In the fall of 2024, Justin Trudeau’s office was ready with congratulatory words in case Kamala Harris made history as the first woman president of the United States. Briefing notes advised the prime minister to recall their last meeting in Philadelphia, when Harris told him her campaign “would be bloody difficult, but we’ll win.” Trudeau was urged to celebrate her resilience, praise her campaign, and emphasize shared priorities such as women’s rights, abortion rights, climate change, and the environment. The notes even included an invitation to visit Canada “at the next possible opportunity.”
The carefully crafted words were never used. Instead, Donald Trump reclaimed the White House, ending Harris’s bid and reshaping the U.S.-Canada relationship once more. Access-to-information documents obtained by The Canadian Press show federal officials had prepared for either outcome, even drafting media statements for a Harris victory that would have framed her win as a breakthrough moment inspiring women, particularly racialized women, to seek political office.
The notes for a call with Trump struck a very different tone. They suggested Trudeau describe the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade pact as “a remarkable legacy of your last presidency” and emphasized cooperation on pipelines, transmission lines, and supply chain security. Absent were references to women’s rights or the environment. Unlike the Harris draft, there was no proposal for an early face-to-face meeting.
In the weeks after the election, Trudeau did fly to Mar-a-Lago for dinner with Trump, who had threatened sweeping tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods unless the countries cracked down on migrants and illicit drugs crossing into the U.S. At that dinner, Trump reportedly floated the idea of Canada becoming the 51st state — a jab he would repeat in the months to come.
Trudeau later pointed to Harris’s defeat as a setback for women’s progress, but Canada soon faced more immediate consequences. Trump’s second administration slapped tariffs on Canadian steel, aluminum, automobiles, and other exports, fulfilling predictions outlined in the government’s own briefing materials. Officials had warned that Trump’s return would bring a “more inward looking, protectionist, transactional” White House, less committed to international rules and more focused on economic security.
For Canada, the documents capture a moment suspended between two political futures: one in which a historic first reshaped U.S. leadership, and another in which familiar battles over tariffs, migration, and trade once again defined the cross-border relationship.