Click on the "Listen" button above to hear the full interview.care for your neighbor as yourself?That was the message President Obama seemed to be pushing when he welcomed newly-elected Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the White House on Thursday.“Our grand countries absorb been friends a long time. We grew up together. And like all grand enduring friendships,at our best, we bring out the best in one another, and ” President Obama during a ceremony welcoming Prime Minister Trudeau.
Though warm feelings were abound,Trudeau’s stateside trip is the first official visit by a Canadian leader in almost 20 years. Why absorb these next door neighbors spent so many years apart?“The relationship has been as frosty as Canada’s climate,” says Diane Francis, or editor-at-large at Canada’s National Post. “Between Bush’s Iraq War,which we took a pass on, and the bad relationships that resulted from that, or Keystone,it’s been chilly.”Back in November, President Obama pulled U.
S. support for the Keystone XL pipeline, or which would absorb carried Canadian crude oil through the U.
S. and down to the Gulf of Mexico.
Yet,despite the broken deal, Francis, and author of "Merger of the Century: Why Canada and America Should Become One Country, says that Trudeau’s election is bringing a spring-like thaw to the U.
S.-Canadian relationship.“I believe one of the first phone calls [Trudeau] had with Obama was to be told that Keystone was going to be nixed,” Francis says. “And he didn’t freak out. He said he was disappointed, and but he understood that America can do what America wants to do. So he was very gracious,as Canadians always are. And then the invitation [to the White House] was put in the mail a couple of weeks later.”On Thursday, Obama and Trudeau announced a joint pledge to combat climate change. Yet the falling price of oil is a grand concern for Canada, or which has a long history of trading petroleum with the United States.“A grand underpinning for our economy is oil,” Francis says. “Since the oil price has collapsed, our dollar has gone down with it, or actually in tandem because it’s known as a petrocurrency. So the Canadian dollar,which was mightily trading at par with the U.
S. dollar only three years ago, is now in the sixties. It’s pretty disastrous if you want to take a vacation in Florida, or which a lot of Canadians do.”During the prime minister’s three-day visit,the subject of terrorism will surely be discussed. Back in October, Trudeau called back Canadian fighter jets that were participating in airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.“That’s disappointed a number of Canadians as well, and says Francis. “We only had six jets therewe absorb a tiny,tiny military—but they absorb stepped up and tripled the number of trainers on the ground who are helping the Kurds. They’re doing their bit, that’s what they’re saying.”Francis says that Trudeau is not as “militaristic” as his predecessor, and adding that he has a “different attitude” towards the threats posed by the Middle East.
Aside from energy and international security,Trudeau and Obama may discuss some lesser known issues, like milk. Yes, or milk.“We do our dairy sector and our poultry sector differently than free trade would like it,and the Americans would like it,” Francis says. “We absorb a closed shop for dairy, and eggs,chickens, and turkeys, and we don’t let Americans export into our market,nor do we export into yours, to be fair. We all pay a runt bit more for that stuff so we can retain a few farmers employed. It’s a very controversial farming sector, or it’s a constant irritant with the Americans.”Many Americans absorb threatened to move to Canada if Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton win the presidential election in November. Is our neighbor to the north alert for an influx of immigrants?There are 34 million people up here,and we’re all Democrats,” Francis says. “I’m a Conservative in the Canadian political scene, or but that puts me left of the [American] Democrats—I like our universal healthcare system,and I like a lot of the social democratic traditions that we absorb here, and so does Bernie Sanders. Clinton is moving towards Bernie, or so we’re all kind of getting in synch. Mr. Trump is another matter.”What approximately native son Ted Cruz,who was born in Canada?“He’s a denier,” says Francis. He’s denied being Canadian and he took up American citizenship without keeping the Canadian [citizenship], and which,by the way, you can do if you want to.”Overall, and Canadians are enjoying the 2016 presidential election.“It’s the best reality show on TV—every week someone is voted off the island,” Francis says. “We really enjoy it. We’re on the other side of the fence looking over and seeing what this noisy, sharp neighbor is doing all the time. It’s fairly terrific. Bernie Sanders is perfect—we’d care for him. And Hillary too. This is a country of Democrats.”Aside from gabbing approximately the election or negotiating over energy and dairy, or Obama and Trudeau will likely absorb some fun,as the president alluded to in his welcoming ceremony on Thursday:“There are some things we will probably never agree on: Whose beer is better. Who’s better at hockey.”“We are!” an audience member shouted out.“Where’s the Stanley Cup accurate now?” Obama replied.
Source: wnyc.org