today, Canada is really three nations: Quebec, the West, and the multicultural cities. ..
Jan. 8, 2006. 08:54 AM
DAN DUNSKY
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
Every country has its problematic national story: race in the United States,
class in Britain, empire in Russia. Canada's problem is its perpetual identity
crisis, a collective neurosis bred of being a confederation of English and
French peoples -- what the novelist Hugh MacLennan once called the country's
"two solitudes" -- and the small neighbour to one of history's few
great nations. Canadians alternately worry about too much American attention
of being overwhelmed by the United States and, as suggested by the title of a
book published in 1999, Invisible and Inaudible in Washington: American
Policies Toward Canada (UBC Press), of being ignored by the United States. (It
didn't help that the New Republic once judged the most boring headline ever to
be "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative.")
These twin pressures have always existed as an immutable fact for
Canadians and likely always will. But American policymakers need to be far more
interested in how we deal with these questions, since their answers will
largely determine whether Canada is likely to remain a trusted ally in the
unpredictable post-9/11 world or become a dangerously exposed northern flank.
The United States cannot "wall itself off" from Canada. Traffic
across the 5,061-kilometre border, which Ronald Reagan once hailed as "a
meeting place between great and true friends," cements the most
comprehensive bilateral trading relationship in history. A truck crosses the
U.S.-Canadian border every 2.5 seconds. Approximately $1.3 billion in two-way
trade crosses the border every day Ρ $500 billion a year. More than 200 million
two-way border crossings occur yearly, making the shared border the busiest
international boundary in the world.
Nearly 25 per cent of American exports go north to Canada. More
significantly, Canada is now America's largest source of crude oil and
petroleum products. This may become more important, both because of continuing
instability in the Persian Gulf and because, according to the Oil and Gas
Journal, Canada contains, at 180 billion barrels, the world's second-largest
proven reserves.
"Anyone watching what is happening up north will recognize that,
before long, Canada will inevitably overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's oil
giant," said Utah Senator Orrin Hatch recently. While chastising Canada
for "irresponsible" talk of favouring China with increased oil
exports as payback for the ongoing U.S.-Canadian softwood lumber dispute, Hatch
nevertheless said that "we in this country don't want to be on Canada's
shit list, ever."
Despite the senator's fears, however, Canada has much more to worry about
than the U.S. Quite simply, the border is Canada's economic lifeline. Owing to
the absence of a large domestic market and an abundance of natural resources,
Canada must export to survive. And today the United States consumes fully 85
per cent of Canada's exports, accounting for an astounding 40 per cent of the
country's GDP. In addition, many high-value Canadian products and services
for example, Canada's contribution to the U.S. space program are designed to
piggyback on existing American initiatives.
The signing of the U.S.-Canadian Free Trade Agreement in 1988 (and NAFTA
in 1993) accelerated the vertical integration of Canada's economy with that of
the United States. Some 50 per cent of Canadian foreign direct investment (FDI)
is now aimed at the U.S., while more than 60 per cent of inbound FDI is
American. According to Export Development Canada, a federal Crown corporation,
"the import content used to make Canadian exports has been growing
steadily and now averages around 35 per cent, and in many manufacturing
industries [exceeds] 50 per cent." This integration has, in turn,
increased Canadian productivity. In short, it is no exaggeration to say that
Canada's primary national interest is located south of the border.
The shock on Canadian economic activity of the effective closure of the border after 9/11 demonstrated the country's vulnerabilities and highlighted Canada's interest in safeguarding its southern frontier. The nightmare scenario for Canadian politicians today is a successful attack on the U.S. homeland by a terrorist who enters through Canada.
Faced with this reality, Canada has strengthened its anti-terrorism posture. Over the past four years, in addition to specific action on the border, Parliament has passed Canada's first-ever Anti-Terrorism Act, a Public Safety Act, and a new Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Further, the government has created the Office of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Canada's answer to the Department of Homeland Security, and has undertaken a foreign affairs and defence review. Canadian law now defines terrorism and designates terrorist groups operating in Canada. It is an offence to support terrorist groups or any activities related to such groups. And security, intelligence and law-enforcement agencies have been given enhanced powers of surveillance, arrest and detention, including preventive arrests or arrests without warrants.
Canada has established common procedures with the United States for the screening of high-risk goods in third countries prior to their arrival at North American airports and seaports, and the Department of Transportation has plans to increase the use of biometric systems and radiological scanners at Canadian points of entry.
Similarly, after 9/11, public pressure to rebuild the Canadian armed forces has grown dramatically. In its 2005 budget, the federal government pledged an additional $11 billion to the armed forces over five years, a move supported even by the dovish NDP. This marked the first substantial increase to the defence budget since cuts in the overall federal budget during the 1990s reduced military spending by some $25 billion.
And though Canada chose to sit out the Iraq War, Canadian Special Forces
joined American units in Afghanistan in 2001 and later assumed the leadership
of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. In the
summer of 2005, the Canadian military enhanced its Afghan force and set up base
in Kandahar. Using language that Canadians had all but forgotten, Major-General
Andrew Leslie, former commander of Task Force Kabul and deputy commander of
ISAF, predicted that Canada may be in Afghanistan for a generation: "There
are things worth fighting for. There are things worth dying for. There are things
worth killing for."
In sum, Canada has acted to improve its overall security posture since
9/11. In keeping with the Canadian realist approach to bilateral continental
relations, Canada has endeavoured to safeguard its economic interests by
satisfying American security concerns, which, according to former Canadian
ambassador Allan Gotlieb, "opens doors [in Washington] like no other
key."
But if self-interest was clearly at work in Canada's post-9/11 security
decisions, it is less clear whether the Canadian and American governments share
the same global outlook. Whether Canada is a trusted ally of the United States
Ρ insofar as the latter has defined its global roles and responsibilities Ρ is
a more difficult question to answer. For, in many disturbing ways, Canada seeks to unify its chronically fractured sense
of nationhood in opposition to the United States.
By and large, Canadians like Americans. A recent comprehensive study of
the country's attitudes reveals that 70 per cent of Canadians "value and
respect the United States and its citizens," while only 15 per cent admit
to not liking or respecting "anything that the United States and its
people stand for." The problem is that, today, Canada's political reality
reinforces the minority anti-American sentiment.
Traditionally, Canadians distinguished themselves from Americans on the
basis of having a different political system. Canadians, said the great literary critic Northrop Frye, are Americans
who rejected the revolution. However, over the last half-century, as
centrifugal forces threatened to tear the country apart, opinion-makers began
to distinguish Canadians from Americans on the basis of having a different
value system.
Alarmed at the rise of nationalism in French Canada, and fearful that as
the British Empire receded from memory the United States would replace Great
Britain in the affections of English Canadians, a new breed of federal
politicians and bureaucrats attempted to erase Canada's very real divisions
(and centuries of history) by appealing to a largely rhetorical set of
"Canadian values" shared by all from sea to sea. Only by appealing to
these values, Canadian nationalists believed, would Canada overcome its
cultural neurosis and emerge as a single, unified state capable of resisting
the inevitable lure of America.
So, where Americans were religious, Canadians were now secular. Where
Americans were a martial people, Canadians were now pacifists. Where Americans
were conservative, Canadians were now liberal. Where Americans were greedy
capitalists, Canadians were now empathetic social democrats. And these beliefs
reinforced by a large contingent of nationalist and anti-American media
rubbed off on the population at large. Today, Canadians consistently tell
pollsters that they are more tolerant, more respected by others, better
educated and friendlier than Americans. Oh, yes: and more modest, too.
This pattern shows up in international matters, as well. Canadians are confirmed multilateralists (except when
they seize Spanish and Portuguese fishing trawlers on the high seas, bomb
Kosovo without UN authorization, and unilaterally claim a 320-kilometre marine
exclusive economic zone). Canadians
are a "moral superpower" (except when it comes to official
development assistance, where Canada's contribution ranks among the lowest of
wealthy nations, despite the prime minister's pledge that "our foreign
policy must always express the concerns of Canadians about the poor and
underprivileged of the world"). Canadians
are environmentally conscious (except that they consume more
energy per capita than all OECD countries except tiny Iceland and Luxembourg
and have no feasible plan for implementing their Kyoto promises). Canadians believe in international law and normative
foreign policy (except when government agencies look the other way as
their own citizens suspected of being terrorists are "rendered" to
Syria or Egypt). And on and on it goes. "A country that seeks great
changes and lacks the willingness to run great risks dooms itself to
futility," the 17th-century English statesman Lord Clarendon is said to
have remarked. He could well have been describing Canada today.
This need to present a unique set of Canadian values is not without
consequence. Consider just three recent episodes involving the governing
Liberal Party. First, the communications director of former prime minister Jean
Chrtien called George W. Bush a "moron," and the prime minister at
first declined her resignation. Then, an MP was caught on camera saying
"Damn Americans! I hate those bastards." And, in an "open
letter" to Condoleezza Rice, former minister of foreign affairs Lloyd
Axworthy called the United States a "virtual one-party state," devoid
of the checks and balances the country "once espoused before the days of
empire." This from someone whose own party has governed Canada for 70 of
the past 100 years!
More seriously, despite the promising reaction to the
terrorism threat, the prevailing Canadian-values and anti-American paradigm has
influenced government policy on security issues. The most recent example is
Canada's confused decision on ballistic missile defence (BMD). The government
of Paul Martin had given every indication that Canada would sign on to the
development and deployment of BMD, even ensuring that NORAD, the joint
U.S.-Canadian air defence system, would be used as a key component in the
program. However, the opposition and, again, elite opinion relentlessly
attacked BMD as America's "missile defence madness," as "the
weaponization of space," and as something that would "harm Canada's
international reputation." Canadians, who had not been asked to contribute
financially to the development of the system, and who could one day be
protected by it, had been favourably predisposed to join. After the onslaught
of negative attacks, however, they changed their minds. The government, fearing
that as many as 20 members of its own caucus would vote with the opposition,
decided to opt out of the program.
To understand how this
anti-American bias is being strengthened
by Canada's current political reality, one must begin with Lord Durham's
observation in 1839 that Canada was "two nations warring in the bosom of a
single state." Some 165 years later, Canada remains a country where, in
the words of historian H. V. Nelles, "unambiguous unity and a singular
identity" still largely elude its inhabitants. Except that today,
Canada is really three nations: Quebec, the West, and the multicultural cities.
Quebec is already separate within Canada. To the average Quebecer, the
Canadian federal government is essentially irrelevant. Quebecers make almost
all their own political and social choices, and international markets are as
influential an economic force in the province as is the rest of Canada, perhaps
more so. Quebecers are more left-wing and statist than their English-Canadian
counterparts and more culturally confident, too. The province has a thriving
French-language magazine, book, film, Web and TV industry that utterly
dominates public tastes, as opposed to the American products that resonate
widely in the rest of Canada. No serious people today think that Quebecers want
to return to past political arrangements or that Quebec nationalism is a waning
fad. The province has never signed the 1982 Canadian constitution (though it is
bound by its provisions) and support for independence hovers around the 50 per
cent mark. A few weeks from now, Quebecers may well send more secessionists to
represent them in the federal House of Commons than ever before.
Meanwhile, more than one-third of Western Canadians believe it is time to
consider separating from Canada, according to 2005 survey data. Western
Canadian alienation is nothing new, but it has lately taken a different form
with the rise of the Conservative Party, which dominates the region and is the
official opposition. The Conservative Party's intellectual roots owe more to
the American conservative movement than to traditional Canadian Toryism: It is
the party of smaller government, social conservatism and rural populism.
Alberta, the engine of this new West, is Canada's wealthiest province, home to
the country's galloping oil and gas industry, and enjoys a faster population
growth than any other region. Nearly 60 per cent of Albertans supported the
Iraq War, while fewer than a quarter of Quebecers did.
This leaves Canada's increasingly multicultural
cities. Five cities are home to 43 per cent of Canadians; Toronto alone
accounts for 17 per cent of the total population. Canada's cities are also the
primary destination for immigrants and refugees to the country. About 20 per
cent of Canada's residents Ρ and half of Toronto's Ρ are foreign-born, compared
with 11 per cent in the United States, 5.6 per cent in France and 4 per cent in
the U.K. Cities are therefore the testing ground for Canada's multicultural
experiment.
However,
multiculturalism rejects the idea that a single set of organized cultural
beliefs and political principles are foundational to the nation's public life.
So multicultural Canada cannot demand, as other countries can and do, that new
arrivals adapt to the country's traditional cultural and political forms
because, as the minister of citizenship and immigration has said, "we've developed,
as a Canadian value, an appreciation of diversity if not a complete nurturing
of that diversity."
Furthermore,
multiculturalism has today become an anti-Western impulse, specifically one
that sees the United States as the locus of all manner of evil in the world.
Therefore, large segments of Canada's urban areas should be seen to be, in
effect if not in intention, hostile to the Western political tradition in
general and to American ideals in particular.
In truth, Canada is
now a country of three solitudes four, if Canada's ever more assertive native
population is included where each has increasingly little in common with the
others. Quebec's secessionist political parties obviously do not
believe in trying to bridge these gaps. Significant portions of Canada's
Conservative Party probably do not believe in doing so either, though the party
will not acknowledge this publicly. This leaves the federal Liberals as the
only major party attempting to be pan-Canadian in its appeal. And their only way
of appealing to these disparate groups is by reference to the mythical Canadian
values described earlier. "As the only truly national party," Prime
Minister Martin said this month, "we will defend Canadian values."
However, Canada's first-past-the-post electoral system and
demographic reality (highly urban Ontario and Quebec represent 60 per cent of
the country's population) reduces Liberal pan-Canadianism to vote-getting among
multicultural city dwellers and non-secessionist Quebecers. So a typical Liberal
election campaign preys on fears of the country's disintegration at the hands
of Quebec's secessionists and the loss of its unique social character and
diversity at the hands of the Conservatives and their "hidden agenda"
of "U.S.-style" policies.
The current campaign is a case in point: Here's the prime
minister addressing Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe on Dec. 16: "Let me say
also that I am a Quebecer, and you are not going to take my country away from
me." And here's the prime minister on Jan. 3: "That is the clear
difference of values that is illustrated by Stephen Harper's goal of a
fend-for-yourself Canada and my vision of a country in which we strive together
as a society toward a common good."
Ergo, the Liberals believe they are the only thing holding
the country together and preventing its inevitable drift into the American
orbit. Thus does the Liberal Party confuse its interests with those of Canada's
citizens and use electoral politics to heighten anti-Americanism and Canadian
regionalism.
However, as long as this Liberal electoral playbook
results in election victories, don't expect Canada to ally itself too closely
with the United States on any matter that doesn't directly affect the country's
key economic interests.
Paul Martin is fond of
saying that Canada "will set the standard by which other nations judge
themselves." Politicians are often called upon to say silly
things, but it is generally a good idea not to let rhetoric stray too far from
reality. But contemporary Canada with the exception of its competent economic
management leaps precisely that gulf between rhetoric and reality, perhaps
overcompensating for deep feelings of inferiority. It is a leap that too many
Canadians have grown accustomed to hearing and by now enjoy believing. And it
will persist until the status quo of Canadian federalism changes: either by
devolving much more power to the regions and allowing each to make its own
political, economic and social choices, or by breaking apart. Either way, the
narcissistic and corrosive platitudes of "Canadian values" and
"national unity" should cease.
There is no shame in fundamentally altering Canada's
political arrangements. Unlike the United States, the country was not founded
on an ecstatic commitment to a great cause but on the more pedestrian grounds
of being a good idea. Such pragmatism should welcome change, if change is best.
Canadians should be mature enough to question whether the country created in
1867 is still acting in the best interests of all its citizens in 2006.
Just as few predicted the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the
break-up of Canada also seems far-fetched. Nevertheless, American policymakers
should consider the possibility. In
1999, President Clinton said the United States "valued our relationship
with a strong and united Canada. We look to you; we learn from you. The
partnership you have built between people of diverse backgrounds and
governments at all levels is... what democracy must be about, as people all
over the world move around more, mix with each other more, live in close
proximity more."
But what if the "partnership" Canada has built
no longer supports America's global roles and responsibilities? What if the
essential condition for Canadian unity is an anti-American value system built
into the national political process? In that case, it is unclear that Canada is
a long-term ally of the United States out of anything more than economic
necessity. In that case, is it still in America's interest to support Canadian
unity?
ddunsky@tvo.org