Barack Obama greets John McCain during a break between the Democratic and Republican presidential debates at Saint Anselm College in January in Manchester, N.H. (Steven Senne/Associated Press)Forget NAFTA. Has Arizona Senator John McCain tried Canadian beer and liked it? Does Illinois Senator Barack Obama secretly trash talk the Toronto Raptors when they play his beloved Chicago Bulls?

We don't really know. The Canadian connection hasn't exactly been played up during the campaign so far, if you don't count the NAFTA leak earlier in the year.

We have to look at Republican McCain and Democrat Obama from the outside as we weigh who has the stronger Canadian connection as the November presidential election looms. We also know there are some connections, and they're pretty good ones.

Barack Obama has a brother-in-law from Burlington, Ont. (Paul Sancya/Associated Press)

Obama's brother-in-law Konrad Ng hails from Burlington, Ont., and Obama visited the city for a wedding celebration dinner in August 2004. As a young man, Obama lived in Hawaii, which, as University of Toronto political scientist Nelson Wiseman points out, has a Union Jack on its state flag.

But McCain has a daughter by his first wife who lives in Canada. Sidney McCain is in the music business and keeps a low profile while in Toronto. (No word on whether her father has visited her here or whether she says "eh" yet, but she apparently does root for the Toronto Blue Jays.)

Sidney McCain has represented the Halifax-based band Wintersleep, according to Entertainment Weekly. The band won the new group of the year award at this year's Juno Awards and picked up a best independent video title at MuchMusic's recent video award show in Toronto.

Despite his daughter's cool credentials, John McCain, who was in Ottawa on Friday to speak at an Economic Club of Canada event, clearly hasn't made Canada a priority. The visit here is not to say hello to "Steve" (as George W. Bush once called Stephen Harper) or sample our fish and chips, but is likely designed to regurgitate the NAFTA slip-up made by Obama's camp earlier in the year when a memo alleged his stance against the agreement was only political positioning, say political watchers.

One of John McCain's daughters lives in Toronto. (L.M. Otero/Associated Press)

It's essentially a campaign stop to say, "Look at me, I can handle foreign affairs in a foreign country like Canada."

Wiseman says, "[ McCain] has been trying to cultivate more of the statesman's image, hovering above what's going on domestically so that people can perceive him already as the president speaking abroad."

According to David Jones, who was a political counsellor in the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa in the mid-1990s and has written about McCain in the Hill Times, it's clear the Arizona senator has left a "light footprint" in Canada.

Jones said that McCain has shown up for Canada Day celebrations at the Canadian Embassy in Washington a few times over the years.

And, according to Ng, Obama has been to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls and hung out in a Burlington park with relatives.

Where will Obama be on Friday? According to campaign details, he might be in West Virginia that day celebrating the state's birthday as well as fundraising.

Does knowledge or a close relationship mean anything?

Songs, vacation homes and "moron" comments come to mind when considering relationships U.S. presidents have had with Canada and its leaders.

Who can forget Ronald Reagan and Brian Mulroney singing When Irish Eyes are Smiling in 1985 in Quebec City?

Franklin D. Roosevelt swims in the pool at Warm Springs, Ga., in 1924 where he went to regain his health following a polio attack. (Associated Press)

Franklin D. Roosevelt, who served as president from 1933 to 1945, practically lived in New Brunswick, having had a vacation home on Campobello Island off the province's coast. In fact, Roosevelt courted his future wife, Eleanor, on what a Campobello tourism website calls his "beloved island."

Vice-presidents even have physical connections to this country. Author Dan Briody says in his book The Halliburton Agenda that Vice-President Dick Cheney was chosen as CEO of Halliburton by corporate leaders as Cheney was asleep at a fishing lodge in New Brunswick.

On the personal front, presidents and Canadian leaders have generally gotten along, but not in all cases. Think of Pierre Elliott Trudeau's relationship with Richard Nixon. In the early 1970s, Nixon called Trudeau an "asshole." Trudeau responded that he had been called worse. One of Jean Chrétien's aides called George W. Bush a "moron" in 2002 , creating a bit of an international flap.

But do we need Obama or McCain to love us? Just how important are their connections to Canada?

"When you hear your family's estimations of their local situation, you process that in a way. It has some impact on you," said Wiseman, who specializes in the study of Canadian politics.

"It's not totally insignificant. I would say the McCain connection is much closer. It's direct family. I don't know the nature of his relationship with his daughter, how close it is, how remote it is. She may be a total apolitical person."

Wiseman points out that McCain likely has the best knowledge of Canada in a political sense because he has been a senator longer and likely has dealt with files on the committee level dealing with this country.

Obama may have to make official visit: professor

Obama might be forced to make an official visit to Canada before the November election, suggests Wiseman, because Obama needs to "beef up" his foreign relations credentials in the U.S.

"He's perceived as weak there," said Wiseman.

McCain's Ottawa visit isn't tied to the fact that thousands of Americans live in Canada because the majority of those are overwhelmingly Democratic, says Wiseman.

Jones said that, for McCain or Obama, a visit to Canada "would be a briefing book exercise and a get-smart, quick type of briefing circumstance."

"It's not as if either one of them have a deep intimate relationship with Canada. They weren't educated here. They didn't have business connections here," added Jones, who lives in Arlington, Va.

"In the end, overwhelming interests are the defining aspects of how well we are going to get along together. We're best friends, like it or not."

The nature of the Canadian connection to the White House will become more clear after the November election.

And when the Chicago Bulls take on the Toronto Raptors, the president may watch and think of the time he spent in Toronto and drove to Niagara Falls. Or perhaps a different president will watch the news reports when it snows heavily in Toronto and wonder how his daughter is making out.

No word on the beer or the trash-talking.