Wednesday August 26, 2026 | OTTAWA, ON [Posted 11:10 am PT]
NDP Leader Avi Lewis had a phone call with Prime Minister Mark Carney this morning regarding measures the government is taking in response to the Trump administration tariffs.
“I reiterated the NDP’s support for Canada walking away from a bad deal,” said Lewis in a news release today.
He says he told Carney that the NDP welcomes the relief measures announced in the tariff response package “as a first step to assist workers and industries”.
In a social media post, Lewis said the phone call lasted an hour today, with the prime minister “taking him through the details of the negotiations” with the United States.
The NDP supported Carney’s walking away from that deal. “No deal is better than a bad deal,” he reiterated.
More action required:
“However, more action is required to make sure workers get the support they need,” says Lewis. He wants to see Canada “responding at scale and speed to the US economic attacks”.
NDP wants:
The New Democratic Party is asking of the federal government:
- Substantial supports to help workers in tariff-affected sectors. This should include wage subsidies with strong guardrails to prevent their misuse by employers. We cannot afford a repeat of what happened during the pandemic, when corporations received wage subsidies only to award bonuses and dividends to their CEOs and shareholders. The money must be used for keeping workers employed.
- Strengthen EI by ensuring that more workers are able to access EI by reducing the number of hours needed to qualify, and increasing benefits. Our EI system was broken before this trade war started, with only one in three workers qualifying for a program that they pay into. This makes fixing it all the more urgent.
- An export tax on critical minerals and energy that the US depends on. We need to use every bit of our leverage in response to these unjustified tariffs, and the revenue from an export tax can be used to fund enhanced supports for impacted workers and their families.
Long-term:
In the long term view, Lewis says he shared with the prime minister that “I believe we are at a fork in the road in this country, and it’s past time that we doubled down on a clear plan to Trump-proof our economy”.
So far, the Liberal government’s approach has prioritized sectors that are already disproportionately US-owned, like fossil fuels, AI, and weapons, says Lewis.
More stable future:
New Democrats want to see a safer more stable future for Canadians, with major projects that are Canadian through-and-through — projects that make people’s lives better immediately and in the long term.
The Carney government does have a significant plan for a national electricity grid. In that context, Lewis outlines housing, healthcare, manufacturing and transportation running off a 21st century grid, powered by renewable energy.
In BC today:
NDP Leader Avi Lewis will be in BC today, helping out with the by-election campaign in North Vancouver–Capilano.