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As US President Joe Biden’s visit to Ottawa winds down, one of the United States’ top diplomats expressed cooperation with Canada on a range of global issues – and vowed to help defend Canada’s democracy against foreign interference.
Brian Nichols, who is the assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, held an interview on CBC’s House aired on Saturday the bright attitude that Biden brought to events around Parliament Hill on Friday.
Leaders from Canada and the US expressed their admiration during the whirlwind official visit, and tackled a number of controversial issues.
The US, for example, has previously pushed Canada to take a leadership role in a potential intervention force in Haiti. But Canada expressed reluctance, citing a lack of military capacity and a lack of political consensus among Haitians themselves.
CBC News: Home8:44 a.mBiden and Trudeau summit
US President Joe Biden is in Ottawa this week for his first official visit to Canada since winning the presidency more than two years ago. Brian Nichols, US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, was in the room where it happened and told Catherine Cullen about the priorities the leaders discussed.
But Nichols, who traveled to Haiti late last year, told host Catherine Cullen that the $100 million in aid announced in Canada on Friday was an “important step,” as the United States also offered support.
“These are important steps. They are not sufficient steps, but they are important steps and we must continue to work together and we must make sure that Haitians talk to each other and come together on the path forward,” said Nichols.
Asked directly whether Canada had let the United States off the hook in Haiti, Biden told reporters Friday: “I’m not disappointed.”
“The biggest thing we can do, and it takes time, is to improve the prospects of a police department in Haiti that has the capacity to deal with the problems we face,” the president said.
Canada will bring in 15,000 more migrants
For the United States, the situation in Haiti is also only one part of the most acute migration crisis on the southern border. But for Canada, the crisis has turned into tens of thousands of people crossing into the country through unofficial ports like Roxham Road in Quebec.
The two countries struck a deal this week that effectively shuts down Roxham Road and others, giving Canadian authorities the ability to turn back migrants.
Opposition parties like the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois have called for Roxham Road to be closed, and Quebec provincial leaders have said the province does not have the capacity to handle the migrants.
“We can’t just turn off Roxham Road and hope it’s all over because we’re going to be in trouble,” Trudeau said Friday. “The border is so long, people always find other places to cross.”
Nichols said the two countries have agreed to work together to support legal pathways to migration, and Canada’s commitment to bring in 15,000 more refugees from this region is a symbol of that partnership.
“I believe that encouraging people to take the legal path is important. Our co-operation in migration with Canada has been quite impressive,” he said.
Aleks Dughman Manzur from the Canadian Council for Refugees said House he worries that the changes will cause current migrants to return to the U.S. and potentially to their countries of origin, where they could face “arbitrary detention, potential return to persecution and possibly death.”
China’s influence stuck through the visit
Canadian politicians have been grappling in recent weeks with allegations that China is manipulating the results of two recent elections, and Nichols reiterated US support for Canada.
“We in the United States have experienced people trying to disrupt our elections from the outside. We understand their feelings, and we will do everything in our power to defend our democracy and our allies,” he said.
“Autocrats around the world will seek to use illegitimate tools to influence democracy in a negative way. We must be prepared.”
As Biden prepares to fly to Ottawa for a meeting with Trudeau, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are wrapping up their own summit. Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, a global risk consulting firm, said the meeting was even more important.
“The geopolitical environment is getting worse,” he told Cullen. “The most important bilateral meeting of the year – in fact, since [Ukraine] the war began – did Xi Jinping spend three days in Moscow.
Bremmer said China’s opposition is a unifying force for Canada and the US
CBC News: Home16:35Canada-US relations in a complicated world
Biden’s visit to Ottawa comes in a wider geopolitical context, with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin also meeting face-to-face to discuss the war in Ukraine, and allegations of foreign interference in Canada. Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer, an expert on geopolitics and conflict, joins The House to break down what the Trudeau-Biden summit means for the world.
“It actually gives some gravity to the relationship. It makes near-shoring more obvious and important.”
But Bremmer warned that the current toxicity of the relationship between the US and China, the two most powerful countries in the world, risked spilling over from areas of adversity or competition to areas where co-operation is needed, like climate change.
He said the economic interdependence between the two powers put a “floor” in the relationship, but it is at risk.
“We tested that floor. We jumped on that floor. Politics is horrible.”
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