Canada’s top diplomat in Washington says she has no concerns about disruptions to Canada’s economy should the results of the U.S. presidential election be delayed — or contested.
“I can’t say that we do,” Canadian Ambassador to the U.S. Kirsten Hillman told CBC Chief Political Correspondent Rosemary Barton on Sunday. “The United States often does not have final results on election night. We even saw that in midterm elections just two years ago where … several seats took quite a while … for those votes to get counted.”
Hillman said that while a presidential race is a more significant undertaking than a midterm election, the country’s vote-counting process is still “well honed.”
“There are state-level officials that have been working on this for months. We are confident that these systems are going to work,” she said in an interview on Barton’s new show, Rosemary Barton Live.
More than 90 million Americans have already cast ballots in the 2020 election, a record turnout driven, in part, by a surge in mail-in voting amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But every state has different rules about processing and counting mail-in ballots, and many will not have a final count by the end of election day on Tuesday.
Hillman said she’s prepared for a late night on Tuesday — she’ll be reporting back to colleagues in Ottawa to share her perspective as the evening plays out.
“We want to wait to make sure that the outcome is clear and accepted. And that’s usually when we make a statement. We usually don’t do it until it’s absolutely clear what the outcome is and Americans have made that decision,” she said.
WATCH | Is Canada’s ambassador to the U.S. concerned if the election result is delayed?
Kirsten Hillman isn’t concerned about the impact on Canada’s economy if the U.S. election result is contested, due to ‘well-honed’ processes to determine a winner. 5:57
Those decisions, said Samantha Power, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, are now being made in unprecedented numbers.
“[The turnout] gives you some testament, I think, to just the degree of engagement and enthusiasm,” Power told Barton in a separate interview.
Efforts to drive Americans to the polls have made “voting salient in people’s lives in a way that I can’t recall happening in my lifetime,” she said. “It’s just the notion of ‘Vote. Do your duty.'”
Trudeau prepares for uncertain outcome
This week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke to Hillman and the 13 Canadian consuls general to discuss the Canada-U.S. relationship as his government braces for an uncertain outcome.
“We will, of course, be watching election day unfold in the United States with confidence in American democracy and their democratic traditions that have managed this event every four years for a very, very long time successfully,” Trudeau said during a news conference on Thursday.
“There have been situations — in 2000, for example — where it was a matter of weeks before arriving at a final outcome. And as we did then, we will follow along carefully without interfering or intervening in well-established processes internal to the United States’s democracy.”
WATCH | Samantha Power on early voter turnout in U.S. election:
Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power sees more enthusiasm to vote in this U.S. election than at any other time in her life. 7:50
In 2000, the final result of the presidential election came down to Florida and its 25 electoral college votes. Initially, the major American television networks called the state for Al Gore, the Democratic candidate. But that turned out to be premature, and the networks were forced to rescind their projections. Then, the decision desks awarded the state to George W. Bush, the Republican candidate.
The projections seemed clear enough that Gore called Bush to concede. But Bush’s lead in the actual vote tally began to shrink, and before Gore could deliver a concession speech, he called Bush back to say that he was no longer conceding the election.
The provisional result in Florida was close enough that an automatic recount was triggered. More than a month of scrutinizing ballots and arguing legalities ensued. Ultimately, the matter ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court, which brought an end to the recount, with Bush ahead by 537 votes.
On Dec. 13 — 36 days after election day — Gore officially and publicly conceded.
“We really watched it like everybody else watched it, and we counted on the expertise in the Canadian Embassy in Washington to tell us what was going on,” Eddie Goldenberg, a senior adviser to former prime minister Jean Chrétien, recalled in an interview with CBC News.
The result of the 2000 presidential race between George W. Bush, left, and Al Gore was contested for weeks until the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately handed the victory to Bush. (Ed Reinke/The Associated Press)
No urgency to recognize a new government, expert says
For as long as it takes to achieve a final result in 2020, Trudeau’s Liberals would presumably want to avoid coming down one way or the other, maintaining an approach to U.S. politics that they adopted in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election.
“What we’ve seen over the last four years is a Canadian government that’s exercised, for the most part, a lot of message discipline when it comes to talking about the United States and talking about Donald Trump,” Roland Paris, a professor of International Relations at the University of Ottawa, told CBC News.
“Canadian prime ministers rarely have anything to gain by weighing into U.S. domestic politics and potentially they have a lot to lose, so I think that what we’ll see is the prime minister keeping his powder dry.”
Paris also said he believes it’s unlikely that a contested result would have a direct impact on Canada.
“We need to remember that Donald Trump will remain the president until Jan. 21 under any circumstances, so there’s no urgency for Canada to recognize a new government or even congratulate the winner until the results are clear.”
Watch Rosemary Barton Live on CBC News Network Sunday at 10 a.m. ET and streamed live on CBC Gem. And you can also catch Rosemary Barton Live on CBC TV across the country at 11 a.m. (12 p.m. AT/12:30 NT).
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OTTAWA – Canada’s unemployment rate held steady at 6.5 per cent last month as hiring remained weak across the economy.
Statistics Canada’s labour force survey on Friday said employment rose by a modest 15,000 jobs in October.
Business, building and support services saw the largest gain in employment.
Meanwhile, finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing experienced the largest decline.
Many economists see weakness in the job market continuing in the short term, before the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts spark a rebound in economic growth next year.
Despite ongoing softness in the labour market, however, strong wage growth has raged on in Canada. Average hourly wages in October grew 4.9 per cent from a year ago, reaching $35.76.
Friday’s report also shed some light on the financial health of households.
According to the agency, 28.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 or older were living in a household that had difficulty meeting financial needs – like food and housing – in the previous four weeks.
That was down from 33.1 per cent in October 2023 and 35.5 per cent in October 2022, but still above the 20.4 per cent figure recorded in October 2020.
People living in a rented home were more likely to report difficulty meeting financial needs, with nearly four in 10 reporting that was the case.
That compares with just under a quarter of those living in an owned home by a household member.
Immigrants were also more likely to report facing financial strain last month, with about four out of 10 immigrants who landed in the last year doing so.
That compares with about three in 10 more established immigrants and one in four of people born in Canada.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information says health-care spending in Canada is projected to reach a new high in 2024.
The annual report released Thursday says total health spending is expected to hit $372 billion, or $9,054 per Canadian.
CIHI’s national analysis predicts expenditures will rise by 5.7 per cent in 2024, compared to 4.5 per cent in 2023 and 1.7 per cent in 2022.
This year’s health spending is estimated to represent 12.4 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product. Excluding two years of the pandemic, it would be the highest ratio in the country’s history.
While it’s not unusual for health expenditures to outpace economic growth, the report says this could be the case for the next several years due to Canada’s growing population and its aging demographic.
Canada’s per capita spending on health care in 2022 was among the highest in the world, but still less than countries such as the United States and Sweden.
The report notes that the Canadian dental and pharmacare plans could push health-care spending even further as more people who previously couldn’t afford these services start using them.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
As Canadians wake up to news that Donald Trump will return to the White House, the president-elect’s protectionist stance is casting a spotlight on what effect his second term will have on Canada-U.S. economic ties.
Some Canadian business leaders have expressed worry over Trump’s promise to introduce a universal 10 per cent tariff on all American imports.
A Canadian Chamber of Commerce report released last month suggested those tariffs would shrink the Canadian economy, resulting in around $30 billion per year in economic costs.
More than 77 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S.
Canada’s manufacturing sector faces the biggest risk should Trump push forward on imposing broad tariffs, said Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters president and CEO Dennis Darby. He said the sector is the “most trade-exposed” within Canada.
“It’s in the U.S.’s best interest, it’s in our best interest, but most importantly for consumers across North America, that we’re able to trade goods, materials, ingredients, as we have under the trade agreements,” Darby said in an interview.
“It’s a more complex or complicated outcome than it would have been with the Democrats, but we’ve had to deal with this before and we’re going to do our best to deal with it again.”
American economists have also warned Trump’s plan could cause inflation and possibly a recession, which could have ripple effects in Canada.
It’s consumers who will ultimately feel the burden of any inflationary effect caused by broad tariffs, said Darby.
“A tariff tends to raise costs, and it ultimately raises prices, so that’s something that we have to be prepared for,” he said.
“It could tilt production mandates. A tariff makes goods more expensive, but on the same token, it also will make inputs for the U.S. more expensive.”
A report last month by TD economist Marc Ercolao said research shows a full-scale implementation of Trump’s tariff plan could lead to a near-five per cent reduction in Canadian export volumes to the U.S. by early-2027, relative to current baseline forecasts.
Retaliation by Canada would also increase costs for domestic producers, and push import volumes lower in the process.
“Slowing import activity mitigates some of the negative net trade impact on total GDP enough to avoid a technical recession, but still produces a period of extended stagnation through 2025 and 2026,” Ercolao said.
Since the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement came into effect in 2020, trade between Canada and the U.S. has surged by 46 per cent, according to the Toronto Region Board of Trade.
With that deal is up for review in 2026, Canadian Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Candace Laing said the Canadian government “must collaborate effectively with the Trump administration to preserve and strengthen our bilateral economic partnership.”
“With an impressive $3.6 billion in daily trade, Canada and the United States are each other’s closest international partners. The secure and efficient flow of goods and people across our border … remains essential for the economies of both countries,” she said in a statement.
“By resisting tariffs and trade barriers that will only raise prices and hurt consumers in both countries, Canada and the United States can strengthen resilient cross-border supply chains that enhance our shared economic security.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
