Unifor national president Lana Payne was a member of Canada’s trade team and she pretty much outlines why everything broke down:
- (last minute) goalposts were changing on the Canadian negotiators,
- concessions that the US was demanding continued to mount,
- (there were) disastrous implications for key parts of our industrial economy
- in the last hours, particularly the last day and a half, you had other folks from the White House interfering
- all until it became untenable for Canada to sign
According to Carney, himself, the last minute demands included needing to get approval from Washington to make other trade deals with other countries (most likely China was named) like Canada was a vassal state of the US. It’s hilarious how much the White House injected last minute poison pills.