Evidence of meeting #18 for International Trade in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was forced.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Liberal
Mélanie Joly Liberal Ahuntsic-Cartierville, QC
There's a lot of, as I said in French...many unpredictabilities linked to this administration. The U.S. Supreme Court decision is obviously something the negotiating team is following and, I must say, the entire world is following—
Conservative
Liberal
Mélanie Joly Liberal Ahuntsic-Cartierville, QC
I won't, in front of this committee, develop any form of strategy or tactics that the government could take. Overall, we should work as one team Canada to see what the impacts could be eventually, but I'm not here to make any form of—what should I say?—analysis of what the impact on Canada or the world could be.
December 4th, 2025 / 4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Jacob Mantle Conservative York—Durham, ON
I would suggest that it's concerning that the industry minister has no analysis of what will happen if this is the case.
Liberal
Liberal
Mélanie Joly Liberal Ahuntsic-Cartierville, QC
My job is to help the sectors in Canada while the negotiating team is negotiating, and it also has its own strategies.
The world is following what's going on in the U.S. every single day. We were following what was going on in Tennessee yesterday. We're following what's going on in Miami at the electoral—
Conservative
Liberal
Mélanie Joly Liberal Ahuntsic-Cartierville, QC
We have a team, and I'm talking here.... I used to be in charge of Foreign Affairs, so I know that we have a fantastic embassy in the U.S., and they're doing this work every single day.
Conservative
Jacob Mantle Conservative York—Durham, ON
Thank you, Minister. I'm going to move on because I have limited time. I appreciate that.
Conservative
Jacob Mantle Conservative York—Durham, ON
Obviously, a large part of our bilateral trade is defence production with the United States. A few weeks ago, in response to questions about the F-35, you made comments. You said you didn't believe there had been enough jobs created or industrial benefits out of the F-35 program. You repeated that yesterday, actually, and in response, Ambassador Hoekstra made some comments suggesting that this was an impediment to our trade negotiations.
You, as you said, were foreign minister. You were at the very first party at Mar-a-Lago with the president—
Conservative
Jacob Mantle Conservative York—Durham, ON
If anyone should have known that injecting uncertainty into the F-35 deal would piss off the Americans, I would have thought it was you. My question is, why would you do this at the eleventh hour? Why inject uncertainty into this negotiation?
Liberal
Mélanie Joly Liberal Ahuntsic-Cartierville, QC
There are a couple of things.
I was not at the first party at Mar-a-Lago, so your facts are wrong.
In addition, following the imposition of tariffs against us, we took a decision that I think Canadians support. My question for you is, do you support the decision of putting the F-35 contract on pause, yes or no?
Conservative
Liberal
Liberal
Mélanie Joly Liberal Ahuntsic-Cartierville, QC
Well, you know, this is part of parliamentary committees. This is democracy.
