I suspect Don Martin is right: Canada-US relations will be plagued with problems for years go come. Canadians should have no illusions about Biden and his commitment to addressing American domestic concerns. I also suspect he is right a second time. Better Biden than Trump. You can find his argument here. There is a great deal about which to be skeptical following the first Biden/Trudeau summit but also a great deal about which to be happy. While there are voices (see previous posts) that have tried to cast Biden as somehow anti-Canadian because of his opposition to Keystone XL, we need to recognize that those voices are intensely politicized and don't really reflect a solid and serious basis upon which Canadian/American relations can go forward. I think this first meeting was a good start and, if I were Trudeau, I'd be reticent to start arguing about Keystone XL not because I was abandoning Alberta, but for a host of other reasons that I've already tried to explain.
What are the positive signs? What are the potential bumps in the road and how are they to be addressed? And, what are the implications of this meeting for Alberta?
The may be a long list of positive signs but some of the key ones I noticed from news coverage are as follows:
- Canada and the US seem to have agreed upon a loose framework to work together on a range of matters.
- The US government is clearly signalling the importance with which it views Can/Am relations and its desire to be a good "friend" of Canada.
- There are issues on which Canada and the US need to work together, if for no other reasons than our shared geography.
- The US is flagging places where it believes Canada can be helpful. For instance, the Biden administration's desire to return to some sort of positive international role for the US guided, at least in part, by a re-engagement with multilateral institutions. Here, the Biden administration is looking for Canada's support to help it re-establish itself on the international stage.
- Twitter diplomacy seems to be at an end. Twitter diplomacy is not just about social media. It is actually a calculated political strategy that works on a number of fronts. In some measure, it worked through threat and uncertainty and looked to inculcate a measure of anxiety over potential consequences in order to push its agenda forward. In my view, Twitter diplomacy took the Canadian state aback because it was unexpected.
- Keystone XL to one side, reading between the lines, the current Biden administration is not going to "give away the farm" but it appears willing to make compromises and it sees compromises as a natural part of a positive international relationship.
What are the bumps in the road? From what I can see, there are a number but I also think we (as Canadians) need to have a good perspective on them. I'll highlight a few key issues and then qualify them.
First, this summit will not solve all problems. The loose framework upon which the leaders agreed is simply that: a framework. This needs to be remembered. Canada and the US are in the process of re-establishing a higher level of civility to their relations at the executive level. This in itself is a positive accomplishment but it does not mean that problems, conflicts, disagreements, and policy differences go away. In fact, it would be naive to believe that that could be the case. (Mark my words, someone -- an opposition politician, a journalist, a public commentator, etc. -- will in the near future note some sort of problem with Can/Am relations and declare that this means that the framework is a failure as if international relations were that simple.) Canada and the US have always have disagreements and always will. That is the character and nature of being different countries with different identities and different (albeit often shared) problems and different populations and histories. The issue is not that there are problems. The issue is how they are addressed. Recognizing that a single summit will not solve all problems -- including ones that we don't know about because they have not yet occurred -- will be, on the part of Canadians, their own good first step.
What do we do about the problems, then? Here, Canadians might take a page from history or at least be familiar with some of the key works on the history of Canadian/American relations. I'd recommend the late Greg Donaghy's fascinating book Tolerant Allies: Canada and the United States, 1963-1968. History is not an inherent guide to the future, but Tolerant Allies reminds us that this is not the first tumultuous period through which Canadian/American relations have passed. The period of Donaghy's study involves a particularly potentially disruptive time as both Canada and the US were moving through a significant number of deeply divisive internal conflicts. Moreover, the countries were moving in different directions. There were conflicts over matters of trade (particularly in durable consumer goods), investment and "financial relations," military matters, and foreign policy, among other things. Finding ways through these differences required on-going and intense diplomacy. Said differently, the issue is not does this one summit solve problems. The issue is this: does it establish the basis for a more regularized civil diplomacy that can address problems in the future? Donaghy's work shows how effective that regularized diplomacy can be in addressing issues and establishing a new and better framework for relations.
Second, the problems in front of us are significant. I'll address Keystone and energy policy separately, but we should have no illusions that Canada and the US (along with other countries) have a series of serious issues that need to be addressed. These include Covid-19 economic recovery, re-opening the international border in as safe a way as possible, and addressing climate change and its implications. In my view, the scope and character of these problems likely will need to be addressed on an international level. What is more, there are serious and important humanitarian and equality considerations that need to be born in mind. The US, Canada, and other western nations need to consider exactly how they can effectively work with poorer countries to promote Covid safety, economic recovery and mitigate climate change in ways that don't offload this problem onto those people least able to afford it. Said differently, the price of Covid safety in Canada cannot be health uncertainty in poorer countries, a matter that is already the subject of controversy in Canada. Put in other words, the key problems that emerge out of our current context are difficult to address not necessarily because Canada and the US will disagree on them but because of their size, scope, and international ethical and democratic implications. My own view is that Canada and the US have a better chance of effectively addressing these problems working together than they did under the previous administration because any solution must necessarily involve the US. This is not to exonerate Canada or say Canada is not important. It is simply to recognize that inequalities (in power, capacity, economics, etc.) between Canada and the US.
It might even be possible to add in some other nagging issues. Could Canada and the US use optimism generated by this first summit (the "bromance" as Martin called it) to address other issues. I'd put Arctic drilling and the Northwest Passage on my list of problems that could be effectively addressed through good will and good, creative diplomacy. Human trafficking is another.
The third potential problem is that the regeneration of Canadian/American relations will take place in a particular and politicized context. What is that context? It involves a number of considerations: Canada's minority government, Canada's deep federal/provincial divisions, Biden's tenuous support in the American Senate and fragile support in the House of Representatives, and deep political divisions in the US. Each of these issues can be subject for discussion but I'll conclude by consider the ways in which Canada/US relations effect regionalism in Canada as a potential issue and more specifically, the importance of Keystone XL to the current government of Alberta.
It is easy to say that the Prime Minister has to address "the national good" in the conduct of international relations. Indeed, there is a whole school of thought that argues precisely that. In this regard, one could, then, say, "look, we know that there can be negative implications for Alberta in the refashioning of Canada/US relations but that is the way it is because it is the fed's job to look after the national interest and not specific regional interests. The US is not interested in Keystone XL so we are not going to bring it up."
I think this approach would be wrong but I also don't think that making Keystone XL the test of Canada/US relations serves any good either. I'd urge Canada to avoid public diplomacy and I'd urge Canada and Canadians to respect decisions made by the US government. For a range of reasons, Keystone XL is not a hill on which Canada should want Canadian/American relations to die. I am sure, behind the scenes, significant diplomacy is going on. I am sure the government of Canada is trying to find out what could be done not to resuscitate the Keystone (because that is likely not possible) but what are the alternatives to it. After all Keystone is only one way in which energy could be moved from Canada to the US.
But, I don't think the Canadian government should leave the matter there. I think removing Keystone as a problem in Canadian/American relations is complex but one way to do it might be to develop economic alternatives for Alberta. To be sure, I believe Alberta will benefit from addressing Canadian/American common agenda issues (say, border transit and Covid). And, I am not convinced Albertans (any more than other Canadians) are opposed to addressing the problems of climate change. What I think is that we have a particularly committed provincial government that has (for one reason or another) linked its own fate and sense of the province to the oil industry. What we need to do is provide alternatives to that sense of identity and link. We need a go-forward strategy that must begin from the assumption that a resumption of Keystone is unlikely but that should not be reason to do nothing. I am not sold on the idea that the current Premier of Alberta would accept this. In fact, I expect the exact opposite and I expect that to come out in opposition to Biden and demands that the federal government alter its approach to Canada/US relations. I'm also not sold, however, on the idea that this is what the people of Alberta want. I think provided with alternatives, they would take them and that, in itself, would be good for Canada/American relations.
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