Carney Says 'All Strategic Sectors' On The Table, Which In Canada Means Everything Including Maple Syrup
Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that "all strategic sectors" are being discussed ahead of the latest U.S. tariff threat, a phrase that in Ottawa has the flexible quality of a rental agreement.
Officials clarified that strategic sectors include steel, aluminium, softwood lumber, autos, dairy, uranium, potash, and, per one unnamed source in the Department of Finance, "whatever they name next Tuesday." The Quebec maple syrup reserve, a genuine strategic stockpile guarded in a warehouse near Laurierville, has been quietly reclassified from agricultural curiosity to national defence asset, which it arguably always was.
The negotiating strategy remains what it has been since 2018. Canada lists its leverage, reads the list aloud in both official languages, and then discovers the leverage was mostly the sentence "we are your largest trading partner," delivered in a tone of hurt.
Washington's approach is simpler. The tariff threat arrives on social media, the exemption arrives six weeks later, and the intervening period generates approximately 400 Canadian panel discussions on economic sovereignty. Trade lawyers in both countries report record billings and no memory of what the original dispute was about.
The truly strategic sector, industry watchers note, is the one that has grown fastest under four consecutive rounds of tariff brinkmanship: consultants who explain tariffs. Their output is up, their exports are unrestricted, and nobody in Washington has thought to target them.
Carney closed by saying Canada would respond "proportionately and calmly." Which is, historically, our most strategic sector of all.