“May these gates never be closed.” So says the inscription under the vault of the Peace Arch that straddles the forty-ninth parallel between British Columbia, Canada, and Washington State, in the United States. Built and founded in 1921, the twenty-one meter tall monument commemorates the signing of the Treaty of Ghent of 1814, which put an end to the War of 1812. When the Peace Arch was christened, Canada was still under British influence, a fledgling nation on the cusp of its independence. The direction towards which this vast land would steer herself was a question of faith, a supposition that the puzzle pieces would fit together, that the kinks would be worked out. It took a few decades more for Canada to gain such a footing but through it all, that inscription on the Peace Arch remains as steadfast as the rock it was carved into. On the Canadian side of the arch, a simple phrase contextualizes a relationship: “Brethren dwelling together in unity.” These words highlight the special bond that exists between two of the largest countries in the world, an alliance and partnership–a stewardship over nearly an entire continent and the bounties therein. But let there be no mistake, Canada and the United States may share ‘the longest undefended border on Earth’, but they also wage a daily war.
It is a battle of ideas and ideology, of policy and culture; it is a ceaseless barrage of American mentality and influence, an onslaught of tactics from Uncle Sam’s playbook. Since the Second World War, Canada has been fighting this battle to protect a national identity and preserve an independence, an autonomy independent of a southern neighbour’s global-reaching hands of sway. During World War Two, Canada exercised her autonomy like never before, from the burgeoning industrialism at home to the beaches on D-Day, Canada didn’t just find its footing, it found its voice. The United States had a voice, too, however, and it had the higher soapbox from which to spread it. So began more than half a century of gerrymandering. America let its voice be heard the world over and, in doing so, placed special emphasis on its northern friend. Canada, for better or worse, became the beneficiary of unique American attention, much of which has shaped the lifestyles we take for granted today, but its influence has also cost us dearly. The Canadian identity is difficult to distinguish. A Canadian ‘way of life’ is of great challenge to pin down. Thusly so, the question arises… Since the finding of these so-called voices, since the resting of rifles and silencing of a moustached despot, which has had more impact on the Canadian state: our own domestic policy or our proximity to, and bending to the sway of, the United States of America? Fundamentally, it can be said that a clear answer is not readily available; but that fails to thwart an effort.
To tackle such a query, it is important to belabour several key aspects of the Canadian-American quandary. Special attention will be placed on defence, corporatism and economics, as well as social politics and cultural identity. These three core facets of our relationship with the United States will expose the precarious game of cat and mouse that Canada plays with America, and perhaps more interestingly, with itself. Cumulatively, they piece together the reality that is present tense Canada: a country whose selfhood is murky at best but still individuated by patriotic bravado and a national willingness to preserve a line of difference.
DEFENCE
Militaristic engagement is not a concept Canadians usually identify with as a nationally held tenet. Canadians see their country as one that stands for peace. This belief is not unjustified, but Canada’s entanglement with American led defence operations, both domestic and international, is substantial, if virtually unknown. Following the Second World War, the United States served as a figurative ‘big brother’ to Canada. America’s decisions were held internationally as a sort of benchmark for the comparing and contrasting of how a western democracy should be progressing in the post-war years.
The establishment of The Permanent Joint Board on Defence (PJBD) in 1940 was the first of many bilateral organizations created between Canada and the U.S..1 Comprising diplomatic and military officials from both nations, the PJBD’s primary focus has been to examine land, sea, air, and space issues from the perspectives of policy, operations, finance, and logistics. The PJBD meets semi-annually and produces recommendations that are then conveyed to each country’s respective officials and heads of state. In the early years of its existence, the board’s prominent American representatives suggested that both nations merge their defence forces.2 The Canadian government, in a move that surely protected the Canadian identity, struck down this American led notion. According to the Canadian Department of National Defence, the PJBD has played a crucial role in the construction of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line, the creation of the North American Air Defence (NORAD) command in 1958, the bi-national operation of the underwater acoustic surveillance system, and the decision to proceed with the North American Air Defence Modernization program in 1985.3 These were American led initiatives, driven home by American influence. The safeguard from complete defence integration has been the joint chairmanship of the PJBD.4
In 1949, progressively caught up in American defence tactics, Canada became a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) along with the U.S. and Great Britain. Prime Minister St. Laurent’s government tried steadfast to establish a formal recognition of NATO’s primary goals as the economic and military cooperation between member states.5 As Alvin Finkel so astutely points out, however, “the organization soon became primarily an American instrument for coordinating the defence policies of its allies.”6
Korea & Vietnam
In the heat of the Korean War, while Canada had a sizeable contingent joining United Nations forces alongside American troops overseas, it was also mounting a different kind of front. Both nations were investing billions into programs like the above-mentioned DEW Line and NORAD.7 These types of programs, fuelled by massive American investment, led to a shift in mentality in the mid-fifties. With growing fears of communism, NATO allies began to see the benefit of nuclear armament, how it could act as an efficient war deterrent. Nuclear weapons would become the centrepiece of American defence, sweeping militaristic influence that eventually saw the storage of American nuclear missiles at Harman and Goose Bay air force bases, both on Canadian soil.8
And then there was Vietnam: America’s war. Conservative provocateur Ann Coulter once argued with the CBC’s Bob McKeown about whether or not Canada sent troops to Vietnam in support of the American led excursion there.9 Canada did send troops to Vietnam, but as part of humanitarian efforts, and in an effort to implement the details of the Paris Peace Accords.10 Canada, as it turns out, did have some secrets held behind the closed doors of power, however. As was exposed in 1981, Canada was a considerable furnisher of weaponry and supplies to the American’s toil abroad. More than that, the Canadian government gave the green light to the testing of chemical defoliants,11 the controversial and toxic chemical agents used by the American military in Vietnam. These supply and testing chains were made possible by the 1956 Defence Production Sharing Agreement which saw American weapons corporations opening factories in Canada to cut costs and increase trade.12 Politically, of course, Canada was anything but supportive of the Vietnam War, resistance that caused surface ripples. These diplomatic tensions flared infamously when President Lyndon Johnson was reported to have grabbed Prime Minister Pearson by the collar in 1965, saying in no uncertain terms that, “You pissed on my rug!”13 Three months later, the two countries would draft the Merchant-Heeney report, a document that made certain further confrontation be taken strictly through backroom channels, not to be made public.14 Pearson would later say, “We can’t ignore the fact that the first result of any open breach with the United States over Vietnam, which their government considers to be unfair and unfriendly on our part, would be a more critical examination by Washington of certain special aspects of our relationship from which we, as well as they, get great benefit.”15 Decoded: tread slowly in the pools of criticism, lest Canada drown in the repercussions.
The Cold War Era
American defence policy was often driven by an offensive frame of mind. Such was most certainly the case throughout the Cold War years. Anti-communist sentiment was a driving force of U.S. politics and it spread like wild fire. Canada fell pray to the so-called ‘red scare’ as well. When Igor Gouzenko, a Soviet Embassy to Canada clerk, defected and revealed that Soviet espionage was alive and well in Canada, the country was set ablaze with backlash, particularly because Gouzenko’s documents implicated a member of parliament.16 American McCarthyism had infiltrated. The Canadian government, in an attempt to save face, pressed down hard on communist activity this side of the border. The RCMP investigated organizations by the hundreds, everything from high profile feminists to rank and file church leaders of several stripes. Between 1945 and 1980, nearly a million people had records being kept on them.17 Unions of every type and creed were placed in the hot-seat for their socialist nature, thousands lost their jobs as suspected communists, including some ten thousand plus Canadian sailors who were part of the Canadian Seamen’s Union.18 Anti-communist sentiment became a dominant form of nationalist attitude, an American import that Canada could easily have done without if only leaders of an upper echelon had taken a stance instead of rolling over to a wave of American ideology.
Perhaps in a broad stroke of irony, at least so far as American influence is concerned, even the estimated hundred thousand draft dodgers, who filtered into Canada in mass exodus during the Cold War era, would exert their own brand of influence over the Canadian populous.19 These wartime evaders essentially rescinded their American citizenship, most of them staying in Canada for fear of prosecution back home. Interestingly, their ‘resistance turned activism,’20 as Hagan and Hansford-Bowles call it, was a hugely important contribution to the social uprising of the 1960’s. Joining the internal Canadian anti-war movement, these dodgers were more than just additional voices; they expressed and conveyed many American anti-war ideas. Thus, it can be said that even when in accord, American policy can affect Canadian sensibilities.
Politicians in Example
The relationship between Prime Minister Diefenbaker and President Kennedy highlighted the boundaries of Canadian-U.S. relations in fluorescent detail. When President Kennedy attempted to push Canada into becoming a member of the Organization of American States (OAS), the prime minister flatly rejected his counterpart’s request.21 Likewise, the Kennedy administration’s attempts to persuade Canada to adopt nuclear weapons as part of its defence arsenal further intensified distaste between the two leaders. Diefenbaker, at the behest of public sentiment,22 turned Kennedy down yet again. The president was none too happy. He aligned his administration with Liberal Party officials, including Lester B. Pearson, who was waiting in the wings to succeed Diefenbaker in a subsequent federal election. Tensions flared as Kennedy chose not to consult with Diefenbaker before making his final decisions regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis, taking the unusual step of announcing, in his address to the American public, that the U.S. had Canada’s full support.23 It was Diefenbaker’s turn to be none too happy. In return, he waited three days to place Canadian forces at the same heightened alert as their American counterparts.24
In 1963, NATO Supreme Commander General Lauris Norstad told an Ottawa audience that by not accepting nuclear arms, Canada was failing to live up to its NATO commitments. It was the final blow to Diefenbaker’s dwindling support. The Canadian press and public pounced25 on the prime minister and three months later, Diefenbaker would lose to Pearson in a landslide. Pearson’s siding with American policy and his already good standing with President Kennedy no doubt enabled his easy victory. This can be seen retrospectively as just how much sway American sentiment can have over the Canadian population. It is arguable that John Diefenbaker’s policies staved off tremendous over-influence of American views in the Canadian defence arena. He stood up to the United States, exerted a national voice, even if it was not rallied behind by the citizenry. Diefenbaker’s voice, regardless of his popularity, allowed Canada to sustain an unmarred nuclear deterrent standing, something that would not have been possible were he to have accepted Canadian-owned weapons on Canadian soil.
Prime Minister Diefenbaker’s policies would enable Pierre Elliott Trudeau to enforce a strong cry for disarmament in subsequent years.26 It also allowed for further departures from American foreign policy, as was exemplified when Prime Minister Trudeau took it upon himself to recognize the People’s Republic of China in 1970, a full two years before the Americans would follow suit.27
Let us fast-forward to the twenty-first century. On March 17, 2003, just two days before the United States began its assault on Iraq, Prime Minster Jean Chrétien stood before the House of Commons and made clear that Canada would not be joining the invasion. There is much ado regarding this decision, one that Chrétien considers one of his finest.28 Regardless of the interpretation or reasoning behind this strategic policy of neutrality, it was a decision that shaped and defined Canada’s independence from not just the Commonwealth bandwagon, from which Canada rarely falls, but most importantly, from the American bandwagon. Retrospect has served Prime Minister Chrétien well. Canadians laud his last minute call. It was a policy that saved countless millions of dollars and placed Canada among the few western democracies that sought approval and proposition from the United Nations on the issue of Iraq. Canada’s voice, if by then a whisper, grew a little louder.
Defence at End
Canadian involvement in Afghanistan continues to wear thin on the populous. Canadians want to know why their troops are there, for peacekeeping or not; they want to know when long is long enough. When Canadian lives are lost to American friendly fire,29 when a prime minister prorogues Parliament seemingly to offset interest and backtrack progress on matters of government knowledge of torture issues,30 the stakes rise higher. American pressure and influence assuredly play a role.
These are the issues that arise when Canadian-American defence are discussed. With each passing issue, each progressive facet, it becomes clearer that Canadian policy is as much guided by its leaders as it is by the powers that be, south of the border, down Washington way. It’s not easy living next to the ‘leaders of the free world’ sometimes.
CORPORATISM & ECONOMICS
Shifting towards finance, an entirely new set of precedents can be seen through the course of history. As former Minister of both National Defence and of Foreign Affairs, Bill Graham, highlighted in 2003, more than 1.5 billion dollars of two-way trade crosses the Canadian-U.S. border every day. Canada and the U.S. are each other’s most significant markets. Canada buys more American goods in one year than do all member states of the European Union, three times as much as Japan. Canadian citizens buy more than twenty-two percent of American exports and thirty-eight states count Canada as their largest export market.31 The relationship goes both ways, especially where energy is concerned. Canada is America’s greatest single source of natural gas, electricity, uranium, and crude and refined oil.32
Since confederation, the American economic influence steadily strengthened as the reach of Great Britain diminished. By the time the Second World War came around, the U.S. had replaced Britain as Canada’s greatest trading partner. Wartime industry catalyzed this process, as the majority of externally controlled Canadian corporations were American run.33
Resources for Freedom: Corporate American Insurgency
Enter the Paley Commission’s 1951 report, Resources for Freedom. In 1958, Percy Bidwell wrote on the Paley Commission’s objectives within the American enterprise. He noted that America’s goal should be ‘to ensure an adequate and dependable flow of materials at the lowest cost consistent with national security and with the welfare of friendly nations.”34 One of those friendly nations was Canada and the Resources for Freedom report directly noted how America’s diminishing raw material and natural resource predicament could be solved to some degree by tapping into the vast resources of its northern neighbour. Not surprisingly, American investment in Canadian industry skyrocketed throughout the 1950s and 60s.35
As previously mentioned, Canada is America’s largest supplier of uranium. By the 1950s, Canada had become the world’s largest supplier of said material, mining out a third of the world’s supply.36 Seeing the critical value of its position in the industry, the Canadian government nationalized Canada’s largest uranium mining corporation, Eldorado Mining and Refining.37 Other companies would follow suit and with the establishment of the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, a crown corporation, Canada ensured to an extent that its nuclear industry remained in Canadian hands, but it couldn’t hold American firms back forever.
The nuclear issue was one of the forerunners of American corporatism and economic influence north of the forty-ninth parallel. In 1955, the Royal Commission on Canada’s Economic Prospects came to the conclusion that American companies operating within Canada favoured American management, limited staffing, and tended to channel mass profits back to the U.S..38 Canada’s ‘economic destiny,’39 as Canadian historians Conrad and Finkel put it, was becoming putty in American hands.
“Canada is being pushed down the road that leads to loss of any effective power to be masters of our own household and ultimate absorption in and by another.”40 James Coyne, president of the Bank of Canada, uttered these words in 1960. Even then, American leverage was noticed and rightly becoming a concern. From 1963 to 1965, Canadian Minister of Finance, Walter Gordon, played an inextricable role in the rise of Canadian economic nationalism that defined the era. Gordon feared American investment in Canada, at least at the level at which it was occurring, would “lead inevitably to our becoming a more or less helpless satellite of the United States.”41 He viewed America’s growing economic hold in Canada as a direct threat to Canadian sovereignty.42 Gordon refused to stand idly by while this was all occurring. He would introduce legislation that enabled the protection of Canadian banks, insurance firms and major financial services from falling subject to foreign subversion.43 His meddling would cost him his job, however. Too many high-ranking corporate feathers were ruffled and his dramatic loss of popularity and influence forced his resignation. Prime Minister Pearson tended to favour his views, though, and created the Task Force on the Structure of Canadian Industry, headed by Mel Watkins, to further protect Canadian economic independence.44
The Watkins Effect: Riding Canadian Sentiment
Watkins would produce several studies on the issue of foreign investment. They all came to the same conclusion: foreign investment and industrial control, particularly that of the United States, damaged Canada’s ability to develop its own economic identity and excluded it from playing a more vibrant role in economic competitiveness in the international arena.45 His most notable report was published in 1968. Emphatically, it presented a grave image of Canada’s economic future. Watkins stipulated, among other notions, that Canada was fully capable of developing its own economic structure, that foreign investment within our borders was not only unnecessary but hurtful to our true potential. Likewise, he emphasized that Canadian investment abroad could easily be kept at home, safeguarding the Canadian economy and opening truly nationalist opportunities. Without the excessive American investment and manufacturing operations, Watkins believed Canada could place itself much more competitively within the confines of the international playing field.
Economic nationalism was a running mantra in late 1960s Canadian politics as well, yet loopholes and sidetracks remained. Such American instruments as the Foreign Assets Control Regulations Act, the Sherman Act and section seven of the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, ensured government retention of legal jurisdiction over its subsidiaries abroad.46 This meant that while the Canadian government could curb future foreign investment, those already under control of American corporations or by the U.S. government would continue to uphold their complete control over operations, sales, and profit direction, siphoning vast amounts of wealth out of Canadian markets and back into America. The seventies would endeavour to never allow such loopholes to develop again.
1970s Nationalist Economics: The Practicality of Ideas
In 1971, the Canada Development Corporation was founded to not only screen foreign takeover of Canadian corporations but also to limit the number of such takeovers in the future.47 The idea was to preserve and increase Canadian investment at home. Later, the Committee for an Independent Canada was forged to propose legislation that would diminish the power exerted by outside forces on Canadian life.48 Such measures would transcend the 1970s.
The Canadian government would take on such initiatives as creating Petro-Canada. As it had done with the uranium industry in the 1950s, the founding of a Crown corporation in the oil industry established Canada in interests it had not previously championed. American oil giants were steeply against a new player in the oil market, over which they had dominated for so long. Further cross-border engagement over oil would ensue as Canadian politicians opposed American tankers from crossing the Arctic behind closed doors. The issue was rarely public but resulted in the passing of the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act, which sought to protect Canada’s arctic sovereignty.
In America, Richard Nixon’s presidency began to shape a jagged riff between the two nations. Canadian leaders began rallying around what became known as the ‘Third Option,’ whereby Canada’s greatest economic success rode upon its diplomatic ability to expand its relationships with countries other than its southern neighbour. It was a slow start to ties that are just now beginning to produce rather notable results in the present day, such as Canada’s bourgeoning ties with China.
Exercises in Standing Up
In the eighties, nationalization of Canada’s energy resources exploded. The National Energy Program (NEP) of 1980 had the primary goal of attaining fifty percent ownership of Canadian oil and gas production by 1990.49 By the end of its second year of operation, the NEP had risen Canada’s government control of the energy industry from 22.3% to 33.1%,50 staving off American investment and, by extension, control of resources. This nationalism would become a house of cards by the time Prime Minister Brian Mulroney assumed power.
In 1994, the United States and Canada brought Mexico into the fold of their 1989 Free Trade Agreement, making it the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the purpose of which was to create a trilateral trade bloc within which all three nations could benefit from reduced tariffs, fewer border trade restrictions and the like. Regardless of how one feels about these agreements, their creation produced tensions as well as economic opportunities. A shining example of this consternation arose in 2001 over a large component of Canadian-American trade: softwood lumber. The United States claimed that Canada was unjustly subsidizing the lumber industry and thusly began levying duties on Canadian lumber imports.51 By 2006, America had accumulated more than five billion dollars in duty fees and Canada was beginning to take issue.52 Using recourse channels built into NAFTA as well as those within the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) systems, Canada sought to have the American duties annulled and for all collected duty fees to be paid to Canada in full. Panels of both organizations continually found that the United States was breaking its own laws and those inherent to their trade agreements with Canada.53 The U.S. was unwavering however. Litigation ensued, the length of which persuaded Canada to accept a settlement. In the end, the U.S. retained more than one billion dollars of the five, money NAFTA panels had made clear that it was not entitled to withhold.54 Professor Sydney M. Cone III, of the New York Law School, wrote an essay that argued that, “…the United States sought to rely on its hegemonic economic power to coerce Canada to yield to the interests of U.S. producers… when the result was a diplomatic crisis, the United States offered to settle the dispute, not on the basis of legal principle, but simply by making monetary payment in the form of a refund of certain of the duties that had been collected.”55
Case in point, this event served as a prime example of how America is able to use its ‘bully pulpit’ to negotiate its way out of legally defined standards of fairness, how it has and continues to shape the economy of Canada at whim and without significant resistance. Canada, like it does in the realm of defence, owes what economic autonomy it has to the rallying of those individuals who recognized this game of cat and mouse, those who took a stand, often at the loss of their influence or employment. The pattern continues…
SOCIAL POLITICS & CULTURAL IDENTITY
The Dicey Nature of Rights and Faith
All of this brings us to the cultural aspects of Canada’s relationship with the United States, the final point in this essay’s positioning. This association comprises two elements: social politics and popular culture. If there is one area where Canada has stood up to the American machine, it has been with respect to social politics. A detailed account of this soapbox trumpeting could well be attempted and achieved but it would be overly ambitious for the purposes of this analysis. Widely known examples stand on their own and need no further explanation. Canada abolished slavery before the U.S. did (1834 versus 1861), gave women the right to vote first (1918 versus 1920), legalized same-sex marriage while America has yet to do so (2003). The gaps between the aforementioned dates are filled with countless more examples. Civil rights issues have defined the inherent liberalism of the Canadian people. From universal healthcare to the soft legal stance on marijuana possession,56 Canada has come to exemplify a socially liberal alternative to its southern neighbour’s general social conservatism.
Perhaps in no other regard is this distinction clearer than in the religious divide that exists on either side of the border. American politicians expressly embrace religion as a political component.57 They hold it high in election campaigns and stand on religious foundations when discussing social issues like abortion and marriage. Such is simply not the case in Canada. Canadian politicians like Preston Manning and Stockwell Day have been sent home by the voters for espousing religious tenets in their campaigning.58
According to the United States government, 75% of Americans identify as Christian while 16% identify as having no religious affiliation.59 The 2006 Canadian census established that 77% of Canadians identify as Christian and 16% as irreligious.60 If the numbers are so identical, why is it that right leaning evangelicals so heavily influence American politics? Bean, Gonzalez, and Kaufman found that Canadian evangelicals are just as morally conservative as their American counterparts. The difference lies in how said evangelicals understand the relationship between morality and national identity. According to their research, Canadian clergy are heedful not to ruffle the feathers of the political climate for the sake of not thwarting their gospel mission. They feel that it would isolate them in the already “post-Christian” society that Canada has become politically.61 These differences in social politics have afforded Canada a distinct political climate within which to operate. They have allowed Canada to evolve independent of American tendencies, to find itself more in alignment with European mentality than American. While the American right finds itself in greater synchronicity with the evangelical movement, the Canadian right is noticeably wary to follow suit in a nation that identifies as two thirds left of center.62
“Lucy, I’m home!” … Just Not Our Home…
Where American social politics have failed ostensibly, however, their popular culture has managed to sift through the border filters with veritable ease.63 Canada was quick to realize this. A royal commission was established in 1949 to follow the progression of the arts, letters, and sciences in Canada.64 The commission’s leader, and Canadian governor general, Vincent Massey, proposed the strengthening of Canadian cultural offerings to resist the entrenchment of an American identity.65 Decades of broadcasting regulations would be founded on Massey’s suggestions, regulations that would mandate that Canadian music, television and film be broadcast over the radio, on television and in cinemas nationwide.66 By 1958, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was argued to hold too powerful a monopoly over Canadian media. The federal government agreed and private entities were granted permission to operate independent of national regulation.67 The experiment failed; the new stations, radio and television alike, aired American content almost without cease. The government would require a 55% Canadian content sanction during the 1960s, a rule that while watered down somewhat, continues to this day. Still, the American cultural invasion continued. In 1970, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) was founded to carry on the mantle of Canadian programming regulations.68
From film, to music, to literature, America’s influence washed into Canada like an unstoppable wave. Government subsidies and grants to national talent became the norm69 but were not enough to hold back the floodgates. Historian Donald Creighton wrote in 1970 that Canadians “had permitted their government to… repudiate their history; and in the bankruptcy of their own national philosophy, they turned instinctively to… the United States… Imitation and plagiarism had become deep-seated Canadian instincts; …dependence had grown into a settled way of life.”70 Canadian entertainers, artists, and writers had become an export, the vast majority of which sought fame south of the border.71 The cultural identity that should have come from the melting-pot nature of Canadian society vanished in a haze of cultural ambiguity.
In the end, social culture has retained a strong spirit in Canada whilst its popular counterpart has dwindled in comparison, languished under full assault of the American entertainment and art that Canadians made clear they favoured.72 Once again, after consideration of facts and figures, examples and reasoning, the American supremacy of influence seems steadfast and clear. Likewise as before, however, it also seems apparent that those willing to challenge the southern barrage have succeeded in preserving, at the very least, a discernable distinction.
Closing Thoughts
Which then has had more influence on the Canadian populous: domestic policy or American proximity? The answer lies somewhere between the two. Were it not for American involvement, Canada would not likely rest on its current pedestal of prosperity, something every Canadian can take solace in. Were it not for Canadian policy, however, shaping American intervention along the way, refracting the direction from which American influence has harkened from, Canadians would likely share more in common with their southern ally than they do.
Culturally, Canadians are arguably indistinct from their American counterparts. Politically however, they retain a greater sense of compassion and desire to understand before acting. Socially, they exhibit a worldliness and openness so far removed from American nationalist and religious sentiment that their differences make them nearly incomparable. Domestic policy has held back the onslaught of American influence. Yes, Canada relies heavily on the United States and, assuredly, American policy affects Canadian lives on a daily basis, but it is likely, were it not for Canada’s policy driven differences, that integration with America would be of an incalculably higher level. This nation owes its world-renowned kindliness and interpersonal respect for multiculturalism a great deal. Still yet, Canadians and Americans must never forget the “special relationship” that they share. As John F. Kennedy so elegantly told Parliament in 1961, “Geography has made us neighbours. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies. Those whom nature hath so joined together, let no man put asunder.”73
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Photo credit: Clyde Keller, 2006
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1 Margaret Conrad and Alvin Finkel, History of the Canadian Peoples: Volume 2 | 1867 to the Present (Toronto: Pearson Education Canada, 2009), 316.
2 Conrad and Finkel, History of the Canadian Peoples, 316.
3 Department of National Defence News Room, “The Permanent Joint Board on Defence,” Department of National Defence, http://www.forces.gc.ca/site/news-nouvelles/news-nouvelles-eng.asp?cat=00&id=298.
4 Conrad and Finkel, History of the Canadian Peoples, 316.
5/6 Conrad and Finkel, History of the Canadian Peoples, 316.
7/8 Conrad and Finkel, History of the Canadian Peoples, 318.
9 The Fifth Estate, “Sticks and Stones,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/sticksandstones.html.
10 The Canadian Encyclopedia, “Vietnam War,” Historica Dominion Institute, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0008367.
11 CBC Digital Archives, “Canada’s Secret War: Vietnam | Supplying the War Machine,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, http://archives.cbc.ca/war_conflict/vietnam_war/topics/1413-9128/.
12 Department of Defence Production (Canada) and the Departments of the Army, Navy, Air Force and the Defence Supply Agency (United States), Defence Production Sharing Agreement, Ottawa and Washington: Canadian and American governments, 1956).
13 Conrad and Finkel, History of the Canadian Peoples, 320.
14 Arnold Heeney and Livingston T. Merchant, Merchant-Heeney Report, Ottawa and Washington: Heeney and Livinston on behalf of the governments of Canada and the United States, 1965.
15 Conrad and Finkel, History of the Canadian Peoples, 315.
16 CBC Digital Archives, “The Gouzenko Affair: Gouzenko Makes the Front Page,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, http://archives.cbc.ca/politics/national_security/topics/72/.
17/18 Conrad and Finkel, History of the Canadian Peoples, 321.
19 Rachel Adams, “Going to Canada: The Politics and Poetics of Northern Exodus,” The Yale Journal of Criticism 18 (2005): 409-33.
20 John Hagan and Suzanne Hansford-Bowles, “From Resistance to Activism: The Emergence and Persistence of Activism among American Vietnam War Resisters in Canada,” Social Movement Studies 4 (2005): 232.
21 Denis Smith, Rogue Tory: The life and Legend of John Diefenbaker (Toronto: Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 1995), 385-88.
22 Knowlton Nash, Kennedy and Diefenbaker: Fear and Loathing Across the Undefended Border (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1990), 139-41.
23 Nash, Kennedy and Diefenbaker, 189-90.
24 Conrad and Finkel, History of the Canadian Peoples, 323.
25 Nash, Kennedy and Diefenbaker, 223.
26/27 Conrad and Finkel, History of the Canadian Peoples, 324.
28 Rick Fawn, “No Consensus with the Commonwealth, No Consensus with Itself? Canada and the Iraq War,” The Round Table 97 (2008): 520.
29 CBC News Online, “Friendly Fire Case: The Legal Saga,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Online, http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/friendlyfire/.
30 CBC News Online, “Harper Grilled Over Prorogation, Detainees,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Online, http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2010/03/04/politics-question-period-detainees-prorogation.html.
31 William C. Graham, “The Economy, Security, and Sovereignty in a North American Context,” Canada-United States Law Journal 29 (2003): 89.
32 Graham, The Economy, Security, and Sovereignty in a North American Context, 90.
33 Conrad and Finkel, History of the Canadian Peoples, 325.
34 Percy W. Bidwell, “Raw Materials and National Policy,” Foreign Affairs 37 (1958): 144.
35 Conrad and Finkel, History of the Canadian Peoples, 325.
36 Douglas Martin, “Canada’s Nuclear Motherlode,” New York Times, March 3, 1985, International section.
37 Conrad and Finkel, History of the Canadian Peoples, 325.
38 Stephen Azzi, “Intuitive Nationalist: Walter Gordon as Thinker,” Journal of Canadian Studies 34 (1999): 124.
39 Conrad and Finkel, History of the Canadian Peoples, 326.
40 James Coyne (1960) quoted in Conrad and Finkel, History of the Canadian Peoples, 326.
41/42 Azzi, Intuitive Nationalist, 126.
43 Conrad and Finkel, History of the Canadian Peoples, 328.
44 Azzi, Intuitive Nationalist, 127.
45 Azzi, Intuitive Nationalist, 127-28.
46 The Canadian Encyclopedia, “Economic Nationalism,” Historica Dominon Institute, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0008367.
47 Conrad and Finkel, History of the Canadian Peoples, 328.
48/49/50 The Canadian Encyclopedia, Economic Nationalism.
51 Daniel N. Adams, “Back to Basics: The Predestined Failure of NAFTA Chapter 19 and Its Lessons for the Design of International Trade Regimes,” Emory International Law Review 22 (2008): 205-06.
52 Adams, Back to Basics, 206.
53 Sydney M. Cone III, “Canadian Softwood Lumber and “Free Trade” Under NAFTA,” New York Law School Review 51 (2006): 842.
54 Adams, Back to Basics, 207.
55 Cone III, Canadian Softwood Lumber and “Free Trade” Under NAFTA, 842.
56 Paul Gecelovsky, “Canadian Cannabis: Marijuana as an Irritant/Problem in Canada-U.S. Relations,” American Review of Canadian Studies 38 (2008): 207.
57 Lydia Bean, Marco Gonzalez, and Jason Kaufman, “Why Doesn’t Canada Have an American-Style Christian Right? A Comparative Framework for Analyzing the Political Effects of Evangelical Subcultural Identity,” Canadian Journal of Sociology 33 (2008): 900.
58 Bean, Gonzalez, and Kaufman, Why Doesn’t Canada Have an American-Style Christian Right?, 900-01.
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68 Conrad and Finkel, History of the Canadian Peoples, 331.
69 Conrad and Finkel, History of the Canadian Peoples, 331-32.
70 Donald Creighton (1970), quoted in Conrad and Finkel, History of the Canadian Peoples, 332.
71/72 Conrad and Finkel, History of the Canadian Peoples, 331.
73 Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolly, “192 – Address Before the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa,” The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=8136.
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