If a U.S. president insulted Canada, would we care anymore?
Derek Burney, a Conservative stalwart, long-serving diplomat and former Canadian ambassador to Washington, has co-written an essay in the influential U.S. journal Foreign Affairs. In it, readers are presented with a veritable laundry list of ways that the U.S. has slighted — or “jilted,” if you prefer — it’s northern ally during the administration of U.S. president Barack Obama.
You can’t say the essay is wrong. From Keystone XL to Buy America provisions in the stimulus packages developed by Congress, the U.S. has found occasion over the last few years to irritate Canada. But notably absent has been the kind of heated Canadian rhetoric you’d hear as recently as the Paul Martin era during the softwood lumber dispute. Nor does the Canadian public seem to be demonstrating much of the reflexive anti-Americanism that has always been a strange part of our national character.
We’ve long insisted that the U.S. treat us as a separate and sovereign country, and yet react with wounded outrage when they treat us as a separate country. Go figure. But given that Burney and his co-author are right, and America has repeatedly slighted Canada … and if we can agree that Canadians don’t seem particularly freaked out about it … good Lord, could it be that Canadians are, gulp, growing up?
It’s not that Canada and the U.S. don’t remain, as the essay in Foreign Affairs says, “joined at the hip.” It’s hard to imagine two nations that enjoy closer ties. Such ties with the U.S. is probably the single greatest blessing — geopolitical fluke, really — in our history.
But it can’t be denied that there certainly is an unusual dynamic at play in the bilateral relationship right now. While the U.S. is hobbled by military overreach, political dysfunction and continued economic weakness, things in Canada are … pretty good. There are problems, and it would be a mistake for Canadians to get complacent.
Still, Canadians have had plenty of occasion these last few years to look south and feel profound relief. Our big, cocky brother, always so loud and proud with their aircraft carriers and moon landings and MTV, is struggling. There is little reason to expect that’ll be turning around anytime soon. Any Canadian who truly wishes for their own country to prosper should hit their knees nightly in prayer for a strong U.S. recovery, but until that happens, perhaps the reason for a sudden apparent relaxing of the typical Canadian inferiority complex vis a vis the United States is simply that, given the state of the two nations, it’s hard for Canadians to look south and feel all that inferior.
That’s a good thing. It’d be better if it reflected a maturing of the Canadian collective identity rather than a fairly objective assessment of the economic and political disaster the Americans have inflicted upon themselves, but we’ll take it. Yes, the U.S. has done any number of things that should annoy Canada of late, but in contrast to eras past … we’re dealing with it just fine.
Maybe we’re just deferring a later freakout. Take Keystone XL, for example. The relatively calm response that its suspension provoked in Canada may be partially due to us believing, deep down, that it’ll happen eventually. Maybe Canadians intuitively understand that the U.S. is working through some weird stuff right now and we can be patient. If we really believed that the pipeline would never get built, perhaps we’d have thrown a more traditional tantrum.
But it seems bigger and more fundamental than that, and Keystone is again the best example. There seemed little upset when the automatic response to the delay (perhaps permanent) in Keystone’s developed was for Canadian officials to say we’ll just sell our oil elsewhere, and if the U.S. doesn’t want it, that’s fine with us. That’s a mature position — not to mention an entirely economically correct one — but it also speaks to the new reality. Canadians like Americans, but we don’t need them as much as we once did. And if they are too busy fixing their own problems to pay us the deference we’ve traditionally felt we’ve been owed, you know what? That’s OK. We’ll just go sell our stuff to Korea.
It will take a long time for this new Canadian attitude to really cement itself, if it ever does. But if current trends continue, we may not be far off from the day when articles like Burney’s, listing off all the ways that America has let Canada down, simply don’t get written anymore because Canadians no longer care.
If a U.S. president insulted Canada, would we care anymore? | Full Comment | National Post
Derek Burney, a Conservative stalwart, long-serving diplomat and former Canadian ambassador to Washington, has co-written an essay in the influential U.S. journal Foreign Affairs. In it, readers are presented with a veritable laundry list of ways that the U.S. has slighted — or “jilted,” if you prefer — it’s northern ally during the administration of U.S. president Barack Obama.
You can’t say the essay is wrong. From Keystone XL to Buy America provisions in the stimulus packages developed by Congress, the U.S. has found occasion over the last few years to irritate Canada. But notably absent has been the kind of heated Canadian rhetoric you’d hear as recently as the Paul Martin era during the softwood lumber dispute. Nor does the Canadian public seem to be demonstrating much of the reflexive anti-Americanism that has always been a strange part of our national character.
We’ve long insisted that the U.S. treat us as a separate and sovereign country, and yet react with wounded outrage when they treat us as a separate country. Go figure. But given that Burney and his co-author are right, and America has repeatedly slighted Canada … and if we can agree that Canadians don’t seem particularly freaked out about it … good Lord, could it be that Canadians are, gulp, growing up?
It’s not that Canada and the U.S. don’t remain, as the essay in Foreign Affairs says, “joined at the hip.” It’s hard to imagine two nations that enjoy closer ties. Such ties with the U.S. is probably the single greatest blessing — geopolitical fluke, really — in our history.
But it can’t be denied that there certainly is an unusual dynamic at play in the bilateral relationship right now. While the U.S. is hobbled by military overreach, political dysfunction and continued economic weakness, things in Canada are … pretty good. There are problems, and it would be a mistake for Canadians to get complacent.
Still, Canadians have had plenty of occasion these last few years to look south and feel profound relief. Our big, cocky brother, always so loud and proud with their aircraft carriers and moon landings and MTV, is struggling. There is little reason to expect that’ll be turning around anytime soon. Any Canadian who truly wishes for their own country to prosper should hit their knees nightly in prayer for a strong U.S. recovery, but until that happens, perhaps the reason for a sudden apparent relaxing of the typical Canadian inferiority complex vis a vis the United States is simply that, given the state of the two nations, it’s hard for Canadians to look south and feel all that inferior.
That’s a good thing. It’d be better if it reflected a maturing of the Canadian collective identity rather than a fairly objective assessment of the economic and political disaster the Americans have inflicted upon themselves, but we’ll take it. Yes, the U.S. has done any number of things that should annoy Canada of late, but in contrast to eras past … we’re dealing with it just fine.
Maybe we’re just deferring a later freakout. Take Keystone XL, for example. The relatively calm response that its suspension provoked in Canada may be partially due to us believing, deep down, that it’ll happen eventually. Maybe Canadians intuitively understand that the U.S. is working through some weird stuff right now and we can be patient. If we really believed that the pipeline would never get built, perhaps we’d have thrown a more traditional tantrum.
But it seems bigger and more fundamental than that, and Keystone is again the best example. There seemed little upset when the automatic response to the delay (perhaps permanent) in Keystone’s developed was for Canadian officials to say we’ll just sell our oil elsewhere, and if the U.S. doesn’t want it, that’s fine with us. That’s a mature position — not to mention an entirely economically correct one — but it also speaks to the new reality. Canadians like Americans, but we don’t need them as much as we once did. And if they are too busy fixing their own problems to pay us the deference we’ve traditionally felt we’ve been owed, you know what? That’s OK. We’ll just go sell our stuff to Korea.
It will take a long time for this new Canadian attitude to really cement itself, if it ever does. But if current trends continue, we may not be far off from the day when articles like Burney’s, listing off all the ways that America has let Canada down, simply don’t get written anymore because Canadians no longer care.
If a U.S. president insulted Canada, would we care anymore? | Full Comment | National Post
