OPEN LETTER: Ms. Kelly, Canada won’t say thank you under a 50% tariff

One street sign in Ottawa

Wednesday, Trump Avenue

Ms. Kelly, one street sign was enough.

On September 23, Ottawa city council voted unanimously to start renaming Trump Avenue, in the Central Park neighbourhood, TIME reported. Councillor Riley Brockington had tabled the motion on September 9.

A sign. Two words on a post. A residential street, named back when your president was a New York developer.

Nothing more.

Thursday, your reply

You answered. To TIME, you called the vote a “meaningless gesture.” Then you wrote that these local governments should “thank President Trump for defending their country.” And make a good deal.

On September 24, at 9:09 p.m., Radio-Canada and The Canadian Press ran your statement. The dispatch was mostly about something else: the risk of U.S. military action that our prime minister says he has studied.

I am writing because your sentence deserves an answer. Not a city’s answer. The answer of someone who lives in this country.

One sign changed, and Washington answers with an invoice.

Madison Park, Manhattan Crescent

A neighbourhood that dreamed of New York

You have to know the street to weigh your answer.

Trump Avenue is one of several streets in Ottawa’s Central Park neighbourhood that nod to New York, CTV reported. There is Madison Park. There is Manhattan Crescent. There are Bloomingdale Street and Staten Street.

When the neighbourhood went up, your president was a famous real estate tycoon. Not a head of state.

A mayor, a councillor

Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe told reporters, according to TIME, that he did not like the idea of “anything that’s named for Donald Trump, who’s demonstrated hostility towards Canada.”

Councillor Brockington wants residents to choose the new name.

That’s all. A city council. A vote. A name to find.

A street that dreamed of New York wants another name.

The White House statement

Your words, read again

Let’s read it again together, as The Canadian Press relayed it.

President Trump, you write, has done more than anyone to protect the Canadian people. He launched the Golden Dome, a missile shield that will protect both countries. He offered a trade deal you call extraordinarily generous.

You mention American farmers and American workers. Ours don’t appear.

Then the conclusion. Instead of a “meaningless gesture,” these communities should “thank President Trump for defending their country.” And “make a good deal to benefit Canadian and American citizens alike.”

Read it again. It contains no tariff rate. It contains no negotiating date.

Three things, one sentence

You talked about a shield. You talked about a deal. You talked about gratitude. All of it in reply to a street sign.

That isn’t a quirk of style. It’s a method.

Defence on one side. Trade on the other. And gratitude to stitch the two together.

A shield, a deal, a thank-you: one sentence.

The thank-you and the tariff

One sentence, two levers

Unfolded, your sentence says this. The security Washington provides is paid for in gratitude. And gratitude is proven with a signature.

A thank-you demanded. A tariff kept in place.

Because your statement says not one word about your president’s tariff. It is still running on our goods.

You don’t thank a tariff. You don’t thank an executive order aimed at our lake. You don’t thank a map draped in someone else’s flag. Nor a threat to make us the 51st state. Nobody says thank you under duress.

You say thank you when you are free not to.

A city vote, a thank-you on demand

I stand with the Canadian workers paying this tariff, and with a country that has the right to name its own streets. Against your president’s decision to impose, since August 22, a 50% tariff on part of our exports. Because after a simple municipal vote, the White House demanded thanks and a deal. Not the removal of that tariff.

Thanks are given. They aren’t invoiced.

I am not insulting you. I am answering you.

No thank-you on command.

A shield over both countries

The Golden Dome

You invoke the Golden Dome. A missile shield, you write, that will keep both countries safe.

Both countries. Yours too.

A shield that protects your territory and ours is not a gift. It is a common defence. You don’t thank a neighbour for locking his own door.

Read your own sentence closely. It says both.

Decades of shared sky

Our defence minister said as much on Thursday, according to The Canadian Press: our two countries have worked together for decades to keep North America secure.

Decades. Not a recent favour. An alliance.

Turn it into a debt, and you damage it.

A common defence isn’t billed to only one of the two.

The tariff that began August 22

In Ottawa’s own words

The facts first. In our government’s words.

Canada’s Department of Finance put it in writing on August 25: the United States is imposing a 50% tariff on C$27.6 billion of Canadian goods, in force since August 22.

According to Al Jazeera, that covers about 5% of our exports to the United States. Electronics. Industrial machinery. Dairy products. All of it on top of the tariffs already in place on steel, softwood lumber and autos.

Three days of talks in Washington, according to Al Jazeera. Then midnight. Then the tariff.

The countermeasures

Canada answered dollar for dollar. Since September 8, countertariffs of 15%, 25% and 50% have applied to C$27.6 billion of U.S. imports, the department writes.

They target steel, dairy, household appliances, farm machinery, pulp and paper, electronics.

The same release announces C$7.5 billion for affected workers and businesses. Minister François-Philippe Champagne sums it up: the United States asked for too much, offered too little, and Canada chose to defend its own.

That’s the backdrop.

And against that backdrop, you ask us for thanks.

Twenty-seven billion taxed, and gratitude demanded.

A lake, a map, a 51st state

What we hear from here

We should also tell you what we have been hearing from here, for a month now.

There is the lake. In August, according to TIME, your president signed an executive order so that Lake Ontario would become Lake America in U.S. federal documents.

There is the map. In recent weeks, according to The Canadian Press, he posted AI-generated images showing North America covered in the American flag. Canada included.

There is the 51st state. For two years, The Canadian Press notes, he has repeatedly threatened to make Canada a U.S. state through economic coercion.

And there is the street. Ours.

Each of these moves, taken alone, can be argued over. Together, they draw a pattern of pressure.

A country he says is destroying itself

Again this week, according to CTV, he wrote that Canada is destroying itself by letting in millions of people without controls.

Statistics Canada data, reported the same day, tell another story. Immigration is down 4.2% year over year.

You call our gesture meaningless. I’ll grant you it is small. It answers gestures that were not.

They rename our lake. We rename a street.

Carney’s extreme risk

Wednesday, in The New York Times

That same Wednesday, our prime minister, Mark Carney, told The New York Times he had studied the possibility of U.S. military action against Canada.

An extreme risk, he said. Not a base case. But it would be irresponsible not to prepare for it, according to CTV.

He declined to go into detail. He spoke of managing risk.

The paper made a point of noting it: Carney did not use the word invasion. That word was the Times’s own.

Thursday, McGuinty

On Thursday, our defence minister, David McGuinty, played it down. “It is normal,” he said, according to The Canadian Press. Every military in the world, he added, analyzes risk scenarios.

He recalled that Canada and the United States share one of the most important military relationships in the world.

Read your sentence next to his. You talk about defence to get a deal. Our minister talks about defence to recall an alliance.

Not the same language.

And yet it was on that very Thursday that your statement invoked defence to demand a thank-you.

One country studies a risk. The other demands thanks.

Greer, Paparo and August 22

The best deal, says Washington

I owe you your best argument. In its strongest form.

On August 22, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Canada had refused to finalize the deal on the terms agreed. Washington was offering, he said, the best treatment granted to any major exporter. New Canadian demands had reportedly broken everything, according to Al Jazeera.

If that is true, the tariff is the price of a Canadian refusal. And your “good deal” is an outstretched hand.

Admiral Paparo

You could add this. In September, Admiral Samuel Paparo, head of the U.S. military’s Pacific command, called the idea of an order to invade Canada absolutely and totally absurd, according to The Canadian Press.

And in May 2025, your president called the use of force against Canada very unlikely, CTV recalls.

This argument deserves to be taken seriously. It calls for proof. Not a shrug.

Your best argument, heard all the way through.

Tutelage, not a trade deal

Last-minute terms

Here is the proof. On August 22, Mark Carney explained why he was calling his negotiators home to Ottawa.

In the final days, he said, Washington had put forward new terms, unfair and unprofitable, that cast doubt on the reliability of any deal. He added, according to Al Jazeera, that Washington had tried to limit Canada’s ability to strike deals with other countries.

A deal that picks our partners

A deal that tells a country whom it may trade with is no longer a deal. It is tutelage.

Canada sells in Europe. In Asia. Soon, more in India. No deal can forbid it to choose.

A country that no longer chooses its customers is no longer quite a country.

And an admiral who calls invasion absurd doesn’t lift a tariff. He reassures us about what won’t happen. He says nothing about what already happens, every day, at the border.

And yet what already happens is exactly what you ask us to thank you for.

A hand that picks our partners is no longer outstretched.

A street, an interview, our countertariffs

A gesture, yes

I’ll grant you three things. They cost me.

I’d rather say them myself. You would have found them anyway.

First. Renaming Trump Avenue is a symbolic gesture. It protects no jobs. It lifts no tariff. You are right: it settles nothing.

Second. Our prime minister’s remarks to the Times drew criticism here at home. Former defence minister Peter MacKay said on CTV that they moved Canada from response to provocation. And that they did not play in our favour.

Our retaliation has a price too

Third. Our countertariffs aren’t free. A tax on C$27.6 billion of U.S. imports is paid first by the Canadian importer. Then by the Canadian buyer.

That is true, and it doesn’t change this: your tariff opened the sequence, on August 22. And your statement asks for thanks in return.

This country pays twice over. I write it down so I don’t lie to myself.

We pay your tax and ours. Then we’re asked for thanks.

Who pays the 50%

6.4% in August

Canada’s unemployment rate was 6.4% in August, CTV reports. Statistics Canada noted accelerating job losses in trade-dependent industries after your tariffs were imposed.

The two countries measure unemployment differently, CTV points out. The trend needs no translation.

In 2025, according to TIME, the United States took 72.5% of our merchandise exports. Three crates out of four travel your road.

A tariff doesn’t hit a government. It hits an order, a contract, a paycheque.

The factories that export

A 50% tariff would effectively push hundreds of Canadian products out of the U.S. market, a McGill University trade specialist told Al Jazeera just before August 22.

These are factories. These are night shifts. These are household budgets redone at the kitchen table.

The sound of a line slowing down. A layoff letter folded in half. The cold of a factory parking lot at dawn, when you don’t know whether you’ll be back on Monday.

They don’t sit on Ottawa city council. They renamed no street.

The thanks you demand, they are the ones who would pay for it.

India, Europe, a Canadian F-35

Other roads

Meanwhile, we are not sitting on your doorstep.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will come to Canada in December to sign a trade agreement, Carney confirmed on September 22, according to CTV. Canada has joined the European SAFE program. It has asked to join the London-led Joint Expeditionary Force, TIME reports.

Other roads. Not against you. Alongside you.

While you ask for thanks, we sign elsewhere. That isn’t a threat. It’s insurance.

The F-35 that flies anyway

And yet we remain your allies. On September 23, the first F-35 in Canadian colours flew in Fort Worth, Texas. The first new fighter to carry our colours in 44 years, according to CTV.

Carney is having the order for the remaining 72 aircraft, out of 88, reviewed against the Swedish Gripen. He talks about capabilities, strategic dependencies, economic spinoffs.

That is grown-up sovereignty. Buy from you when it’s fair. Look elsewhere when dependence becomes a risk.

An ally who diversifies is not an ally who leaves.

A date: October 22

Defence apart from trade

Here is what I ask of you, Ms. Kelly, in your official capacity.

I ask you to separate defence from trade. I ask you to strip the thank-you from your statements. I ask you to put lifting the tariff back on the table. Do it with no strings on the partners Canada may choose. And let our cities name their streets.

It is the smallest of sovereignties. It speaks for all the others.

Two months after the tariff

I propose a date: October 22. Two months to the day after the tariff took effect.

Between now and then, a return to negotiations, with no demand for gratitude. It’s little. It’s possible. It’s what two neighbours do when they have defended the same sky together for decades.

If the date passes without an answer, that will be an answer too.

Two months is long for a factory. Short for diplomacy. Long enough for a gesture.

A deal is negotiated standing up. Not by saying thanks.

Thanks, once the tariff is gone

The sign, soon

Trump Avenue will get a new name. Residents will choose, Councillor Brockington says.

One sign will come down. Another will be screwed into place. Nobody, that day, will ask for your opinion.

A small job. A few posts. A few addresses to change.

The tariff doesn’t come off with a screwdriver. It stays signed in Washington.

At the checkout and at the plant

How much is each of us prepared to pay, at the checkout and at the plant, so that our gratitude toward our neighbours stays a choice and not a condition?

I know the city of Ottawa’s answer. I’m waiting for the country’s.

And for yours, Ms. Kelly, by October 22.

Canada will say thank you when the tariff falls. Not before.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• The Canadian Press, Radio-Canada — McGuinty and Anna Kelly’s statement, September 24, 2026
• Finance Canada — countermeasures and the 50% U.S. tariff on C$27.6 billion, August 25, 2026
• TIME — Trump Avenue and the White House statement, September 24, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• CTV News — McGuinty, MacKay, the F-35 and unemployment, September 24, 2026
• CTV News — Carney tells The New York Times of an extreme risk, September 24, 2026
• Al Jazeera — 50% tariffs after failed talks, August 22, 2026