US president-elect Barack Obama has approval ratings as high as 86 percent in neighboring Canada, but this won’t help him get trade concessions or more Canadian troops for Afghanistan, polls released Monday showed.

According to an Ekos survey for public broadcaster CBC, 81 percent of Canadians approve of Obama’s performance as he prepares to take over from President George W. Bush on Tuesday.

An Ipsos Reid poll for CanWest News Service found 86 percent of Canadians believe Obama’s presidency “brings hope for the future.”

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)

But expectations for his first term remain tepid, given the major challenges that lie ahead: conflict in the Middle East, a worldwide recession, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and global warming.

Of the 1,016 Canadians polled by Ipsos, 49 percent said Obama would get the global economy back on track, 45 percent felt he would address global warming, and 36 percent predicted he would have an impact on the Mideast peace process.

Full article here