Canada’s top trade negotiators are heading back to Washington this week for more meetings with the Trump administration as the Opposition Conservatives urge Prime Minister Mark Carney to stop making concessions in pursuit of a tariff-free deal.

Negotiations between Canada and the United States have ramped up in recent weeks ahead of an Aug. 19 deadline that would see a range of Canadian exports hit with 50 per cent tariffs.

Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Janice Charette, Canada’s chief negotiator, will be back in Washington this week for another round of talks, LeBlanc’s spokesman Gabriel Brunet told The Canadian Press on Sunday.

Canada’s trade team has met with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer twice in the past two weeks. Brunet said talks have broadly covered the newly threatened duties, existing sectoral tariffs and renegotiations of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico agreement, or CUSMA.

“In doing so, we are taking a Team Canada approach – working with provinces and territories, across party lines, to get the best deal for Canada,” Brunet said.

In a letter to Carney on Sunday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and his Canada-U.S. relations critic Shuvaloy Majumdar accused the prime minister of routinely caving to U.S. President Donald Trump over the past year.

The pair cited scrapping the digital service tax, removing Canada’s counter-tariffs and cutting the United States into a deal to share net toll revenue from the recently opened Gordie Howe International Bridge.

Poilievre and Majumdar argued against Carney’s previous claim that no deal is better than a bad deal by pointing to job losses in manufacturing-heavy Canadian cities that rely on cross-border supply chains.

“Canadians deserve a government that has the backbone to fight for our workers, our families, and every inch of our sovereignty,” they said in the letter.

Brunet accused Poilievre of talking down Canada’s economy. He cited recent job creation data suggesting a resilient labour market to defend the Liberals’ economic record in the face of U.S. tariffs.

The Opposition Conservatives laid out a series of items in Sunday’s letter they want to see in a renegotiated trade pact with the United States, such as an end to U.S. tariffs on lumber, steel and aluminum and a Canadian exemption to “Buy America” rules for infrastructure projects.

Poilievre and Majumdar also call for an auto pact reminiscent of the 1965 agreement between Canada and the United States that would allow a car to be sold duty-free in Canada for every vehicle the same manufacturer produces north of the border.

The Conservatives reiterated their call to strengthen Canada’s negotiating position with the creation of a strategic reserve of critical minerals, which would be open to countries that provide tariff-free access to their own markets.

Canada and Mexico both indicated last month that they want to see CUSMA, the trilateral North American trade pact, extended for another 16-year term. The United States instead opted to let the agreement move to rolling annual reviews.

The United States has cited provincial bans of U.S. booze and the supply management system that protects Canadian dairy as key trade irritants. Trump has repeatedly complained about the level of U.S. dairy farmers’ access to Canada’s market.

Carney said Thursday his government is loyal to the supply management system as Dairy Farmers of Canada urged the government not to offer concessions regarding its industry in trade talks.

The dairy group has also said Canada has already made several concessions, only to be met each time with fresh demands.

The Conservatives also argued the time for concessions is over.

“Before you concede anything else, Canadians deserve a good deal,” Poilievre and Majumdar wrote.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 9, 2026.