Obama is heading to Canada, his first many international trips. Likely topics: trade, climate change and Afghanistan.
CTV: U.S. president-elect Barack Obama will visit Canada for his first foreign visit after his inauguration later this month.Obama could ask Canada to keep troops in Afghanistan:
"We're honoured and thrilled he has chosen Canada," Peter Kent, Canada's minister of state for foreign affairs of the Americas, said.
The planned trip will continue a longstanding tradition of new American presidents choosing Canada for their first official state visit.
The tradition was broken by President George Bush after his election when he visited Mexico instead.
The fact that Obama has revived the tradition of earlier presidents bodes well for Canada, CTV's Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife said.
"This has got to please the government and please Canadians, in general," he told Newsnet.
This "clearly shows that Barack Obama understands that Canada is an important player," he said.
Details of the trip are still emerging, but Fife said Canada and the U.S. have a variety of bilateral issues to discuss.
"There was a concern that with the American economy in such dire straits -- and the fact that there are so many global problems facing the Americans -- that he (would) not come to Canada right away," Fife said.
"(But) clearly, if the economy is going to be a major issue for (Canadian and U.S. leaders) they will probably want to work as closely as possible."
Canada.com: The meeting between Harper and Obama is certain to focus heavily on several key topics - the war in Afghanistan, climate change and the impact the global recession is having on the North American auto industry and Canada-U.S. bilateral trade.
Since the U.S. presidential election, Obama has made clear his immediate foreign policy priority is to beef up the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.
It's expected between 20,000 to 30,000 additional U.S. troops will be deployed to Afghanistan over the next year.
During the presidential campaign, Obama said he would not ask America's NATO allies to send more troops to Afghanistan until the U.S. first increased the size of its force.
But since the election, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates - who will remain in that post under Obama - hinted the new administration would like to see Canada keep troops in Afghanistan past the current 2011 withdrawal deadline.
"The longer we can have Canadian soldiers as our partners, the better it is," Gates said during a trip to Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan last November.
Ottawa insists the Afghanistan deadline is firm.
Canadian officials say one of Ottawa's first priorities in bilateral relations with Obama is to forge close co-operation on climate change initiatives, part of a broader plan to ward off any potential threat to Canada's energy exports to the U.S.
Strained relationship? Remember Nafta-gate?
There's been concern in Ottawa, however, over the new U.S. administration's policy toward oil from Alberta - an Obama aide referred during the presidential campaign to opposing "dirty oil" from Canada.
The Conservative government has signalled a potential Canada-U.S. climate-change pact would protect oilsands exports and include a carbon emissions trading system.
The Obama-Harper meeting, more than anything, will be a precious opportunity to put relations between the two men on solid footing after a strained beginning.
Obama's campaign was furious last March over the leak of a confidential Canadian diplomatic memo which claimed the Democratic candidate's tough primary campaign talk about unilaterally withdrawing from the North American Free Trade Agreement was little more than political rhetoric.
