U.S.-Canada Relations in an Age of Tumultuous North American Politics: A Presentation and Q&A with the Honourable Bill Morneau, former Finance Minister, Government of Canada
A Presentation and Q&A with the Honourable Bill Morneau, former Finance Minister, Government of Canada. Discussion Moderated by Dr. Brendan A. Shanahan
U.S.-Canada relations stand at a crossroads. President Trump’s recently announced thirty-day pause on the imposition of severe tariffs on Canadian goods (and the Canadian government’s halting of equally strong retaliatory tariffs) has provided inhabitants of both countries a brief reprieve. But the possibility of a North American trade war – among other potential stresses to the U.S.-Canada relationship – still loom large and threaten the two nations’ economic interdependence and longstanding partnership.
Domestic politics within both countries are no less tumultuous. Various forms of surging conservative populism appear to be on the ascent in Canada, as well as the United States. Federal and provincial Tory parties currently hold the upper hand in ongoing or forthcoming elections in the nation’s largest province (Ontario) and at the national level. Meanwhile, the recent resignation of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has thrust the governing Liberal Party of Canada into a shortened leadership race to find his replacement ahead of the 2025 Canadian Federal Election. Debates over the best trade, macroeconomic, and diplomatic responses to the second Trump Administration’s threats have sometimes proven just as fractious within party and ideological ranks as they have across partisan lines.
In his remarks and responses, Mr. Morneau will draw from both his experience in the Trudeau government (particularly during the era of the first Trump Administration) and his professional expertise in the private sector. Deeply engaged in U.S.-Canada relations to this day, Mr. Morneau currently serves as Co-Chair of the Washington Forum on the Canadian Economy at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC. A former Senior Fellow at the Jackson School, we are thrilled to welcome Mr. Morneau back to Yale.
Bill Morneau served as Canada's 39th Minister of Finance from 2015 to 2020, and was also Governor at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Between 1990 and 2015, Mr. Morneau led the multinational human resources firm Morneau Shepell (now TELUS Health). Mr. Morneau currently serves as Chair of NovaSource Power Services, Director at CIBC and at Clairvest Group Inc., Chair of the Advisory Board of Magnet at Toronto Metropolitan University, Member of The Wilson Center’s Canada Institute Advisory Board, and with his wife, Nancy McCain, is Co-Chair of the National Arts Centre’s The Next Act campaign. He is a Distinguished Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto, and an Executive in Residence at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. In January 2023, he released his book Where to From Here, outlining his views on how Canadian economic policy can increase prosperity. In 2021, he was Senior Fellow at the Jackson Institute at Yale University. Mr. Morneau founded a school for Somali and Sudanese girls in a UN Refugee camp in northern Kenya and is currently sponsoring a scholarship program for young women refugees at the University of Toronto. He is past chair of St. Michael's Hospital, Covenant House, and the C.D. Howe Institute. He holds an M.Sc. (Econ.) from the London School of Economics, an M.B.A. from INSEAD, and a B.A. from Western University.
Dr. Shanahan serves as an associate research scholar with the Canadian Studies Committee at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, and as a lecturer in the Department of History, at Yale University. A specialist in North American immigration and citizenship legal history and comparative U.S.-Canadian political history, he is author of, among other works: Disparate Regimes: Nativist Politics, Alienage Law, and Citizenship Rights in the United States (OUP, 2025).