Janice Charette

And I think that Canadians are right to feel that.

I think that there's another side of it, which is knowing from what I've heard and from the people I've spoken to, that Jameson Greer and Janice Charette, the Canadian lead trade negotiator, get along quite well.

And anything that you've heard from Jameson Greer more recently is how he is measured and how the conversations unfold.

that he has had at the table have been fruitful and that they were, in a sense, I mean, for all intents and purposes, things were on the right track until Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, got involved.

[laughs]

Uh, y- you know, I keep coming back to something Janice Charette was reported to have told, uh, American negotiators before talks broke down, which was that if they couldn't get to a deal, if the Americans went forward with this, with this round of tariffs, if Canada was forced to respond, that they would, they would have something of a cliff moment, that they would go over a cliff-

Yeah

... that this would get harder, not easier, that the political environment would get rougher, not e- not smoother.

And so to the extent I'm permitted to have an advocative position here, my position is that it's time to put the professional negotiators back in charge.

A few weeks ago, the professional negotiators, US Trade Representative Greer, Minister LeBlanc fr- US Trade Representative Greer from the United States, US Trade Representative LeBlanc from Canada, Chief Trade Negotiator Janice Charette from Canada, were locked in a room, they were negotiating, they were making progress in these nego- in these negotiations.

We need to put them back in charge, go into a room, not at press conferences.

They weren't calling each other names.

I think this happens a lot [laughs] when deals fall apart, each side blames the other.

We've seen a sort of narrow and narrow version of what happened come out on both sides, both, uh, to, to me, to my mind, like the most compelling figures describing what happened are the chief negotiators, right? They're the trade rep, Jameson Greer on the American side, and Janice Charette, uh, on the Canadian side.

Both of them have provided a lot more detail from what the Prime Minister, um, provided at the outset, um, and what you hear from Trump and, and, you know, his true social posts.

And to my mind, like that's really where the truth lies is some space in between [laughs] Janice Charette and Jameson Greer.

And that's really interesting because the question of whether the deal made sense or not sits there.

It sits in that conversation.