Trade Tensions Shadow Gore in Canada : North America: Vice president, Ottawa officials emphasize friendship in speeches. But disputes over flow of goods may worsen.

Vice President Al Gore met with Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien and other top officials here Tuesday, emphasizing the strong friendship and economic ties that endure between the two countries despite rising trade tensions.

In public remarks, Gore, Chretien and Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps all stressed the historic amity between the United States and Canada. Gore even recalled that a Canadian neurosurgeon operated on his son, Albert Gore III, in 1989, restoring the 6-year-old’s use of his arm after he had been struck by a car.

Private meetings were also described by both sides as cordial.

But Canadian officials suggested that Chretien and others made clear their views on the trade irritants, which threaten to worsen in coming months.

Gore’s visit came one day after farm state members of Congress met with President Clinton pressing for U.S. limits on the import of Canadian wheat, which American farmers believe is unfairly subsidized.

If the United States acts to cap Canadian wheat imports, Canada is expected to retaliate against American food products, including California wine.

Negotiators from the two countries also are deadlocked over each country’s share of the salmon catch in the Pacific Northwest. That impasse threatens to erupt into a “salmon war” in which fishermen from both countries would catch as much as possible, depleting stocks and disrupting conservation efforts.

Gore said he hoped the disputes would be resolved amicably, but added, “you can’t possibly have trade flows as large as the ones between our two countries without having disputes from time to time.”

Canada’s emphasis on the trade snags, considered relatively minor by American officials, underline the peculiar nature of the bilateral relationship, in which a hiccup by the giant to the south can feel like an earthquake in Canada.

Besides the tension over wheat and salmon, there are unresolved disputes over Canadian export of softwood lumber to the U.S. and limited access by American brewers to Canada’s beer market, among others.

While these arguments account for only a small part of U.S.-Canada trade--which totaled about $250 billion last year and could hit $275 billion in 1994--they are well-publicized here.

That stems in part from the one-sided nature of the relationship--almost 80% of Canada’s trade is with the United States--and in part from the expectation here that adoption of the North American Free Trade Agreement would end such disputes.

“When Americans suggest we have a cap on the amount of wheat we can sell to the United States, that doesn’t sound like the Yankee free trader we had expected,” Copps said in an interview last week.

The announced purpose of the visit by Gore, who was accompanied by his wife, Tipper, was to plan for the Summit of the Americas, scheduled for December in Miami. Canada wants the summit to focus on economic issues, with an eye toward expansion of membership in NAFTA beyond the United States, Canada and Mexico.

There also was discussion of a possible visit to Canada by President Clinton, but no announcement.

In the nearly nine months since Chretien’s Liberal Party won a landslide election, ending nine years of government by Conservatives Brian Mulroney and Kim Campbell, there have been other disagreements with the United States.

The most notable have been over Canada’s reluctance to back possible military action to oust the military dictatorship in Haiti and its gentle urging for an end to the U.S.-enforced isolation of Cuba.