OTTAWA \u2013 Clean energy and climate policy will be a dominant theme when the leaders of Canada, the United States and Mexico convene June 29 in Ottawa, a senior government official said Monday.<\/p>\n
But because Barack Obama\u2019s days in office are numbered, Canada isn\u2019t pursing any major initiatives beyond climate change for reinvigorating the complicated three-way relationship at the summit, said Kevin Thompson, executive director for North America policy and relations at Global Affairs Canada.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not really the time for grand visions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thompson told a panel discussion on Monday that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau\u2019s state visit to Washington in March gave a pretty clear signal of where he and Obama believe progress can be made.<\/p>\n
They agreed to deep cuts in emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, as one of the showcase announcements from the Washington visit.<\/p>\n
Now with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto joining them, Thompson said it’s no secret that climate and energy will feature fairly prominently on the agenda.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you could probably read into the fact that this government is very committed to addressing the challenges of climate change, the Obama administration, as well as Nieto\u2019s administration, are all on the same wavelength in that regard,\u201d said Thompson.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo that will feature fairly prominently in the agenda of the leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n
But both Thompson and Steven Zate, a representative of the American consulate, downplayed expectations for any big headlines out of the one-day summit in their talk to the Institute for Research in Public Policy.<\/p>\n
Instead, said Thompson, the three countries will content themselves with making \u201cincremental progress\u201d on a range of issues, including security, increasing shared competitiveness, harmonizing regulations on dangerous goods, streamlining the continent\u2019s patent regime and fostering female entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n
The so-called Three Amigos summit has been fraught with delays and problems in the past.<\/p>\n
This Canadian-hosted summit is a year overdue because Prime Minister Stephen Harper saw no political advantage in hosting it before the last federal election while Obama delayed a decision on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. Obama officially killed the project, which the Conservatives pushed hard for, after the October federal election.<\/p>\n
There was also no win for Harper with Mexico because the controversial visa requirement that his government imposed on Mexican travellers remained in place \u2013 and still does.<\/p>\n
The new Liberal government has not said publicly that the visa issue will be resolved in time for the summit, but Trudeau has said he wants to see it done away with.<\/p>\n
Panel member Agustin Barrios Gomez, president of the Mexico Image Foundation and a former member of Mexico\u2019s Congress, urged immediate scrapping of the visa, which he said creates a \u201cstack of papers\u201d that must be dealt with every time a Mexican traveller applies and reapplies to come to Canada.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeriously, Canada, my God,\u201d he said. \u201cIt really does not do justice to this country.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also said it was \u201ca very exciting time for energy integration\u201d on the continent because the U.S. Department of Energy is doing its first study of continental energy integration, while Mexico\u2019s government is investing massively in green energy in order to meet an ambitious target of 35 per cent clean energy production for the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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