Canada’s Trudeau to meet provincial premiers on US ties, urges unity

OTTAWA (Reuters) -Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday said he would meet the premiers of Canada’s 10 provinces this week to discuss U.S. relations, a day after President-elect Donald Trump vowed to impose tariffs on Canadian exports.

Trudeau, who has previously noted the Liberal government has four years’ experience of dealing with the first Trump administration, urged unity among the provinces, .

“This is a relationship that we know takes a certain amount of working on, and that’s what we’ll do,” he told reporters. “One of the really important things is that we be all pulling together on this.”

Trump said he would impose a 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico until they clamped down on drugs, particularly fentanyl, and migrants crossing the border.

In an early sign of strain, the premier of the oil-rich province of Alberta said late on Monday that Trump had valid concerns related to illegal activities at the shared border.

“We are calling on the federal government to work with the incoming administration to resolve these issues immediately, thereby avoiding any unnecessary tariffs on Canadian exports to the U.S.,” Danielle Smith said in a social media post.

“The vast majority of Alberta’s energy exports to the U.S. are delivered through secure and safe pipelines which do not in any way contribute to these illegal activities at the border,” said Smith, whose relations with Trudeau are icy.