https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/canada-sent-no-one-to-make-its-case-against-us-tariffs-so-i-went-instead-what-i-saw-sickened-me/article_39cc05c1-e13b-4178-abb7-493f98f5486a.html
“Many American companies attended seeking tariff vengeance against foreign competitors, and Canada let it stand unopposed.

Compare that with the room. Mexico sent its Economy Minister to appear in person and argue that there was no legal basis for the action, and that Mexico should be excluded. Peru’s minister argued that the United States had not carried out the individualized analysis the statute requires. Those governments treated a tariff proceeding against their workers as a fight over law and jurisdiction. Canada treated it as a form to fill out, and left half the form blank. Canadians like to say we go into a fight with our elbows up. Canada sent no person into that room, and no elbows.

The people who pay for Canada’s absence were not in the room either. They are the autoworker whose plant went quiet, the steelworker whose shift was cut, the millwright in a town where the mill was the town, and then it wasn’t. Some of them have already lost the jobs this proceeding is about. They dismantled nothing, and they broke no rule. They are simply told, after the fact, what was decided about their livelihoods in a room their own country chose not to enter. They deserved someone there to defend their rights. They had an empty chair.

I made Canada’s argument this week because someone with a Canadian connection had to, and no one from Ottawa would. That is not a role a private lawyer should have to fill. The government of a G7 country, facing tariffs on the work of its own citizens under a law that points the dispute somewhere else, should not have to be reminded to attend, or to argue, or to care.

We sing that we are the true north, strong and free. In that hearing room this week, we were the true north, strong and absent. Canada’s invitation for a chair is still there. It is still empty.