Canada: President Obama's First International Trip

Wednesday, the President deployed 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan. This underscores a significant disagreement between the new US Administration and Canada.

WASHINGTON (Catholic Online) - The President of the United States will make his first international trip on Thursday. He will visit our neighbor to the North, Canada.

On the agenda are economic issues, energy concerns and security concerns.

Wednesday, the President deployed 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan. This underscores a significant disagreement between the new US Administration and Canada. Canada will withdraw all of its 2,500 combat troops in Afghanistan.

He also has more mending of relationships to do in the wake of the "America first" provisions in the U.S. Stimulus bill. Canadians are deeply concerned that the measure will significantly harm the vital trade relationship between out two nations and violate treaties with Canada.

The Obama administration counters that the language in the final measure, which is intended to interpret the Bill in a manner which precludes any damage to international relations, will cure any potential problems.

Denis McDonough is the National Security Advisor for strategic communications. He had this to say about the Presidents trip to Canada on Tuesday:

"There will be a lot of discussion of the economic recovery plan that the President is signing today, and the synergies of that plan with the stimulus package that Prime Minister Harper has proposed in Canada, as obviously both of them have infrastructure investment in clean and renewable energy and green jobs and tax cuts for working families.

"They'll also obviously be discussing, given the fact that Canada is the largest energy provider to the United States, our shared interest in energy and the environment, significant discussion of cooperation on clean energy technology.

"And the President is hopeful that they can -- that he'll be able to build on the very productive conversation he had with President Calderón of Mexico last month here in Washington, before he was sworn in, wherein he and President Calderón talked about possibilities for carbon abatement, clean energy technology, and a partnership among the three North American countries on those issues.

"And then of course the last set of issues they'll discuss relate to the global security challenges that we jointly face -- one, of course, being Afghanistan."

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