Three Amigos Summit Offers Chance for Better Ties Between Mexico, Canada and U.S. David Olive - The Star
go to original May 28, 2016

U.S. President Barack Obama walks with Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto, left and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, right, at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Manila, Philippines, on Nov. 19, 2015.  (Susan Walsh/The Associated Press)

Ottawa is gearing up for a rare opportunity to legitimize, in the minds of mostly U.S. doubters, the growing benefits of collaboration among Mexico, Canada and the U.S.

In the lead-up to the next “Three Amigos” summit, June 29 in Ottawa, federal work teams are already preparing the case for even stronger ties among the three countries, which together account for about 440 million people.

Justin Trudeau, the Canadian PM, might be the one to watch most closely, more than U.S. and Mexican counterparts Barack Obama and Enrique Pena Nieto, respectively.

Mexico and the U.S. have suffered strained relations for more than a century. Canada may have long neglected Mexico, but there’s no time like the present to rectify that. And Trudeau might be just the leader to do it.

The timing is right: Populist U.S. hostility to immigrants and especially Hispanics has poisoned the current U.S. election cycle, and a corrective is long overdue.

As for Trudeau’s suitability, at the Paris climate-change summit late last year the tenderfoot Canadian PM successfully pushed more than 200 fellow countries to adopt more ambitious CO2 emissions reductions than anyone expected possible. And before arriving at Obama’s annual anti-nuclear proliferation talks in Washington last month, Trudeau had already committed $42 million in additional spending to prevent terrorists from obtaining “loose nukes.”

Trudeau, unusually popular in the U.S., can deploy Canada’s longstanding “honest broker” role to set the record straight on Mexico.

Trudeau could be the one to point out, for instance, that men in the U.S. illegally are more likely to work, and to work at sub-minimum wages, than either native-born Americans or legal immigrants. And to note that today more Mexicans are returning to their homeland than are coming into the U.S.

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