Environment deals and ‘awkward disagreements’: what to expect at the Three Amigos summit

[U.S. President Barack Obama, centre, walks with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, left, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, right, as they arrive for a group photo with leaders of the APEC summit in Manila on Nov. 19, 2015. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh]

Look for environmental initiatives when the three North American leaders meet a week Wednesday in Ottawa, say political observers and officials, as it’s an area where all three are “on the same wavelength.”

Just don’t expect the same level of harmony when it comes to other issues.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, U.S. President Barack Obama and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto are set to meet June 29 in Ottawa for the first North American Leaders’ Summit in over two years.

During the so-called Three Amigos summit, Obama will make a speech to Parliament, while Gov.-Gen. David Johnston will host Peña Nieto as an official state visit.

The summit comes at the end of Obama’s second and final term as president, amid a raucous and bitter race to succeed him between presumptive candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Both candidates have criticized what has been hailed by trade boosters as the future cornerstone of North American economic integration, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

But it is Trump who has scared North America-watchers the most, railing against the current NAFTA trade pact, calling it “the worst trade deal” in “the history of the world” and making what even the U.S. vice-president has called “racist” comments against a judge because of his Mexican heritage.

All of this actually gives the Obama White House an opportunity to make some big deals, said Carlo Dade, director of the Centre for Trade & Investment Policy at the Canada West Foundation.

“Obama has the ability to say, ‘Look, none of us really think Trump’s going to win, but should he win, wouldn’t it make sense for us to get some stuff done now?” Dade told Yahoo Canada News.

For this reason, “I expect the summit to be actually one of the more successful,” he said.

Energy and the environment

If any topic is to be featured at the summit, it’s likely to be the environment. Earlier this month in Ottawa, a senior Canadian government official told a panel on the North American relationship that this topic would feature “fairly prominently in the agenda of the leaders.”

“Without disclosing too much, I think you can probably read into the fact that this government is very committed to addressing the challenges of climate change,” said Kevin Thompson, executive director of North America Policy and Relations at Canada’s foreign affairs department, Global Affairs Canada.

“The Obama administration as well as Peña Nieto’s administration are all on the same wavelength in that regard,” Thompson said at the June 6 event hosted by the Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP).

Trudeau visited Washington, D.C., in March, and climate change and clean energy was a major focal point, Thompson reminded the crowd.

At that D.C. meeting, Trudeau and Obama agreed to work together on combating climate change, releasing a joint statement that discusses environmental co-operation in heavy detail — from reducing methane emissions from the oil and gas sector to implementing the Paris climate agreement’s provisions on carbon markets, including exploring carbon pricing.

In April, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy also met and released a statement suggesting the two countries would be building upon their current environmental co-operation.

“For Obama, having a national agenda on climate change with executive authority will have limited impact, but if you combine that with actions from Canada and Mexico, you’ve suddenly got something,” Dade said.

The two “fundamental themes” of international trade and carbon emissions reduction are coming together, said Céline Bak, president of Ottawa-based Analytica Advisors, to the IRPP panel.

Canada will have a hard time meeting its carbon emissions reduction targets, she said — set by the previous federal government in May 2015 to be 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 — without a lot of work and collaboration.

“Part of that is going to be, as we do price carbon, how we establish border carbon adjustments,” she said, using a term to refer to taxes or other measures imposed at the border to try and counteract the advantage a country with more relaxed environmental laws might have importing cheaper goods.

“That has to be done within a positive and constructive institutional setting,” she added. “I think that our institutional capacity needs to grow in order to do that.”

The U.S. Department of Energy has been conducting the “first fully North American analysis of energy integration,” Agustín Barrios Gómez, president of Fundación Imagen México, told the panel, and will release the study “very soon.”

Trade and visas

One of the biggest issues in front of all three leaders may not even get discussed that much — at least in public.

The TPP, which includes all three nations and nine others along the Pacific Rim, would essentially supersede NAFTA and align trade rules for 40 per cent of the world market and 800 million consumers. Proponents of the deal, like Obama, say it’s a chance to counter China’s rising economic status by expanding sales into Asian markets.

But the deal faces stiff public opposition out of fears it would further the offshoring of jobs, suppress wages and creativity, boost the price of medicines and damage the environment.

Although the Trudeau government signed the deal in February, it hasn’t said yet whether it will move to ratify it. Instead, the government has been holding public consultations, and will do so through June leading up to the summit.

Dade played down concerns that the TPP would make for an awkward meeting in Ottawa in June.

“You have those sort of awkward disagreements at every summit,” he said.

“I don’t know that they’re going to let the TPP dominate. For Obama there’s marginal use in having Canada come out in favour of the TPP, but is that as important to him as … getting movement on greenhouse gas emissions?”

Other issues

Other major issues among the three countries include the visa imposed by Canada on Mexicans and the softwood lumber dispute with the United States.

Mexico has pushed for years for Canada to drop a visa requirement on its citizens that was established in 2009. In 2013 the Mexican ambassador said his country was “really mad,” an unusually blunt assessment from a diplomat.

The Liberals campaigned on removing the visas and in November 2015, Trudeau formally committed to the process. But it still hasn’t happened, six months later. Barrios Gómez on the IRPP panel suggested it was far beyond time for this to occur.

But it doesn’t appear as though either of those will be discussed. Media reports show Canada and the U.S. far apart on the issue of softwood lumber, while The Canadian Press reported this week that a fixed date for the visa’s removal is still an uncertainty.

Thompson suggested other possible areas for collaboration include economic prosperity and competitiveness, defence and security, and regional or global linkages.

“I think you’ll see many of those same types of themes coming through in this NALS [North American leaders’ summit],” he said.

The Mexican embassy did not return an interview request by Yahoo Canada News before publication time.