Joe Biden heads to Ottawa: He and Canada’s Justin Trudeau have much to talk about

When then-Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden last vis­it­ed Ottawa, in 2016 as part of a vale­dic­to­ry trip, he was fet­ed at an elab­o­rate din­ner and effused that the Unit­ed States and Cana­da were “bet­ter posi­tioned than any time since the end of World War II” to pro­mote democ­ra­cy around the world.

Pres­i­dent Biden returns to Canada’s cap­i­tal on Thurs­day to a very dif­fer­ent world.

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has shut down economies. Russia’s auto­crat­ic ruler, Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin, has launched a mil­i­tary inva­sion of Ukraine.

An emerg­ing super­pow­er, Chi­na, is men­ac­ing its neigh­bors and send­ing recon­nais­sance bal­loons over North America.

Refugees are flee­ing a once-demo­c­ra­t­ic Venezuela.

Haiti is in anarchy.

Biden and Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau will have much to talk about.

Both have backed Ukraine’s resis­tance against Vlad the Invad­er. But the Unit­ed States is press­ing Cana­da to increase mil­i­tary spend­ing in sup­port of NORAD (the North Amer­i­can Air Defense Command).

“I think Cana­da and the Unit­ed States agree on the need for enhanced spend­ing in the defense space,” David Cohen, U.S. Ambas­sador to Cana­da, told CBC in a pre-sum­mit interview.

It is tra­di­tion for a new U.S. pres­i­dent to make his first for­eign vis­it to the Great White North. Due to COVID, how­ev­er, the get togeth­er in Feb­ru­ary of 2021 took place by video con­fer­ence. The vis­its are a form of recog­ni­tion val­ued by Cana­da. The two coun­tries share 4,000-plus miles of the world’s longest peace­time border.

The Biden trip fol­lows years of acri­mo­ny with Trump in office.

Just before a 2018 G7 con­fer­ence in Charlevoix, Que­bec, Biden’s pre­de­ces­sor slapped a twen­ty-five per­cent tar­iff on Cana­di­an steel plus a ten per­cent tar­iff on alu­minum, part of his “Amer­i­ca First” trade policy.

Trudeau described the tar­iffs as “insult­ing” but empha­sized con­tin­ued col­le­gial­i­ty with the U.S. Trump blew up on the flight back to Wash­ing­ton, D.C., and described the Cana­di­an prime min­is­ter as “so meek and mild” as well as “very dis­hon­est and weak.”

The insults out of right field have continued.

When a “Free­dom Con­voy” of truck­ers occu­pied down­town Ottawa in Feb­ru­ary of 2022, protest­ing vac­cine require­ments, Trump described Trudeau as a “far left lunatic who has destroyed Cana­da with insane COVID man­dates.” FNC pun­dits have show­ered the prime min­is­ter with abuse then and since.

The Biden admin­is­tra­tion has moved to heal relations.

After the 2021 video con­fer­ence, the pres­i­dent told reporters: “Cana­da and the Unit­ed States are going to work in lock­step to dis­play the seri­ous­ness of our com­mit­ments both home and abroad.”

Ambas­sador Cohen, play­ing Sher­pa for the approach­ing sum­mit, told CBC: “He (Biden) likes Cana­da, he cares about Cana­da, and the Unit­ed States cares about Cana­da.” To which Kirsten Hill­man, Canada’s ambas­sador in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., respond­ed, “We’re sources of strength for each other.”

(Hill­man works out of Canada’s embassy on Penn­syl­va­nia Avenue, a strik­ing build­ing designed by Van­cou­ver archi­tect Arthur Erick­son, with a sculp­ture, “The Spir­it of Hai­da Gwaii, the Black Canoe,” by British Colum­bia Hai­da artist Bill Reid. Then-Prime Min­is­ter Bri­an Mul­roney remarked, in a 1988 vis­it, that the ambassador’s digs were far more hand­some than the PM’s office in Ottawa.)

What else is on the table? The two lead­ers are expect­ed to talk about the depth to which they should inter­vene in Haiti, and what to do about gangs run­ning ram­pant. Biden and Trudeau are both com­mit­ted to action on climate.

They are expect­ed to dis­cuss crit­i­cal min­er­als need­ed for car bat­ter­ies and semi-con­duc­tors. Cana­da is edgy about our Infla­tion Reduc­tion Act, and what role it is to play in the U.S. com­mit­ment to clean ener­gy development.

The Biden deci­sion to kill the Key­stone XL pipeline stirred ran­cor in Canada’s ener­gy indus­try. The pipeline was designed to trans­port Alber­ta tar sands oil, run­ning south through “the States” to export ter­mi­nals on the Gulf Coast.

Chi­na spy­ing is sure to come up, because the recon­nais­sance bal­loon trav­eled over Cana­da on its jour­ney from Alas­ka to the U.S. Trudeau is fac­ing a mini scan­dal over alle­ga­tions of a clum­sy Chi­nese inter­ven­tion in Canada’s 2021 elec­tion, sup­pos­ed­ly sup­port­ing a can­di­date of his gov­ern­ing Lib­er­al Party.

Curi­ous­ly, trans-bound­ary issues gen­er­al­ly get a back seat. The big salmon fish­ery of South­east Alas­ka faces a poten­tial threat from mines along major rivers – the Unuk, Taku and Stikine – which orig­i­nate upstream in British Columbia.

The Colville Indi­ans and con­ser­va­tion groups wor­ry about expan­sion of a big cop­per mine near Prince­ton, B.C., on the Sim­ilka­meen Riv­er, which flows south to join the Okanogan Riv­er in north cen­tral Washington.

Hav­ing entered office in 2015, Prime Min­is­ter Trudeau has wit­nessed the Oba­ma, Biden and Trump admin­is­tra­tions. His father, Prime Min­is­ter Pierre Elliott Trudeau, dealt – some­times con­tentious­ly — with the admin­is­tra­tions of Pres­i­dents Lyn­don John­son, Richard Nixon, Ger­ald Ford, Jim­my Carter and Ronald Reagan.

Biden will address Canada’s Par­lia­ment before fly­ing home. Vis­its take on the per­son­al­i­ties of pres­i­dents. A tree plant­ed on Par­lia­ment Hill by Richard Nixon, as a sym­bol of the coun­tries’ friend­ship, grew up crooked.