WASHINGTON – No immediate, looser border-crossing restrictions came out of President Biden's summit this week with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but the two leaders agreed to work together to reopen the border someday.
"Both leaders agreed to take a coordinated approach based on science and public health criteria when considering measures to ease Canada-U.S. border restrictions in the future," said a "Roadmap for a Renewed U.S.-Canadian Partnership," which the two governments issued late Tuesday.
That roadmap made clear, though, that roads between the U.S. and Canada will remain closed to most people until the Covid-19 pandemic eases.
"The President and the Prime Minister recognize coordinated border policies remain central to controlling Covid-19 and new variants while promoting economic growth and recovery," the joint statement between the two countries said.
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Biden and Trudeau released the statement hours after concluding a 2½-hour virtual summit in which they discussed issues ranging from the pandemic to trade to climate change.
In a joint appearance afterwards, Biden made no comments about the border closure, which is now in its 12th month.
But in French, Trudeau said: "As for Covid-19, we also talked of our strict measures concerning trips in order to protect people on both sides of the border. However, even if our most important priority is to secure peoples' safety, we must also think of our future."
The virtual summit – Biden's first as president – came amid growing calls to loosen border restrictions from groups representing people who have loved ones on the other side of the border.
Thanks to the pandemic, the border has been closed to nonessential travel since March 21, 2020, but Canada has slightly looser rules than the U.S. does for people who want to cross the border to visit loved ones.
The summit offered no hint that the U.S. would match the Canadian policy, and that fact prompted a complaint from Let Us Reunite, one of those groups representing people separated by the border.
"It is disappointing that President Biden spoke of the millions of families depending on the U.S./Canadian partnership while ignoring thousands of cross-border families who have been kept apart by the U.S. government's refusal to enact family travel exemptions," Let Us Reunite said in a statement.
Rep. Brian Higgins, a Buffalo Democrat who has been pushing for a border reopening, noted that Biden and Trudeau had plenty to discuss beyond the border.
Along with the summit, "the U.S.-Canada Partnership Roadmap provides a path forward in rebuilding our binational bond through a synchronized strategy that will benefit the health, safety and economic interests of our citizens," Higgins said. "We look forward to ongoing collaboration as the dialogue continues.”
That U.S.-Canada roadmap also calls for coordinated efforts to:
• Fight the pandemic, and to work together to prevent future ones.
• Bolster small- and medium-sized businesses as well as the supply chains that link the two countries.
• Combat climate change.
• Promote equality and democracy.
• Re-establish the Cross-Border Crime Forum to promote cooperation among law enforcement agencies on both sides of the border.
• Improve efforts to provide for the defense of the two nations, with a focus on issues such as violent extremism, human trafficking and gun smuggling, among others.
