Across this city and province right now, boards are signing off on capital plans for 2027. Equipment orders, expansions, hires, leases. All of it under trade rules that changed with a weekend’s notice and could change again before the ink dries.
That’s the real cost of this fight, and it appears in none of the numbers anyone is announcing.
Ottawa’s counter-tariffs have been in force for a month: 15, 25 and 50 per cent across more than 700 product lines, matched dollar for dollar with Washington. The Order in Council was signed four days before they took effect. CBSA guidance landed the day before. Importers got a long weekend to re-price a year of purchasing.
That isn’t incompetence. It’s a tell. Business plays chess. Government plays checkers.
On a checkerboard, every piece is worth exactly the same. That’s the design. Move one square, take what’s in front of you, and jumping your opponent counts as a win. You lift the piece off the board, and everyone watches you do it. Satisfying! Also the entire extent of the strategy.
Now look at how this file has been played. Trump moves. Carney counters, $27.6 billion against $27.6 billion. Both sides announce a victory. Ottawa puts $7.5 billion on the table to cushion whoever just got jumped, spread evenly across sectors, because on a checkerboard a steel fabricator in Nisku and an auto parts supplier in Windsor are the same piece with the same value.
A chess player two moves from check doesn’t smile.
Nobody I represent is building a 2027 plan around the tariff that landed in September. They’re deciding what their supply chain looks like in 2029, which market replaces the one that just got expensive and which customer they haven’t met yet. They aren’t looking behind the ball, and they aren’t keeping their eye on the ball. They’re looking at where it’s going to land and setting up the play after that. That’s the difference between signing the front of a cheque and signing the back. You learn to price risk instead of flinching from it.
Government is built to flinch. The machinery cautions away from anything new, defaults to process, and manufactures a roadblock for every idea it can’t pre-approve. Nobody in a bureaucracy was ever promoted for a bet that paid off.
Both roles are legitimate. I don’t want the treasury run like a startup, but we elect governments to govern; to see the whole board and play the long game the rest of us can’t play alone.
The long game is simple: stop needing the Americans this badly. In late August, the premiers agreed to recognize skilled trades credentials across provincial lines within 30 days. Alberta passed its mutual recognition legislation in April. No parade. No piece lifted off the board. Two quiet moves toward an economy that carries its own weight.
There will be another announcement from Washington. There always is. The question is whether anyone in Ottawa is playing for the move after that one, or still counting squares.