NDP Leader Singh outlines plan to protect Canadian workers from potential tariff fallout

Federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh was in Montreal Thursday laying out his plan to counter potential U.S. tariffs.

His “Build Canadian, Buy Canadian” plan would ban American companies from all federal procurement contracts when Canadian workers could do them — should U.S. President Donald Trump follow through with imposing tariffs.

“We need to make sure that if we’re spending public money, any public money, that it goes towards Canadian companies, Canadian contracts that hire Canadian workers,” Singh told reporters.

Sing also wants Canada to carry out more secondary and tertiary transformation of raw materials rather than exporting resources in their raw state without added value.

“The problem we have in Canada and in Quebec too, often, is that we have natural resources and we sell them without having had the chance, the opportunity to add value. We must refine the products in Canada, in Quebec, we must invest more to do these processes in Canada,” he said.

“I think the time is over for only selling natural resources without having a step in Canada where we add value, where we create more jobs in Canada.”

Not so fast, says Canada’s energy minister.

“With all due respect to Mr. Singh, I think he is getting a little bit ahead of himself on a lot of these issues,” Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Jonathan Wilkinson said. “It was last week when he said we should stop sending critical minerals to the United States, any listed cobalt and lithium, neither of which we actually produce in significant quantities in this country.”

Another major element of Singh’s plan would be to protect and create more unionized jobs during a potential trade war by permanently changing Canada’s procurement policies to favour unionized companies.

Singh cited the approximately 250 layoffs announced by two Quebec companies in the last days – Sheertex Inc. and South Shore Furniture.

“We want to make sure that these are contracts going to companies that have good paying jobs,” the NDP leader said. “One of the best ways to ensure that those workers have safe conditions and good pay is if the workers are unionized.”

Singh wants Parliament to resume so that measures to protect workers can be adopted immediately.

“We have to put in place better protections for these workers. These workers should not be left on their own. They should know that there’s a government there for them.”

Singh would also like to change the rules to Canada’s employment insurance, making more people eligible and increasing the amounts paid out.

“The majority of Canadians, 60 per cent of Canadians who are working cannot access EI. That is probably the most glaring problem with the EI system,” he said.

“The amount is insufficient to meet the needs of workers, to pay the bills that we have right now with the cost of inflation.”

Also speaking in Montreal Thursday, Wilkinson again “encouraged Mr. Singh to hold on a little bit.”

“The tariffs aren’t in place yet, but we certainly are looking at what can be done to be able to support workers and industries that would be impacted,” the minister said. “And so in that context, obviously, unemployment insurance is one of the tools and there may be others, but certainly we are thinking very actively about how to do that in what will be a very challenging context if there are tariffs.”