Biden held a video call with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the Roosevelt room, then moved to the East room for the public photo-op portion of the meeting.
Biden said he and Trudeau “agreed to work together on a inclusive recovery” from the COVID-19 pandemic by “using the tools available through the small and medium enterprise chapter of our trade agreement to support women and minority owned businesses.”
Biden and Trudeau said they would like to work together on global warming.
“We also double downed on our efforts to tackle climate change, It was really, really encouraging. Now that the United States is back in the Paris Agreement, we intend to demonstrate our leadership in order to spur other countries to raise their own ambitions,” Biden said.
“Canada and the United States are going to work in lockstep to display the seriousness of our commitment at both home and abroad. To that end, we’re launching a high level climate ambition ministerial to align our policies and our goals and achieve net zero emissions by 2050,” a goal Biden previously stated in his presidential campaign.
Trudeau, Canada’s most progressive liberal leader in history, and vocal Trump-hater, unsurprisingly said US leadership has been “sorely missed” as a swipe at Trump.
The most obvious topic of contention between the two leaders was Biden’s executive order cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office.
The white house refused to answer any questions related to such conversation, though they were ready for the questions, as “The decision will not be reconsidered,” a U.S. official told reporters ahead of the meeting.
(https://www.npr.org/2021/02/23/970375260/biden-welcomes-canadas-trudeau-virtually-to-white-house-for-1st-meeting)
The next day, Trudeau on Meet the Press with Chuck Todd
When Todd asked him if the pipeline was “dead,” Trudeau signaled Canada wanted to “move forward” on the issue.
“I think it’s fairly clear that the U.S. administration has made its decision on that, and we’re much more interested in ensuring that we’re moving forward in ways that are good for both of our countries,” Trudeau said. “There’s so much we can do together that I don’t spend too much time worrying about the tension points. It’ll always come up in our relationship, but we’ll work through them, particularly given the alignment on so many things that we’re able to bring with this new administration.” (https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/27/justin-trudeau-biden-us-canada-relations-471829)
Worth noting, many Canadians are just as pissed off at Trudeau for his lack of support for the Keystone XL pipeline as Americans are at Biden (https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/07/keystone-pipeline-canada-trudeau-obama-112306)
Joint press statements release afterwards:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/02/23/remarks-by-president-biden-and-prime-minister-trudeau-of-canada-in-joint-press-statements/
Sources:
