US president Joe Biden and Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau were optimistic about moving past the turbulent Trump years by promising to work together to handle challenges like climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Trudeau and Biden met on their first virtual meeting on Tuesday afternoon from the Roosevelt Room at the White House and the Ottawa office because of the COVID-19 pandemic. “US leadership has been sorely missed over the past years,” said Trudeau praising Joe Biden for rejoining the Paris climate accord during the meeting. “And I have to say as we were preparing the joint rollout of the communique on this, it’s nice when the Americans are not pulling out all the references to climate change and instead adding them in.”
US President returned Trudeau’s compliment saying, “The United States has no closer friend, no closer friend, than Canada.” The Trump administration had previously pulled out almost all references to climate change from the White House website shortly after Mr. Trump assumed office along with pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord. The U.S. officially re-entered the Paris Agreement last Friday as Mr. Biden reversed that move on his first day in office.
On the two-hour long bilateral meeting, both the leader agreed on working together on a number of issues, including combatting the COVID-19 pandemic along with climate change, reestablishing the cross-border crime forum and eradicating racism and discrimination from their respective country’s systems. President Biden also pledged that the two countries would work together to economically compete with China better. He also called for the release of two Canadian citizens Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, who have been detained by China since December 2018 on charges of spying. Their detention came after Canada detained Meng Wanzhou, CFO of Chinese telecom giant Huawei on a US warrant.
