Farmscape for February 24, 2021
The Vice President of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute says, after one month in office, Canada-U.S. relations under the Joe Biden administration have seen a return to the regular order.
The Joe Biden administration is now just over one month into its mandate.
Colin Robertson, the Vice President and a fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, says he doesn't see any discernable change in Canada-U.S. relations at this point and it's basically business as normal as it can be in COVID times.
Clip-Colin Robertson-Canadian Global Affairs Institute:
I think it's a restoration to the regular order that we enjoyed with U.S. Presidents until Donald Trump.
Donald Trump really was singular and, as you know, his policy was one of America first and he seemed to give the back of his hand to the allies including Canada where as Mr. Biden comes very much from that tradition, as he has stated, "America is back" and that America places great value on the alliance and America wants to lead the alliance.
That was not Mr. Trump's approach.
Mr. Trudeau made the first call to congratulate Mr. Biden on his election and Mr. Biden made the first call in response to congratulations to Mr. Trudeau and then his first substantive call was with Mr. Trudeau and now his first substantive business call with cabinet members is with Mr. Trudeau and his cabinet so the relationship is certainly starting on a very promising level in comparison to how it started with Donald Trump.
Robertson notes, although the flow of people across the Canada U.S. border has dropped substantially and there is no tourism what so ever, the truck traffic that carries food products into Canada from the United States and into the United States from Canada is moving back and forth.
He expects to have a better sense over the next week of how relations will unfold as the Trump and Trudeau administrations develop what they call a roadmap of how things will move forward.
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Bruce Cochrane.
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