U.S. President Biden to visit Canada in March, according to PMO

Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden tied up a pair of bilateral loose ends Tuesday: one for Canadians who frequently cross the Canada-U.S. border, the other for a certain U.S. president who has yet to do so.

The Nexus trusted-traveller program, on ice in Canada for nearly a year due to an outstanding dispute over U.S. border agents on foreign soil, is ramping back up, albeit in an altered and somewhat less convenient form.

The new program, jointly run by the Canada Border Services Agency and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, will be up and running by the spring, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a joint statement.

That option “will include CBSA interviews at reopened enrolment centres in Canada and separate CBP interviews in Canadian airport preclearance locations for departing applicants,” the statement said.

Mendicino later said that the changes, which also include a faster renewals process and expanded Nexus staffing levels on the U.S. side, would increase the system’s ability to process Nexus applications by 50 per cent.

“The demand is there because people see this as a way to accelerate their travel in a flexible, seamless and efficient way,” he said. “That’s precisely what the vision of this program is, so this is truly a win-win.”

The system is currently dealing with a backlog of between 220,000 and 240,000 applications, he added.

Scotty Greenwood, CEO of the Canadian American Business Council, said the new arrangement echoes a proposal her group floated in November aimed at getting around intractable questions about Canadian sovereignty.

“The breakthrough will allow the resumption and enhancement of one of the most successful trusted-traveller programs in the world,” Greenwood said in a statement.

“The new agreement reaffirms that Canada and the U.S. are well suited to confront the world’s challenges together.”

The agreement will allow Canada’s Nexus enrolment centres to reopen, with interviews with U.S. border agents taking place at Canadian airport facilities that already provide preclearance services for travellers heading stateside.

Nexus applicants, who must be interviewed by both Canadian and U.S. authorities, would sit down with Customs and Border Protection officials for that portion of the process before travelling to the U.S., provided they are travelling imminently and leaving from an airport where customs preclearance is an option.

International airports in Canada that offer preclearance services include those in Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa and Winnipeg, as well as Pearson International Airport in Toronto.

Word of the arrangement crystallized as Trudeau, Biden and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador wrapped up the formal portion of their North American Leaders’ Summit Tuesday at the National Palace in Mexico City.

Much like at last year’s gathering of hemispheric leaders, Biden’s agenda was dominated by the migratory crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, making his meeting with Trudeau the prime minister’s best chance to press issues of specific concern to Canada.

From a Canadian perspective, the summit’s overarching economic goal is to ensure Biden — a vocal and unapologetic champion of protectionist, pro-labour domestic policy — sees America’s neighbours as true partners and collaborators.

That was clear enough from the summit of business leaders from across the continent that got the Canadian portion of the proceedings started on Monday.

Biden was asked on Jan. 10 to square the seemingly contradictory ideas of U.S. protectionism and broader continental economic co-operation with Canada and Mexico, but he never got the chance, thanks to Lopez Obrador’s discursiveness.

“Just for the record,” Biden joked when it was finally over, “I don’t know which questions I didn’t answer.”