Canada will beef up border security following a meeting between President-elect Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but officials remain vague on how they will fund “visible” improvements.
Trudeau and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum each called Trump earlier this week following his threat to implement a 25 percent tariff on all of their products coming into the U.S. until they addressed his concerns about drugs – particularly, fentanyl – and the inflow of “illegal aliens.”
“Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem,” Trump insisted in a Truth Social post written on Monday last week.
In response, Trudeau and Trump agreed to meet at Mar-a-Lago and have a sit-down conversation and dinner. Trudeau and Trump both hailed the talks as “productive” and “excellent.”
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Canadian Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc revealed during an interview with Canadian news outlet CBC on Sunday that he had accompanied Trudeau. He held his own conversations with Trump’s commerce secretary nominee Harry, addressing concerns about the impact Trump’s tariffs could have on the Canadian economy.
“We also discussed additional measures and visible measures that we were going to put in place over the coming weeks,” LeBlanc said during the interview. “We also established … a path, a series of rapports, that will allow us to continue to make that case.”
LeBlanc said that Lutnik had reached out following the Mar-a-Lago visit to try and set up a time to meet again and continue their discussions, which would focus on the border and those “visible” improvements.
Trudeau had suggested such measures as increasing helicopter patrols along the border between the U.S. and Canada, among other ideas, according to Canadian outlet Global News.
When pressed on what improvements might look like and how they might be funded, LeBlanc said: “There’s already hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars spent, but we’re going to take additional measures, and I’ll have more to say with the minister of finance in the coming days or weeks.”
Newsweek reached out Sunday evening by email to the Trump transition team and the Canadian government for comment.
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“It was a warm, sort of social evening, as well,” LeBlanc said of the rest of the evening. He laid out the topics that Trudeau and Trump covered, including “challenges around the world,” different world leaders, energy security, pipelines, “some of the challenges of China.”
“I think it was important to have an opportunity to meet some of his incoming Cabinet secretaries,” LeBlanc said. “I was sitting at the table close to the incoming commerce secretary, who will also be responsible for the U.S. trade representative function, Howard Lutnik. He and I spoke about tariffs, we spoke about the border – so I think it was a chance for the prime minister to talk to the president about the importance of the relationship.”
Chief among the topics of concern discussed were tariffs and border security, including “additional measures we’re going to take” on the border.
LeBlanc insisted that the conversations proved constructive, and while the Canadian government did not secure any overt concession on the 25 percent tariffs Trump threatened to impose, the two groups were able to reach a “mutual understanding of what they’re concerned about” with border security.
“All of their concerns are shared by Canadians and the government of Canada,” LeBlanc said, highlighting the fentanyl crisis and “current security posture at the border.”
LeBlanc later added: “As much as a reassurance exercise, we believe that the border is secure, we believe that there has been a long history of effective cooperation between Canada and the United States – and it’s a bilateral challenge.”
“We’re also concerned about guns,” LeBlanc said. “We discussed with the Americans our concerns about gun smuggling, coming from the south towards the north, so these are all shared concerns that we agreed to work on together.”
