Minister Duclos says it should be ‘relatively easy’ to sell Trump on icebreaker pact

OTTAWA — Public Services and Procurement Minister Jean-Yves Duclos insists it will be “relatively easy” to convince incoming U.S. president Donald Trump not to scuttle an icebreaker production pact with Canada.

That comes after Trump said at a news conference Tuesday the U.S. should go it alone — a comment he made while complaining about the trade deficit with Canada.

“We help them. As an example, we’re buying icebreakers and Canada wants to join us in the buying of icebreakers,” Trump said. “We don’t really want to have a partner in the buying of icebreakers. We don’t need a partner.”

Duclos told The Canadian Press Wednesday after the Liberal caucus meeting in Ottawa that Trump’s administration had signalled to Canada in his first mandate in the White House that it was supportive of the co-operative effort.

“It would be very good for the American industry, which is finding it very hard to build icebreakers,” he said. “We would be partnering with the American industry to help them build those icebreakers that the U.S. needs and also invest in our own ability to develop the technology and the skills that the Americans would benefit from.”

The trilateral “ICE Pact” with the U.S. and Finland was signed under President Joe Biden and unveiled at the NATO summit in Washington last summer.

The agreement is designed to ramp up production of icebreakers to help safeguard the Arctic and Antarctic regions as climate change melts polar ice, and to strengthen each nation’s shipbuilding industry. It includes provisions for having workers and experts train in shipyards across the three partner countries.

It was also made with an eye to China and Russia’s ambitions in the North and, notably, Russia’s vast icebreaker fleet of more than 40, which greatly outnumbers the few held by the U.S.

Daleep Singh, the White House’s deputy national security adviser for international economics, said at the time the deal was announced that without it, the U.S. would “risk our adversaries developing an advantage in a specialized technology with vast geostrategic importance.”

He said that could also allow adversary nations to “become the preferred supplier for countries that also have an interest in purchasing polar icebreakers.”

Trump’s comments, which cast doubt over the future of the agreement, come as he threatens 25 per cent import tariffs against Canada and Mexico unless the two countries bolster border security measures. They also come ahead of a scheduled major CUSMA trade-pact review between the three nations.

Trump said at the same freewheeling news conference Tuesday that the U.S. doesn’t need to purchase Canadian automotive, lumber or dairy products and openly mused about making Canada a U.S. state.

“We don’t need anything they have,” he said of Canada, suggesting he threatened Trudeau by telling him, “What would happen if we didn’t subsidize you?”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 8, 2025.

— With files from Sarah Ritchie and The Associated Press.

Kyle Duggan, The Canadian Press