Carney Names Canada-U.S. Advisory Committee Ahead of CUSMA Review

Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a newly expanded Advisory Committee on Canada-U.S. Economic Relations on Tuesday, naming 24 members from across business, labour, Indigenous leadership and former elected politics as Ottawa prepares for a politically charged review of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement. The committee is chaired by Dominic LeBlanc, President of the King's Privy Council and Minister responsible for Canada-U.S. Trade, and will hold its first formal meeting on April 27, 2026.

The announcement lands at a tense moment in the bilateral relationship. U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has layered new tariffs on Canadian steel, aluminum and autos since taking office, upending assumptions about the trade architecture Canadian businesses have relied on since the 1990s. Carney, who has framed Canada's heavy exposure to the American economy as a vulnerability to be managed rather than celebrated, is using the committee to widen the circle of voices that will shape the government's strategy.

A statement from the Prime Minister's Office said the body will serve as a forum for expertise on all aspects of the Canada-U.S. economic relationship, feeding recommendations directly into the negotiating team. The review of the trade agreement, known in Canada as CUSMA, is scheduled for July.

Who is on the committee

The council brings together figures who rarely sit in the same room. Former Quebec premier Jean Charest, who chaired a similar advisory body under the previous Trudeau government, returns alongside Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association president Flavio Volpe and Unifor president Lana Payne. Former federal Conservative leader Erin O'Toole and former Conservative cabinet minister Lisa Raitt are also members, an unusual move that signals Carney's preference for a cross-partisan posture on trade.

Former Nunavut premier P.J. Akeeagok provides a northern and Indigenous governance lens, while former Liberal cabinet minister and high commissioner to the United Kingdom Ralph Goodale adds diplomatic experience. Tabitha Bull, chief executive of the Canadian Council for Indigenous Business, and Cameron Bailey, chief executive of the Toronto International Film Festival, round out a roster that reaches beyond the country's traditional trade lobby.

The business membership is concentrated in sectors most exposed to American tariffs and most central to the integrated North American economy. According to the Prime Minister's Office, the chief executives of CN Rail, the Bank of Montreal, Nutrien, TC Energy, Canfor and Teck Resources sit on the committee, along with Candace Laing, chief executive of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

What the committee is meant to do

The council's mandate is advisory rather than decision-making. Members are expected to help Ottawa stress-test negotiating positions, flag sectoral risks that might otherwise be missed inside the federal bureaucracy, and build political backing for trade-offs that could prove uncomfortable for specific regions or industries.

Carney has consistently argued that Canada needs a coherent response to Washington that does not simply mirror American escalation. In a video address released Sunday, the Prime Minister told Canadians that close ties with the United States, once a national strength, have become a weakness that must be corrected. Ottawa says it has signed 20 new trade or economic cooperation agreements on four continents in less than a year as part of that diversification drive.

By putting former political opponents and union leaders at the same table as resource executives, the committee is also an attempt to keep Canadian solidarity from cracking during a difficult negotiation. The government is well aware that Ottawa's CUSMA stance will create winners and losers within the country, and a council with broad legitimacy may make it easier to absorb the pain of compromises when they come.

The CUSMA review and what it changes

The CUSMA review in July is not automatically a renegotiation of the entire agreement, but it does open a formal window for each country to propose changes or even trigger the deal's sunset provisions. The Trump administration has already signalled interest in revisiting rules of origin, digital trade provisions and dispute settlement, while also maintaining tariffs on steel, aluminum and autos that are not compliant with CUSMA's preferential terms.

Canada's response has been to keep its own counter-tariffs in place while continuing to negotiate. Finance officials have described the situation as one of intensive talks rather than a full breakdown, with Ottawa arguing that the American measures violate the spirit of the existing deal. The advisory committee will help draft the formal submissions Canada brings to those talks.

Officials familiar with the negotiations have said privately that Canada's strategy depends on convincing American lawmakers and state governors that tariffs are hurting industries in their own districts. Volpe, Payne and the business chief executives on the committee are expected to play a significant role in that outreach.

Reaction from opposition parties

The Conservative opposition has criticised the Liberal government's handling of trade with the United States for months, arguing that Ottawa has been slow to retaliate and too reliant on talking points about diversification. Including O'Toole and Raitt in the advisory committee may soften some of that criticism, though party leadership is not obliged to follow the committee's eventual recommendations.

The New Democrats, for their part, have focused on the risks to Canadian workers. Unifor's Payne has been a vocal critic of tariffs that threaten jobs in auto plants across southwestern Ontario, and her continued role on the council will be watched closely by labour voters the Liberals courted in the spring election.

Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet has warned that Quebec's manufacturing and aluminum sectors cannot be treated as bargaining chips in a broader Canadian deal. With Charest on the committee, Quebec's industrial voice is not absent from the table, though critics note that the province has no active political representative in the group.

What it means for Canadians

For workers and consumers, the committee's work will be invisible until outcomes start to show up in final CUSMA language or in new bilateral agreements. But the stakes are concrete. American tariffs of 25 per cent on autos and automotive components and 50 per cent on steel and aluminum have already prompted layoff notices in Canadian steel towns, and warnings from auto parts producers about shifting investment south of the border.

Canadian counter-tariffs, meanwhile, are raising input costs for some domestic manufacturers and feeding through to consumer prices. Statistics Canada's March inflation report showed the annual rate rising to 2.4 per cent, in part because of energy and supply chain pressures tied to the broader trade environment.

If the committee helps produce a durable outcome in July that rolls back American tariffs on CUSMA-compliant goods, it will ease pressure on manufacturing employment in Ontario and Quebec, and on resource producers across the Prairies and British Columbia. If talks stall, Canadians can expect the current pattern of cross-border tariff escalation to continue into the fall.

Sectoral impacts across the country

The committee's composition reflects the sectors most exposed to the current U.S. tariff regime. Steel producers in Hamilton and Sault Ste. Marie, aluminum smelters in the Saguenay and in British Columbia, and auto parts makers across southwestern Ontario all face direct tariff pressure. The committee includes executives and labour leaders who can speak with authority on those industries.

Resource-extraction sectors including mining and forestry are also represented, with the chief executives of Teck Resources and Canfor on the council. Canadian lumber exports have been subject to periodic duty actions from the United States for decades, and a full CUSMA review raises the possibility of broader adjustments to trade in forest products.

Agriculture, while not explicitly represented by a sectoral executive on the roster, is indirectly present through the chair of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and through the broader business community on the committee. Farming groups have urged Ottawa to keep agricultural market access at the centre of the negotiating agenda.

The diversification strategy running in parallel

While the committee prepares for the CUSMA review, Carney's government is continuing to pursue trade agreements outside North America. The Prime Minister's Office has highlighted new deals across Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, part of what Carney calls a plan to reduce Canadian dependence on a single buyer.

That strategy took another step this week with the announcement of an incremental increase in direct flights between Canada and China. Officials framed the move as a way to support a target of increasing Canadian exports to China by 50 per cent by 2030. The advisory committee is expected to weigh in on how aggressively Ottawa should pursue similar openings elsewhere.

Diversification is not a quick process. Roughly three quarters of Canadian merchandise exports still flow to the United States, and building new commercial relationships takes years of logistics, regulation and trust. The committee's effectiveness will depend in part on whether its members can sustain political focus on long horizons, even as short-term tariff battles demand attention.

Lessons from the first Trump-era renegotiation

The original negotiation of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement during Trump's first term provides some institutional memory for Canada's current team. Chrystia Freeland, then foreign minister, led Canada's negotiating effort and worked closely with a predecessor advisory council. Many of the analytic tools and political relationships developed at that time remain useful, though the current context is substantially more adversarial.

Former officials involved in those negotiations have publicly cautioned that the current American administration is pursuing a more explicitly transactional posture than it did in 2018. The earlier negotiation produced modest changes to the previous agreement; the current review, by contrast, may test whether the basic preferential structure of North American trade can be preserved at all.

Canadian negotiators are reportedly preparing for a range of scenarios, including the possibility that the United States unilaterally pulls out of specific provisions while maintaining the formal architecture of the agreement. That range of contingencies makes the advisory committee's role in stress-testing options particularly valuable.

What's next

The first meeting of the advisory committee is scheduled for April 27 in Ottawa, according to the Prime Minister's Office. A full agenda has not been released publicly, but officials indicate members will be briefed on the state of play in Washington and asked to identify priority sectors and red lines.

Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne will then table the Spring Economic Update on April 28, a statement that is widely expected to include measures responding to tariff pressures on specific industries. The sequencing suggests the government wants the committee's input reflected in its broader economic messaging.

Beyond that, the CUSMA review in July will be the first major test of whether the assembled expertise can deliver. For Canadians watching tariff headlines and wondering how much longer the uncertainty will last, the answer may lie partly with a council whose work, for now, happens mostly behind closed doors.