FACT CHECK: Greer’s “last hour” doesn’t hold up, and the constraint Carney decried has no text

Four o’clock on a Friday

The September 25 claim

Jamieson Greer repeated on CNBC on September 25 that Canada had asked for relief on heavy trucks in the final hours of the August talks.

That account is misleading.

The exact hour comes from another cabinet member. On August 27, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told reporters that the words “medium- and heavy-duty trucks” had been spoken on the Friday at 4 p.m.

One hour. One day. One accusation.

What rolls out of Ontario

These trucks have names. Some models of Ford’s F-Series and General Motors’ Silverado are built at Ontario plants, according to CBC.

The people who build them don’t count in negotiating hours. They count in shifts, to the hiss of pneumatic tools.

For them, this is no quarrel over a clock. A truck left out of the deal stays under the separate American measure that targets it, by Greer’s own account.

The clock is in Washington. The truck is in an Ontario plant.

Four o’clock for Washington, whole shifts for Ontario.

Two versions

Washington’s version

Washington has a version. On August 26, Greer laid it out for CBC.

The deal was done. Tuesday night. Canada was getting, in his words, “the best deal available to any country on the planet.”

Then Dominic LeBlanc went back to Ottawa. He spoke with the provincial premiers. He spoke with the prime minister. When he came back, Greer says, Canada had additional requests, too much for the United States.

So the fault is Canadian.

Ottawa’s version

Ottawa has another. On August 22, Mark Carney listed three last-minute American changes. The scope of the auto tariffs. A curb on Canada’s other trade agreements. Limits on our protections for language and culture.

In his address the same day, he added that Washington had pushed on language and culture right up to the very last minute. They asked for too much and offered too little, he summed up.

So the fault is American.

Two versions, and not one page published.

Neither Ottawa nor Washington has released the text of the draft agreement, CBC reported on August 26. Greer invokes the confidentiality the two sides owe each other.

So I check what can be checked. The trucks. The other agreements. Language.

Who is right about Friday at four?

Two clocks, and not one page to settle it.

The Tuesday of the deal

A handshake

First, the days need to go back in order.

On Tuesday evening, August 18, Greer and LeBlanc shake hands outside the office of the US trade representative. All that is left, they assure the cameras, is to dot the i’s, according to CBC.

That same evening, Trump extends the tariff reprieve by three days. Greer will later say the deal set specific rates, specific percentages.

The two sides give themselves those extra days, Greer says, “to just get everything down on paper.”

To get everything down on paper.

Friday night

On Friday night, August 21, Carney calls his negotiators back to Ottawa. A few hours later, 50% duties hit a range of Canadian products, The Canadian Press reports.

Tuesday to Friday. Three days. Each side locates the other’s fault inside those three days.

On paper, as it happens, nothing survived.

Neither government has shown what was written on the Tuesday. Or what had changed by the Friday.

Three days to write it down, and nothing written to show.

The trucks, according to Washington

Friday, four o’clock

Here is the American version, in its strongest form.

Lutnick maintains that medium and heavy trucks came into the negotiation on the Friday at 4 p.m. He added, according to CBC, that the Canadians did it to sink the deal.

That is an accusation. It targets an intention. No document comes with it.

Two cabinet members. One hour. No minutes.

A separate measure

Greer, on August 26, made the substantive argument. The United States has a Section 232 measure on autos and pickup trucks. Medium and heavy trucks fall under another action, “separate and distinct and different.” Its economics differ. So do its effective rates.

Bringing those trucks in at the end, he said, amounted to declaring that autos meant “everything from a little Escort to the biggest truck you can think of.”

The argument is not absurd. A deal on cars is not necessarily a deal on heavy trucks.

It deserves weighing. It can’t be brushed aside.

For Washington, autos stopped at the pickup.

The trucks, according to Charette

Late July, in writing

Canada’s chief negotiator, Janice Charette, answered on August 28, on CBC.

Canada, she said, had always been talking about the whole of its auto sector. And “Howard Lutnick was not at the negotiating table,” she added.

She told Politico on August 31 that the proposals she sent to the United States in the latter part of July clearly included trucks. “Every note and every document,” in her words.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday

Ottawa raised them Monday. Ottawa raised them Tuesday. Ottawa raised them Wednesday. Ottawa raised them Thursday. Ottawa raised them Friday too, according to Charette.

Lutnick kept only the last.

In the room, Charette told Politico, she would slip in “and medium and heavy” every time Washington tried to limit relief to light vehicles. “It almost got funny,” she said.

According to Politico, Carney says “no rationale” was given for the exclusion. It came after agreement on cutting the car tariff from 25% to 15%.

Charette sums it up this way: pens down, door open. Trust, she says, is earned through the fine print.

Five days running, and only one remembered.

Greer’s own words

For weeks

And yet the best evidence against Greer comes from Greer.

On August 26, on CBC, he said it himself. “For weeks,” he had been clear with his Canadian colleagues about what he could deliver. Including on autos.

Greer said “for weeks.” Greer said the truck measure was separate. Greer said the Canadians wanted to get as much as they could.

Three sentences. A single timeline.

In other words, everything suggests the line between autos and trucks was being argued well before the Friday. A disagreement known for weeks is not a last-hour demand.

“That sounds like me”

The president himself blurred the line. Asked on CNN about last-minute American additions, Donald Trump answered: “Hey, that sounds like me.”

Greer called it “off the cuff.”

On the trucks, then, the last-hour story is misleading. They were on the table earlier, according to the Canadian negotiator. And Greer himself describes weeks of exchanges on autos.

Greer dates a demand his own weeks contradict.

A constraint with no text

No “Canada shall”

Second point. Carney accuses Washington of trying to restrict Canada’s ability to strike other trade deals.

Greer denies it. On August 26, he said that characterization went “far beyond” anything that had been discussed.

There was no text like that, he said. It wasn’t “Canada shall.” It was only an invitation to coordinate, country to country.

His motive is known. If Washington lowers its tariffs on steel and aluminum, he says, Canada cannot become a back door for other countries’ metal.

The concern is real. The text is missing.

Consultation, ban or veto

Charette confirms there was no text on this point, according to Politico. She adds that the subject came up late.

Consultation, ban or veto?

Nobody on the Canadian side knew which, according to her. What was clear: an American interest in limiting our future agreements for products like primary steel.

A source told CBC that Washington wanted Canada to apply its sectoral tariffs to its partners. Free trade partners would have paid above their 2025 volumes.

Charette had instructions. Under no circumstances was she to accept language limiting Canada’s ability to strike new agreements, she told Politico.

Politico places the American concept on the very Friday of the breakdown, in the drafting room.

On this point, Carney is plausible, but not proven. A late demand exists. Its written form does not.

A late demand, without a line to prove it.

The fortress was Canadian

Ottawa’s own word

Now for what cuts against Ottawa’s version.

“Fortress North America” is not an American invention. Greer points it out: the term comes from the Canadians, “their term, not mine,” he says, and they have been repeating it to him for a year and a half.

Michael Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat, confirms it in the Globe and Mail on September 24. In May, Carney said he was open to deeper integration, including Fortress North America options in some sectors.

Greer cites another precedent. The Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) already provides that a country signing a free trade deal with a non-market economy, such as China, can be pushed out of it.

China, missing from the speech

Kovrig adds the awkward part. In his 2,700-word address of August 22, Carney never said the word China.

Not once.

And the agreement reached with Beijing in January reopened manufacturing sectors that worry Washington, Kovrig writes. In his view, it gives the American measures a reason.

That is true, and it does not change this: coordination offered by Ottawa is not a right of oversight demanded by Washington. Kovrig says so himself. Canada offered alignment, and the United States withdrew the reciprocity.

Washington, he writes, is asking Canada to close off its Chinese options while closing its own market to Canadian cars. That is no longer a fortress. It is a wall, with Canada outside.

Offering alignment is not handing over your pen.

Language, until Friday night

Nothing mattered less

Third point: language and culture.

Lutnick, on August 27, waved it away. Speaking of how the Québécois speak, he asked, according to CBC: “what could matter less to America?” He accuses Carney of having “manufactured” the issue to sway the Quebec election.

Greer, for his part, calls it a subject he “highlighted,” and “the farthest thing from a red line.” What interested Washington, he says, was the mandatory contribution imposed on streaming services.

Yet the demand was written down elsewhere. In March, the US trade representative’s annual report on trade barriers targeted the Online Streaming Act and Quebec’s Bill 109, according to the Congressional Research Service.

The demand was old. It was in print.

Withdrawing a position

Charette describes the opposite of Lutnick. The Americans were still asking for those provisions to be removed “right up until the final negotiating session, Friday night,” she told CBC.

One detail settles it. After Greer’s interview, in late August, Dominic LeBlanc welcomed on X the fact that the United States was withdrawing its positions on discoverability and labeling, CBC reports.

You can’t withdraw a position that never existed.

The minister was also awaiting, he wrote, clarification on the other American positions. The other positions, everything suggests, concern trucks and our agreements.

On this point, Carney is accurate about the demand being there. Less so if you read it as something new: it lasted, it did not suddenly appear.

And yet language was not the last lock. Washington dropped it within days, and the deal did not come back.

You only withdraw what you put on the table.

What one hour cost

Fifteen percent, maybe seven

Now to measure what the dispute brought down.

There were autos, from 25% to 15%, with the possibility of falling to 7%, according to Greer. There was steel, from 50% to 25% for most shipments. There was aluminum, from 50% to 25%.

It was, Greer says, a springboard. It is gone.

Fifteen percent on cars, maybe seven, if…

Témiscaming, in mid-September

Instead, the 50% duties took effect on August 22.

In late August, Rayonier Advanced Materials announced it would shut its Témiscaming complex indefinitely in mid-September. About 400 unionized workers are affected, according to Politico and Northern Ontario Business.

The company points to the scale of the American tariffs, on top of long-standing troubles in pulp and paper. The town has about 2,400 residents.

One Friday at 4 p.m., people were fighting over a word. Less than a month later, in Témiscaming, a mill was set to go dark.

The padlock on a gate doesn’t know who had the right time.

For Unifor, Daniel Cloutier says workers are absorbing the shock of a confrontation they didn’t start and don’t control.

They weren’t in the room. They are paying the bill.

Nobody in Témiscaming was arguing about the hour.

A month later

September 25, on CNBC

On September 25, Greer told the same story again. Washington offered Canada its best deal, he says, and Ottawa wanted relief on heavy trucks in the final hours, The Canadian Press reports.

The same dispatch recalls Carney’s version. Restricting our other agreements. Limiting our protections for language and culture.

A month. The same sentences. No new document.

What the clock is for

On August 26, Greer told CBC that Washington had banned nothing from Canada. Maybe it should, he added.

On September 8, according to the White House, the import bans were signed.

Thirteen days.

That is what the last-hour story is for. Naming who broke off the talks, so the next measure passes for a response.

And yet no page has been published since.

Whoever owns the last hour owns the next retaliation.

Three points, three degrees

For Washington

The check leads here.

The trucks. Greer’s claim is misleading. Heavy trucks were on the table before the final hours, according to the Canadian negotiator. Greer himself describes weeks of exchanges on autos.

The other agreements. Carney’s accusation is plausible, not proven. A late demand for coordination exists. Without a text, according to both negotiators.

For Ottawa

Language. Carney’s version is accurate on the persistence of the demand. It overstates the case if you read it as something new.

Who changed the terms at the last minute? On the other agreements, the late demand came from Washington, according to Ottawa. Greer does not deny raising it. He disputes its scope.

On the trucks, nothing shows that Ottawa moved the goalposts on the Friday.

One point misleading. One point unproven. One point accurate, but inflated.

Nobody is entirely right. But only one version is contradicted by its own author’s words: Greer’s.

Misleading on one side, no written proof on the other.

The missing page

What the notes would show

This ranking can move. One page would do it.

We would need to see the Canadian proposals from late July that Charette says she sent. We would need to see the American draft from the Friday. We would need to see the most-favored-nation clause that Kovrig says vanished from that draft.

I could not cross-check that last claim. I report it as such.

None of these is public.

To the reader

I wanted a page. All I have are voices, every one of them with a stake.

Will we judge the next agreement on what we are told about it, or on what we are shown?

Four o’clock on a Friday will remain a disputed hour. A page turned, though, makes a sound everyone hears.

The verdict awaits its document.

The last hour will belong to whoever publishes the first page.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• The Canadian Press via L’actualité — Greer and the final-hours heavy trucks, September 25, 2026
• CBC News — full transcript of Jamieson Greer’s interview, August 26, 2026
• CBC News — interview with chief negotiator Janice Charette, August 28, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• CBC News — Greer disputes the last-minute demands claim, August 26, 2026
• Politico Canada Playbook — the blame game after the breakdown, August 31, 2026
• The Globe and Mail — Michael Kovrig on alignment and the China factor, September 24, 2026