(MP Randy Hoback/Facebook)

By Teena Monteleone

Federal Politics

‘We need to be united as Canadians first’; MP Hoback on U.S. trade relations

Oct 29, 2025 | 5:00 PM

Prince Albert’s Member of Parliament Randy Hoback said he is happy to see Prime Minister Mark Carney taking a page out of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s playbook, by trying to diversify Canada’s business sector to a variety of other markets.

“It’s something the Conservatives would be doing,” Hoback said. “I have no issues with him looking for more places to sell our beef, to sell our canola, to sell things that we’ve built. We’re an exporting nation, so we need to make sure we’re doing that.”

Carney is set to meet with leaders from South Korea, Australia and New Zealand as he continues an Asian trip to promote trade, secure foreign investment, and diversify Canada’s economic partnerships. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit gets underway on Friday, and Carney will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the first formal meeting between Xi and a Canadian prime minister since 2017.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump called off trade negotiations with Canada last week, citing an Ontario ad with clips of former president Ronald Reagan criticizing tariffs and questioning their longterm effectiveness.

Hoback said premiers taking trade matters into their own hands comes back to lack of leadership. He said when Trudeau was prime minister, the premiers didn’t have confidence in him to lead the charge against the U.S., so they formed their own alliance. Hoback, who is an advisor on Canada-U.S. relations to Conservative leader Pierre Poillievre, said there needs to be a Team Canada game plan, where everyone is speaking with the same voice.

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“We need to be united as Canadians first and doing what’s best for our country and working together to get those types of results. Now, we’ve got a faction forming between different provinces but that’s not helpful. The prime minister needs to get that under control and we need to get back to the point when Canadians, whoever they are, whatever party they are, whatever level of government, are speaking with one voice,” he said.

To help promote Canadian goods, Hoback believes the government should be taking advantage of the systems that are already in place: trade commissioners, Export Development Canada (EDC), and Small and Medium Enterprises (SME), for example.

“I also think that when you’re doing trade deals, you need to have transparency, and you need to have the stakeholders more involved. That’s how you get buy-in, and that’s how you pass a trade bill once it’s completed. I find the Carney government is too secretive and keeps things too close to their chest. They’re not sharing information on what’s going on to not only members of Parliament, but to other stakeholders, and that can be problematic after you get a so-called deal because then you gotta get people convinced that that’s the deal that Canada needs.”

As Carney navigates Trump and trade pressure, results of a recent survey by Abacus Data on the current state of federal politics showed Canadians aren’t sure Poilievre would do any better. When questioned about the perceived impact of a Conservative government on Canada-U.S. relations, 29 per cent said things related to Trump would be better, 32 per cent said the relationship would be worse, and a plurality of 40 per cent said it wouldn’t make much difference because, “Trump is Trump.”

(www.abacusdata.ca)

Poilievre received some recent criticism after he suggested that ‘despicable’ leadership of the national police force helped cover up alleged crimes of former prime minister Justin Trudeau. The Liberals, Greens and NDP called on the Conservative leader to apologize. When MPs met earlier in the week for their caucus meeting, some deflected reporters’ questions about their leader’s comments. When asked about criticisms that the Conservatives are too quiet about their leader’s sometimes controversial comments, Hoback said he doesn’t hear that.

“You know, the leader is a very, very good communicator…one of the best communicators I’ve seen in a long time. So, he has his style and that’s the way he gets the message out and people like it. So, that’s who he is and we have to respect that.”

Poilievre will face a mandatory leadership review in January.

-With files from the Canadian Press

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