Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and now-U.S. President Joe Biden walk down the Hall of Honour on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, on Dec. 9, 2016.PATRICK DOYLE/The Canadian Press
U.S. President Joe Biden wants to talk about Ukraine, global competition with China, continental defence, hemispheric migration, and Haiti. Justin Trudeau wants to push Canada’s interests on Roxham Road and trade.
The two leaders’ political views are not miles apart, but there will be a disconnect when Mr. Biden travels to Ottawa on Thursday for his first visit to Canada as president.
The U.S. President feels the world’s weight in a time of transformative change. Mr. Trudeau feels he has to use the time to draw attention to Canada’s bilateral business.
Canada’s Ambassador to the United States, Kirsten Hillman, noted in an interview on Friday that the two meet each other often at international summits. “I think that the objectives for next week are to focus in on our bilateral relationship,” she said.
But bilateral issues can be a lot of things. Sometimes Canada’s concerns strike American leaders as small-time. When Condoleezza Rice was national security adviser to president George W. Bush she notably referred to them as “condominium issues.” Canada might be harming its own interests by framing them too narrowly.
So is Mr. Trudeau ready to talk to Mr. Biden about the big things?
Mr. Biden is looking for allies in the world and he wants to talk about defence issues – and particularly about upgrading NORAD, the joint U.S.-Canada command protecting North American airspace.
Whatever debates Canada has about its military, it should be a no-brainer to revamp Cold War systems to face modern threats from a more disruptive Russia and a China developing hypersonic weapons.
Defence Minister Anita Anand announced a $4.9-billion commitment last year to modernizing NORAD, but the United States wants Canada to act faster. It’s not good for bilateral relations to fail to deliver on something as basic as continental defence.
It also fuels a broader U.S. suspicion that Canada talks big but doesn’t act big.
As the U.S. embarks on a massive series of green-tech and high-tech subsidies launched in large part to compete with China and secure supply chains closer to home, Mr. Trudeau’s strategic response – ahead of Canada’s own subsidy program to come in next week’s budget – has been to play up the idea that Canada can play a fundamental role in those supply chains, notably as a supplier of critical minerals.
And that really did get a reaction from the U.S.
But Maryscott Greenwood, the chief executive officer of the Canadian American Business Council, says there is a risk Canada will move too slowly to take advantage of its own strategy. If Ottawa doesn’t approve mines and minerals processing, the U.S. could look for other sources, she said.
Now, Canada can only scramble to compete with its subsidies (with measures expected in next week’s federal budget) and work around the edges to try to push back some of the more damaging aspects for Canada. At this summit, both leaders will laud their own efforts to revamp industry to address climate change.
But it’s worth noting that geopolitics are a key driver for Mr. Biden’s economic and trade policies. Mr. Biden doesn’t deal in transactions like his predecessor, Donald Trump. He looks for allies on big issues.
There will be times when Canada doesn’t want to be that ally. Mr. Trudeau rebuffed U.S. requests for Canada to lead a military mission to Haiti, and there are good reasons to be reluctant. But it’s not reassuring that the PM also has to admit that Canada’s military is too stretched to do it, anyway.
Yet it is still wiser to talk to the U.S. President about the big things.
Mr. Trudeau will be pressing Mr. Biden to make arrangements that effectively extend the safe third country agreement between the two countries to the entire border, so that Canada can turn back asylum seekers at Quebec’s Roxham Road to the United States.
But Mr. Biden has his own, bigger issue on his southern border. He has made it clear that he is looking for allies in the hemisphere to work on issues of migration, build capacity in Central American countries, and create “legal pathways” into their countries. That broader issue of migration in the hemisphere has a lot to do with Roxham Road, too.
If Mr. Trudeau can find ways to talk about big things with Mr. Biden, those bilateral Canadian issues might actually get a better hearing.