Justin Trudeau has praised Joe Biden for rejoining the Paris climate accord during their first bilateral meeting, saying: “US leadership has been sorely missed over the past years.”
The Canadian prime minister added: “And I have to say as we were preparing the joint rollout of the communique on this, it’s nice when the Americans are not pulling out all the references to climate change and instead adding them in.”
The meeting – held virtually between the Roosevelt Room at the White House and Trudeau in his Ottawa office because of the pandemic – was Biden’s first with a foreign counterpart since taking office,
Biden returned Trudeau’s compliments, saying: “The United States has no closer friend, no closer friend, than Canada.”
After talking for about two hours, the two leaders emerged and said they planned to work closely together to beat the Covid-19 pandemic and combat climate change, with a goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
