For about 24 hours this week, residents of Canada’s capital were advised not to talk to their neighbours over their fences.

The advice was met with incredulity — to put it mildly — and quickly rescinded within a day by Ottawa mayor Jim Watson and the city’s chief medical officer.

But when it comes to Canada’s largest neighbour, the United States, this week was another good argument for fences and keeping some distance with the folks next door.

It was Premier Doug Ford who put it the most plainly: “I don’t want them (Americans) in Ontario.” He was talking about the open musing from Donald Trump that the border to Canada might be imminently reopened, even as the coronavirus is still wreaking its damage through the two countries.

In fact, rather than opening borders, the opposite appears to be true: Canada and the U.S. were still talking on Friday, according to senior sources, about keeping the border closed for another 30 days. Canada is quite happy at the moment to stay away from the neighbours’ fence.

As many times as Trump has been talking about hurrying up the recovery this week, Trudeau has been talking about the need to go slowly. Asked specifically about Trump’s hopes for a reopened border this week, Trudeau — familiar by now with the president’s need for praise — chose to frame the discussion as a compliment to Canada.

“There was a recognition by the president as I have highlighted many times that the closeness, the collaboration, the friendship between Canada and the United States is quite unlike any other,” Trudeau said.

“As we move forward there will be special thought given to this relationship but at the same time we know there is a significant amount of time still before we can talk about loosening such restrictions.”

Where political leaders are especially united in this country right now, it seems, is in avoiding Trump’s style of managing his way out of the pandemic. One source familiar with the first ministers’ discussions says that Trump’s move to block a shipment of masks to Canada a couple of weeks ago steeled premiers’ resolve to be more generous than the president had been. “That was a shock,” the source said.

Nor do Canada’s first ministers seem eager for the kind of intergovernmental feuds they’re seeing to the south. While Trump has spent a lot of this week setting up a COVID-19 recovery plan that pits the White House against the state governors, Canada’s first ministers are making a deliberate choice to co-ordinate their various plans to ease out of the national lockdown.

“We talked last night about how important it is to be co-ordinated and agreed on the principles and the approaches that we take,” Trudeau said on Friday about his weekly call with leaders of the provinces and territories.

Co-ordinated doesn’t mean simultaneous, though. It is looking like British Columbia will be the first province starting to phase back to normal, with other provinces setting their own timetable based on when the curve starts flattening for them.

Trudeau and the premiers were on their weekly call roughly at the same time on Thursday evening that Trump was rolling out his pandemic recovery plan at a White House briefing. It was actually more of a marketing plan — intended to leave the impression that Trump would reopen the economy while governors would keep the responsibility (and the blame) for keeping containment measures in place.

Contrast that with Ford’s report about the first ministers’ call this week and how Trudeau was approaching the divergent timetables for recovery.

“He (the prime minister) recognizes that every part of this country is different. B.C.’s a little ahead of us because it hit them, hit them first, and they’ll probably start off. I know in Alberta they wanted to move forward very cautiously, but we’re gonna do this in a methodical way in stages when the time comes,” Ford said.

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One source close to the first ministers’ talks said that the weekly calls are an entire exercise in co-operation, with each premier volunteering ways to be helpful to the others. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney provided tangible evidence of this last week when he donated pandemic-fighting supplies to B.C., Ontario and Quebec. Expect to see more of this, the source said, as the recovery efforts start to be phased in.

Don’t get too close to the neighbours seemed like preposterous advice for 24 hours this week in Ottawa. But when that neighbour is Trump hurrying his way out of the pandemic, the advice doesn’t seem all that strange at all.

Susan Delacourt is a columnist covering national politics based in Ottawa. Reach her via email: sdelacourt@thestar.ca or follow her on Twitter: @susandelacourt

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