Trudeau Celebrates Biden: We Have ‘So Much Alignment’

 

On Friday, asked about the decision by President Joe Biden to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau touted the “alignment” between himself and Biden as well as Canadians and Biden, saying they were “much more aligned on values.”

A reporter asked, “Can you tell us more about your conversations with the premiers last night over Keystone XL and your chat with President Biden today? What were some of the specific measures or some of the specific points the premiers want you to make to Biden? What were they telling you about what Biden was doing, the president was doing? Can you give us a sense of sort of their mood about this decision which obviously some of them would not have been pleased about?”“The call with the ministers, which lasted just over an hour, included discussions on the raging coronavirus pandemic but was dominated by the president’s order, which was signed just a day earlier,” Global News reported. “According to aides who participated in the meeting, ‘some premiers want to go to war with the United States over the Keystone XL cancellation. The aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the discussion ‘got pretty heated.’”

After noting that some Canadians would lose jobs as a result of the Keystone XL cancellation, Trudeau answered the reporter, “I think the fact that we have so much alignment not just me and President Biden, but Canadians and President Biden on values of creating jobs and prosperity for everyone and opportunities for everyone, investing in the fight against climate change as a way of growing the economy, looking to be coordinated and aggressive in stepping up in our measures against COVID-19. These are things that we’re going to be able to dig into significantly.”

“It’s not always going to be perfect alignment with the United States, that’s the case with any given president,” he added, “In a situation where we are much more aligned on values, on focus, on work that needs to be done to give opportunities for everyone while we build a better future. I’m very much looking forward to working with President Biden.”

Yet later in the day, Trudeau reportedly voiced his displeasure with Biden’s decision about Keystone XL. The White House website stated, “The President acknowledged Prime Minister Trudeau’s disappointment regarding the decision to rescind the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline.”

One of Biden’s first executive orders after taking office was to rejoin the Paris Accords, announcing on January 21, “I, Joseph R. Biden Jr., President of the United States of America, having seen and considered the Paris Agreement, done at Paris on December 12, 2015, do hereby accept the said Agreement and every article and clause thereof on behalf of the United States of America.”

Trudeau signed the Paris Accords in 2016. In June 2017, after former President Trump left the agreement, Trudeau stated, “We are deeply disappointed that the United States federal government has decided to withdraw from the Paris agreement.”