{"id":315026,"date":"2021-08-03T23:15:48","date_gmt":"2021-08-03T20:15:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/the-biden-trudeau-talk-build-back-whatever\/"},"modified":"2021-08-03T23:15:48","modified_gmt":"2021-08-03T20:15:48","slug":"the-biden-trudeau-talk-build-back-whatever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/the-biden-trudeau-talk-build-back-whatever\/","title":{"rendered":"#The Biden-Trudeau talk: build back whatever"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#The Biden-Trudeau talk: build back whatever<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m going to cheerfully assume it\u2019s not at all a bad sign that the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Canada don\u2019t even agree on why they spoke by phone on Monday.<\/p>\n

The readout from the Prime Minister\u2019s Office<\/a> landed first in Ottawa reporters\u2019 inboxes. \u201cToday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke with the President of the United States of America, Joe Biden,\u201d it begins. \u201cThe Prime Minister and President discussed the importance of physical and human infrastructure investments being made to build back better from the COVID-19 pandemic and address its disproportionate impact on women, including by prioritizing supports for child care and education.\u201d<\/p>\n

The White House\u2019s account of the chat<\/a> came soon after. \u201cPresident Joseph R. Biden, Jr. spoke today with Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada to thank him for the gift of Montreal smoked meats sent in congratulations for the Tampa Bay Lightning\u2019s victory over the Montreal Canadiens for the Stanley Cup trophy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps they had a bad connection? \u201cJustin! I just got the\u2014what the hell is this stuff?\u2014the brisket, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI agree, Joe. A fair recovery will be hard, but we have to risk it!\u201d<\/p>\n

There follows a period of relative alignment between the two descript<\/a>ions of what was, after all, the same conversation. PMO: The two leaders \u201clooked forward to working closely together for the benefit of people and jobs on both sides of the border.\u201d<\/p>\n

White House: Same, pretty much. Biden and Trudeau \u201cdiscussed bilateral economic cooperation and their shared commitment to strengthening the resilience and competitiveness of the U.S. and Canadian economies.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Canadian account is, in a departure from the norm, more detailed than the American. Trudeau\u2019s staff say he \u201chighlighted the significant alignment between labour and environmental standards in both countries and the benefits to each country of open government procurement.\u201d Biden makes no mention of such a thing. Trudeau says he \u201chighlighted the importance of Line 5<\/a> for Canada\u2019s energy security and reiterated Canada\u2019s support for a negotiated settlement between Enbridge and the State of Michigan.\u201d Biden says nothing about this, although the Canadian account insists both Biden and Trudeau \u201cagreed to continue to monitor developments closely.\u201d What would monitoring developments closely entail, anyway? A Google News<\/a> alert?<\/p>\n

The two accounts briefly agree again. Biden and Trudeau discussed the continued detention of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig by the Chinese regime. They both want the Michaels freed. From there, it\u2019s more lonely unilateral Canadian declarations of bilateral cooperation: wildfires, November\u2019s COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, \u201ccontinued close collaboration\u201d in managing the shared land border. On all of these matters, the White House keeps shtum. Perhaps the president was already tucking into his \u201csmoked meats\u201d and didn\u2019t debrief his staff in any detail. The Ottawa readout ends with Trudeau ribbing the President about Canada\u2019s Olympic women\u2019s soccer victory over the Americans, although again, apparently Biden didn\u2019t hear or care to repeat it.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s close reading of two terse communiqu\u00e9s has been brought to you by the letters \u201cP,\u201d \u201cM\u201d and \u201cO,\u201d and by this corner\u2019s continued amazement at the arid news desert surrounding what was, after all, supposed to be a renewed Canada-U.S. relationship.<\/p>\n

My roadmap for this renewed Canada-U.S. relationship is the 40-point Roadmap for a Renewed Canada-U.S. Relationship<\/a>, which Biden and Trudeau made public on Feb. 23 during their distanced online summit a month after Biden\u2019s inauguration. That was five months ago. Given that Trudeau\u2019s account of their latest conversation (and only Trudeau\u2019s) says the two look forward to \u201cworking closely together,\u201d the Roadmap\u2019s progress is a good measure of how closely they\u2019ve worked together so far.<\/p>\n

Progress has been limited.<\/p>\n

The Roadmap twice mentions \u201csupply chain security,\u201d which is the notion that goods can be built in instalments across the border without facing assorted trade-limiting barriers. But last week Canadian concerns about \u201cbuy American\u201d provisions in Biden\u2019s huge new infrastructure bill were still running high<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The roadmap says Biden and Trudeau \u201cdirected their Ministers of Foreign Affairs and National Defence and Secretaries of State and Defense to meet in a 2+2 Ministerial format,\u201d a goal Marc Garneau, Canada\u2019s foreign minister, reiterated after Zoom-calling with his opposite number, Anthony Blinken, three days after the Biden-Trudeau summit. A 2+2 ministerial did happen during the Trump administration<\/a> but hasn\u2019t taken place again since the Trudeau-Biden roadmap.<\/p>\n

The roadmap called for the \u201cCross-Border Crime Forum\u201d to be re-established, and the two countries\u2019 attorneys general<\/a> reiterated the goal<\/a> when they spoke in April. Unfortunately the Government of Canada website dedicated to this organization hasn\u2019t been updated since 2018<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The roadmap called for \u201can expanded U.S.-Canada Arctic Dialogue.\u201d Neither side has made any announcement about such a thing since. Garneau\u2019s account of a chat he had with Blinken<\/a> in May mentions the need for such an expanded dialogue; Blinken\u2019s\u2014stop me if you\u2019ve heard this one before\u2014doesn\u2019t<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not as though there\u2019s been no joint work. The roadmap calls for strengthening the U.S.-Canada Action Plan on Opioids, \u201crecognizing the rise in drug use and overdoses in both of our countries.\u201d Officials from both countries met in May<\/a> to advance that goal.\u00a0Natural Resources Minister Seamus O\u2019Regan and his U.S. counterpart, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, ticked off significant boxes on the roadmap\u2019s to-do list with this June Memorandum of Understanding<\/a> that at least mentions further work on cybersecurity in the energy sector and ensuring a secure continental supply of critical minerals\u2014the often-rare substances without which modern electronics can\u2019t be manufactured.<\/p>\n

But the roadmap still leaves a hefty inbox to work through. A revived North American Leaders\u2019 Summit\u2014the so-called Three Amigos summits that began with Paul Martin, George W. Bush and Vicente Fox in Waco in 2005 and ended, so far, with Trudeau, Barack Obama and Enrico Pe\u00f1a Nieto in Toronto in 2016? No news yet.<\/p>\n

Half a year into the Biden presidency, we\u2019re left with the impression of cordial relations across the border, not more. I\u2019m given to understand the Americans are frustrated by this. The Biden administration is plainly doing whatever the heck it wants on supply chains and Line 5, but it doesn\u2019t take a friendly government to the north for granted. Its fondest wish is that Canada and the U.S. might work together on shared priorities in the rest of the world\u2014that these occasional top-level phone chats over hockey bets might become more than a list of (apparently almost always uniquely Canadian) requests for exemptions from assorted bilateral irritants. What would excite Biden tremendously, in other words, is some burden-sharing.<\/p>\n

U.S. authorities think Canada might be coaxed into taking a particular interest in stabilizing Haiti<\/a>; in strengthening democracy\u2019s hand in Cuba<\/a>; in offering a model for African development that would be an alternative to China\u2019s efforts<\/a>; and at least, if Canada won\u2019t bite on any of the other projects, on a robust and imaginative effort to modernize NORAD, the 63-year-old continental defence pact that stands at the heart of both countries\u2019 national security doctrines.<\/p>\n

Soviet nuclear missiles, the modish threat in 1958, have been replaced by a Pandora\u2019s box of threats small and large, well canvassed in this article<\/a>. But while NORAD modernization made it into the February roadmap, the Trudeau government is plainly skittish about discussing it,<\/a> because it touches on taboo topics like ballistic missile defence (\u201cBush\u2019s Star Wars\u201d), 21st-century jet fighter capability (see assorted Canadian governments\u2019 procurement horrors passim ad infinitum<\/em>), and what for the Prime Minister is the eternally vexing question of Canada\u2019s attitude toward China.<\/p>\n

How skittish? Here\u2019s a memo<\/a> on NORAD modernization on the defence department\u2019s website. Have a look<\/a>. No, really, have a look.<\/p>\n

Hard things are hard, as people used to say in Trudeau\u2019s PMO, although I always thought that meant hard things require the kind of effort that you put into a task when you take it seriously. Perhaps, hard things being hard, it\u2019s easier just to look around for easy things. As Joe Biden just demonstrated<\/a> with a huge bipartisan infrastructure deal in Congress, he\u2019ll talk to anyone<\/em> if it\u2019ll advance his agenda. The conspicuously chatty Canadian account of his latest conversation with Trudeau makes no mention of any of the agenda items I\u2019m told would really catch Biden\u2019s attention. When your neighbour keeps calling asking for favours, courtesy demands that you take the call, at least every once in a while. Calling that kind of strained and patient indulgence a renewed relationship, however, is a stretch.<\/p>\n

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