems to be a bit more focused on the potential for oil and gas and at least the MOU with Alberta signals a possible pipeline. I’m hopeful about all those things. And I think he took a message from the last election that Canadians wanted to pivot from the policies of the past from (Justin) Trudeau. But right now, I would say this, and I’m not intending to be critical here, necessarily, but just observing. So far on these issues, especially when it comes to the energy sector, we see a lot of good talk from the prime minister and his cabinet members, but we have yet to see the action, and I think we’re all waiting to see that. We’re all hopeful to see that, because the words alone, of course, aren’t going to get the job done.

Every time we have you on the radio, I can count on seeing either a post on Facebook or a text in from a listener saying “Great to hear you, Brad.” When are you going to get back into politics and give us some leadership here? And what’s your standard answer?

WALL: Those people are very kind. The standard answer is I had what was the sort of my dream job, but it was time then and I’m enjoying private-sector life now. And those people, I thank them, and they’re very kind, but it ain’t gonna happen.