Meet Canada’s CEOs who are banking on Trump

“Traders” and “traitors” alike want Trump’s help

You might call them “traders” or “traitors,” but there is no mistaking that some folks in Canada are cheering for Trump.

Much of the country is still buzzing over Carney’s speech in Davos calling for middle-sized countries to band together and resist “American hegemony.” U.S. President Trump was so visibly unhappy, many think PM Carney must have hit the right note.

Yet not everyone agrees with the Prime Minister, and are taking Trump’s side.

The Trump administration admitted this week its top officials have been meeting with leaders of the Alberta successionist group that is driving a referendum to break up Canada. The anti-Canada group wants U.S. funding to back its campaign.

B.C. Premier David Eby put it bluntly: “There’s an old-fashioned word for that, and that word is ‘treason,’” he said. “It is completely inappropriate to seek to weaken Canada, to seek to go and ask for assistance to break up this country from a foreign power and, with respect, a president who has not been particularly respectful of Canada’s sovereignty.”

Canadian CEOs for Trump

You don’t have to go to Alberta to find people who want to cozy-up to Trump. There are plenty “traders” of stocks and bonds on Bay Street who are opposed to PM Carney’s stance.

“Carney is a really smart guy and he said in the United Kingdom during Brexit, it’s really dangerous for the United Kingdom to separate itself from its No. 1 trading partner,” Goldy Hyder, chief executive of the Business Council of Canada, said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “And yet that’s exactly kind of the narrative that came out in Davos, so I don’t know how to square that circle.”

The Business Council represents the CEOs of the six biggest banks, along with top executives from major railways, telecommunications firms, pipeline operators, retailers and manufacturers.

Photo by Jonathan Gong on Unsplash

As PeaceQuest readers will recall, the head of Scotiabank said Canada should cash in on Trump’s muscle-flexing in the Americas. “Longer-term, this is a good thing for the Western Hemisphere. It’s a good thing for the U.S. It’s a good thing for the Bank of Nova Scotia,” said Scotiabank’s CEO Scott Thomson to a Bay Street crowd.

It may be going too far to say the CEOs want to break up Canada like the Alberta separatists, but they all share common cause in pursuing their political – and financial – aims through cooperation (or subjugation) to the Trump Administration.

Meanwhile, PM Carney is enjoying a post-Davos bump in approval, according to Angus Reid. PeaceQuest readers seem to be giving a thumbs-up sign, too, given last weekend’s poll results.

Nevertheless, on Friday GM Canada’s layoffs hit their Oshawa assembly plant, putting up to 1,200 autoworkers out of work. As the economy suffers under U.S. tariffs, it’s difficult to predict whether Canadians’ resolve will stay firm in its opposition to Trump.

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Readers support PM Carney’s Davos speech

Last week we talked about PM Carney’s frank, blunt, but polite, rebuke to global power shifts being created by Trump as the international order and the United Nations are being pushed aside. Carney’s speech in Davos, Switzerland to political and financial leaders has been reprinted widely, including in The Independent (UK) and the New York Times.

By far, PeaceQuest readers said they agreed with PM Carney’s speech, most strongly supported (72%). About one-in-ten did not agree (9%).

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That speech by Mark Carney? Here it is

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