Canada-U.S. relations need to be reinvigorated

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Canada’s top diplomat to the United States called the sacrifices required to win “a chance at least to save our soul.” The war inextricably linked Canada and the U.S. in defence and economic co-operation. Two such agreements were named eponymously for the cities in New York state where they took place—Ogdensburg and Hyde Park—because they were convenient locations for a president and a prime minister who regularly met and vacationed in each other’s countries, more than any other pair in history. The U.S. Department of State saw Canada, not long thereafter, at a “parting of the ways” between Europe and America, and floated proposals for free trade. Negotiations began in 1948 under the tightest security. But then, on March 24 of that year, Canada’s eccentric and longest-serving prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King reached for a book in his study that opened to a chapter titled “The Soul of Empire,” which he took as “perfect evidence of guidance from Beyond” to call off the deal. He was worried that getting close to the Americans economically would destroy Canada’s imperial bonds with Britain. It was an emotional plea more than anything. Not for another four decades would the countries touch free trade again, first with the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, then the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the renegotiated United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement signed in 2018. Seventy-five years later to the very day of Mackenzie King’s divine revelation, on March 24 of this year, Joe Biden visited Canada for the first time as America's president and addressed Parliament. While he frequently uses “the soul of the nation” as a metaphor in his battle for democracy, to his Canadian audience, he reflected on two countries “sharing one heart.” His address ended in a rallying cry for the “possibilities” of thy neighbours, a line borrowed from his most recent State of the Union address. Drew Fagan is a professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and a former deputy minister. Photograph provided by Drew Fagan For the Biden administration, a key part of the fight for the soul of the nation is a fight to Buy American, which has been the law of the land for many administrations for many decades, but has often been implemented mostly in abeyance. Canada has frequently found ways around it, in what scholars have coined as the country’s “exemptionalist” practice. But perhaps the most telling insight came from the March 24 press conference, where Biden casually questioned why Canada had any qualms at all: “Well, you guys—we don’t have the minerals to mine. You can mine them. You don’t want to produce—I mean, you know, turn them into product. We do.” Every single Canadian prime minister has confronted this: how to not be hewers of wood and drawers of water. Canadian-American relations are complicated and require an understanding of our interconnected history. Earlier this year, for example, Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland gifted the U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen a copy of former Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s memoirs because, she explained, Acheson had Canadian parents and his handbook on postwar architecture resonated for her with the current handling of Russia. Acheson did have these familial ties, but also bitingly said that listening to Canadian policymakers moralizing about foreign policy was like listening to “the stern daughter of the voice of god.” Jennifer Levin Bonder is a fellow at the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History, and the U.S. projects co-ordinator at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Photograph provided by Jennifer Levin Bonder Canadians and Americans share common values, notwithstanding real divergences on abortion, gun control, and health care; less so on immigration now with an updated understanding of the Safe Third Country Agreement. Canadians are also inundated by American media. Fox News host Tucker Carlson has called to “invade Canada” and liberate the country from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. When, in the early 20th century, a speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives made a claim similar in tone—wistful about the day the American flag would “fly over every square foot of British North America up to the North Pole”—this fear of invasion became a critical reason that another trade treaty between the countries failed. How Canadians view U.S. presidents matters. It is one of the many variables that contributes to an understanding or perception of anti-Americanism in Canada, which ebbs and flows, and has defined the course of events for a country with a mid-sized economy and a very big land mass. Biden currently has better approval ratings in Canada than he does in his own country. The occasion of a presidential visit can usually be counted on to provide a memorable quote or two that might eventually adorn an embassy wall, like John Kennedy’s spirited 1961 address to Canada’s Parliament engraved in the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa: “Geography has made us neighbours. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies.” When Richard Nixon made his address in 1972, he avoided the rhetorical flourishes and frankly recognized instead the “separate identities” of the two allies and the “significant differences” between them. Peter Loewen is the director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Photograph provided by Peter Loewen From that moment on, and to some extent even before that, Canadians have tried to redefine themselves in other regions, as an Atlantic nation, an Arctic nation, or more recently as a player in the Indo-Pacific. Canada released this new strategy in November 2022, and plans to modernize foreign investment rules; the U.S. welcomed these signs of Canada acting more firm on China. A consistent theme of Canadian development has been its future resting elsewhere, with decisions outside of the country determining the course of events. But despite real attempts to look beyond the United States, Canada’s geography is inescapable, and Nixon was not wrong to poke at the asymmetry and dependency of Canada on the U.S. Institutions supporting and furthering the relationship are weak and stagnating. The Canadian government does not fund a United States Studies Centre, like it does the Asia Pacific Foundation. Funding for Canadian studies centres in the U.S. was cut and, despite attempts by a group of eminent Canadians to pressure the government to bring them back, it has yet to happen. A new privately sponsored U.S.-Canada summit series and newsletter is trying to fill some of this gap. But it is to the great detriment of each nation to not understand and learn about one’s neighbours. The relationship needs more than a working visit full of compliments. When Mackenzie King and Franklin D. Roosevelt began their cross-border travels, Europe was increasingly under Nazis, Britain was in danger of collapse, and Japan was under control of a totalitarian regime; the Americas seemed about all that the U.S. could count on. The challenges are different today, of course, but there is still a lot that both countries can do together. The threats to the soul of the nation Biden speaks about—to democracy, election interference, polarization, violence—exist in Canada to some degree, because what happens in America seldom stops at the border. Soulmates is a stretch, but investing and understanding the long history of Canadian-American successes and failures helps both countries work on issues of sustainable development, migration, defence modernization, supply chains, critical minerals, oceans management, and much else besides. Drew Fagan is a professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and a former deputy minister. Peter Loewen is the director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Jennifer Levin Bonder is a fellow at the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History, and the U.S. projects co-ordinator at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. The Hill Times

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Canada-U.S. relations need to be reinvigorated

The Canada-U.S. relationship needs more than a working visit full of compliments.

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