Biden goes to Kimmel as Trudeau meets Barbados PM on day 1 of Summit of the Americas

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LOS ANGELES — U.S. President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are charting markedly completely different paths immediately on the Summit of the Americas.

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Earlier than his leader-level conferences get underway, Biden is sitting all the way down to tape an look with talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel.

Trudeau, who arrived in Los Angeles late Tuesday, is getting all the way down to work on environmental priorities with Barbados counterpart Mia Mottley.

Later, the prime minister will attend a roundtable assembly with Latin American and Caribbean leaders to debate local weather change, defending democratic values and selling gender equality.

He’ll additionally discuss with Shilpan Amin, the president of Normal Motors Worldwide, about electrical automobiles, the hemisphere’s local weather targets and the hassle to energise financial development.

In Ottawa, Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne stated it might serve the folks of the hemisphere effectively for nations to do extra collectively to boost financial integration and export alternatives.

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“I feel that that is an financial zone the place Canada can play a number one position with the Caribbean, with Central America, with South America,” Champagne stated on his approach right into a caucus assembly.

Biden and Trudeau will cross paths later within the day, when the president hosts the entire delegations on the official opening ceremony.

The conferences mark a whipsaw pivot for Trudeau, who spent Tuesday afternoon within the rarefied air of the Rocky Mountains for conferences with army officers in Colorado.

He and Defence Minister Anita Anand toured the Cheyenne Mountain Advanced, the fortified command centre that homes a part of Norad, the joint-command continental defence system.

Each nations agree Norad, the one binational defence system of its form on this planet, is badly in want of upgrades whether it is to counter the modern-day threats of potential aggressors like Russia and China.

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However neither Trudeau nor Anand are providing any clues as to what kind of timeline could also be concerned.

Anand would solely say “a lot of initiatives” are on the desk and {that a} modernization plan can be forthcoming “shortly” — a message she’s been delivering for months.

Trudeau and Anand, flanked by Norad’s U.S. and Canadian commanders, met with Protection Secretary Lloyd Austin in a boardroom festooned with photographs of fighter jets and army insignia.

“I rise up each single day, as do all of our different members, realizing that we’ve probably the most noble mission on the planet, and that’s defending our homeland,” stated U.S. Air Power Gen. Glen VanHerck, the present joint commander of Norad and U.S. Northern Command.

The Canadian delegation later visited a granite-encased, concrete-walled Norad command fortress that appeared extra just like the lair of a James Bond villain than a army base.

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VanHerck offered Trudeau with a hunk of the mountainous rock that surrounds the bottom, mounted on a platform and adorned with two of the commander’s problem cash.

“Very spectacular,” Trudeau marvelled as officers demonstrated the power’s imposing blast door, a metre-thick, 20-tonne hydraulic behemoth fortified with 22 thick metal rods that slide shut to make sure an impermeable seal.

Afterward, the prime minister held up the shared obligations of Norad — the one binational joint-command early warning system on this planet — as an ideal illustration of the distinctive Canada-U.S. relationship.

“We’re seeing a time the place the world is shifting quickly,” Trudeau stated — a reference to Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, in addition to the prospect of hypersonic long-range weapons being developed in Russia and China.

“Whether or not it’s new threats, new applied sciences, or shifting geopolitical realities, it turns into all of the extra vital for associates and allies like Canada and the USA to proceed working so carefully collectively.”