Canadians are often summed up in a single word: nice. But the past ten months have told a different story. As the U.S. trade war disrupts supply chains, stalls investments, and tests industries across the country, Canada’s real strength has emerged – and it’s coming from the ground up. In factories, ports, farms, small businesses, and homes, a clearer defining trait is taking shape. It isn’t niceness; it’s resilience.
This reality emerged to the forefront at Cities at the Front Lines of Trade Disruption: How Municipalities Can Strengthen Canada’s Economic Resilience, a national virtual panel event led by Romel Mostafa, Director of Ivey’s Lawrence National Centre for Policy & Management, and featuring David Paterson, Ontario’s Representative in Washington, D.C., and mayors Josh Morgan (London, ON), Donna Reardon (Saint John, NB), and Alanna Hnatiw (Sturgeon County, AB).
From their illuminating conversation, one message cut through: cities may be taking the first hits, but they’re also leading solutions. The strategies already working on the ground point to three levers Canada must now double down on to weather this trade war: relationships, diversification, and strategic coordination.
Relationships: Canada’s most undervalued trade asset
Joining from the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C., David Paterson opened the discussion with a clear assessment: Canada is navigating a volatile trade landscape that could stay unsettled for years. The U.S. has issued tariffs broadly, but as America’s largest trading partner, Canada feels the shock the fastest. With three-quarters of Canadian exports headed south, even small disruptions ripple quickly through industries and communities.
Yet Paterson was far from pessimistic. The U.S., he emphasized, relies heavily on Canadian minerals, clean energy, manufacturing inputs, and talent; and tariffs ultimately make life harder for Americans themselves. Canada has leverage, he argued, but using it requires one thing above all: relationships, especially with U.S. business leaders at every level.
“Americans talking to Americans is going to be the most effective lobbying tool that we have down here,” he said. “…so, my opinion is the best thing that we can do is to have dialogue with our American friends and help them to understand.”
The mayors echoed this point. Relationship-building isn’t a soft skill in a trade war; it’s an economic strategy. Canadian companies work with a vast network of U.S. customers and suppliers – people who influence Congress, state governments, and ultimately, voters. Mobilizing those ties humanizes the impact of tariffs and makes their real cost harder to ignore.
Mayor Reardon drove the point home with a blunt reminder: “Our beef is not with the U.S.; it’s with the policy.” And if Canadians want that policy to change, she said, the push must come from the ground level: “It needs to come from the grassroots… it can’t come from the top down,” she said. In other words, in a volatile trade environment, meaningful change must start with front-line relationships, or it will never reach Ottawa or Washington.
Diversification: Building shock absorption into the economy
If relationships are Canada’s most undervalued trade asset, diversification is its built-in shock absorber.
In London, Ontario, Mayor Morgan has seen this firsthand. Once reliant on manufacturing and the auto sector, the region has spent years shifting toward agri-food, health care, and technology. Today, its growing agri-food cluster – including an Italian pasta maker’s first North American plant – reflects a simple truth: “…the world needs food,” said Morgan. “So, whether it's the United States or elsewhere, the diversification of our economy into products that are needed globally – and have widespread reach across the world – has been a great advantage to us and something we continue to lean into.”
Sturgeon County is undergoing a similar recalibration. When tariffs briefly disrupted oat shipments into the U.S., Mayor Hnatiw’s region accelerated efforts to move into defense and aerospace, while doubling down on keeping more value at home. As she put it: “The best thing to do is add value. We should not be exporting raw commodities. We need to add the value here and export a product that's either half-finished or all the way finished, whether that's an energy or a food product.”
Saint John offers a different form of diversification, and it’s one shaped by geography. With an Atlantic-facing port oriented toward Europe, Mayor Reardon is expanding industrial land, modernizing zoning, and pursuing new innovative opportunities, like an AI data centre that could pair its excess heat with local greenhouses.
Across all three cities, a clear pattern shows that trade shocks are painful, but they are pushing communities to broaden what they produce, who they sell to, and how much value they keep at home.
Strategic coordination: Listening locally, acting nationally
With uncertainty emerging as a constant theme, mayors agreed that cities are now coordinating more closely than ever – with their communities, with each other, and with other levels of government.
In London, Mayor Morgan’s “Economic Response Team” pulls together manufacturers, tourism operators, small businesses, and other local players to capture real-time intel on how tariffs and counter-tariffs are landing. That information doesn’t sit in a report; it moves fast – straight to federal and provincial officials – shaping where counter-tariffs help and where they would simply “tax Canadians in response to Americans taxing themselves.”
And London isn’t an outlier. Across the country and across the border, mayors are syncing their efforts through the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and with U.S. counterparts in groups like the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the Pacific Northwest Economic Region. These networks turn scattered local experiences into a coordinated national signal.
But coordination can’t be passive. Cities don’t just want a say in Canada’s response; they want a hand in shaping it. As Mayor Morgan put it, “Good policy is made, and good decisions are made, when you engage those who have a really good sense of the on-the-ground impacts…”
Strategic coordination, done right, turns local action into national strength, while ensuring Canada meets this trade disruption with every order of government rowing in the same direction.
The task ahead is taking this localized approach national: build relationships, diversify smartly, and coordinate strategically. Do that, and Canada won’t just politely weather the trade war – it will come out stronger and more resilient.
Or, in David Paterson’s words: “We’re going to be fine. We’ve got what they need, and let’s just execute.”
Cities at the Front Lines of Trade Disruption: How Municipalities Can Strengthen Canada’s Economic Resilience was hosted by the Lawrence National Centre for Policy & Management at Ivey Business School, in partnership with the City of London, London Chamber of Commerce, Excellence in Manufacturing Consortium, Small Business Centre London, and London Economic Development Coordination – with support from Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
For the full discussion, stream Cities at the Front Lines of Trade Disruption: How Municipalities Can Strengthen Canada’s Economic Resilience on Ivey’s YouTube channel.
