Ontario Premier Doug Ford says Ottawa needs to be “tougher” to ensure that only “friends” get to invest in the Canadian critical minerals sector and not “someone” who wants to destroy the country’s auto and steel sectors . “When it comes to critical minerals, rare earth minerals, the constitution says it falls under the provinces, and we have the right to make sure that the people that buy our critical minerals are friends,” he said at the 2025 U.S.-Canada Summit in Toronto on Wednesday. The United States government has recently invested in two Canadian critical mineral companies , Trilogy Metals Inc. and Lithium Americas Corp., both based in Vancouver. The Canadian government has blocked foreign investments in the country’s critical minerals sector on the grounds of national security, but it was against companies based in China, a nation that dominates the sector and one that Canada has been trying to rely less on. Ford said there won’t be a “grain of critical minerals” or an “ounce of energy” going to the U.S. from Ontario in the future if U.S. President Donald Trump looks to “destroy” the province’s steel and auto sectors. But he also said Trump wasn’t going to be around forever and that he would want Canada’s closest allies to have access to the country’s critical minerals. The federal government said Prime Minister Mark Carney’s meeting with Trump on Tuesday was positive, with the two leaders trading compliments, but Ford continued his rigid stance against Trump, whose tariffs on Canadian products have particularly impacted Ontario. “Doug has a very different set of difficulties that he’s facing and I am very mindful of that,” Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said at the event. “He’s hit by steel and aluminum and autos … he is taking on multiple hits.” But when it comes to Alberta, she said just three per cent of the province’s goods are exposed to Trump’s tariffs, which is the lowest in the country. Smith said she is a “lot more confident” than she was under the previous Liberal leadership about Alberta’s issues being well represented during Canada’s talks with the U.S. “Let’s be frank: part of the reason why I’ve had to do so much travel to the United States is there was no way I was going to let Steven Guilbeault and Justin Trudeau talk about Alberta’s energy interests,” she said. Smith said she is beginning to see that Carney’s relationship approach with Trump may not be the “elbows up” strategy that helped him come to power earlier this year, but that’s a good thing because that approach wasn’t going to get Canada a deal with the U.S. Gary Mar: We need a national vision and belief, not a new national bureaucracyTrump adds second Canadian company to U.S. government's growing portfolio “We should be cheering the prime minister on. We want him to have a good personal relationship. We want him to be able to stay at one of the presidential residences when he goes down there. We want them to have private dinners and conversations together,” she said. “That is how deals get made with this particular president.” • Email: nkarim@postmedia.com