How to Fight Back
Canada has enjoyed an important relationship with the U.S. that I hope will continue long after Donald Trump has departed. But the next four years are going to be no picnic. I believe that Donald Trump is trying to extort our manufacturing, our resources and our sovereignty, and I do not believe that any respectful relationship comes from bending before a bully. I have been inspired to watch Canadians rise up as one against Trump’s gangsterism. In Washington, they hear our patriotism. They hear and feel our determination. So far, we’re the only country that has had the courage to retaliate. It’s great to see that Canadians are willing to fight and to sacrifice because we must fight. And so those sacrifices are going to be deep. This is our economic Battle of Britain. The odds look a little steep.
But I think we can win this. The economists will tell you that the U.S. has a consumer-driven economy. I just came back from Florida, from the heart of MAGA land, and I am 100 per cent certain that consumers are in no mood to sacrifice. They did not vote for more expensive cars, more expensive energy. They’ve been promised a golden age. I believe they’re complacent. I believe they’re soft. If we can make them feel pain, and not even that much, but sustained pain, MAGA will crack, and so will Donald Trump—as long as we don’t crack first.
Secondly, there’s the stock market. People will tell you that the stock market is perhaps Donald Trump’s only guardrail. It has to go higher while he’s in power. But it’s frothy already, and markets hate uncertainty. Anytime he mentions tariffs, the market goes down. We must make the market go down. That will make ours go down. That’s the way it is. We need to show him that Canada can absorb a haymaker and keep on. That we will embrace sacrifice if he’s going to behave that way, but they will be forced to do the same.
There’s a fundamental issue that we must address if we want a truly great country. We are seeing a fraying of society, which the populist politics of today are reflecting, not causing. The trust that Canada’s business community has always enjoyed with its workers and broader society has decayed. It’s reflected in the surveys, it’s reflected in the informed behaviour of the two main federal party leaders, neither of whom are keen to get up with us on this particular stage. This loss of faith is particularly acute among the young. The recent rise in popularity of the AfD party in Germany was fuelled by the young. In the United States, the group between 20 and 45 believe that the murder of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson was justified. And in Canada, 40 per cent of our people in that same age group would be perfectly happy to join the United States. If far too many people can no longer see the connection between a successful corporate Canada and their own personal prosperity, enough so that they’d be quite happy if we weren’t successful, we have a real problem.
The housing crisis afflicting young people and lower-income groups is acute. But growing income disparity over the last 30 years, I believe, is the biggest problem. Everybody knows wage growth at the lower and middle income levels has stalled and that a disproportionate share of wealth creation in those three decades has gone to the top 10 per cent, specifically the top one per cent. The IMF’s own research shows that less income and wealth disparity leads to greater prosperity, to more growth and to lower taxes. I believe that all of us need to directly engage with this problem because if we don’t fix it, someone will fix it for us. And that will be much worse, as we are seeing.
Izzy Sharp, the founder of the Four Seasons, the world’s most successful luxury hotel brand, had a business philosophy that could teach us something important today. He said that he never worried about his guests. He worried about his employees. He knew that if his employees were well-trained and happy, his guests would be happy. And if his employees weren’t happy, his guests would never be. And just so we’re clear, nobody ever called Izzy Sharp a socialist. He was a Canadian legend who profoundly affected my career. We have to emulate his outlook.
At EllisDon, we made a conscious decision about three decades ago not to worry so much about where we were going. We don’t know where we’re going now. But we do care a whole lot about how we’re getting there and, most importantly, with whom. In other words, we said let’s just go find the very best people we can and see what happens. And it worked. Over several decades, Canadians let us build their hospitals, universities, office towers, factories and homes. Putting people first is a winning approach.
This moment in history is a wake-up call and there’s an urgency to meeting it. Not tomorrow, today. Yesterday. We need courageous decisions by the political leaders right now. To secure the future prosperity of the nation, we’ve got to move now.
Geoff Smith is the chair of the board of EllisDon, a global construction services company. This opinion piece is an edited version of a speech he delivered at the Board of Trade “Dare to Lead” Annual Gala in Toronto on February 27, 2025.
