贸易战冲击下的安大略市镇应对与市政政党化之争

>>: Ottawa and Ontario have announced new supports for the steel and auto sectors in the face of the ongoing trade war. It's not the first move governments have made to support workers and businesses. When Federal Finance Minister Francois-philippe Champagne announced that Canada would counter American tariffs. Quote, dollar for dollar rate for rate. Back in August. He also said that Canada would dedicate $7.5 billion to support workers and businesses affected by the trade war.

>>: We will meet the moment together. And as the Prime Minister has said, we will support our workers, our businesses and our industry with whatever it takes for as long as it takes.

>>: So what will it take? And do different communities need the same things? We look at what it's like for Ontario municipalities on the front lines of the trade war. Then municipalities also stand apart when it comes to elections. I'm talking about the fact when you cast your ballot in a local election, you just vote for a candidate, not for a party. Is it time to change that? I'm Jeyan Jeganathan and this is The Rundown. The Prime Minister has championed a Team Canada response to the trade war. So what role should municipalities be playing on that team, and how are they dealing with all this economic uncertainty? Ermal Mustafa Graham Henderson Mayor Krista Lowry, great to have you on The Rundown. I'm going to start with you. You spearheaded this study in collaboration with the FCM Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the City of London. You surveyed 31 municipalities across nine provinces. Help us understand what's the consensus on how the U.S. trade disruptions are impacting these places?

>>: Yeah. And thank you, Jen, for having me. And, you know, the survey actually provides a lot of interesting facts about what's happening in the ground. And one other thing that really jumps out is essentially that there are three, you know, most affected channels through which we see, you know, the impact, you know, essentially pass through. So one of them is, if you think about it, cost, you know, pressures that, you know, companies are facing. And that comes from various ways in terms of if you think about not only, you know, tariffs non-tariff, but there's also premium in terms of uncertainty, right? Because essentially you could anticipate tariffs coming in. And as a result, some supplier might increase your increase prices. And that then propagates within the supply chain. Right. And so those issues come in very strongly. And and they come in even before we see in the national data. So I think that that tells you something about, you know, the municipal intelligence that is providing some early warnings in terms of, you know, what is happening and the impact varies across different jurisdictions depending on the industry, makeup, how diversified they are. And we can go more into it. The key takeaway is that, you know, each community probably feels very differently than, you know, a, the others. And so we have to really take into account of these heterogeneity in terms of the impact.

>>: Now, ROMA, some of those communities that we'll be talking about, you know, we're talking Windsor, Mississauga, London, who reported highest ranking in terms of trade impact. But one thing I want to highlight as well is some communities also are showing some resilience in the face of uncertainty. Very quickly. Can you give us a few examples of what that actually looks like when we talk about resilience in this uncertain trade environment?

>>: Absolutely. Right. I mean, there are, you know, lots of programs that municipalities have rolled out, right? One of them is through the Buy Canadian initiatives, right? In order to source things from Canada and invest, you know, locally. There are, you know, municipalities that have worked with businesses in terms of, you know, how to navigate through the various programs that are being rolled out. There are, you know, essentially a, you know, programs about how how to think about diversification and how even deal with compliances with trade, etcetera. So, so there are those elements to it. And then there's also creativity. If you think about in London itself, you know, one of the initiatives that was taken was to really ramp up local tourism with events. And what we've seen is actually, you know, tourism actually grew, you know, last year, there's also community, you know, coming together in Sault Ste. Marie, for example, right? When the Algoma plant shut down, what you see essentially is, you know, the union, the, the local government and Soo College developed, you know, an action plan in order to support the workers. So this this goes into not only in terms of mental health, but also, you know, retraining and other areas of, you know, transition that is needed.

>>: I want to get a pulse on the ground. So, Krista, I'm coming to you. You are the mayor of Mississippi Mills. You represent rural communities as the chair of ROMA. When you are talking to these communities, what are they seeing in terms of those pressures showing up outside of the, you know, as Romel mentioned, we have Algoma Steel, we're talking about factories, but outside of those factories, what is what are those pressures look like.

>>: Something that is not not unique to any one municipality, but is certainly felt by all of our communities. Is the impact on infrastructure every community is is dealing with either growth related infrastructure, ageing related infrastructure, and some of the data that Amo was able to gather in their research and modelling back in 2025. So some of that data is has changed. We've changed a lot in about a year, but we know that there's $51 billion worth of capital projects between March of 2025 and March of 2027 being planned across the province, and that's 27,000 different projects. That's 19,000 social housing units. And so that looks different in every single community. And how that would be realised. But we also know that the tariffs would impact that that bucket of projects to the tune of 1.8 billion. So a negative impact. And that's hard because how does that how does that gap get filled?

>>: Well, well, I actually want to hone in on one of those municipalities. So Graham, I'm coming to you. You were the CEO of the London Chamber of Commerce, the report that his team put together suggests that London may be experiencing some of the effects of trade disruption indirectly through its labour market. So I'm hoping you can help us understand a little bit. This is not necessarily through plant closures or job losses here, but does that line up with what you're seeing on the ground?

>>: Well, I'd like to give concrete examples here because I think that'll bring it home to folks I recently visited a little tiny store here in London. It's called the Cookie Airy. It was founded by two entrepreneurs several years ago. They started out making custom sugar cookies, and they combined their sort of entrepreneurial creativity, their engineering enterprise, to build this little business based on making 3D printed cookie cutters. And they're now selling baking supplies and equipment to entrepreneurs. Other entrepreneurs, including in the United States. So they have this. It's a very innovative little market manufacturer, but they are wrestling with the tariffs and tariff complications. They've had to change their shipping arrangements to the United States. They used to ship free. Now they can't. Now they've had to build tariff into their pricing. And this is a wonderful example of Canadian entrepreneurship and a reminder that even the most technologically sophisticated small businesses can struggle with the consequences, the complexities of international trade. I could give you two other examples. We don't have time, but one of them is kind of the famous one. It's the Vaughan Vaughan hockey custom sports here in, in, in London. And then there's Black Fly, which which does custom made, ready to drink alcoholic beverages. So these businesses are having real difficulty navigating. The government is aware of this. And what I'd like to talk about at some point is how we're going to deal with this, because here in London, we've been working to put together a tariff response service that will help businesses navigate this.

>>: All right, Krista, we are seeing I want to shift gears a little bit. Talk a little bit about Ottawa's response to tariffs here. Krista. We're seeing projects like power EV power battery plant in Saint Thomas being delayed by two years. How difficult is it for communities to plan around investments when these timelines shift?

>>: It's really difficult. The environment is shifting very quickly. There's a lot of uncertainty in the environment. The danger, of course, is if we don't move forward with with projects, that creates a whole other set of challenges. If projects are deferred or delayed or they don't go forward. And part of the challenge that we have been hearing from our members, we being Amo, the Association of Ontario, is uncertainty around some of the the framework with the. Buy Ontario Act that has come into play and certainly the goal of strengthening the economy, the goal of strengthening the domestic supply chain is, is something that municipalities share, AMO shares ROMA shares. But having a clear understanding of what that guidance means, having a clear understanding of how to work with suppliers, our our bidders and whatnot who are working on projects. Sometimes those are what those delays are about is challenges of what the the legislation means, how staff should be interpreting scoring, looking at some of these these pieces, and more recently, we have AMO Association Municipalities of Ontario have written a joint letter with some of the. The industry sector associations as well, with some some guidance and some suggestions on how that could become easier for municipalities to work with, as well as industry associations and, and organisations, so that we're not seeing delays so that we are able to move forward because delaying projects is not going to be good for municipalities. It's not good for business. It's not good for Ontario.

>>: Rommel does this kind of uncertainty expose a bigger vulnerability in the way municipalities plan for major investments?

>>: It does. Right. I mean, if you think about it in, you know, the insights that we're getting from both Gram and Krista is that, you know, those are actually basically are represented in other parts of Ontario. And, you know, in the country that we've surveyed. Right. And essentially, you know, if we think about in certain cases, if you have, you know, municipalities that are facing if you have one highly concentrated industry that that's got affected, that requires a different type of response, more thinking about, you know, industrialisation and stabilisation, then maybe if you have a diversified kind of industry makeup that would require more transitional support and getting more investments and, you know, growth going, right. So these are variations that we need to think about in ways in which when we think about, you know, responses within the municipalities and at the same time, you know, time is of the essence because, you know, if we can't keep the economic activities going, then that would have, you know, implications for bigger resilience, right? If you think about it within these communities, and we can, over time sort out some of the trade, you know, discussions that are going on. Right. And so that becomes really an important priority going forward.

>>: All right. Speaking of responses, I did want to mention that we did reach out to the Federal Ministry of Finance and asked how confident that they were that these investments were hitting the mark when it comes to EVs. Specifically, we received a statement from them, which reads in part, in February 2026, the government introduced an auto strategy that rewards the production of Made in Canada vehicles and harnesses Canada's technology expertise to build the cars of the future. The strategy includes allocating $3 billion from the Strategic Response Fund and $100 million from the Regional Tariff Response Initiative to support investments in automotive manufacturing. These investments will help the industry adapt, grow and diversify in new markets. I should mention that Prime Minister Mark Carney and Premier Doug Ford are set to announce supports for steel and auto workers on Wednesday afternoon. We are filming this interview Wednesday morning, and those details have not been released in time of this taping. How would you characterise Ottawa's response here? What's missing?

>>: Well, I mean, these are good. You know, first steps, right. And I think the devil is in the details as we get more of these details and enable, you know, municipalities to work through those details in terms of mobilising, you know, local response in terms of investments, I think the key thing I would suggest is that as we think about, you know, investments in communities, especially that are hard hit with advanced manufacturing, yes, we need to think about EV, but we also need to think about pathways in which we can create enable some of these component manufacturers to diversify into other sectors, and especially in areas where there are domestic growth opportunities, including defence, aerospace, etc. Right. And so that requires a lot of, you know, partnership into new supply chain in terms of training, retooling, and those, I think, you know, policy instruments needs to be fleshed out a bit more, but these are good first steps, you know, going into in terms of thinking about how, how should we think about the, you know, the Team Canada response.

>>: All right, Graham, I want to get you into the fold here. When we talk about response, obviously, this is EV specifically, you know, your examples. We're talking small and medium businesses here. Are these the tools that London needs to respond effectively? What what are they?

>>: Well, again, we're sort of defaulting to talking about steel. Algoma massive. You know, transnational businesses. The government has also responded with its you know, it has a tariff response. The problem that. And we've so we've been working with the federal with Feddev to create a tariff response service. We think it's sort of a one of its kind. So far. We presented this proposal to Minister Solomon. What was encouraging about our discussion was his recognition that there has. There is a real. There are real gaps in our in in the response to trade disruption. And it particularly affects smaller businesses. And it also affects businesses who have difficulty simply navigating the available resistance. The. The available assistance. So what we've proposed is a service that has two components. You get a navigator, it's hands on assistance to business, a custom, a company that is facing tariff issues, customs problems, losing a customer, struggling with rising costs would have somewhere to turn for practical advice. The second thing is to focus on diversification of supply chains. Are you having a problem with the supplier? Is that supplier located in the United States? Do you want to find a Canadian supplier? So running through the whole initiative, the tariff response service we're developing here is something else that's critically important. And I know that Doctor Mustafa has talked about this as well. And that's the importance of intelligence. By working directly with businesses, we're going to be able to identify emerging problems, understand where the pressures are building and share that information with governments so they can respond more effectively. But but it's critical that business and other organisations were working with the Ledc here in London and Tech Alliance, and the city itself has put money forward, is that we have to come together to assist the government in delivering these problems to the businesses and folks that need help.

>>: All right. Actually, I'm going to pick up on that. We did ask the Ministry of Finance whether it's $7.5 million billion dollar package rather of new tariff relief measures. We're reaching the communities most affected and quickly enough. And so I want to read quickly part of their response. It reads part of this enhanced support is the strengthening of the regional Tariff response initiative by $1.5 billion. The initiative is delivered through Canada's seven regional development agencies and provides support to small and medium sized businesses dealing with tariff related pressures, including demonstrated liquidity needs. The government is also introducing additional liquidity support through the Business Development Bank of Canada and a fast track, one step review and approval process under the new Canada, Strong Diversification Fund to help get projects moving faster. So a little bit of what Graham was talking about there, Krista, help me understand here. Give me give me some of your thoughts. But how much of a difference could faster access to funds make.

>>: Make all the difference in the world for, for the communities that that, that we're hearing from, with, with Amo, there are shovel ready projects ready to go. They're needing the investment to be able to, to move forward in some of that work. I had mentioned earlier that Amo had done the research and modelling. They had modelled that a $3.45 billion investment in infrastructure in our communities. That would translate to a saving of 14,000 jobs. And that only tells part of the story because it's also about supply chains. It's also about supporting business. It's also about creating jobs in our community, supporting the businesses in our communities. And one of the things that we know is that, you know, historically support in communities supporting municipal infrastructure is one of the most effective ways to stimulate the economy. And so there is there's great opportunity here to keep people working to support local communities to, to support those supply chains, chains. Pardon me. Expand upon those supply chains and really leave our leave our communities, but leave our businesses in a stronger position at the end of the struggles that we are currently currently feeling across so many sectors.

>>: Rommel, what should provincial and federal governments take away from your report? What what is it that you are trying to drum up with this?

>>: You know, I think we have three clear messages. One is, you know, if you think about it, a, you know, municipal intelligence matters because, you know, the interactions that municipalities have with the local business and communities, they actually provide you, you know, signals ahead of time, right? And that allows you then to really, you know, navigate quickly in some of the pressure points that you see. Right? So that's number one. Number two, what we're seeing is also municipalities, you know, essentially coming together and working right and mobilising resources and responding to the need. And the third part is that, you know, it. There are coordination opportunities. We think that we should seize, you know, in terms of thinking about Team Canada approach, right? If there is an opportunity to improve coordination and improve these small businesses, regional economies, right. And in, in, you know, come ahead stronger through this process, we should, you know, jump on to it. And so that's the clear message. And I think we can work within, within the responsibilities that are there right across the orders of government. Right. I don't think we need a different infrastructure there, but it's more in terms of coordination. And Team Canada approach.

>>: Graham, you're getting the last word here. As we know, trade uncertainty is is unfortunately the new normal. As we talked about. You know, we can look at supply chains, we can get more money and get it to communities faster. But how do we make sure communities are ultimately prepared to weather the storm going forward? We don't know when we are going to get out of this, but how do they do it?

>>: Well, I think that better, better information getting to our governments is important. But, you know, I'm glad we're ending on the on the note of uncertainty, because a, a factory or a business doesn't have to close for a community to suffer. Sometimes the damage begins with an investment that never gets made. And governments can announce billions of dollars in assistance. That's one thing. It's important we applaud it. But making sure that a business or a community with 20 employees can actually access that help, that is another issue, and that is where we feel organisations like Chambers of Commerce and economic development organisations can step in.

>>: Rommel, Graham, Krista, I want to thank you so much for your insights. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me.

>>: Thank you.

>>: Thank you, thank you.

>>: So yeah, municipalities have their own specific challenges and unique identities, but should they really have their own unique way of doing elections? You know, without parties? TVO Today's nerds on politics breaks it all down.

>>: Should local elections have political parties? No.

>>: Political parties are the way we Organize basically all of our important elections. We've had political parties at the provincial and federal level since Confederation. And, you know, Canada is governed better than most countries. And I don't think that's an accident. What we have in Ontario at the municipal level is kind of an aberration. Other global cities that a city like Toronto likes to compare itself to Paris, New York, London, these are all cities that are governed by formally Organised, explicit political parties. So it's kind of weird, actually, in a global context.

>>: I kind of like my politics at Toronto City Hall to be weird and anomalous. All the reasons he just gave for having political parties in the federal parliament and at Queen's Park are exactly the reasons you don't want to have them at City Hall. We have a problem in politics right now of being far too partisan. Far too much of the time. I don't think we need to export that to Toronto City Hall. I'll tell you the other thing. We've been down this road before. One of the advantages of having a few more grey hairs than the other guy is that I remember back in the early 1970s at Toronto City Hall, they actually ran on party slates. David Crombie, the tiny, perfect mayor of Toronto, ran on a party slate. And you know what happened? One or 2 or 3 elections later, those party slates disappeared. People came to realise that they did not want party slash partisan politics exported to Toronto City Hall. And essentially they went the way of the dodo bird. Now, there's been one exception. The NDP used to run on a formal partisan platform. New Democratic candidates. It used to tick a lot of people off at City Hall. Now, let me make one additional point here. We kind of have quasi parties already, and it's been that way for 40 years. The mayor and his or her allies constitutes kind of a party in power. There's also always another group of city councillors who form kind of an official opposition. And then there's a third group in the middle you might call Persuadables. I'm good with that. Let's pump the brakes and just keep it there.

>>: I agree that we do have political parties of a kind at the municipal level, and in fact, I would add to that we have these now third party advertisers, groups like Progress Toronto or a Better City Toronto, that are starting to function more and more like formal political parties. They make coordinated endorsements, and they recruit like minded candidates for their platforms. If we've got parties of a kind anyway, and we've got third party groups raising and spending money, let's just be honest and do the thing. Let's just have actual political parties.

>>: I'll go for dishonesty in this case, mind you, I'm going to take you back here. Let's go back 40 plus years. The mayor of Toronto was a guy named Art Eggleton. And before every council meeting, Mr. Eggleton used to have in his office a kind of informal meeting with the members of Toronto City Council, who kind of felt the same way he did about the issues. And they would have a very sort of informal understanding that these were the issues that the mayor wanted to get past. And wouldn't it be wonderful if all of you like minded people went along with me on those issues? You give me a little something, I'll give you a little something. I like this better. There's no punishing people if they decide to go a different direction. It allows them to keep the appearance of independence. Anyway.

>>: If we wanted to do this, how would it work?

>>: It wouldn't.

>>: Political parties tend to form organically and naturally. Whenever you've got elected assemblies. The reason we don't have that at the municipal level in Ontario is not just because some people don't like the idea, it's because it's actually illegal. In Ontario, a political party has to be able to raise money and then spend that money on behalf of its members. And currently, Ontario's municipal election financing laws do not allow groups to spend or coordinate their spending with other candidates. If I give money to a candidate in a municipal election, whether that's a mayor or a councillor or whatever, they can only spend that money on their campaign. That money can't go to a higher party. It cannot be spent on any other candidate. We'd have to amend Ontario's election laws to allow people to give money to political parties, and then have that money spent in other races.

>>: I got one more thing to say. Politics has already broken my heart by taking away delegated conventions. They are the best. They always have been the best, and they don't exist anymore for terrible reasons. Don't break my heart again by bringing partisan politics to City Hall. We don't need it.

>>: I think that there might be some higher virtues or higher reasons we might consider in policy making, beyond just whether we break Steve Paikin heart or not.

>>: No, I think that's the most important consideration.

>>: How is the trade war affecting your community, and would you like to see parties play an official role in local elections? I want to know. Send us an email to TheRundown@TVO.org or drop us a comment on our YouTube page. Until then, I will see you next week.