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Impact of Domestic Political Factors on Canadian-American Relations: Canada

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

John W. Holmes
John W. Holmes
Affiliation:
Canadian Institute of International Affairs in Toronto.
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Extract

The major difference between Canadians and Americans on the subject of their relationship is in the intensity of their perceptions. There is bound to be conflict between a people who regard the relationship as critical and those who have scarcely noticed the other country. Firmly fixed in the Canadian view is the idea that a special relationship has come to an end. When the British contemplated the end of their special relationship with the United States, they were interested in an alternative—association with the European Economic Community (EEC). The problem for Canadians is that no alternative association seems clear, attractive, or promising. In light of their relative comfort in the energy crisis of 1973, however, the need for any special relationship has seemed less urgent.

Type
Part II. National Attitudes
Information
International Organization , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , Autumn 1974 , pp. 611 - 635
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1974

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References

1 Canadians generally regard the proposed Burke-Hartke bill as a menace, but when the Canadian section of the United Steel Workers of America discussed the subject, what they demanded was exemptions for Canada, i.e., protection on a continental basis. Globe and Mail (Toronto), 1 June 1973.

2 Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 28th Parliament, 4th sess, vol. 2, 1972, p. 1328.

3 US Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Thorp and Under secretary of State Lovett, 8 March 1948, on a proposal under secret discussion to eliminate trade barriers between the United States and Canada: “The present may offer a unique opportunity of promoting the most efficient utilization of the resources of the North American Continent and knitting the two countries together—an objective of United States foreign policy since the founding of the Republic” (US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1948, vol. 9: The Western Hemisphere [Washigton, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1972], p. 406).

4 See, for example, Gotlieb, Allan and Dalfen, Charles, “National Jurisdiction and International Responsibility: New Canadian Approaches to International Law,” American Journal of International Law 67 (July 1973): 229–58. In the currently fashionable anxiety to emphasize, as in the United States, that Canadian foreign policy is being dictated now by tough-minded national interests rather than by soft-minded internationalism as in the past, the extent to which the national interest was in fact subordinated to do-goodism by previous governments has been considerably exaggerated. The same argument may well apply in the United States, but the two mythologies are political forces nevertheless.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 For a contradictory aspect of this situation, however, see p. 616.

6 For statistics, see footnote 17.

7 Certainly the popular assumption that most recent American immigrants to Canada were draft dodgers has been widely exaggerated.

8 For example, the move to integrated schools has been a great goal of liberals in the United States. In Quebec, Ontario, or New Brunswick, any threat to the right of the English and French to their own schools would be regarded as reactionary. Paradoxically also, it is the factor of the United States as an outside challenge that makes the problems of the Canadian confederation so different from those of the United States, which has no such challenge. The argument for governmental control of communications, for example, has no counterpart in the United States.

9 Not to be confused with genuine anti-Americanism. Resistance to the United States is a sine qua non of the existence of Canada. It does not require a belief that the United States is sinful or intentionally hostile. It emphasizes differentiation rather than superiority. Anti-Americanism is more ideological, a conviction of the far Left or far Right or far liberal that the United States is based on false premises or has grown degenerate.

10 There is evidence, for example, that the government could improve the Canadian-US relationship on trade questions by conceding certain safeguards of the auto pact that have ceased to be meaningful but it does not dare risk accusation from the opposition parties of giving in to US pressure.

11 When the United States went on year-long daylight saving time in January 1974, the other provinces waited for Ontario's decision, and when Ontario decided not to follow the US example, British Columbia reversed its decision to do so.

12 A straw in the wind could be the agreement between premiers and governors of the Atlantic provinces and the New England states, meeting in August 1973, to press their respective governments to allow a free flow of power, generated in Canada, between the two regions. Globe and Mail (Toronto), 17 August 1973.

13 See particularly a report on United States tactics in the Globe and Mail (Toronto), 27 June 1973.

14 It is a word Americans tend to use only about other countries, but Canadians do not see much difference between the increasing emphasis on US interests and what Americans pejoratively call nationalism in Canada.

15 See Tremblay, Rodrigue, Indépendence et marché commun, Québec-Etats-Unis (Montréal: Editors du jour, 1970).Google Scholar

16 The Canadian percentage of the total population of North America (north of the Rio Grande) is rising rapidly. At the beginning of the century it was 6.6 percent. In the decade of the sixties it rose from 9.2 percent to 9.6 percent.

17 Immigrants in 1972 from four largest sources: Unites States—22,618; Unites Kingdom—18,161; Portugal—8,737; Hong Kong—6,297, According to the 1973 annual report of the visa office of the US Department of State, Canadian immigration to the United States has declined steadily from 40,013 in 1965 to 7,278 in 1973.

18 Globe and Mail (Toronto), 29 March 1973.

19 See UN Statistical Yearbook, 1972 (New York: Statistical Office of the UN, 1973), pp. 95—96.

20 Globe and Mail (Toronto), 1 January 1974.