Who invited you, Joe? Obama wants to know.
There are only a few weeks left before the Obama team leaves office, and U.S. Veep Joe Biden is using his last bit of time to wedge in on the Trudeau-Obama bromance.
Trudeau hosted Biden Thursday night in Ottawa noting that unlike the last state visit to Washington, there was no celebrity star power at the dinner. “I’m the only eye candy you get to sit with tonight,” Trudeau apologized.
Biden didn’t miss a beat wistfully recalling the days “when I used to be eye candy.” And telling Trudeau “Don’t get used to it, old buddy. Another 40 years, I don’t know.”
Joe Biden’s famously disarming humour was on full display as the Vice President relayed his conversation with Obama as he was preparing to leave the White House for the Ottawa visit. By his account, Obama asked where he was going. “To a state dinner,” Biden replied opaquely, as he straightened his own tie. Obama: “where the hell are you going?” Upon hearing that his Vice President was heading up to Canada, Obama seemed piqued: “who invited you?”
The folksy U.S. politician was also a bit suspicious about how Obama had sent him out of the country during Trudeau's Washington visit and state dinner.
"I think he was worried you'd like me more than you like him," Biden said at the Ottawa dinner on Thursday to laughter. "He (Obama) doesn't send me a lot to Canada or France or England. I mean, I won't say where he sends me but you can guess. And I happened to be in the UAE, Jordan, Iraq, and on the way to Egypt when you were having dinner with the president."
Biden’s visit took place as Canada's premiers were gathering with Trudeau to hammer out a national climate strategy. He initially joked about the prospects of the incoming Trump administration, lightheartedly telling the Canadian leaders that he was authorized to speak for the president-elect. But he then used the moment to reassure and prod the First Ministers on the necessity and inevitability of a revolution in clean energy.
The Vice President called on Trudeau and the premiers to “tak(e) action before it further imperils the future of all our children. We know the threat is real, at least the vast majority of us know the threat is real and as my friend the President’s science advisor Dr. John Holdren often reminds us, we have only three options. We can mitigate. We can adapt or we can suffer.”
Biden tried to reassure Canadians that “Whatever uncertainty exists around the near term policy choices of the next president I am absolutely confident the United States will continue making progress in its path to a low carbon future…. (The solutions are) market driven, they’re common sense…
"Last week Google announced a new goal of powering itself with 100 per cent renewable energy starting next year. If that announcement were made nine years ago I think everybody would wonder what they were doing at lunch time at Google.”
“Your children are going to see more change in the next ten years than you and I have seen in the last forty years.”
“…There is no way to turn back this tide that has begun to roll."
U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden speaks to Canada's first ministers about Trump and climate policy in Ottawa on Dec. 9, 2016. National Observer video
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