Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said Canadian preparations for the next U.S. president have been underway for months as American voters decide who will replace Joe Biden in the White House.

“We have been preparing for this for months thanks to our diplomatic network in the United States, but also throughout the world,” Joly told reporters in Ottawa on Tuesday.

“This government will be able to tackle issues that are important to Canadians, regardless of what the American people decide.”

Today is the last day for voters to cast ballots in a tight presidential race between Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and Republican nominee Donald Trump.

WATCH | “An important day”: Canadian ministers weigh in on the US elections:

Joly’s comments come after one of Trump’s former ambassadors to Canada said Canada should prepare for what could be a more antagonistic bilateral relationship with the United States if his former boss wins.

“Canada must buckle up, the whole world must buckle up because President Trump will continue his policies of 2016. We are going to make America great again and we will bring it back to where it was under the Trump presidency,” he said. he added. ” Kelly Craft told Radio-Canada in an interview on Sunday.

At the NATO summit earlier this year, Trudeau pledged to meet the defense pact’s spending targets, which Canada has long ignored. Trudeau said Canada would spend 2 percent of its GDP on the military by 2032.

Craft said it’s not soon enough and she expects Trump to demand more defense spending in a shorter time frame.

Asked Tuesday about the possibility of accelerating military spending, Joly was evasive, saying that Canada “will respect its obligations to its NATO allies.”

Trade will likely become a major issue if Trump returns to the Oval Office. He promises a minimum 10 percent tariff on all imports into the United States – which would be a disruptive development for Canadian businesses and the workers they employ, given that approximately $3.6 billion in Goods cross the border every day.

Joly insisted that Ottawa has worked to create important connections with officials at the local and state levels who can help advocate for open and continued trade between the two countries.

“We now have a deep relationship at different levels of American society,” she said.

Trudeau questioned about possible unrest

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau echoed Joly’s statements heading into question period Tuesday, saying he was ready to work with whoever wins.

Sources say that behind the scenes, Trudeau held conversations with advisers about the potential results and was briefed by Canadian security officials about the possibility of violent unrest in the United States sparked by a delayed result.

If the results are as close as polls suggest and mail-in voting becomes a deciding factor, there will be no clear winner Tuesday night — a repeat of the experience in the 2020 election, when Biden failed to win. was declared the winner only a few days later. after election day.

Trump took advantage of the delay and declared victory before many states had finalized their results.

The 2020 delay sparked protests and weeks of unrest that culminated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Trudeau dodged a question about whether he was concerned about the potential for violence.

“My job as Canadian prime minister has always been to work with whoever the Americans elect to be their president…and that’s exactly what I’m going to continue to do,” he told reporters Tuesday .

WATCH | Trudeau is asked if he is worried about possible violence in the United States after the elections:

The FBI said Tuesday it had heard of a number of bomb threats at polling places across the United States, but none were deemed credible.

“The FBI is aware of bomb threats against polling places in several states, many of which appear to come from Russian email domains. None of these threats have been deemed credible to date,” the agency said. agency in a press release.

The FBI did not identify the states in question, but Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Tuesday that the state’s election process suppressed some bomb threats that he said came from Russia .

Officials in Fulton County, Georgia, said they received “multiple calls” and the threats forced a brief closure of two polling places.

Officials continue to warn of what they see as an unprecedented level of foreign influence and disinformation that they say will persist beyond Election Day.