From the coal face of our polarized discussion about our future with the U.S., I always come away thinking that somewhere between these divergent mindsets there must be a third way.
The left and right tell us we have a problem. Like with any problem, what’s required is a solution. Part of defining and finding a third path is to stop looking for the solution. Our relationship with the U.S. is a paradox. It is simultaneously both dangerous and helpful. Understanding this moves us out of, past, and beyond the old paradigm of left and right ideology and imperial connections.
We must dissolve and drive from our minds the old conceptual framework with its comfortable and tired rhetoric, touchstones, and shibboleths so that a new model of understanding can emerge which embraces the contradiction of our relations with the U.S.
There is an enduring paradox to be managed. The new paradigm requires we put at the centre of our understanding the contradiction that the U.S. simultaneously both assists and hinders us. It cannot be avoided or dispensed with. There is no problem to be solved, but rather an enduring situation to be managed. This is why this part of the book about managing our relationship with the U.S. is central to my thesis.
Those who advocate big solutions of a NAFTA-Plus variety seem oblivious that continentalism is a force of nature that should not be encouraged, as it threatens to consume us. Society in the U.S. is more neoconservative than in Canada, more supportive of minimalist government and lower taxes. Within Canada the orientation of leading business organizations, while outside the Canadian mainstream, is within the norm of American opinion. Perhaps this is one of the reasons Thomas d’Aquino, associated with the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, and Nancy Hughes Anthony, formerly with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, advocate further integration with the U.S. — it is a way of advancing the economic interests of their members and of making Canadian society more like that of the United States.
Advocates from both groups with the best of intentions can inflame Canadians understanding of the U.S., doing us a disservice, whether it is nationalist Linda McQuaig (promoting her recent book Holding the Bully’s Coat[2]) who spent five minutes of a forty-five-minute talk on American invasion plans for Canada, or d’Aquino telling us “security trumps trade,” and our only course is to fall in line with the U.S. Both are respected and influential proponents of the two sides of the debate, as it is currently structured, and both misunderstand our relationship with the U.S. Not only does the current debate have its advocates talking past each other, but their battle has a lack of reality to it. These are the very conditions that signal and precede a paradigm shift.
Ironically, the prescriptions of the left and the right take us to the same outcome! D’Aquino feels it is very logical and normal that in our relationship with the U.S. we will enter into a Customs Union and a Monetary Union. A Customs Union means Canada and the U.S. would have a single uniform tariff for the rest of the world. A Monetary Union means both countries would have one currency.
Maude Barlow would have us avoid the U.S. — costing us jobs, giving our children fewer opportunities, and making us poorer. That route poorly positions us to face the force of the U.S., and would eventually have a dramatic integrative outcome.
Barlow and d’Aquino lead us to the same outcome. D’Aquino’s approach gets you a Customs Union and a Monetary Union. Barlow’s approach leads to economic decline and less negotiating power, in which the ensuing crisis would still lead to d’Aquino’s end point. These diametrically opposed approaches to Canada’s relationship with the U.S. take us by different routes to the same end.
We are walking the line of a ridge. To have significantly more or less integration is to tumble down one side or the other. Rhetorically, we are told the “status quo is not an option,” when it is largely the only option.
The U.S., a huge presence, is not going away. Our starting point must be to recognize and manage that reality. That must be the premise we start from, which will give us prescriptions and outcomes. From the two false premises, with which we are currently sadly saddled, come poor prescriptions and unnecessary and undesirable outcomes.
This part of the book explores fundamental ideas for understanding the relationship and how to manage it. A central element, and truth, is that we don’t understand the United States: how it’s society works or how it’s system of government works. We imagine the Americans think about us, but they don’t. When I asked Colin Robertson, the former head of outreach to Congress at our embassy in Washington, “What do they think about Canada?” he replied, “They don’t think about Canada!” Such an attitude should not be disappointing or frustrating; it is an opportunity. It means we have a freedom we haven’t allowed ourselves.
With a fresh approach, we can see there are things in our history with the U.S. that could have happened that did not, and things that are now possible. As explored in the previous chapter, we might have made the Avro Arrow a success. And as we will see in future chapters, we would not focus on Mexico and we would look to our energy reserves for our needs and not those of the Americans — and know the difference. We might see the Americans as allies in the Arctic rather than as bullies. We could have said “no” to ballistic missile defence without the hand-wringing. We would not have gone to Afghanistan in the way we have. Canadians there would not have died — and some that may in the future will not have to.
By taking some time to understand how our neighbour works, we are in a much better position to manage relations with them so that we get the most out of it for ourselves — not selfishly or with anti-Americanism, but sensibly.
Notes
1. BBM Nielson Media Research.
2. Linda McQuaig, Holding the Bully’s Coat, Canada and the U.S. Empire (Toronto: Random House, 2007).
4
Engaging a Preoccupied Partner
The U.S. is a vast, self-contained world within the world. It spans the most fertile and temperate part of the western hemisphere. With more than 300 million people and the world’s richest economy, it’s self-absorbed. This combined with a powerful Congress with members being re-elected every two years means it’s law makers are excruciatingly sensitive and responsive to the interests of their constituents.
The House of Representatives has 435 seats, and to win the day 218 votes are needed. Much of the decision-making at the federal level in the U.S. comes down, as a senior congressional figure told me, to those 218 votes.
This is important for Canadians to keep in mind. So much of what emanates from Washington has nothing to do with other countries, or with Canada, it has to do 435 members of Congress being re-elected every two years and passing legislation in the House of Representatives. U.S. policy is about domestic interests operating within a remarkably self-contained and self-absorbed world.
This is reinforced by the fact that extraordinarily little of American wealth comes from exports: only about 10 percent. So while about 20 percent of U.S. exports go to Canada, that is less than 2 percent of U.S. gross domestic product!
Other than the world’s hot spots into which the U.S. is drawn, the outside world simply doesn’t appear upon the mental map of most Americans.
Here’s an example: an exact quote as related to me by a Canadian minister who was part of a small dinner with former President George W. Bush in the dining room off the Oval Office. The discussion turned to Devils Lake where water is being diverted from North Dakota into Manitoba. Bush, after much listening, finally said, “You’re telling me this water runs into Canada, but water doesn’t run south to north.”
What Bush meant to say was “In the U.S., water for the most part runs north to south, sometimes to the east and west, but rarely from the south to the north.” The head of the United States had seldom been outside of the U.S. before becoming president. Like so many of his fellow citizens he is wonderfully insular and self-absorbed. The U.S. is his world. A world of rivers like the Mississippi and Hudson that run north to south.
Bush resonates so well with average Americans because they see things the same way. For the average American, water doesn’t flow south