Bromance? Canada-US Relations in the Post-Trump Age

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. 

Keystone Redux: Biden, Environmentalism, and Energy Policy

Why did Biden cancel US commitments to Keystone XL? In Canada, Jason Kenney tried to brand this as an attack on Canada that deserved the a swift and extreme response. It wasn't an attack on Canada and, as I will explain, even if there were a swift and extreme response, the chances that the decision can be overturned are slim. Why? There are a large number of reasons and these reasons are worth considering as we think about the character and nature of the Canadian response. Here are what I see as some of the key factors that weighed on Biden's mind before he took office. 

• Biden is committed to establishing better American environmental policies. There is a scientific consensus on the problems of carbon-based energy for the environment, particularly but not exclusively with regard to climate change. 
• I don't think we should see this as a shallow commitment, but if we did -- even if you argued that Biden's commitment to the environment is cynical politics -- you'd still have to ask why his made this decision. The answer is that his voters at best lukewarm to Keystone XL and at most in opposition to it. Said differently, a different government if it were behaving cynically, might talk the talk but ignore Keystone. Biden can't because his supporters won't. They want him to take action and so he will take it. 
• Taking action is made easier because the US is awash in energy. Back in the 1980s, when Canada and the US were negotiating free trade, a key goal of the American negotiators was to secure access to Canadian energy. There could be all sorts of reasons for this but the key reason is that the American government was concerned about the state of American energy reserves and with the "oil shock" and the Iranian revolution still fresh on American minds, making sure that the US had easy access to Canadian energy was particularly important. Hence, the proportionality clause which, in effect, forces Canada to sell oil to the US. How different things now are. A series of changes means that the US has less need of Canadian energy than at any time since, say, the 1980s. The factors include:  
• Green energy will continue to develop as a viable alternative to carbon energy.
• The US reversed policy under Trump and brought back older forms of carbon-based energy production (coal) that are in competition with oil.
• Other countries have pushed production of oil to new levels. Increased political stability in countries like Iraq, Syria, and Libya will likely see continued advances in production. Despite cut production cut backs by some countries in order to try to maintain higher energy prices, there will likely continue to be increases in energy supply.
• The US has increased its own supply thanks to widespread fracking in Montana, the Dakotas, and Oklahoma. 
• There are some short term measure that can be included as well. Covid-19 has depressed all sorts of travel lessening the demand for oil and thus lowering prices and need. 
• A wild card is the American commitment to cleaner energy. I don't know how significant this factor is, although I suspect it much more significant among Democrats who voted for Biden than Republicans. If American are taking steps to use less energy as part of their personal commitment to the environment, that will have an effect as well. 
• I suspect American oil companies are not sad to have less competition from Canadian oil. While the oil (bitumen) moved through Keystone may never have been for American domestic consumption (which raises another issue), why would American energy producers elect to negatively effect their own bottom lines by encouraging the US government to facilitate the shipment of Canadian oil to the US? Does it not make more sense that they would, at the least, say nothing and at most actually encourage Keystone's cancelation? 
• There are shockingly limited spinoff effects in the US for Keystone. The jobs that were to be created by it were largely in construction. Once the pipeline is up and running, the number of permanent jobs it creates in the US is limited. There is, thus, no groundswell of "Keystone will get us jobs" in the US because ... people know it is not true. 
• There are other issues that the Biden administration also wants to address that are tied up with Keystone, not the least of which is relate to the Standing Rock protests and the opposition of American Indigenous peoples to the pipeline. Going forward with Keystone would have forced the Biden government into on-going confrontations with Indigenous peoples and their allies and likely ended costing millions of dollars in legal fees as battles waged in the courts. 

When one puts this all together and what is evident is that Keystone was dead anyway.  It was only the Trump administration's ideological commitment that kept it alive. Canadian oil is also expensive, compared to its alternatives. The Canadian oil patch had begun to experience series problems several years ago that date back to the time of the previous NDP government in Alberta and stand at the root of Alberta's pipeline conflicts with BC and Canadian First Nations. What is interesting, of course, is that Kenney's response to the concerns in BC were basically similar to what he is suggesting now.  BC, the UPC and even members of the NDP argued, should be forced to let Alberta transport oil over its territory. Now what we have is the Premier of Alberta saying that Canada should find a way to force the US to accept Canadian oil that it does not want, does not need, creates internal conflicts in the US, and stands in the way of other domestic policy initiatives. What would we, as Canadians, think if the US adopted this approach to Canada? 

This is the point where I say "I get it" and ... I do. I understand and sympathize with people wanting jobs and good jobs. The problem with the approach taken by Kenney is that it can't provide precisely the thing he is promising. The carbon economy is past its best before date. That does not mean that there will not be energy production and that Canadians won't drill for oil. What it means is that we need to think about what the next stage for the Alberta economy is and begin to work on that. Biden's rejection of Keystone XL was not an attack on Canada. It was a policy decision overdetermined by a broad range of factors and it is unlikely that that broad range of factors will change in even the medium term. Rather than trying to find a way to revive a dead project and a flagging economic sector, we need to find ways to promote alternative economies.