THE DISPATCH

The Friday Dispatch

That's not me. That's Wab Kinew, Premier of Manitoba, summing up the week on his way into the First Ministers' Meeting in Charlottetown.

No communique language, no "deeply concerned," no measured disappointment. Dumb. And the second half of his sentence is the part Washington should care about but doesn’t. This only makes things more expensive for Americans.

Kinew has been on a run lately. He's also the guy who answered the smoke-fee talk by pointing out that Manitoba sent wildfire fighters south to fight American fires this season and will keep doing it no matter what Washington says, because that's what decent people do. Hard to tariff that.

Quick recap for anyone who spent the week underground, which for this readership is not a figure of speech. On Monday the White House signed three proclamations under a Depression-era tariff law, putting 50 percent duties on about $20 billion of Canadian goods effective August 19. Wine, cream, cement, electrical equipment, hockey gear. The exemption list, as noted here Monday, was the real meat of it: energy, potash, critical minerals, and fish all carved out. They tariffed what they can live without and spared what they can't.

By Thursday, Ottawa had its answer: nothing. Yet. On purpose. Carney came out of Charlottetown saying everything is on the table if there's no deal by August 19, but responding in advance would be counterproductive. Talks are intensifying instead. Sometimes the fastest move is the deliberate one.

Doug Ford, as usual, skipped the deliberate part and went straight to the interesting question. He wants Canada to withhold potash and oil. Danielle Smith wants no retaliation at all. So Ontario is proposing to weaponize the exact commodities the White House just exempted while Alberta proposes the opposite, which is about the most Canadian federation you can draw on a napkin.

But let's take Ford's idea seriously for a minute, because the math is worth seeing.

How expensive could it get, exactly?

Kinew says the tariffs make life more expensive for Americans. Correct. Now run the thought experiment: what happens if Canada did what Ford suggests and went after the categories Washington deliberately excluded?

// Oil. 
Canada now supplies 64 percent of American crude oil imports, about 1.4 billion barrels a year, up from 41 percent a decade ago. They didn't reduce their dependence during this trade war. They deepened it. And it's not swappable supply. Midwest refineries spent billions on equipment built specifically to process Canadian heavy crude. You can't run West Texas light through a machine tuned for Alberta bitumen without writing a very large cheque and going dark while you do it. A supply disruption doesn't mean inconvenience at those refineries. It means gas prices across the Midwest doing things that end political careers.

// Potash. 
Canada supplies 85 to 90 percent of American potash imports. Washington put potash on its own Critical Minerals List last year, which is government-speak for "we checked and we cannot live without this." The backup supplier is Russia, at around 9 percent. So the contingency plan for losing Canadian fertilizer is calling Moscow. American corn and soybean farmers, a constituency the White House allegedly cares about, would feel that within one planting season.

// Uranium. 
American reactors sourced a third of their uranium from Canada in 2024, more than from any other country, right as nuclear demand climbs on the back of AI data centres. The clean energy comeback runs through Saskatchewan.

// Electricity. 
Canada is the largest supplier of US energy imports, full stop, and that includes the power itself. Ontario and Quebec keep the lights on for a meaningful chunk of the northeastern grid.

Add it up and Ford's napkin isn't a bluff. It’s Pandora’s Box sitting in a drawer both capitals know about.

Which is exactly why Carney won't touch it in advance.

Leverage like that is worth the most while it's still theoretical. The moment you use it, you've spent it, and Americans at the pump and the grain elevator pay the bill Kinew is describing. The premier called the tariffs dumb because he's read the same math. The dumbest part is that Washington wrote it down for us, in the exemption schedule, and signed it.

Twenty-six days to August 19.

// NOTES FROM THE NORTH

Something new at the top of the page

You may have noticed a new name in the ad spot this week: The Good Work Club.

That one's mine, so let me tell you what it is.

Twenty-plus years in this industry leaves you with two things: opinions and a contact list. The Good Work Club is the contact list, put to work. It connects companies with a curated network of experienced public relations professionals, designers, developers, marketers and more. People I know. People whose work I've seen hold up.

I’ve been building this list and community for more than a decade, it used to be called Offload and here’s an article about it from 2014… I’ve been running this for a long time.

Every week someone in here asks me if I know a designer who won't make their site look like a template, or a PR person who understands the difference between a drill result and a press release about a drill result.

Well, the thing is that many of the best I know are finding themselves being made redundant, or at at the very least they can see the writing on the wall as they train their AI replacement.

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When you need Good Work done, I'll help you find someone who knows what they're doing. 

That's the whole pitch. No platform, no algorithm, no marketplace with 4,000 freelancers and a star rating system.

A phone call with someone you know (me) to scope out your needs and then a match with a curated set of options from people who know their craft and have results to prove it.

If that sounds useful, I'd love to chat with you about what this would look like for your operation.

Hit reply. It comes straight to me, because there is no one else here.

-Lee