OTTAWA — Liberal leadership candidate Frank Baylis says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Canada’s premiers have been approaching President Donald Trump's trade threats all wrong.
The Montreal businessman said Thursday the leaders have made “mistake after mistake,” starting with Trudeau's decision to rush to Trump's Mar-a-Lago Florida resort in November soon after he threatened Canada with tariffs.
Baylis told The Canadian Press in an interview that a government led by him would take the opposite approach. He said the only way to deal with a bully like Trump is to dig in your heels and refuse to offer him anything.
"You don't fly down to his private residence when he's not even the president. That's completely acquiescent to him," he said. "What happened after we visited? Did he become more aggressive or less?"
Ottawa produced a $1.3 billion plan to upgrade border security after Trump complained about drugs and illegal immigrants entering the United States — problems the U.S. largely has with Mexico, not Canada.
But while Trump paused his initial 25 per cent tariff threat, he has not taken it off the table and has since escalated by taking aim at steel and aluminum imports.
Baylis said that while the premiers flew down "en masse" to Washington earlier this month, none of them managed to get a meeting with the president or vice-president.
"We're missing leadership from A to Z on this and when I'm prime minister, that's all going to stop," he said.
Baylis said he would deal with Trump better than his opponents have, due to his strong business background and experience in negotiating contracts with Americans.
"Whether we like it or not, the Americans have put as a president a highly aggressive bully of a man, who's a businessman," he said. "And people coming from a genteel world of bureaucrats or banking, they're not going to know how to deal with this character."
The comment was a nod to the presumed front-runner in the leadership race: Mark Carney, a former Bank of Canada governor and former senior Department of Finance official.
"This is not a negotiation. This is really about a shakedown," Baylis said. "This is about intimidation and seeing how much he can continue to take for free. So unless we put a stop to that, it'll just continue."
Baylis is a longtime party activist who successfully ran in 2015 under the Liberal banner, but chose not to re-offer in 2019. He was the first candidate to announce he would run to replace Trudeau.
Baylis sold his company Baylis Medical Company Inc. to Boston Scientific Corporation in 2022 for $1.75 billion. He said he has negotiated countless times with Americans during his career.
"The Donald Trump types I've met many times, so this is not new to me," he said. "I'm not going to be learning on the job, and I'm not going to be spraying bullets all over the place, trying and helping and hoping."
Baylis is one of five Liberal leadership candidates who will square off in a set of televised debates in Montreal on Monday and Tuesday.
Former finance minister Chrystia Freeland, former Liberal House leader Karina Gould and former Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla are also seeking the party's top job.
Freeland has centred her entire campaign on proving that she's the strongest fighter to take on Trump. Carney has based his campaign on his economic and business experience.
Liberals select their next leader in just over two weeks.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 20, 2025.
Kyle Duggan, The Canadian Press