Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was in Washington on this date in 1981. He was there as host of the upcoming G7 Summit (the first time the all-important annual gathering of the leaders of the seven most advanced economies in the world was held in Canada). Part of his duties as host was to gather input on the agenda that would guide Trudeau and his fellow leaders when they met at Montebello, Quebec. Canada’s Prime Minister also took the opportunity at his meeting with President Ronald Reagan to raise a variety of bilateral issues with his American counterpart.
President Reagan described their meeting in his diary.
“P.M. Trudeau arrived on his way back from trip to Europe,” he wrote. “We discussed his Ottawa Summit meeting coming up in about 9 days. I believe it will be a general meeting to discuss economic. issues, North-South relationships & some East-West trade matters. At lunch we finally got around to 3 bilateral issues. On their side they want action on acid-rain which they believe results from air pollution on our side of the border. I assured him we are researching that because we have people in Vermont who think they are getting acid rain from Canada.”
“Second issue is the gas pipe line to be built from Prudhoe Bay down to Calgary to join existing pipe line to U.S,” Reagan’s account continued. “The whole project was conceived during the energy crunch. Carter pledged we’d go through with it even though the Alaska portion was & is supposed to be built by private enterprise. The problem is that now no one (but Canada) thinks or at least is sure it should be built. There have been new gas discoveries down here and it might be more practical for Alaskan gas to be liquefied & sold to Japan.”
Reagan and his Administration also had their own concerns to raise.
“Our issue had to do with a discriminatory tax policy on American- owned business in Canada while we do nothing of that kind to Canadian owned business on our side of the border,” Reagan wrote, describing Trudeau’s reaction. “He grew very defensive. I think our problem is that he leans toward outright nationalization of industry.” 
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.