Jim Wilson, minister of economic development, with Attorney General Caroline Mulroney at Queen's Park in Toronto on Sept. 15, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Cole Burston

The clock is ticking down to the latest deadline to renegotiate a trade deal with the United States and Mexico, but Ontario’s trade minister went out of his way Thursday to commend the Trudeau government’s work.

Fresh off a one-day trip to Washington on Wednesday, Minister Jim Wilson gave kudos to Canada’s negotiating team.

“They’re all working very, very hard,” Wilson said, noting that Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland “worked 24 hours the other day.”

Wilson and Premier Doug Ford were at Canada’s embassy in Washington to get briefed by Ambassador David MacNaughton about the trade talks.

[READ MORE: U.S. Buy American demand gone from NAFTA: sources]

U.S. President Donald Trump has set an Oct. 1 deadline for the talks on a revamped NAFTA to wrap up. The U.S. and Mexico have already reached a bilateral deal.

A few hours after Wilson’s comments, Freeland emerged from almost three hours of talks in Washington to say no deal had been reached yet.

The president’s continued threat of auto tariffs, and the possibility that threat will continue even if a deal is reached, is a key sticking point in the negotiations — as are Canada’s heavily protected dairy sector and the dispute-resolution mechanism called Chapter 19.

Freeland and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have repeatedly said they would rather take no deal than a bad deal.

Wilson wouldn’t go so far as to endorse that stance. But he did say the continued threat of auto tariffs would be “a very bad thing.”

“A deal that doesn’t take into consideration the need to protect jobs in Ontario and grow those jobs in the future is not a deal we’d be signing onto, that’s for sure,” he said.

In August, senior government sources in Ontario told iPolitics the province was increasingly concerned by the approach Ottawa was taking in the negotiations. Wilson said those people were “badly misinformed” and repeated the premier’s pledge that he would stand “shoulder-to-shoulder” with Trudeau in the NAFTA talks.

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