Can this friendship be fixed? Should it be?Canada is less important to the U.S. than it was five years ago. JOHN IBBITSON asks, should we be worried?
By JOHN IBBITSON
Monday, December 26, 2005 Page A5
Every day, 37,000 trucks cross the Canada-U.S. border. So when Paul Martin trashes George W. Bush, it drives Russel Marcoux crazy.
"I think it's totally inappropriate in the course of an election to beat up on your best friend and largest trading partner," fumes the CEO of the trucking firm Yanke Group, and the chair of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. "It's absolutely dangerous."
Dangerous? Really?
Really, Mr. Marcoux affirms. "If we don't think that they're not just patriotic, but retaliatory, then we're not paying attention."
Things are not going well between the Langevin Block and the West Wing. Liberal Leader Paul Martin, who came to power hoping to mend the frayed relations between the Canadian and U.S. governments, has instead decided to make America-bashing a wedge election issue. Only Liberals are prepared to demand justice for lumber producers, he claims. Only Liberals have the courage to chastise the Yanks for failing to sign on to the Kyoto accord. Only Liberals will keep Canada out of future Iraqs.
Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, while upbraiding the Liberal Leader's rhetoric, wants no daylight between the two parties on Canada-U.S. policy. He would stand up for Canadian interests as well, he insists. He'd just be nicer about it.
No wonder David Wilkins, the U.S. ambassador, has started wondering in public why abusing the U.S. government has suddenly become Canadian campaign fodder.
Now let's get real. Whatever dissonance there may be between 24 Sussex Dr. and the White House, Canada-U.S. relations remain rich and rewarding. If the strains at the head-of-government level were filtering down into the bureaucracy -- so that Mitch in the U.S. Department of Agriculture no longer felt comfortable talking to Michelle at Agriculture Canada without going through State or Foreign Affairs first -- then we'd be in trouble. But that's not happening. By one informed estimate, only 5 per cent of the communication between the Canadian and U.S. governments is handled through their respective embassies. For the rest, people just e-mail each other, at the federal-to-federal level, at the province-to-state level and, increasingly, at the city-to-city level. Whatever the politicos may be doing, the rest of us are keeping a civil tongue in our heads.
That said, Mr. Marcoux has every right to worry about the impact of a PM trash-talking the U.S. It feeds the Canuckistan Lobby of conservative pundits and Republican politicians, who claim the Canadian border is a security risk, or who just think we're all Communists who need to be taught a lesson. That border is already troubled enough, what with a rising Canadian dollar, higher fuel costs, tightened security and technology that can't keep up with efforts to keep low-risk goods moving back and forth. Mr. Martin's shots at the U.S. bully, his proclamations that China could provide an alternative market for Canadian resources, and his gratuitous appearance beside former Democratic president Bill Clinton (how would Mr. Martin feel if George W. Bush appeared in a forum with Brian Mulroney -- or worse, Jean Chrétien?) have bureaucrats at the most senior levels of the federal government expressing quiet, if off-the-record, concern about possible American retaliation down the road.
But it's more than worries over Liberal cheap shots. Something is happening to the Canada-U.S. relationship: an unconscious, or perhaps subconscious, evolution, that may underlie the increasing political dissonance between the two countries.
Canada is not distancing itself from the United States, which remains the only country in the world that really matters to us. But the United States is distancing itself from Canada. Canada is less important to the United States than it was five years ago. It will be even less important five years from now. The bonds between the two countries are weakening, not strengthening. Rather than Canada becoming ever more enmeshed in U.S. interests, as some of this country's more strident nationalists complain, Canada and the U.S. are, at a fundamental level, drawing apart. This does not mean, as pollster Michael Adams insists, that the American and Canadian people are becoming fundamentally different from each other. But the differences are growing.
If so, then our political leaders should not be debating: Who will stand up for Canada? They should be asking: How can we close the gap?
At a geopolitical level, Canada no longer has the right to call itself the United States' closest ally. By that litmus test, Britain and Australia, America's partners in Iraq and the ballistic-missile defence program, score higher.
At the economic level, China is replacing Canada as the largest source of U.S. imports (although we are expected to remain the largest market for their exports for another 10 years or so). East and South Asia are where the American mind is at these days, with India and China rising as emerging major markets and potential competitors.
And at the social level -- the level that matters most of all -- Americans are distancing themselves from Canadians, as the economic, political and psychic centre of the United States shifts from the northeast to the southwest.
"In terms of population movement and its impact on politics, this is having a long-term impact on American politics and American attitudes," observes James Patterson, an American historian and author of the recently published Restless Giant, a history of the United States from Nixon to Clinton. The implications of that shift should concern Canadians.
As the Atlantic seaboard cedes power and influence to the south and the southwest, American ties to Canada loosen. Taft and FDR had summer homes in Canada. But Bill Clinton was from Arkansas and George W. Bush has a ranch in Texas.
America is increasingly becoming a Hispanic nation. Latinos now outnumber blacks, and Latino numbers, economic power and political influence continue to grow steadily. As a result, America's preoccupation with Latin America is deepening. American political elites are far more concerned about elections in Bolivia and Peru than with any vote that might be under way up here.
Finally, the United States remains, as it has been since its inception, a restless, dynamic society, never content with the status quo, always reinventing itself. The recent growth of evangelical conservatism is simply the latest manifestation of a country seeking to redress perceived imbalances and to put itself back on the path to perfection.
Back when Paul Martin was an aspiring statesman -- before he became simply a politician fighting for his life -- he paid a lot of attention to the Canada-U.S relationship. The Martin government created a secretariat in our Washington embassy to lobby Congress, appointed a parliamentary secretary and a cabinet committee dedicated to Canada-U.S. relations and increased the number of consulates in the United States from 13 to 41.
But then came the unpleasantness over missile defence and widespread anger over softwood lumber. Suddenly it was politically cool to surf the latent wave of anti-Americanism that is part of the complex Canadian identity. It has left one U.S. official, who preferred not to be named, observing that Canada has turned into a nation of naggers.
It must be said that Canadian concerns are real, even if the rhetoric accompanying them is overheated. And yet it is also true that, for any reasonable Canadian or American, differences and distances disappear the minute one of us crosses the other's border and we remember what any American business executive remembers when he lands at Pearson International, or what any Québécoise snowbird remembers when she settles down for the winter in Florida, or what each and every one of us remembers whenever we pop over to the other side for a hockey game or a Broadway musical, to take the kids to Disney World or to take a master's degree at Stanford.
We remember that, for all the differences and distancing, Canadians and Americans think the same way, hold to the same values, understand each other's mental language. Only a pundit or a politician could manufacture differences between us.
So, if America remains, for us, the only country in the world that matters, even though we are becoming increasingly irrelevant to them as they migrate south and look westward, then what can we do to strengthen the necessary bonds, ease the tensions, and keep our country and our interests within the U.S. focus?
Colin Robertson, Canada's minister of advocacy at the Canadian embassy in Washington, recently published several proposals: increasing the number of consulates from 41 to 50 -- in other words, one for each state; bringing U.S. legislators to visit Canada (Why not make it a goal to have every freshman representative or senator tour Canada, at this country's expense, within his or her first year?); encouraging American students to study at Canadian universities; promoting linkages between premiers and governors, mayors and mayors; recruiting expat Canadians in the U.S. to serve as informal envoys; seeking alliances with local U.S. interests sympathetic to Canadian causes; being more aggressive in the U.S. media.
But that won't be enough. The Americans rarely ask Canada for anything. The St. Lawrence Seaway, the agreements to clean up the Great Lakes and to fight acid rain, free trade -- these were Canadian initiatives.
It's time for a new initiative: one that harnesses Canadian supplies of energy and water and Canadian concerns over environmental degradation to the Canadian need for an open border and American concerns about continental security. A customs union. A labour mobility agreement. A continental security pact. A continental environmental accord. Something.
Or perhaps nothing. There are those who argue we should respond to the distancing of America by finding a new best friend: Europe, perhaps, or India or China, or some combination of them all. (Consider this, however: The United States receives 85 per cent of all Canadian exports. China receives 2 per cent. If we quadrupled exports to China over the next decade, which would be a phenomenal achievement, that figure would still represent less than 10 per cent of our current exports to the U.S.)
This is the debate we should be having: Who should we be talking to, and what should we be saying?
Mr. Marcoux remembers the terrifying days after Sept. 11, when the U.S. closed its borders. He tells stories about American companies who refused to use his firm after Jean Chrétien announced Canada's opposition to the American-led invasion of Iraq. And he chafes at the delays in technology and infrastructure that needlessly tie up his trucks.
The very last thing we need, he maintains, is gratuitous provocations from politicians who think they can pick up a few votes by poking the U.S. with a rhetorical stick.
"Should we stand up for what we believe in, should we stand up for our culture? Absolutely," he declares. "But what is unacceptable is to play politics."
The stakes are just too high.
United States and Canada, by the numbers
$100-BILLION - Value of goods, representing one quarter of all the trade between Canada and the United States, that cross the Ambassador Bridge, between Windsor and Detroit
15 MILLION - Number of American overnight visits to Canada last year
4.6 MILLION - Number of Canadian overnight visits to the United States last year
85% - Trips that were non-commercial in nature
$113-MILLION - Value of maple syrup exports last year to the United States
$127-MILLION - Value of fresh orange imports last year to Canada
2 MILLION - Estimated number of Canadian jobs that depend on trade with the U.S.
5.2 MILLION - Estimated number of American jobs that are dependent on trade with Canada
180 - Number of Americans currently serving in the Canadian Forces
35 - Number of Canadians currently serving in American forces (including NORAD)
By JOHN IBBITSON
Monday, December 26, 2005 Page A5
Every day, 37,000 trucks cross the Canada-U.S. border. So when Paul Martin trashes George W. Bush, it drives Russel Marcoux crazy.
"I think it's totally inappropriate in the course of an election to beat up on your best friend and largest trading partner," fumes the CEO of the trucking firm Yanke Group, and the chair of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. "It's absolutely dangerous."
Dangerous? Really?
Really, Mr. Marcoux affirms. "If we don't think that they're not just patriotic, but retaliatory, then we're not paying attention."
Things are not going well between the Langevin Block and the West Wing. Liberal Leader Paul Martin, who came to power hoping to mend the frayed relations between the Canadian and U.S. governments, has instead decided to make America-bashing a wedge election issue. Only Liberals are prepared to demand justice for lumber producers, he claims. Only Liberals have the courage to chastise the Yanks for failing to sign on to the Kyoto accord. Only Liberals will keep Canada out of future Iraqs.
Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, while upbraiding the Liberal Leader's rhetoric, wants no daylight between the two parties on Canada-U.S. policy. He would stand up for Canadian interests as well, he insists. He'd just be nicer about it.
No wonder David Wilkins, the U.S. ambassador, has started wondering in public why abusing the U.S. government has suddenly become Canadian campaign fodder.
Now let's get real. Whatever dissonance there may be between 24 Sussex Dr. and the White House, Canada-U.S. relations remain rich and rewarding. If the strains at the head-of-government level were filtering down into the bureaucracy -- so that Mitch in the U.S. Department of Agriculture no longer felt comfortable talking to Michelle at Agriculture Canada without going through State or Foreign Affairs first -- then we'd be in trouble. But that's not happening. By one informed estimate, only 5 per cent of the communication between the Canadian and U.S. governments is handled through their respective embassies. For the rest, people just e-mail each other, at the federal-to-federal level, at the province-to-state level and, increasingly, at the city-to-city level. Whatever the politicos may be doing, the rest of us are keeping a civil tongue in our heads.
That said, Mr. Marcoux has every right to worry about the impact of a PM trash-talking the U.S. It feeds the Canuckistan Lobby of conservative pundits and Republican politicians, who claim the Canadian border is a security risk, or who just think we're all Communists who need to be taught a lesson. That border is already troubled enough, what with a rising Canadian dollar, higher fuel costs, tightened security and technology that can't keep up with efforts to keep low-risk goods moving back and forth. Mr. Martin's shots at the U.S. bully, his proclamations that China could provide an alternative market for Canadian resources, and his gratuitous appearance beside former Democratic president Bill Clinton (how would Mr. Martin feel if George W. Bush appeared in a forum with Brian Mulroney -- or worse, Jean Chrétien?) have bureaucrats at the most senior levels of the federal government expressing quiet, if off-the-record, concern about possible American retaliation down the road.
But it's more than worries over Liberal cheap shots. Something is happening to the Canada-U.S. relationship: an unconscious, or perhaps subconscious, evolution, that may underlie the increasing political dissonance between the two countries.
Canada is not distancing itself from the United States, which remains the only country in the world that really matters to us. But the United States is distancing itself from Canada. Canada is less important to the United States than it was five years ago. It will be even less important five years from now. The bonds between the two countries are weakening, not strengthening. Rather than Canada becoming ever more enmeshed in U.S. interests, as some of this country's more strident nationalists complain, Canada and the U.S. are, at a fundamental level, drawing apart. This does not mean, as pollster Michael Adams insists, that the American and Canadian people are becoming fundamentally different from each other. But the differences are growing.
If so, then our political leaders should not be debating: Who will stand up for Canada? They should be asking: How can we close the gap?
At a geopolitical level, Canada no longer has the right to call itself the United States' closest ally. By that litmus test, Britain and Australia, America's partners in Iraq and the ballistic-missile defence program, score higher.
At the economic level, China is replacing Canada as the largest source of U.S. imports (although we are expected to remain the largest market for their exports for another 10 years or so). East and South Asia are where the American mind is at these days, with India and China rising as emerging major markets and potential competitors.
And at the social level -- the level that matters most of all -- Americans are distancing themselves from Canadians, as the economic, political and psychic centre of the United States shifts from the northeast to the southwest.
"In terms of population movement and its impact on politics, this is having a long-term impact on American politics and American attitudes," observes James Patterson, an American historian and author of the recently published Restless Giant, a history of the United States from Nixon to Clinton. The implications of that shift should concern Canadians.
As the Atlantic seaboard cedes power and influence to the south and the southwest, American ties to Canada loosen. Taft and FDR had summer homes in Canada. But Bill Clinton was from Arkansas and George W. Bush has a ranch in Texas.
America is increasingly becoming a Hispanic nation. Latinos now outnumber blacks, and Latino numbers, economic power and political influence continue to grow steadily. As a result, America's preoccupation with Latin America is deepening. American political elites are far more concerned about elections in Bolivia and Peru than with any vote that might be under way up here.
Finally, the United States remains, as it has been since its inception, a restless, dynamic society, never content with the status quo, always reinventing itself. The recent growth of evangelical conservatism is simply the latest manifestation of a country seeking to redress perceived imbalances and to put itself back on the path to perfection.
Back when Paul Martin was an aspiring statesman -- before he became simply a politician fighting for his life -- he paid a lot of attention to the Canada-U.S relationship. The Martin government created a secretariat in our Washington embassy to lobby Congress, appointed a parliamentary secretary and a cabinet committee dedicated to Canada-U.S. relations and increased the number of consulates in the United States from 13 to 41.
But then came the unpleasantness over missile defence and widespread anger over softwood lumber. Suddenly it was politically cool to surf the latent wave of anti-Americanism that is part of the complex Canadian identity. It has left one U.S. official, who preferred not to be named, observing that Canada has turned into a nation of naggers.
It must be said that Canadian concerns are real, even if the rhetoric accompanying them is overheated. And yet it is also true that, for any reasonable Canadian or American, differences and distances disappear the minute one of us crosses the other's border and we remember what any American business executive remembers when he lands at Pearson International, or what any Québécoise snowbird remembers when she settles down for the winter in Florida, or what each and every one of us remembers whenever we pop over to the other side for a hockey game or a Broadway musical, to take the kids to Disney World or to take a master's degree at Stanford.
We remember that, for all the differences and distancing, Canadians and Americans think the same way, hold to the same values, understand each other's mental language. Only a pundit or a politician could manufacture differences between us.
So, if America remains, for us, the only country in the world that matters, even though we are becoming increasingly irrelevant to them as they migrate south and look westward, then what can we do to strengthen the necessary bonds, ease the tensions, and keep our country and our interests within the U.S. focus?
Colin Robertson, Canada's minister of advocacy at the Canadian embassy in Washington, recently published several proposals: increasing the number of consulates from 41 to 50 -- in other words, one for each state; bringing U.S. legislators to visit Canada (Why not make it a goal to have every freshman representative or senator tour Canada, at this country's expense, within his or her first year?); encouraging American students to study at Canadian universities; promoting linkages between premiers and governors, mayors and mayors; recruiting expat Canadians in the U.S. to serve as informal envoys; seeking alliances with local U.S. interests sympathetic to Canadian causes; being more aggressive in the U.S. media.
But that won't be enough. The Americans rarely ask Canada for anything. The St. Lawrence Seaway, the agreements to clean up the Great Lakes and to fight acid rain, free trade -- these were Canadian initiatives.
It's time for a new initiative: one that harnesses Canadian supplies of energy and water and Canadian concerns over environmental degradation to the Canadian need for an open border and American concerns about continental security. A customs union. A labour mobility agreement. A continental security pact. A continental environmental accord. Something.
Or perhaps nothing. There are those who argue we should respond to the distancing of America by finding a new best friend: Europe, perhaps, or India or China, or some combination of them all. (Consider this, however: The United States receives 85 per cent of all Canadian exports. China receives 2 per cent. If we quadrupled exports to China over the next decade, which would be a phenomenal achievement, that figure would still represent less than 10 per cent of our current exports to the U.S.)
This is the debate we should be having: Who should we be talking to, and what should we be saying?
Mr. Marcoux remembers the terrifying days after Sept. 11, when the U.S. closed its borders. He tells stories about American companies who refused to use his firm after Jean Chrétien announced Canada's opposition to the American-led invasion of Iraq. And he chafes at the delays in technology and infrastructure that needlessly tie up his trucks.
The very last thing we need, he maintains, is gratuitous provocations from politicians who think they can pick up a few votes by poking the U.S. with a rhetorical stick.
"Should we stand up for what we believe in, should we stand up for our culture? Absolutely," he declares. "But what is unacceptable is to play politics."
The stakes are just too high.
United States and Canada, by the numbers
$100-BILLION - Value of goods, representing one quarter of all the trade between Canada and the United States, that cross the Ambassador Bridge, between Windsor and Detroit
15 MILLION - Number of American overnight visits to Canada last year
4.6 MILLION - Number of Canadian overnight visits to the United States last year
85% - Trips that were non-commercial in nature
$113-MILLION - Value of maple syrup exports last year to the United States
$127-MILLION - Value of fresh orange imports last year to Canada
2 MILLION - Estimated number of Canadian jobs that depend on trade with the U.S.
5.2 MILLION - Estimated number of American jobs that are dependent on trade with Canada
180 - Number of Americans currently serving in the Canadian Forces
35 - Number of Canadians currently serving in American forces (including NORAD)
