President Joe Biden will make his first presidential trip to Ottawa on Thursday to meet with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and address Parliament. The goal of the trip is to repair the two nations’ relationship as they confront growing geopolitical challenges.
The trip will be brief but busy. President Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, will arrive in Ottawa sometime after 6 p.m. and meet with Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, at Rideau Cottage. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby called the meeting an “intimate gathering.”
On Friday, President Biden will participate in a bilateral meeting to discuss North American supply chains and critical materials, climate change, the opioid crisis, and critical defense cooperation – including the efforts to modernize the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).
“We’re going to talk about our two democracies stepping up to meet the challenges of our time. That includes taking concrete steps to increase defense spending, driving a global race to the top on clean energy, and building prosperous and inclusive economies,” Kirby told reporters on Wednesday.
Upon announcing Biden’s trip earlier this month, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that Biden would “reaffirm the United States’ commitment to the US-Canada partnership and promote our shared security, shared prosperity, and shared values.”
Biden will also discuss delicate issues like the deteriorating situation in Haiti, immigration, trade, and Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine with the Canadian Prime Minister. Trudeau has been an ally to President Biden in providing military and financial assistance to the country during the Kremlin’s invasion.
Vincent Rigby, a former national security and intelligence adviser to Trudeau and current adviser at CSIS, told CNN that the biggest question is, “OK, Canada, where do you stand on all this?”
Rigby noted that the country has been struggling to match some of its allies in responding to an “unstable security environment,” and this topic will be the elephant in the room to a certain extent.
“I think that the prime minister needs to reassure the president that he’s going to do what’s necessary…to respond to these kinds of threats, particularly on the international stage,” Rigby added.
American presidents typically visit Canada as one of their first trips abroad, but the COVID-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine at the beginning of the Biden administration delayed and complicated matters. Instead, the U.S. President decided for his first phone call and virtual bilateral meeting to be with Trudeau. Since then, the Trudeaus have visited the White House, and the two men have met several times, including most recently in January at a summit of North American leaders.
