At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said that “great powers” — by implication the U.S. and President Donald Trump — were attempting to use leverage and coercion to get what they want.
And he said , following threats of annexation and the reality of stiff tariffs over the past year, Canada was amongst the first to hear the wake-up call.
While relations between Canada and the U.S. are strained, the state of Washington and neighboring British Columbia are making an effort to maintain a good relationship
Washington Lt. Governor Denny Heck was in Vancouver earlier this month to sign on to the British Columbia-Washington State Interparliamentary Group.
Heck recently joined KNKX’s All Things Considered to explain what this means for Washingtonians.
Interview Highlights
On what the agreement does
It sets up a forum for us to be able to listen to one another and talk with one another about potential issues between us, but more importantly, how it is we're respectively solving problems and maybe learning from one another and making us more effective on our sides of the border to solve our own problems.
On what he’s hearing from lawmakers in British Columbia
So emotions are pretty high, but to my everlasting gratitude, all of the members of the Legislative Assembly, they call them MLAs, as well as other government officials, are really able to separate how they feel about what President Trump has said and done from how they feel about us. Look, the bottom line is, Washingtonians love Canada. They love British Columbia.
"We have a very close, very close, long standing relationship with them, and that, frankly, transcends what I hope are the very transitory issues of tension that have been brought about by President Trump."Washington Lt. Gov. Denny Heck
On the issues the group might tackle
When we met, kind of as a pilot project in Blaine a couple of years ago, a limited number of MLAs and members of the state legislature, we had presentations on a couple of issues each. And one of the issues that the MLAs from British Columbia presented on is, here's how we're solving our housing crisis, and they have one too. As a matter of fact, all of North America is suffering a housing shortage that is really impacting people and families budgets. And they had a couple of ideas in there that we went, Oh my goodness. Why aren't we doing that?
On one thing Washington has learned from B.C.
They decided that they would invest significantly in housing on college campuses, which used to be a thing, but then kind of faded over time. But what they concluded was some of the worst housing shortages were in communities where higher education facilities existed because all the students were taking up all the housing that then therefore regular people couldn't buy or rent. And so they really ramped up the number of units available on campus, or that were campus-operated. The community colleges in Washington state really picked up on that. We got a budget proviso added to kind of lay out the roadmap and then to begin investing.
Heck said the British Columbia-Washington State Interparliamentary Group is expected to hold its first meeting later this year.
