How Harper should handle Obama
As Canadians anticipate the new President's visit to Ottawa,
John Ibbitson imagines the advice the PM is getting about their first meeting From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
February 16, 2009 at 8:27 PM EST
WASHINGTON — As Prime Minister Stephen Harper prepares for this first face-to-face meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama in Ottawa this week, something like this might very well be lying on his desk.
Memorandum
TO: The Prime Minister
FROM: The Privy Council Office
RE: Feb. 19 Meeting with U.S. President
Prime Minister:
We are concerned that your meeting with Mr. Obama may be the most challenging between a Canadian prime minister and an American president in some time. That is because you represent a government that is globalist in outlook and outreach, while Mr. Obama could best be described as a postglobalist politician. This crucial difference in perspective between yourself and the President could influence, and possibly disrupt, your conversations on trade, energy and the environment.
There is no reason to believe, at a personal level, that you and Mr. Obama will not get along. Each of you displays a keen interest in analyzing policy and both of you identify with the western side of your respective countries, reflected in your recognition that North America is shifting from an Atlantic-oriented continent to a Pacific-oriented one.
However, like all prime ministers stretching back to Brian Mulroney, you see Canada as an outward-looking nation in a globalizing world, in which products and capital flow freely across borders and trade becomes ever-more free. This is a world in which Canada, which depends on foreign trade for its very existence, has thrived.
But Mr. Obama believes the excesses of globalism caused the current economic crisis. Wealth dissipated from the American worker to workers overseas. A cabal of Wall Street oligarchs exploited deregulated financial markets to accumulate staggering wealth, before the edifice collapsed through its internal contradictions.
The President seeks to lead Americans into a new, postglobal world. This new world would encompass greater personal and corporate responsibility, governmental oversight of the economy, the creation and preservation of jobs in the manufacturing sector and greater energy independence and environmental protection. These priorities will inform his discussions with you. None of them coincide with Canada's interests.
As you know, the final version of the economic stimulus legislation retained some Buy American provisions that could limit the ability of Canadian firms to bid on contracts generated by the $800-billion package. While the bill was amended to comply with international law, we believe these reassurances are largely false.
Our concern is that Mr. Obama, whose sole focus is on the welfare of the middle-class American worker, will promise you that America will abide by its international obligations while encouraging state governments to exclude foreign competition from contracts. (The U.S. government will argue, falsely, that the one does not contradict the other.) You, as Prime Minister, will need to decide for yourself how hard you wish to press the President on this point. Be advised, however, that Mr. Obama appears to display a marked impatience with those who don't see things his way.
We also note that Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano ordered an immediate interagency review of security at the Canada-U.S. border. The review was to be completed by today, two days ahead of the President's visit. We need to gauge how concerned the Americans remain about border security. On its face, Ms. Napolitano's decision to order the review is not encouraging.
Mr. Obama has displayed an active interest in improving U.S.-Mexico relations, meeting with President Felipe Calderon before his inauguration. This poses yet another challenge for the Canada-U.S. relationship, for it has become increasingly apparent that including Mexico in North American negotiations of any kind hampers agreement between Canada and the United States, since the two borders are so very different. The “if we did it for you we'd have to do it for Mexico” argument employed by American negotiators is irksome. Canada and the United States are winners in the global lottery of wealth; Mexico, sadly, is not.
In the most diplomatic way possible, we hope you will stress to the new President that future negotiations on trade, the environment, energy and security should be bilateral and not trilateral in nature.
Mr. Obama has proposed a broad, consultative process to examine “upgrading” the environmental and labour provisions of the North American free-trade agreement. We believe that he will seek to include the moribund Security and Prosperity Partnership, which sought but failed to harmonize the regulatory regimes of Canada, the United States and Mexico, within that process.
Our government might wish to be proactive in proposing a continental carbon market, so as to delay its implementation and dilute its impact. As you know, Mr. Obama seeks to harmonize existing state efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by creating a national program that will cap emissions and allow industries that operate above or below their caps to trade credits.
Since Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Manitoba are co-operating with state efforts, we could earn credit with the administration by proposing continental reduction targets and a continental market. This would permit Canada and the United States to incorporate adequate safeguards to protect industry and energy produced in both the Ohio Valley and Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Within that context, we are deeply concerned that Mr. Obama's determination to wean the United States off foreign and carbon-unfriendly energy sources will result in reduced U.S. imports from the oil sands. Unlike previous presidents, this one actually appears to mean what he says about energy sovereignty and environmental leadership. Industries and power generators could be penalized for using “dirty” oil that increases greenhouse-gas emissions during the extraction process; oil sands oil would be particularly vulnerable to such measures.
You might wish to raise the oil sands with the President in order to gauge how worried we should be about possible cutbacks in demand. We have always assumed that the American thirst for oil would be limitless. If the President truly is determined, as he seems to be, to slake that thirst through conservation, environmental regulation and new technologies, this is not good news for Canada.
The only thing the new President appears to care about more than greening the earth is protecting the jobs and votes of workers in the industrial Midwest. When talking with Mr. Obama we need to speak the language of the former, while pointing out the implications for the latter, hoping pragmatism trumps principle in the President's deliberations, as it so often does in our own.
We might also propose joint co-operation with Mr. Obama's planned $11-billion upgrade of the United States electricity grid. The upgrades are intended to bring alternative forms of energy onto the grid while reducing the possibility of cascade failures.
Although there are voices in Canada calling for greater east-west integration of the Canadian grid, the fact is, as Environment Minister Jim Prentice has observed, electricity flows north-south between our two countries. The last thing we should want is a cascade failure from antiquated Canadian equipment shutting down their new, improved American grid. Besides, joint co-operation on grid renewal might help Canadian firms to get around Buy American provisions.
Finally, on Afghanistan, the Obama administration says it accepts our decision to end our deployment in 2011. At this meeting, we do not expect an “ask” from the President to extend that deployment. Depending one how the situation evolves [or devolves] over the coming year, an ask may yet come. But that, thankfully, is for another day.
As you know, this is largely a get-acquainted meeting and we expect few concrete new proposals to emerge from your conversation with the President.
Nonetheless, we need to bear in mind that all of these discussions occur within a particular context: a new President with a strong mandate determined to reshape and reregulate financial markets, to protect American workers from international competition and to restore American environmental leadership on the one side, and a Canadian government whose mandate is, shall we say, more tenuous on the other.
We can also not help but note that the American President is extremely popular within Canada. Thousands are expected to come to Parliament Hill to see Mr. Obama, despite the brief nature of his visit. It is not certain that the current Canadian government generates equivalent enthusiasm.
That is, however, a political consideration, and outside the competence of this memorandum.
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