Biden’s Mistaken Visit to Canada

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets with U.S. President Joe Biden at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, Calif., on June 9, 2022. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

Commentary

President Joe Biden is scheduled to visit Canada on the eve of March 23, which will be the first U.S. presidential visit since President Barack Obama’s trip in 2016.

Visits to Canada can be crowd-pleasers. On a trip in 2009, Obama made a surprise stop at an Ottawa bakery for a red maple-leaf cookie. Warm-hearted Canadians haven’t forgotten the gesture.

But Biden’s trip will be not-so-sweet, especially for critics. In fact, it will more likely be frothy, soporific, and prone to more giveaways.

The White House provided a preview of the topics on tap between the two North American countries. “Canada, as you know, is not only a neighbor to the north, but a NATO ally,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.

“There are a range of issues that you can imagine they‘ll talk about, everything from NORAD, and modernization of NORAD capabilities … military, and national security issues. ... Migration concerns, climate change. There’ll certainly be issues of trade to discuss.”

Unfortunately, Biden has already gifted the farm to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with past U.S. subsidies that are already energizing Canadian manufacturing at the expense of U.S. industry. Added to the latter’s lack of defense spending and indulgence of China’s criminals and spies, who use the country as a launch pad for infiltrating the United States and our neighbors to the north, Ottawa is starting to look negligent and exploitative.

Biden will likely attempt to encourage Canada to increase its defense spending, which is below its NATO commitment of 2 percent. But that minimum level should have been a prerequisite for a U.S. presidential visit—a wasted opportunity to leverage Canada into doing the right thing concerning the defense of democracies and our allies.

NORAD equipment and infrastructure in Canada are currently outdated, requiring new radar for which Ottawa already promised to pay, but without providing a timeline for its production.

When it comes to defense expenditures, promises without a deadline are no promises at all.

U.S. Ambassador David Cohen is putting pressure on Canada by asking whether the speed of Ottawa’s defense procurement process meets the exigencies of the imminent threat emanating from Russia and China. Judging by Cohen’s commentary, even Canada’s military believes it does not.

Biden’s Money for Canada

On economic and trade negotiations with Canada, as with Europe, Biden painted himself into a corner before getting elected by promising to dramatically improve relations with our allies. This lacked a strategic assessment of the source of alliance stressors, which was the last administration’s correction of past subsidy and tariff giveaways to Ottawa and Brussels.

To remove them, Biden took the easy route and made new concessions. To Ottawa, it included Canada as an ultimate beneficiary of the ill-named “Inflation Reduction Act,” which is actually a rebranded Build Back Better Act that front-loads pork expenditures of $739 billion and back-loads higher taxes to more than pay for the bill. When it comes due, Congress can pass a new law amending the payment part.

Add the $739 billion to $5 trillion of pandemic stimulus and the $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan,” and one starts to understand a few sources of today’s and tomorrow’s core inflation.

Some of that U.S. taxpayer money is not going to Americans.

Among other things, the IRA provides a windfall of U.S. tax dollars to Canadian companies that produce electric vehicles, batteries, and construction materials because it does not limit the subsidies to U.S.-made goods. When Biden finally signed the bill into law, Trudeau could barely contain his glee.

A car is charged at a charge station for electric vehicles on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on May 1, 2019. Transport Canada data shows more than 14,000 electric vehicles were purchased in Canada during the first three months of the federal government's new rebate program. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

His Liberal government immediately set to work luring companies around the world to build new factories in Canada for products to be sold at subsidized rates in the United States. U.S. taxpayers pay the subsidies, and Canadians get the jobs.

Canada is even adding subsidies about which we have little information. They are probably Canada-specific. Americans don’t know because Ottawa won’t tell us.

What we do know is that they have helped some companies, like GM, Volkswagen, and Michelin, to announce over $11 billion in 2022 for new electric-vehicle-related factories to be built in Canada, mainly for the supply of American consumers.

The U.S. Congress should immediately amend those provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act that, along with Canada’s subsidies, give Canada an unfair advantage in attracting investment at the expense of American taxpayers.

Quad 2.0

Canada is gradually increasing its defense expenditures from 1.3 percent of GDP in 2022–23 to 1.6 percent in 2026–27, according to Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer. But this is far below the 2 percent required of NATO members and even further below the U.S. level of 3.5 percent in 2022.

While Canada has been slow to contribute to joint defense, Ottawa is just as quick in seeking the diplomatic limelight, with Trudeau acting as the lead.

(L-R) Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, U.S. President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi attend the Quad Fellowship Founding Celebration event in Tokyo, Japan, on May 24, 2022. Yuichi Yamazaki/Getty Images

But the prime minister’s antics are going unappreciated.

Likely due to Ottawa’s porosity to China and its low defense spending, Canada has been excluded from not only AUKUS—a technology-sharing grouping of Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—but the original Quadrilateral Security Dialogue between the United States, Japan, India, and Australia.

Unlike Trudeau’s novel diplomacy, the original Quad did some heavy diplomatic lifting as it is gradually networking a formerly independent India into democratic alliance systems.

AUKUS shares the latest nuclear submarine, quantum, hypersonic, biometric, and acoustics technologies. Canada’s failure to gain an invitation to the group is a “disturbing” national security concern, according to Canadian Vice Admiral Mark Norman (retired).

To overcome the exclusion from AUKUS, at least in the eyes of a naive electorate, Canada’s prime minister is reshuffling existing alliances and proposing a new four-way with the United States, Canada, Japan, and South Korea, dubbed “Quad 2.0.” Proponents say it will help counter both China and Russia.

Unfortunately, Quad 2.0 is a paper-thin diplomatic initiative where real dollars are needed to fill out Canada’s weak military. Trudeau’s diplomatic sleight-of-hand should not distract us from what we really need to defeat the emerging Sino-Russian alliance: more military spending, targeted exports to frontline defenders most in need, and the bringing of new alliance members into existing democratic alliance systems.

Poland has shown real leadership in developing alliances and promoting defense exports where those supports are lacking with respect to Ukraine, for example. Trudeau could make a real diplomatic contribution by doing the same for Taiwan.

Rather than add another Quad to an already balkanized system of Asian dialogues, Trudeau should promote the further integration of countries currently left out of the U.S. hub-and-spoke system of alliances, like Taiwan, or promote the inclusion of our closest Asian-Pacific partners, like Japan, South Korea, and Australia, in the NATO alliance.

That would be a real achievement, eh?

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.