Toronto Police Service and Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) vehicles are seen on Wellington Street in preparation of U.S. President Joe Biden's visit in Ottawa, on March 22.Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press
The Canadian and U.S. governments are signalling that there may be movement on the thorny issue of irregular migration going in both directions across the border, a day before President Joe Biden arrives in Ottawa for meetings with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
In Ottawa on Wednesday, Mr. Trudeau and Immigration Minister Sean Fraser both dropped hints that there will be an announcement on the matter as part of Mr. Biden’s two-day working trip in the capital. The President will arrive with First Lady Jill Biden on Thursday afternoon.
While officials in Washington were more cagey about what they expect the outcome of the talks will be, Mr. Trudeau suggested a solution to the issue could be in sight.
“We’ve been working very closely with the Americans for many months and we hope to have an announcement soon,” Mr. Trudeau said after reporters asked him about irregular migration on his way into Question Period on Wednesday.
The Prime Minister has been under growing pressure to curb the flow of migrants at Roxham Road, an unofficial border crossing between New York and Quebec. Doing so would require a change to the Canada-U. S. Safe Third Country Agreement, which prevents people arriving via the U.S. from making asylum claims at official Canadian border crossings, but doesn’t cover unofficial ones. The federal government wants the White House to allow the agreement to be applied across the entire border.
In a Wednesday background briefing with senior U.S. administration officials, reporters were told that the makeup of the entourage of officials and cabinet secretaries joining the President for the trip hasn’t yet been confirmed. But they said it will include Secretary of State Antony Blinken; Mr. Biden’s national-security adviser, Jake Sullivan; and his homeland-security adviser, Liz Sherwood-Randall.
The officials stressed the warm “Justin and Joe” relationship between the President and Prime Minister. They said they expect the visit to be substantive, and to cover issues like the scale and speed of the modernization of North American air defences and the humanitarian, political and security crises gripping Haiti. The Globe is not identifying the officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be named.
On defence spending, the officials said the White House is focused on the size and timing of Canada’s previously announced investments. The U.S. wants to ensure that the upgrades are made in time for the delivery of Canada’s newly purchased F-35s. The first of those fighter jets are scheduled to arrive in 2026.
The files the leaders will address are challenging and complicated, but not contentious, the officials said.
At a separate news conference in Ottawa, Mr. Fraser repeatedly told reporters his U.S. counterpart has shown a willingness to address the irregular migration issue.
“There’s more work to do, but we have no shortage of a partner in the United States,” Mr. Fraser said.
In conjunction with that work, he said, Ottawa is committed to addressing broader issues of irregular migration, which is dramatically more pronounced for the U.S. on its southern border with Mexico. Last year nearly 40,000 people crossed into Canada through Roxham Road. Hundreds of thousands of people cross into the U.S. from Mexico each month.
Mr. Fraser said the governments want to address the issues driving migration from Central and South America and work on “capacity building” in the region.
At a White House briefing Wednesday, U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby emphasized the scale of the challenge. “There are more people on the move in this hemisphere than there have been since World War II,” he said.
Asked whether the U.S. would agree to Canadian demands on the Safe Third Country Agreement, Mr. Kirby declined to pre-empt any potential announcements from the President.
“I don’t want to get too far ahead of the agenda. I think we’ll have more to say once we get up to Ottawa,” he said.
A smaller but growing number of migrants have been crossing the border irregularly in the other direction, from Canada to the U.S., giving the U.S. some reason to revisit the Safe Third Country Agreement, too. These migrants have primarily been Mexican nationals, who can enter Canada without visas.
Mr. Kirby said Mr. Biden will also discuss the need to “increase defence spending” with Mr. Trudeau, as well as clean energy, climate change and Haiti.
On Parliament Hill Wednesday, Mr. Trudeau said his focus with Mr. Biden will be the economy, the green transition and the critical minerals that are needed for it. He said the two will also talk about global issues, notably China. On Monday, The Globe and Mail reported that Canada will also seek to ensure domestic businesses are not affected by Mr. Biden’s latest push to advance Buy America policies, which could block Canadian businesses from accessing certain sectors of the American market.
Canada’s opposition party leaders also made known their expectations for the presidential visit. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said he wants Mr. Trudeau to secure exemptions to Buy America policies, put a stop to migration via Roxham Road and negotiate an end to softwood lumber tariffs. U.S. officials said Mr. Poilievre, as the Official Opposition leader, will have a pull-aside with Mr. Biden during official events in Ottawa on Friday.
The Prime Minister told reporters that he always raises softwood lumber tariffs in his meetings with U.S. presidents. Behind the scenes, officials are significantly downplaying the possibility of a resolution on that front.
At a background briefing late Tuesday, a government source said the government expects the leaders to make progress on the file, but added that it won’t be possible to sort out every issue. The source pointed out the protracted and long-standing nature of the softwood dispute. The Globe is not identifying the source, who spoke on the condition that they not be named.
A 2006 Canada-U. S. softwood agreement expired in 2015, with no replacement. In the latest phase of the long-running trade fight, the U.S. Department of Commerce started imposing tariffs on Canadian lumber in 2017. Last week, Global Affairs Canada told The Globe that the U.S. is “not meeting us at the table” on the issue.
The Prime Minister called the tariffs unfair on Wednesday and said part of his argument to sway President Biden is that the fees are also “causing higher prices for American homebuyers, that it’s hurting the American middle class in really clear and fundamental ways.”
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has said his party’s top priority is for Mr. Biden and Mr. Trudeau to address the competitiveness concerns raised by the President’s decision to double down on more Buy America provisions, including hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. subsidies intended to spur the transition to a cleaner economy, which Mr. Singh has argued put Canada at a disadvantage.
With reports from Janice Dickson and Laura Stone