Ontario Premier Doug Ford pulled the ad off the air, but only after it ran during the first game of the World Series.Blair Gable/Reuters
Ontario Premier Doug Ford is defending his TV advertisement that prompted U.S. President Donald Trump to scrap trade talks with Canada and threaten higher tariffs, calling it the “most successful ad in North American history.”
Responding to questions in the legislature, Mr. Ford said the ad, which features pro-free-trade remarks by former U.S. president Ronald Reagan, had grabbed international attention.
“It was the most successful ad in the history of North America, not just here,” Mr. Ford told question period at Queen’s Park. “We had over one billion impressions, meaning one billion views and that’s still counting, from around the world. I was getting calls from people who have relatives in India, in Portugal, in Italy, in Scotland, over in U.K. Every outlet – small, large, medium – in the U.S. was talking about the conversation about it’s better to get rid of any of the tariffs.”
The Government of Ontario released this TV ad which will be broadcast in the U.S. that uses a recording of Ronald Reagan to argue against tariffs.
Government of Ontario
In a late-night social-media tirade last week, Mr. Trump denounced the ad, falsely accused it of being a “fraud” and announced an immediate end to trade talks with Canada.
Mr. Ford pulled the ad off the air, but only after it ran during the first game of the World Series.
Mr. Trump also said he would impose an additional 10-per-cent tariff on Canadian goods. On Monday, he told reporters he would not be meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney again for “a long time.”
Mr. Carney said on Monday that trade talks stopped after the ad appeared.
Explainer: What you need to know about Ontario’s anti-tariff ad
At Queen’s Park on Monday, Liberal MPP John Fraser accused Mr. Ford of running an ad campaign that botched trade talks in an attempt to “make him look good” and lay groundwork for a future leap to federal politics.
“I don’t think the Ontario taxpayer should be funding this Premier’s desire to become the prime minister of Canada,” Mr. Fraser told MPPs in question period. “He’s doing damage.”
The Premier replied by saying that the ad campaign represented $300-million to $400-million of “earned media,” or news coverage behind the paid slots, and that Canada has been waiting months for a deal with the U.S. – a deal he warned would still leave key sectors behind, including the auto industry. He criticized the federal government’s decision to charge only half the 50 per cent U.S. tariff on steel.
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“My job is to protect the people of Ontario, that’s exactly what I am going to do,” he told the legislature.
Mr. Fraser said Ontarians would pay with their jobs for Mr. Ford’s ad.
The Premier responded that Mr. Trump would go through with his threat of increased tariffs. He said that the ad “created a conversation with every Republican, Democrat governor, congressperson and senator,” and that all of his fellow premiers supported it.