We’re still friends
PRIME Minister Justin Trudeau did the country a favour on Monday when he met with President Donald Trump and artfully managed to make the whole event completely boring. Diplomacy at its finest, basically.
Trump’s oft-repeated threat to tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement was, and still is, a great concern to Canada. Our country’s economy is built on trade with the US, and we would be badly hurt by a surge in American protectionism.
There were also questions about whether Trudeau, a self-avowed feminist and defender of diversity, could relate to a bully of a president who feeds his base the red meat of anti-immigrant rhetoric. Would they clash? Would there be hissing? Media commentators analysed their first handshake like zoologists studying the ritual displays of peacocks in mating season.
In the end, there were just the timeless and reassuring rituals of US-Canadian friendship. The two leaders met, posed for the cameras and released a joint statement that could have been delivered by any combination of prime minister and president since World War I.
As always, the two countries reaffirmed their shared values and their shared concerns with unhindered trade and the security of their citizens. If there were differences, they were ones of emphasis. Trudeau was preoccupied with the trade part.
Trump was far more preoccupied with border security, but Trudeau let him have that. Anyone who wanted him to scold the president for his executive order restricting Muslim immigrants and refugees was doubtlessly disappointed. But this was not the time for marking one’s moral territory.
Canada got what it wanted: the reassertion of our special friendship, a firm commitment to free trade across the 49th parallel, and recognition that an open border and the fight against terrorism are not mutually exclusive.
The one downside is that these things came from Trump. His volatility has a way of making everything – including the greatest international relationship in modern history – feel precarious.