Commentary, Opinion

Ripping off the Band-Aid

August 27, 2026   ·   0 Comments

By Brock Weir

If you were struggling to find your get-up-and-go over the first few days of this week, I’m sure you’re not alone. It was, of course, an eventful weekend for all of us as trade talks with the United States, such as they were, collapsed, with our negotiating team apparently deciding that no deal was better than a bad deal.

According to both parties, negotiations were going well into last week, a last-minute extension of the tariff deadline being granted, apparently just to fine-tune some of the details. 

By the time Friday arrived, however, it became clear that the devil would truly be in the details.

Midday passed without any real movement towards signatures being announced. Nothing further by the time the stock markets closed that afternoon. By the time dinner rolled around, no matter how diligently both sides claimed to be working, my optimism began to wane.

Surely if there was something positive to report, no matter how small a movement in the right direction, it would have been heralded by both sides.

It was clear a long night lay ahead.

No matter how much I prepared to be in it for the long haul, an exceedingly busy workweek got the better of me, and, no matter how restless I was feeling about what lay ahead, I drifted off and woke up – still on the couch – to the news so many were dreading.

This sense of uncertainty is reflected in new data released Tuesday morning by the Angus Reid Institute which polled Canadians in the immediate aftermath of the trade deal collapse.

The poll found one-in-five Canadians expressed “frustration or anger after a year-and-a-half of tariffs, while anxiety, fear, and uncertainty (12 per cent), and disappointment (7 per cent) are also common.”

The poll of 1,700 Canadians were asked to describe how they were feeling after these difficult 18 months and “frustration” and “anger” came out on top with 19 per cent of respondents; “anxiety”, “worry”, and “fear” following at 8 per cent; “disappointment” at 7 per cent, “pride” and “patriotism” at 5 per cent; “uncertainty” and “confusion” at 4 per cent, “anti-US” and “Anti-Trump sentiment” at 3 per cent, “exhaustion” and “fatigue” at 3 per cent; “disgust” at 2 per cent; “betrayal” and “distrust” at 2 per cent; and rounding out the list with one per cent each were “indifference,” “apathy,” “disbelief,” and “shock.”

“The data also shows Canadians across the country are preaching national unity over Provincial interest at a majority level,” the poll found. “Seven-in-10 (69 per cent) Canadians want a ‘Team Canada’ approach from their province; majorities in every province agree, ranging from 57 per cent in Saskatchewan to 75 per cent in Manitoba.

“This, despite elevated concern from Canadians that this trade dispute will hurt their province. Two-thirds (66 per cent) believe the trade war will very or badly affect their province, including 68 per cent in B.C., 70 per cent in Ontario and 70 per cent in Quebec who say this. Those three provinces are expected to be the epicentres of any job losses caused by the latest round of Trump tariffs.”

There is a lot to iron out domestically in the coming days, weeks, and months, and a lot of uncertainty, fear, and frustration will need to be weathered by just about every Canadian in just about every sector as we re-calibrate our collective direction amid the disintegration of one of the most reliable international relationships we have had in our history.

By the same token, however, I am surprised one word failed to make the Angus Reid cut: Relief.

It sounds counterintuitive to say “relief” was one of the myriad feelings that coursed through my veins on Saturday morning as we waited for the Prime Minister to detail some of the factors that led to the collapse of trade talks, but it is true.

Given Trump’s propensity to continually change the goal posts in any talks, no matter the benefit to his people, it was clear from the outset that Canada was going into negotiations in anything but good faith. It was clear from the outset that we, as Canadians, would be expected to do all of the giving in this relationship, would be expected to settle for a deal that would inevitably be worse than what we’ve got, would be expected to settle for a deal that just one side could blow out of the water, whenever they felt like it, for whatever reason, and we would be expected to live with a deal that wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.

“Our government understood, before many, that America would transform all its commercial relationships, that it would put a series of tariffs on its closest allies, and use economic integration as a weapon,” said Carney in his Saturday morning address to the nation. “That its signature was written in pencil.

“While the U.S. has imposed a seemingly endless stream of tariffs and threatened more, Canada has, by contrast, taken several steps in good faith to find compromise and secure a comprehensive deal in the best interest of Canadians and Americans. Our negotiators sought not only to reduce tariffs, but also to restore a degree of certainty and stability – through a new, comprehensive agreement that Canadian businesses and workers could rely on.”

This, of course, was not to be – and many saw the writing on the wall. While “relief” might be a strange word to use in this context, it’s like a weathered Band-Aid, holding onto the remains of a wound with as much light as its adhesive allows, has finally been ripped off, we can no longer avoid what was clearly a reality, and now that we know where we stand, we can forge a new path ahead being masters of our own destiny as a nation.

It will take a lot of hard work, it will require enduring many tough days ahead, but we have the tools to build a strong economy with new partners and renewed relationships rather than hitching our economic wagon to a horse more than willing to kick us in the teeth whenever it’s feeling the proverbial zoomies.

And, if there is any doubt that this would – and would always be – the case, one only has to look to missives sent out by the White House musing upon changing the name of Lake Ontario because they didn’t get the deal they wanted. It was never about making a serious deal.

Those devilish details of what ultimately led to the collapse of trade talks are yet to be released in full. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is calling for a special Parliamentary session to get those details released to the public – and rightly so – but, if reports stating the United States wanted control over our foreign and trade policies to ink the deal, effectively annexing our nation, are true, that’s really all we need to know.

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