Recent tariffs on Canadian exports to the U.S. will bring serious economic consequences to every region of our country. In response, our federal government has introduced a support package to help affected workers and businesses.
We applaud the government for implementing key support measures quickly, including improving access to the EI Work Sharing Program. In our 2023 Sustainable Jobs Blueprint, the Pembina Institute and the Canadian Labour Congress showed how this program could help employers retain workers during slowdowns and avoid layoffs, as it allows employees to receive partial EI benefits while working reduced hours. Ensuring businesses can keep their workforce intact during economic uncertainty is vital to maintaining stability and resilience.
This chaotic moment underscores the need for Canada to develop both short- and long-term strategies that support workers facing job loss, strengthen national energy security and independence, foster national unity and enhance economic resilience. Specifically, Canada’s response should include:
Within a month of tariff announcement
Prioritize workers in the most affected industries
Tariffs on Canadian goods are forecast to have huge impacts on trade-exposed industries like the auto industry, manufacturing and oil and gas, among others. The needs of workers in the most impacted industries must come first, so they can stay in their communities and take care of themselves and their families. We echo Canada’s labour movement in calling for stronger measures, including modernizing Employment Insurance and other response measures that help protect jobs and wages. Canada must also determine how best to support workers facing longer-term challenges in industries where employment levels may not rebound through supportive transition programs.
Two to three months after and beyond
Accelerate investment in low-carbon industrial growth
It’s time for industrial policy that creates jobs and sets Canada up for long-term prosperity in the low-emitting energy economy. Investments in clean energy are critical. We must also remove barriers preventing timely efforts to modernize electricity grids, bring new renewable electricity capacity to the market, build transmission interties between provinces, expand supportive infrastructure for EVs and support deep retrofits to Canada’s aging building stock. This will strengthen Canada’s domestic economy and create good jobs for workers in their communities, maintaining the livelihoods of at least some workers displaced by the tariffs.
Use public procurement to drive Canadian industries, while removing domestic trade barriers and diversifying trade partners
Canada has made significant investments in technology innovation. All levels of government can, and should, use public procurement to support made-in-Canada solutions. Providing a stable, domestic customer base for emerging industries — like building materials resilient to extreme weather, EV supply chains, renewable energy and domestically produced low-carbon cement — Canada can grow its domestic economies while demonstrating the experience and capacity needed to engage new export markets. The federal, provincial and territorial governments should also work together to remove barriers to interprovincial trade and harmonize regulation, including raising labour and environmental standards to the highest common denominator wherever possible, while assertively pursuing new markets with trading partners around the world.
The effects of the tariffs should galvanize Canadians to build an economy that is more resilient, more diversified and better able to deliver good outcomes for all over the long term. That economy will be powered by clean energy.
At the Pembina Institute’s January unGALA event in Toronto, former Quebec Premier and recent appointee to the prime minister’s Council on Canada-U.S. Relations, Jean Charest, remarked, “We're not going back. It'll never be what it was before. We should double-down on clean energy because it's the right thing to do, for the economy and for our future."
The more united we are in our response — the more we put our people first and leverage Canada’s advantages in the emerging global clean energy economy — the stronger Canada will emerge.
