Canada should be treated with respect: Former U.S. ambassador | CTV’s Question Period

help us unpack Donald Trump’s attacks on Canada and what it could mean for bilateral relations moving forward is David Cohen served as former President Joe Biden’s ambassador to Canada until last month. Ambassador Cohen Good to see you again…Thanks for making time. It is good to see you and I must admit I think it’s good to see you virtually since I understand you’ve got a lot of things going on. Yeah, the ground. Yeah, this is true. This is true. Um, there are a lot of questions that I have for you but I wanted to start with one of.

sovereignty, and I understand there are different assessments of how serious that threat actually is but I wanted to know from your vantage point how, you know, if we should be surprised that the president right now is speaking in those terms. So I’m in a somewhat uncomfortable position because it’s not my job and it’s not my inclination. You know me long enough to know that, um, I don’t represent President Trump in Canada. I don’t represent anyone in Canada anymore.

and as president, he’s entitled to a lot of room in how he pursues the policies and objectives that he’s trying to pursue; however, there is a matter of tone and respect that I, you know, subscribe to, that Joe Biden subscribed to, frankly. This isn’t a part of the issue because I think multiple presidents of both parties have subscribed to a theory that you treat your friends like friends and you treat them with respect and I don’t think the constant, almost heckling of Canada is the solution to this problem.

Canada should be treated with respect: Former U.S. ambassador

Canada just to become the 51st state is very respectful and I think I quibble with any attempted exercise of foreign policy that doesn’t show proper respect to other countries, any other countries, um, let alone a country like Canada that has a 150-year-plus relationship of friendship and ally ship and partnership. On the other hand, it’s hard for me to get exercised about this because, um, Canada has made quite clear that it has no interest in becoming the 51st state, and the United States has no authority to annexed.

Canada or to make Canada the 51st state, it would require Canadian consent and a negotiation and I don’t know how much clearer Canada can be that it has no interest in being the 51st state of the United States and so this is just something that is not happening. Um, and it doesn’t matter how many times Donald Trump says it; it still isn’t going to happen. As I was thinking about having this conversation with you, um, you know, there were obviously irritants in the relationship between our two countries.

during your tenure I don’t think they’re, you know, of the scale that we’re seeing in the first few weeks right now but they were still there and I remember on a number of occasions when you were talking about the Canadian approach to navigating those irritants you mention frequently, not to focus so much on the White House, right? In that often you would count Council different levels of government to engage with different levels of government or Congress or the Senate in the United States, I think the perception we have.

Trump ‘definitively’ looking at Canada becoming U.S. state

Here is that our allies in that regard, particularly over the last number of years, are much more quiet than they have been in the past. I’m wondering if you share that observation and what your counsel to Canadians would be. Well, it’s still my advice because the structure of the United States government and the way in which the United States government and US-Canada relations operate remains the same as it was, unfortunately, in this space as in other spaces involving other countries and other issues. Um, we haven’t quite had.

a president like Donald Trump before and he is doing—he’s conducting business in a different way, um. I think my advice remains the same, um, because I don’t know of any way to deal with the United States other than to deal with the broad variety of stakeholders that you have to deal with, but you know, I’ll go. I mean, you started this question with my—my statement at the time and my continued statement that, um, everything is not the president in.

http://No real negotiation going on: Former ambassador

the United States, the power is more diffuse. Um, I will absolutely represent to you that I have not seen anyone, including President Trump, argue that he, the president, has the capacity to make Canada the 51st state without any action by anyone else in the United States. In fact, I haven’t heard him say that he has the ability to do that without Canada consenting and in fact, most of his argument around Canada being the 51st state is that it’s an escape path for Canada, that if they don’t like what he’s doing, he’s.

offered them a solution, which is they can agree to become the 51st state but I guess, yeah so essentially, I mean, the argument that he’s put forth is, uh, you know, economic ruin or join us; you can avoid that by joining us. Well, I don’t accept that. I don’t accept that Donald Trump, um, that any president of the United States, has the capacity to cause economic ruin to Canada. I just don’t think that’s true. I will leave it on that note, Ambassador. Appreciate your