President-elect Joe Biden is taking the helm of the United States government at one of its most uncertain periods in recent history. 

Over 400,000 Americans, many of them racialized, have died of COVID-19. Police forces across the U.S. are killing primarily Black, Indigenous, queer, disabled, and homeless people at astonishing rates. American democracy has been both metaphorically and — as of last week — physically assaulted under the orders of outgoing president Donald Trump. Four years of his presidency has atrophied America’s foreign aid and development regimes. 

Canadians often indulge in the fantasy that our culture is fundamentally different from the United States. Yet we share one official language, the longest non-militarized border in the world, and a plethora of social issues. Racism, poverty, women’s rights, climate change, and police militarization are all serious issues in Canada, too. The nation’s social impact sector often works with counterparts south of the border — and are no doubt influenced by American social and political developments. 

Here’s what Biden’s incoming administration may mean for Canadian social impact organizations working on some of these cross-border issues:

A renewed aid and international development policy

When Trump addressed his inauguration in 2016, he summed up his vision for the U.S.’s humanitarian aid policy in two simple words: America First. While foreign aid only counts for less than 1 percent of the U.S. budget, according to NBC News, Trump tried to cut back on spending for refugees and global health. Trump’s last proposed budget cut foreign aid and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funds by 22 percent. Biden is promising to reverse this trend. Last week, the incoming president announced former U.N. ambassador Samantha Power would take over USAID. 

Some of Biden’s plans for renewed international development also appear to draw on the idea of a feminist foreign policy, a concept first established by Sweden’s government in 2014. (Canada says it has a feminist foreign policy, but has yet to develop a comprehensive policy statement that defines it). In his platform, Biden promises to return to a focus “of uplifting the rights of women and girls at home and around the world, including by focusing on measures to address gender-based violence internationally.” This language is quite similar to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s undefined feminist foreign policy, one that considers the advancement of women and girls as an integral part of its policy agenda. Biden and Trudeau reportedly agree on a lot of policies, including the idea of a more equitable international development focus. 

However, Beth Woroniuk, policy lead at the Canadian organization Equality Fund, doesn’t expect the Biden administration will refer to their policy as feminist, even if they adopt its ideals. “It’s because it’s a lightning rod and it means different things to different people,” she says. “Even though there may be many people within the Biden administration who call themselves feminists — to actually put the label on their foreign policy is not a path they’re willing to go down at this point.” 

A home for social good in government

Non-profits in Canada and the United States have long been asking their respective governments for permanent departments focused on the social impact sector as a whole. 

“It should be part of the DNA of new governments,” says Bruce MacDonald, president and CEO of Imagine Canada. “They’ve been talking about what they’re going to do for fisheries and agriculture and manufacturing and technology and innovation. They should also be talking about social good.” 

Last November, Independent Sector (IS), an organization representing non-profits, foundations, and corporate giving programs in the U.S., delivered a memo to Biden’s transition team asking for the establishment of a Cabinet-level social impact sector agency and a liaison with the White House. Perhaps, MacDonald says, if U.S. social impact organizations can convince their government to consider a permanent government agency to represent it, Canada will follow suit. 

After all, there are governments in the world that currently have permanent representation for the social impact sector — MacDonald points to Wales. The nation within the United Kingdom was given greater control over its own affairs in 1999 along with Scotland and Northern Ireland. “The charitable sector was written into that agreement — the Welsh government has responsibility for it,” MacDonald says. “So it’s a little more top-of-mind.” 

Changes to newcomer settlement

Some of Trump’s cruellest moments in office have been around how his administration treated refugees applying for asylum in what they see as a safe and stable country. Reports of children being separated from their families along the U.S.’s southern border and held in detention centres shocked the world. Biden has promised to undo the U.S. immigration system’s worst excesses under Trump as soon as possible, including reversing bans on family separation and travel from several Muslim-majority countries, and a comprehensive plan to reform the asylum process. 

But Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Centre for Refugees, points out that many of the abuses faced by migrants go back to former president Barack Obama. Obama’s administration was responsible for record-high deportation rates, according to Vox — 2 million over both of his terms — and it developed the practice of detaining immigrant families until their cases were over. “What is needed is not just to undo what Trump did, but also to have major reform in many, many areas,” she says. 

That’s a tall order for any incoming president, and Dench says immigration-related NGOs in the U.S. wonder if Biden can make it all happen. “There’s hope,” she says. “But there’s also a sense that the changes that are needed are absolutely overwhelming.” 

For this reason, Dench doesn’t believe Biden’s administration will fundamentally change the work Canada’s immigration NGOs will take on. “The basics remain the same,” she says. The changes required in the U.S. immigration system go much deeper than any one administration. And those changes matter for Canada, too — Dench points out that the Canadian government is choosing to send back refugees to U.S. authorities for detention. It is contributing to these immigration abuses. “We’re part of the world,” she says. “So everything that happens around the world should be of concern to us.” 

Bold climate action

Biden’s climate plan is perhaps the most ambitious section of his platform. Immediately after taking office, he promises to bring the U.S. back into the Paris Accord, revoke a building permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, and begin making major investments in climate resilience. Over the next ten years, his administration is planning to invest roughly $2.2 trillion into clean energy and environmental justice initiatives, and hopes to leverage a total of $6.3 trillion through private sector and state investments. However, climate change does not respect international borders. 

Many of the issues Biden will tackle are also keenly felt in Canada, especially by Indigenous people. The Keystone XL pipeline’s construction involved the brutal assault of Indigenous protesters at Standing Rock in the U.S., but the pipeline itself extends into southern Alberta, the traditional territory of Treaty 6 peoples such as the Kainai, Siksika, and Blackfoot. Less than a week before Biden’s inauguration, over 75 female Indigenous leaders from across the U.S. and Canada demanded Biden suspend not only Keystone XL, but also the Dakota Access and Line 3 pipeline projects. 

“Suspending one big oil expansion project through Native territory and approving another is the opposite of climate leadership and respect for Indigenous sovereignty,” said Tara Houska, a Couchiching First Nation Anishinaabe and founder of Giniw Collective, in the letter. The signatories of this letter say all three pipeline projects pose grave threats to Indigenous rights over their land, the survival of their culture, the health of local waterways, and an elevated risk of COVID-19 exposure. 

Canadian environmental NGOs are cautiously optimistic about Biden’s election. Having Canada’s biggest political ally and trading partner take a hard stance on climate policy could offer an antidote to the Canadian habit of deflecting criticism of social or environmental issues by comparing the nation to American issues. “Canada now has a North American ally for strong global action on climate change and a huge market for low carbon exports on its doorstep,” reads an Ecojustice statement issued after Biden declared victory. “But without immediate action, Canada risks being left behind.” 

Ending the global gag rule

Since 1984, the United States government had an intermittent policy of refusing to fund non-government organizations that provide any abortion-related services. The “global gag rule”, as it is sometimes known, was passed by former president Ronald Reagan’s administration, but rescinded by every Democratic president since then. Every Republican president since Reagan has re-implemented the rule, and Trump was no exception. His administration reinstated it in 2017 and expanded it to include organizations receiving any U.S. health-related funding. 

Woroniuk says she’s heard from advocates in the U.S. that Biden will likely rescind the global gag rule, potentially on the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe vs. Wade decision. But these advocates are hoping Biden goes even further by getting rid of the Helms Amendment, a 1973 change to the Foreign Assistance Act that forbids organizations that provide abortion services from receiving U.S. foreign assistance money. 

What does Biden’s potential rollback of the global gag rule mean for Canadian organizations? Woroniuk says it is quite common for Canadian NGOs working on women’s health and sexual rights abroad to receive U.S. funding previously denied to them. “That’s where I think the big impact is going to be,” she says. “I think it’s going to be on the ground.” 

Reviewing (but not defunding) the police

Before a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd last May, the concept of reallocating huge swathes of law enforcement budgets to community initiatives was a proposal only abolition activists made. Today, government officials in both Canada and the U.S. are considering it, but Biden is not one of them. “I’m totally opposed to defunding the police,” Biden said on the campaign trail last September. “They need more assistance.” 

Still, Biden is no apologist for police, nor the American prison system. He openly acknowledged the racist bias of American police forces after the Capitol Hill insurrection of Jan. 6. In his platform, he commits to a national review of policing practices, an end to imprisoning people convicted of drug possession alone, and the promotion of crime prevention rather than incarceration. This is big news for a country that has expanded and militarized its police for decades. But for Jessica Quijano, an organizer with Montreal’s Defund the Police Coalition, Biden’s policies won’t offer police abolition activists a new opening.  “I am always hopeful,” she says. “But he hasn’t really indicated that he’s open to that discussion.” 

That said, Quijano says Biden is also fairly open to sitting down with activists and leaders to get their views. Defunding the police is increasingly a mainstream idea. The size of the Black Lives Matter movement and the progress on police reallocation policies — including in Oregon and Los Angeles — means he won’t have a choice but to listen. And the president of the United States listening to any issue, whether it is police abolition or a Green New Deal, will inevitably influence Canadian politicians to do the same. “I think that kind of trickles down to here,” Quijano says. 

More to come

In the coming weeks, Biden is reportedly preparing to sign dozens of executive orders related to his policy agenda. Canada’s social impact sector will be affected by many of them. The U.S. is our country’s largest neighbour, trading partner, and inspiration. Big picture issues such as climate change are already present north of the border. 

Trudeau’s government has promised to make Canada a net-zero country by 2050 — but Canada has repeatedly failed to hit climate goals for years. And as Biden promises to cancel a building permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, the Canadian government is pushing ahead with the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project and other pieces of oil infrastructure. 

Climate justice work has long been seen as an international issue. However, Canada’s government has been lagging in comparison to many of our closest allies when it comes to reducing CO2 emissions and transitioning our economy — and some NGOs believe that Biden’s bold stance on climate could convince the federal government to take more aggressive climate action. 

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