As 'Three Amigos' meet in Mexico, experts call on leaders for North American vision | Canada News Media
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As ‘Three Amigos’ meet in Mexico, experts call on leaders for North American vision

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Three Amigos

From the frosty throes of a Canadian winter, the land of conquistadors and Frida Kahlo can seem a million miles away.

But that’s not the way North American diplomats, trade experts and business leaders see it — and they hope the continent’s leaders have a similar vision as the so-called “Three Amigos” gather this week in Mexico City.

“The potential for North America is immense,” said Eric Farnsworth, the former Clinton-era White House official who now leads the D.C. office of the Council of the Americas and the Americas Society.

Farnsworth said a continental perspective will be vital to make substantive progress on issues like fortified supply chains, mitigating China’s influence and building a 21st-century workforce in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s our hope that the leaders, when they get together to talk about some of these issues, keep in mind the fundamental vision of what North America really could be,” he told a panel discussion Friday.

“We can’t do these things without our partners in Canada and Mexico; it’s just fundamental to our own well-being. And so that has to be the underlying message of the leaders as they get together.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrives later Monday in Mexico City, where he’ll take part in an afternoon discussion with business leaders from across the continent before the summit gets underway in earnest Tuesday.

While Trudeau is airborne, Joe Biden — fresh from his first presidential visit to the politically fraught southern border — will sit down for a bilateral meeting with Mexican counterpart Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

A tête-à-tête between just the Canadian and U.S. leaders is scheduled to take place  Tuesday morning.

“It’s a trilateral meeting, a trilateral summit, but there are lots of bilateral items that are discussed at those meetings as well,” said Gary Doer, who served as Canada’s ambassador to the U.S. from 2009 to 2016.

Then-prime minister Stephen Harper got plenty of one-on-one face time with U.S. counterpart Barack Obama the last time the summit took place in Mexico in 2014, Doer recalled.

With Canadian and Mexican manufacturers added in the 11th hour to Biden’s plan to encourage the sale of climate-friendly electric vehicles, there will be room to talk about more familiar irritants like trade disputes and  U.S. protectionism.

On those fronts, there is no shortage of talking points.

The U.S. argues that Canada’s supply-managed dairy market denies American producers fair access to customers north of the border. The U.S. also says Mexico is unfairly favouring domestic energy suppliers. And both Mexico and Canada say the U.S. isn’t playing fair when it comes to how it defines foreign content in its automotive supply chains.

Mexico is also under pressure to come to terms with the U.S. on López Obrador’s plan to ban imports of genetically modified corn and the herbicide glyphosate, a decree that has angered American farmers

Then there’s Buy American, the long-standing, politically popular U.S. doctrine of preferring domestic suppliers over those of even the  most neighbourly allies.

Canada may have averted catastrophe when Biden’s electric-vehicle tax credits were amended last year to include North American manufacturers, but the president still rarely misses a chance to tout made-in-America supply chains.

And the green-energy incentives now in place in the U.S. still pose challenges for Canada, said Louise Blais, a retired Canadian diplomat who served as ambassador to the UN and consul general in Atlanta.

“I’m expecting both the Mexican president and the Canadian prime minister to raise this issue with the president to say, ‘Look, we need to have a more continental approach to some of these policies,'” said Blais.

“It’s in the interest of the United States, at the end of the day, to get those pieces of legislation right so that they really do boost prosperity across the United States.”

As a country that’s not immune to the influences of irregular migration and the flow of fentanyl at the U.S.-Mexico border, Canada will need to be part of that conversation as well, one that’s widely expected to dominate the agenda.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported nearly 2.4 million expulsions and apprehensions at or near the southern border in the last fiscal year, a 37 per cent increase over the previous fiscal period. Anecdotal evidence suggests a post-pandemic increase in irregular migration in both directions at the northern border as well.

Biden’s Sunday visit to the southern border followed a fresh crackdown on illegal migrants from Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua, on top of existing restrictions against Venezuelan migrants.

At the same time, the U.S. plans to welcome 30,000 new immigrants a month from all four countries over the next two years, provided they are eligible to work and enter the country legally.

Brian Nichols, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, made clear in a Wilson Center panel discussion Friday that his country’s unique ties to Canada won’t be lost in Mexico.

The last North American gathering at the White House in 2021 produced a list of more than 40 different “deliverables,” Nichols said — a huge number by most standards, but not surprising for three countries that share borders.

“That’s a family conversation in a way that often you’re not having with other nations,” he said. “The goodwill to advance our shared future in those conversations is something that really comes across.”

Canada, however, often doesn’t want to be lumped in with Mexico when it comes to its relations with the U.S., said Scotty Greenwood, chief executive of the Canadian American Business Council.

“It wants to have its own unique relationship with the U.S., so we’ll see if Canada is going to embrace or resist the ‘North American idea.’ Greenwood said.

“Meaning, ‘Let’s view things as a bloc and as a region, and let’s take things on together.’ I hope it embraces it. But that would be different.”

Biden also has yet to visit Canada in person since taking office — a long-standing bilateral tradition that typically comes shortly after a presidential inauguration, but which was short-circuited in 2021 by the pandemic.

This week’s meetings could provide fresh clarity on when Biden’s long-promised trip north — confirmed over the summer, but interrupted again when the president himself tested positive — might finally take place.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 9, 2023.

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Canada’s Denis Shapovalov wins Belgrade Open for his second ATP Tour title

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BELGRADE, Serbia – Canada’s Denis Shapovalov is back in the winner’s circle.

The 25-year-old Shapovalov beat Serbia’s Hamad Medjedovic 6-4, 6-4 in the Belgrade Open final on Saturday.

It’s Shapovalov’s second ATP Tour title after winning the Stockholm Open in 2019. He is the first Canadian to win an ATP Tour-level title this season.

His last appearance in a tournament final was in Vienna in 2022.

Shapovalov missed the second half of last season due to injury and spent most of this year regaining his best level of play.

He came through qualifying in Belgrade and dropped just one set on his way to winning the trophy.

Shapovalov’s best results this season were at ATP 500 events in Washington and Basel, where he reached the quarterfinals.

Medjedovic was playing in his first-ever ATP Tour final.

The 21-year-old, who won the Next Gen ATP Finals presented by PIF title last year, ends 2024 holding a 9-8 tour-level record on the season.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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Talks to resume in B.C. port dispute in bid to end multi-day lockout

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VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.

The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.

The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.

The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.

The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.

MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.

In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.

“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.

“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”

In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.

“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.

The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.

“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”

The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.

The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.

A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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The Royal Canadian Legion turns to Amazon for annual poppy campaign boost

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The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.

Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.

Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.

Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.

“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.

“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”

Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.

“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.

Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.

“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”

But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.

Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.

“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.

Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.

The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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