By the work and grace of the bad neighborliness of President Donald Trump, the United States and Canada have declared a trade war. For Ottawa, however, there is more than just business in this conflict and it considers it an attack against the French language and culture, which constitute a fundamental part of Canadian national identity.
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Canada declared this Tuesday that it intends to impose tariffs of up to 50% on about 700 American products starting September 8, a measure equivalent to about 20 billion and represents an increase in tension between the two countries after the failure of negotiations. In defending his actions, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney did not only refer to trade issues to walk away from the table.
Canada responds with tariffs on U.S. products worth 20 billion dollars
According to Carney on Monday night, what U.S. negotiators consider an “irritating factor,” the French language in Canada, in Quebec “these are rights.” Carney received widespread praise from political leaders for rejecting a U.S. trade proposal that many considered weakened the country’s Francophone culture.
His statements came just hours after Trump showed little interest in ending the dispute. The U.S. president posted on his social network that Canada had been “ripping off the United States for years” and threatened to impose a new round of 50% tariffs starting in January on cars and trucks.
Carney ordered his negotiators to leave the talks last week. A first batch of tariffs on a series of Canadian products came into effect last weekend and affect approximately 5% of Canada’s exports to the U.S.
In this tug of war, laws related to the French language have further contributed to fueling tensions between the two historic allies.
Canada is a bilingual country and has rules that protect its two official languages: English and French. French is the first language of about one-fifth of the population, including almost 85% of the inhabitants of Quebec, a predominantly Francophone province.
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Among these laws, it is established that product labels must appear in both languages and that U.S. streaming platforms must support and promote Canadian content, including Indigenous and Franco-Canadian, for audiences north of the border.
The U.S. president wants to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America
Canada’s language requirements have long been seen by the U.S. as a trade barrier, but for Ottawa they generally constitute a red line. Carney made this clear when he left the negotiations of an agreement that, he emphasized, included “threats against the French language and culture.”
After U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer called Ottawa’s concerns about French on Monday “funny and false history,” the Canadian leader denied that the matter was a laughing matter. “There is a “huge gap between our perspective and the U.S. perspective,” he indicated.
“For Americans, the French language, Francophone culture, and Canadian culture are irritating factors,” Carney reiterated in French at a press conference in Lévis, Quebec. “Here, in Quebec, here in Canada, they are rights,” he stressed.
Trump referred to this dispute on Tuesday: “I would never interfere with Canadians speaking French. It never occurred to me to do something so stupid. This lie was invented by a weak and ineffective prime minister in an attempt to gain the political support he has completely lost from the population of Quebec,” he said on his network.
But he added another element to the differences he has with Canada by stating through a message on Truth Social that he wants to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America. Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes shared by the two states and separates the state of Ontario from New York in the south.
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