U.S. ambassador to Canada working to ensure warm relationship lasts

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The July 4 party that U.S. Ambassador Bruce Heyman threw last week was bigger than ever. Thousands lined up at the gate of his official Ottawa residence, Lornado. His speech was so upbeat it was almost giddy.

It was a golden moment when Justin Trudeau visited to Washington for a state dinner in March, Mr. Heyman told the crowd of 4,000 officials, aides, lobbyists and guests who lined up for pulled pork and beer.

But then U.S. President Barack Obama came for the North American Leaders' Summit and to address Parliament.

"As good as I thought it was in Washington, it just got that much better," Mr. Heyman said.

Eighteen months ago, his ambassadorship was completely different. He was the rarest kind of American envoy – one who couldn't get a foot in the door in Ottawa. Stephen Harper's Conservatives were bitter over the stalling of the Keystone XL pipeline. The ambassador was shunned by Mr. Harper and many of his ministers.

But Ottawa's doors are all open to Mr. Heyman now. He's celebrating buddy-buddy ties that are partly of his making. And he's labouring to make sure there's a legacy that isn't washed away in a few months, when the President who appointed him leaves office.

There are plenty of symbols of closer ties. Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Obama saw eye-to-eye at climate talks in Paris in December. The PM was welcomed to the state dinner. In June, Mr. Trudeau hosted the first Three Amigos summit in Canada in nearly a decade, followed by Mr. Obama's flattering speech to Parliament. "I don't think the relationship has ever been in a better place," Mr. Heyman said in an interview at his embassy office.

It's certainly a massive shift from the chill that existed before – notably for Mr. Heyman himself. Locked out of close ties with Mr. Harper's ministers, he worked on contacts with premiers and opposition leaders, getting to know a third-party leader named Trudeau. When last year's election campaign came, the former Goldman Sachs executive decided to map out a fast-start strategy to work with whoever won.

It started at the embassy's "country team" meetings on Wednesdays, where representatives of various U.S. departments were told to make a list of priorities – forcing them to talk to superiors in Washington about Canada. Then the priorities of several departments were hammered together, while embassy staff watched the pronouncements of all three major parties to glean their priorities.

"We really worked hard to identify those areas where we felt we could have important quick successes with a new government," Mr. Heyman said.

In the end, it was the party that campaigned on forging closer ties with the U.S. – the Liberals – that won. They also wanted quick successes in cross-border relations.

And Mr. Heyman already had done a lot of the work on the U.S. side. That was one reason a state dinner could be organized so quickly, four months into Mr. Trudeau's tenure: The dinner is a celebration on a day of meetings, and those meetings are the focal point for months' work to have "deliverables" that can be announced. "The real story is the work that gets done in the months that lead up to that," Mr. Heyman said.

That's now happened twice. The two governments announced border measures, energy co-ordination and climate measures. The question, with Mr. Obama in his last months, is follow-through.

The ambassador argues preparing for those meetings created "muscle memory" – officials on both sides of the border developed relationships and agendas across dozens of departments. "What ends up happening is after this is over, that relationship and that work, and all of that exercise that you went through about U.S.-Canada or Canada-U.S., stays," he said.

Of course, that might be true if Hillary Clinton becomes president, but no one knows with Donald Trump. Mr. Heyman argues most Canada-U.S. relations keep rolling no matter who is U.S. president, and he stays mum on the presidential race. After serving as Washington's neglected envoy, he is now enjoying a resurgence. But that window is small – Mr. Obama leaves office in January – and now the ambassador is working to ensure it leaves a legacy.