Ottawa has been preparing for next U.S. president 'for months,' foreign affairs minister says
Minister's comments come after former Trump ambassador said Canada should be prepared for more tense relations
Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly says Canadian preparations for the next U.S. president have been in the works for months as American voters decide who will replace Joe Biden in the White House.
"We've been preparing for this for months through our diplomatic network across the U.S., but also around the world," Joly told reporters in Ottawa on Tuesday.
"This government is going to be able to address issues that are important to Canadians notwithstanding who the American people will decide."
Today is the final day for voters to cast ballots in a tight presidential race between Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Joly's comments come after one of Trump's former ambassadors to Canada said Canada should prepare for what could be a more antagonistic bilateral relationship with the U.S. if her old boss wins.
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"Canada, they need to buckle up, The whole world needs to buckle up because President Trump will continue his policies from 2016. We are going to make America great again and we will be bringing it back to where it was under the Trump presidency," Kelly Craft told Radio-Canada in an interview on Sunday.
At the NATO summit earlier this year, Trudeau vowed to meet the defence pact's spending targets, which Canada has long ignored. Trudeau said Canada will spend two per cent of its GDP on the military by 2032.
Craft said that's not soon enough and she expects Trump will demand more defence spending on a shorter timeline.
When asked Tuesday about the possibility of speeding up military spending, Joly was non-commital, saying that Canada will "abide by our obligation towards our NATO allies."
Trade is likely to become a major issue should Trump return to the Oval Office. He is promising a minimum 10 per cent tariff on all imports into the U.S. — which would be a disruptive development for Canadian businesses and the workers they employ, given that an estimated $3.6 billion in goods cross the border every day.
Joly insisted that Ottawa has worked to create important ties with officials at the local and state levels who can help advocate for continued open trade between the two countries.
"We have now a relationship that goes deep at different levels of the American society," she said.
Trudeau asked about potential unrest
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau echoed Joly's statements on his way into question period on Tuesday, saying that he's prepared to work with whoever wins.
Sources say that, behind the scenes, Trudeau has had conversations with advisers about potential outcomes and has been briefed by Canadian security officials on the potential for violent unrest in the U.S. prompted by a delayed result.
If the results are as close as the polls suggest and mail-in ballots become a deciding factor, there will be no clear winner on Tuesday night — a repeat of the experience during the 2020 election, when Biden wasn't declared the winner until days after election day.
Trump seized on the delay and declared victory before many states had finalized their results.
The 2020 delay sparked protests and weeks of unrest that culminated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trudeau dodged a question about whether he's concerned about the potential for violence.
"My job as Canadian prime minister has always been to work with whomever the Americans elect to be their president … and that's exactly what I'm going to continue to do," he told reporters Tuesday.
The FBI said Tuesday that it has heard reports of a number of bomb threats at polling stations across the U.S., but none have been deemed credible.
"The FBI is aware of bomb threats to polling locations in several states, many of which appear to originate from Russian email domains. None of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far," the agency said in a statement.
The FBI did not identify the states in question, but Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said earlier Tuesday that the state's election process had snuffed out some bomb threats that he said came from Russia.
Officials in Fulton County, Georgia said they received "multiple calls" and the threats forced a brief closure of two polling places.
Officials continue to warn of what they say is an unprecedented level of foreign influence and disinformation that they expect will persist beyond election day.
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With files from Rosemary Barton, Louis Blouin and The Associated Press