‘We’re going to work together until we get their safe return’
Biden pledges to help get two Canadians out of Chinese prison
WASHINGTON — Joe Biden granted Justin Trudeau at least one of the items atop his wish list Tuesday as they met for the first time as president and prime minister: a pledge to help get two Canadians out of a Chinese prison.
Strenuous expressions of presidential dismay were nowhere to be seen during the final two years of Donald Trump’s tenure as Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor languished behind bars.
That all changed Tuesday as Biden and Trudeau — one in D.C., the other in Ottawa — wrapped up a warm and comprehensive, if virtual, summit meeting, Biden’s first since taking office.
“Human beings are not bartering chips,” the president said in his closing statement from the East Room of the White House. “You know we’re going to work together until we get their safe return.”
Spavor and Kovrig were detained in China in an apparent act of retaliation after Canada arrested Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in December 2018 on U.S. charges of violating sanctions on Iran.
They have remained in custody ever since, held on what the federal government and international observers alike have described as bogus charges aimed at pressuring Canada into releasing Meng.
Biden offered no hints about how the White House might help secure their release, such as by abandoning Justice Department efforts to extradite Meng to stand trial on U.S. soil.
The public portions of Tuesday’s meeting were cordial from the start.
Biden made much of the fact that both his first phone call and his first foreign meeting were with Trudeau — evidence, he said, of the deep friendship and lasting ties between the two countries.
“The United States has no closer friend than Canada,” Biden said from the Roosevelt Room, where he was flanked by cabinet members including Vice-President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
In Ottawa, Trudeau was joined by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau, with Biden, Harris and members of his cabinet projected on a big-screen TV.
After four years of dealing with Trump, who was famously unswayed by calls to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Trudeau’s enthusiasm for Biden’s aggressive climate-change strategy was hard to miss.
“Thank you again for stepping up in such a big way on tackling climate change — U.S. leadership has been sorely missed over the past years,” he said.
“As we are preparing the joint rollout and communique from this (summit), it’s nice when the Americans are not pulling out all references to climate change and instead adding them in.”
Freeland, who addressed Harris directly, was no less effusive in her praise for the first woman and person of colour to be elected U.S. vice-president.
“Your election has been such an inspiration for women and girls across Canada, especially for Black women and girls, and for South Asian women and girls,” Freeland said.
“I couldn’t agree more with what the president said, that we have a real responsibility now, all of us, to show that democracy can deliver for people.