Let's make a deal. Or, not.

What happens if there’s no deal?

The deadline is Wednesday. For weeks, Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc has essentially become a citizen of Washington, D.C. So too Chief Negotiator Janice Charette. Canada’s most-senior representatives in the Canada-U.S. have endured countless meetings with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer that have gone precisely nowhere. No deal.

Similarly, Prime Minister Mark Carney has endured myriad phone calls with U.S. President Donald Trump that have been a waste of time. Trump continues to refer to Carney as “Governor.” He still calls Canada the “51st state.” We still get threatened by the MAGA Republicans and Trump.

So, as of this writing, there is no deal. Both Canada and the U.S. are saying - at least publicly - that the two countries are too far apart.

What happens, then, if there is no deal for real?

For Canada, plenty will happen, none of it good. For the United States, comparatively less harm - but still some harm.

Canada’s greatest vulnerabilities are autos, steel, aluminum, copper and lumber. Those sectors employ an estimated quarter of a million Canadians directly, and hundreds of thousands more indirectly. Ontario is home to the vast majority of those jobs, with Quebec coming a strong second.

While failure to achieve an agreement won’t hit those five sectors immediately, other Canadian  sectors will feel the pain right away. They are dairy, alcohol and a broad list of other types of goods. There, as many as 400,000 jobs are at immediate risk. Once again, the vast majority of dairy jobs are found in Ontario and Quebec. For the alcohol and brewing sectors, the employment is more spread out - Nova Scotia, Quebec, New Brunswick, British Columbia and Ontario. Ontario has the most breweries, followed by B.C and Quebec.

The bottom line for dairy, alcohol and “other?” Close to $30 billion in potential losses, which amounts to about five per cent of all of Canada’s annual exports to the U.S. For autos, steel, aluminum, copper and lumber: close to $60 billion, a huge blow to our economy.

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