It also matters when the President of the United States comes to Ottawa for a two-day official visit.

Just to compare to its recent predecessors, if you don’t count presence at international summits hosted by Canada like the G7, there wasn’t all that much interest in that relationship.

President Trump has never paid an official visit to Canada.

His predecessor, Barack Obama, came for part of the day. He had arrived in the morning. A speech in the House of Commons that afternoon, and he was back in Washington for dinner. George W. Bush never had time for an official visit.

To find an American President who spent the night on Canadian territory during an official visit, you have to go back to Bill Clinton… back in the last century!

The fact that Mr. Biden is coming for two days is a token of friendship for Canada and shows how much he has always felt connected to Canada. One of his final gestures as Obama’s vice president was to come to Ottawa to meet Justin Trudeau. And when he was Senator and Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, his office was a must for Canadian politicians visiting Washington.

That being said, relations between Canada and the US are never straightforward. Jean Chrétien has said that the most frustrating thing for a Canadian prime minister is having to ask the president something.

“You have the most powerful man in the world with you and you ask him to help you with a small problem that has become a big thing here. And he answers you, “I’d love to help you, but a senator like that from a state like that is really against it and… I need his vote to pass the budget…” »

It is not because we have time with the President of the United States that he is able to solve the problems plaguing Canada.

That brings us to Roxham Road. In Quebec, it’s easy to believe that the issue will be high on the agenda of the meeting between MM. Biden and Trudeau.

But let’s see what the White House statement listing the issues being discussed said:

1. Defense Cooperation and NORAD
2. Supply chain security
3. The challenges of climate change
4. Regional challenges, especially Haiti
5. The War in Ukraine
6. The Opioid Crisis
7. And last but not least… illegal immigration

So we’re going to talk about Roxham Road… but reading between the lines we’re almost tempted to add “when we have time”.

Of course, the Canadian side will have a say on the agenda. And it is obvious that we will raise the issue of immigration and Roxham, but we cannot believe that we will be able to quickly renegotiate the Safe Third Countries Agreement.

In any case, Americans will be quick to point out to their Canadian friends that the deal in question was signed at Canada’s behest as part of a series of post-9/11 security deals.

You should also know that Roxham Road is also becoming a partisan issue in the United States. A group of about 30 elected Republicans formed the Northern Border Security Caucus. Essentially, they want to politicize the issue by showing that the problem of illegal immigration is no longer just at the southern border.

It is true that the number of illegal border crossings from Canada to the United States, relatively modest compared to the southern border, has increased in recent months. But are you talking about a crisis?

“It’s Joe Biden’s borderline crisis, and you never hear what Joe Biden is going to do,” said Elise Stefanik, Republican number three in the House of Representatives and dated March 21^e The borough of New York State that includes Plattsburgh and the route to Roxham Road.

All of this to say that President Biden has his own problems on the immigration issue and that we must not look at the Roxham Road file while forgetting this American perspective.

If we can expect the two leaders to tackle a more pressing issue, we should probably look to Haiti.

Americans have strongly suggested in recent months that Canada lead a multinational force in Haiti, where there is a major political and social crisis.

But Canada refuses, and also this week the Chief of Staff, General Wayne Eyre, reminded that the capacity of the Canadian Armed Forces is very limited, especially since we would soon double the contingent in Estonia, which borders Russia and Belarus.