U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, a close ally of President Trump, accused Prime Minister Mark Carney Thursday of manufacturing a dispute over French to influence Quebec’s election and hurt the sovereignist Parti Québécois.

“This is politics only,” Lutnick said, also referring to the Alberta independence movement, outside a federal courthouse in Washington.

“If you think I ever said the word ‘French’ — do I care about how the Québécois speak? I mean, what could matter less to America?” Lutnick said. “We don’t care.”

“This is manufactured,” he added. “There’s the sovereignty party trying to run, and they’re in the lead in Quebec.”

His remarks came as Premier Christine Fréchette launched Quebec’s election campaign. Quebecers will go to the polls on Oct. 5. Her party, the Coalition Avenir Québec, trails behind the Parti Québécois in the latest polls.

According to Canadian government sources, the U.S. wanted to scale back rules requiring streaming platforms to give Canadian-made content more prominence in Canada, including French-language content. The U.S. did not target Quebec’s French-language product rules in the final stages of the talks, contrary to what Fréchette had told reporters. She had not yet been briefed by Canada’s negotiating team when she spoke Saturday afternoon, one of the sources said.

The issue over French went on to become a flashpoint after the talks collapsed and the two countries imposed billions of dollars in additional tariffs on each other’s goods.

Trump, too, denied the U.S. had targeted French. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer acknowledged French-language issues arose during the negotiations, but said they were “the farthest thing from a red line.”

Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc welcomed on Thursday what he described as Washington’s retreat from its positions on French-language labelling and Canadian-content discoverability rules, suggesting the clarification could open the door to renewed negotiations.

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Lutnick said he had spoken to LeBlanc at least “10 times” over the past month and to Carney twice during the final 24 hours of the negotiations, exchanging text messages, too. He said he has known Carney since the prime minister worked at Goldman Sachs.

“We had a deal. We shook hands. The president announced it,” he said. “Everybody was positive. Canada made the decision, for political purposes, that they wanted to walk away.”

Lutnick predicted “a plane full of Canadian negotiators” would return after the election.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, which is the federal agency responsible for American trade policy, has previously singled out Quebec’s Bill 96 – requiring French to appear on products sold in Quebec — in its annual report on barriers faced by U.S. exporters, citing concerns about its effect on trademarks. U.S. officials even raised the law at the World Trade Organization in 2024. Though in its latest annual report, the U.S dropped mention of the bill.

In March, the U.S. Trade Representative also identified Bill 109 as a potential trade barrier. That regulates how French-language cultural content is made available and promoted online.

The Gazette reached out to the Prime Minister’s Office for comment on Lutnick’s remarks but did not receive a response before publication.

Later Thursday, Trump repeated his claim Canada had been “ripping us off for a long time on trade” and also signed an order he said renamed Lake Ontario — one of the Great Lakes on the Canada-U.S. border — “Lake America.”

Trump also suggested he might rename the Atlantic or Pacific oceans.

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