Mr. Prime Minister and ladies and gentlemen:
We have just completed a series of meetings, first a private talk between the Prime Minister and myself, and also a number of meetings at other levels of government between members of his party and members of the administration.
I think it could be said without fear of contradiction that this is one of the most successful meetings of this type--successful in the sense of the number of subjects covered and the progress which has been made in the solution of those subjects-ever held between the two countries.
We have issued to the press a joint statement 1 which will indicate the subjects that were discussed and the positions that were taken and several future meetings that are planned.
1 See the joint news briefing by Press Secretary Ronald L. Ziegler and Romeo LeBlanc, Press Secretary to the Prime Minister, printed in the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents (vol. 5, P. 467).
I have only two other brief things to add before the Prime Minister will have a chance to indicate his reactions to some of the subjects we discussed.
Your visit, Mr. Prime Minister, has provided us here an opportunity to know intimately the problems of your country, but also to know you. This we deeply appreciate.
I have been impressed by the candor and also by the restraint of the statements, the conversations that we have had.
As we work together in the years ahead, I am confident that the relationship will be a close one; it will be an honest one; it will be one where we will find some areas of disagreement, but far more areas of agreement.
We are so delighted that you came here so that we had the opportunity to know you in this way.
Finally, the Prime Minister has invited me to pay a visit to Canada. Mrs. Nixon and I are delighted to accept that invitation. We will arrange a time convenient to both the Prime Minister and ourselves at some later time.
But apart from that visit, I think that the members of the press should know that we have established several channels of communication; some existed before, new ones have been added at all Cabinet levels where there are common interests.
We found several new areas in which communications could go forward. As far as the Prime Minister is concerned, we will not talk only on official visits of this type, or like the one I will pay to his country; we will be in communication by telephone, of course, as well as through the diplomatic channels, because this is a new era of consultation and, we hope, cooperation between our countries who share so much together.
Thank you.
Note: The President spoke at 12:10 p.m. in the Rose Garden at the White House.
Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau of Canada responded as follows:
Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen:
I essentially want to state my agreement with what you just said, Mr. President. This has been 2 days of agreement in many areas, and I agree wholeheartedly with your summary of our meetings.
We have laid the groundwork, the foundations for consultation between our two countries, as you put it, in many areas, in my meetings with yourself, sir, with the Vice President, and with most ministers of your Cabinet.
We have covered a great deal of ground and we have established--I repeat your words---the channels through which very many of our bilateral problems can be tackled and solved.
We discussed at great length the problems of wheat and problems of oil, which are very important in our Canadian West. We discussed trade problems generally, and our approach to them in the world.
I find that we reached agreement, especially when we were looking outward, on the kind of value in which we believe, and I can only repeat what I said to you, sir, the admiration I have for the place you have put so early in your administration on consultation with your European friends, and then with us, that you should have taken such time so soon to state your points of views, to ask us questions, and to answer ours, is to us a guarantee, a symbol of the kind of warm relationships we will have.
It is appropriate that yesterday was kind of a rainy day, in which we did a lot of work, and today it is warming up and we can now--we have, in French, an expression: L'important, c'est la rose.
Well, the important thing is that we should be saying this in a rose garden under the sun, and this augurs well, I am sure, for all future relationships between yourself and us Canadians.
When I arrived, I brought you the greetings of the Canadian people, and I am proud now to go back and report to Parliament the cordiality of your welcome, sir, and the candid and sincere quality which you brought into all discussions, whether bilateral or looking outward towards the world.
I thank you very much for your hospitality. I will be looking forward to your visit and Mrs. Nixon's visit to Canada at a time when you can conveniently arrange it.
Thank you again so much.
Richard Nixon, Remarks at the Conclusion of the Visit of Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/239741
