Good morning.

U.S. President Donald Trump frequently prefers to speak directly to voters via his social media feeds, bypassing the usual mechanics of canned statements or basic diplomacy.

So it was in that vein that Ontario Premier Doug Ford decided to do the same with a 60-second television ad using archival footage of former U.S. president Ronald Reagan harshly criticizing American protectionism, saying trade barriers hurt American workers and consumers.

The ad aired during Game 1 of the World Series, surely reaching many American voters.

B.C. Premier David Eby had plans to talk directly to Americans himself.

This province planned digital advertisements to be aimed at U.S. homeowners starting this month. They were to focus on increased costs of softwood lumber for American home construction and renovation projects.

The impact of the Ontario was seismic, and not in the way Canadians would have wanted.

The U.S. President broke off trade talks with Canada on Oct. 23, citing the Ontario government TV ad. Trump announced he would boost tariffs on Canadian imports by another 10 per cent.

The Ontario government pulled the ad last week, after it aired during Game 2 of the World Series. Ford said the president wanted the ad pulled after the first day, but “I took three more days, and we paused it to get back to the table. It was very, very effective."

On Monday, after earlier saying B.C. would press ahead with its plans, Eby said his government would drop the idea.

“I knew that it was a source of anxiety for many people, including potentially the federal government, given the reaction” of Trump to the Ontario campaign, Eby said.

Anxiety might have been understatement.

The fallout from the Ontario ad has been roiling trade talks for the past week. Prime Minister Mark Carney said he advised Ford not to run the ad. Ford said Monday he has a different recollection of that conversation.

Ford said he would “never apologize” to Trump, even though Carney did during his recent trip to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea.

The ad also prompted a less-than-diplomatic outburst from the U.S.’s top diplomat in Ottawa.

The Globe’s Robert Fife reported that U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra unleashed an expletive-filled tirade about the ad on David Paterson, a former General Motors auto executive now working as Ontario’s representative. Both men were attending the annual Canadian American Business Council gala last week.

Globe columnist Gary Mason noted it’s not the first time Hoekstra’s behaviour has run counter to the usual job description of a diplomat. In September, Hoekstra wondered why Canadian politicians were so hostile to the Trump-imposed tariffs.

“Mr. Hoekstra isn’t here as a diplomat,” Gary wrote. “He is here to lecture, berate, and tell us how great America is and how much lesser the rest of us are.”

Responding to a much larger bully is always difficult, but Eby had evidently concluded that antagonizing the American administration and making life more difficult for Ottawa’s negotiations wasn’t worth it.

At a summit of B.C. cabinet ministers, federal officials and Dominic LeBlanc, the federal minister responsible for Canada-U.S. trade, Eby said he was able to impress upon his federal counterparts the importance of the softwood sector.

The sector has been hammered in recent years with escalating duties and U.S. import taxes on softwood now total 45.16 per cent on most Canadian producers. B.C. has complained the sector’s woes aren’t getting the attention that Ontario’s auto and steel industries are getting.

But on Monday, Eby said he believes Ottawa now gets the point.

“I feel much more confident the federal government understands the severity of the crisis facing the sector,” he said after the meeting.

This is the weekly British Columbia newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.