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 to north. It’s not that it can’t, it just doesn’t.
This is what that vast, self-contained world looks and feels like, with its powerful Congress constantly and highly responsive to domestic interests. This is the world, through growing integration with the U.S., into which Canada is being drawn.
Relations between the two countries are so broad and deep that the current structures of their management do not reflect the reality of the situation. As Canada’s economic space is increasingly becoming more integrated with America’s, the Canadian political space is infused from the U.S. Therefore, there is a steady pressure to find new ways of engaging and interacting with the United States.
To reflect and better capture what’s happening, we are increasingly moving beyond the normal models within which nation states interact, and increasingly organizing some of our systems of government to align with, and engage, the Americans’. The federal government, in both Canada and the U.S., is reorganizing and expanding initiatives to engage the Americans. In the U.S. we are opening more offices: a massive increase of thirteen offices to forty-one. Author and columnist Jeffery Simpson captures the logic:
The Congress and the administration represent the basket, where points are scored. The whole country is the basketball court, where plays develop and strategies unfold that eventually lead to something happening around the basket. There are no lay-ups or slam dunks or 15-foot jumpers without playing well over the whole court.[1]
In Washington we have set up a new branch in our embassy to focus on Congress. Our embassy representatives visit Congress daily to lobby members and their staffs on how their districts are affected by Canada. Through a new database, they point out how many jobs amongst their constituents are dependent on Canadian employers.
While former Canadian ambassador to Washington, Allan Gotlieb, claims to be the inventor of lobbying Congress, he didn’t so much invent it as respond in the mid-1980s to the failure of an east coast fisheries agreement in which two U.S. senators reacted to pressure from a few hundred scallop fisherman and derailed a treaty that had been negotiated and signed by the two governments.
The move to put more gears, and oil, into the U.S. system means we are becoming more a part of that system. Former Prime Minister Paul Martin created a committee on our relations with the U.S. in our federal cabinet. And some, such as former Deputy Prime Minister John Manley and former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed, are advocating that our ambassador to the U.S. should be a member of cabinet, so, as Manley says, “He would have real clout in D.C.”
The launch in March 2005 of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) was part of this process of striving for closer cooperation. It represents an understanding between the leaders of Canada, the U.S., and Mexico to enhance coordination of their economic and security relations. For Canada’s purposes, it is about more fully harmonizing our procedures and regulations with the U.S. The SPP recognizes that three can talk, but two can do. Both Canada and Mexico are largely engaged in separate discussions with the U.S. on many issues. This is consistent with the findings, in a later chapter, about how Mexico should sensibly fit into our relations with the U.S.
These initiatives that involve reorganizing government capacity and procedures — be they special committees of cabinet or the processes of the SPP — are measures of our growing integration. This is a process whose ultimate logic, if we are not mindful of the dangers, is direct Canadian representation in the U.S. Congress.
As we have seen, both sides of the debate over our relations with the U.S. frame it as a problem. Right-continentalists tell us they have a big solution to the problem. A problem with these big solutions is they put us in huge asymmetries of size and power. Take one of their favourite proposals, a monetary union. At best, Canada would become the thirteenth regional Federal Reserve bank, joining the twelve that currently shape U.S. monetary policy.
There is, however, one notable anomaly to this problem of asymmetry: the International Joint Commission (IJC). Formed in 1909, the IJC manages environmental issues along the border. Each country has three commissioners, and all decisions require a majority vote. It’s a system for making decisions, which, apparently, the U.S. doesn’t like and can’t believe it’s saddled with; it is not the way the U.S. is used to operating around the world. It exists as a special case, perhaps because it was signed with Great Britain near the height of its power, and because it is about managing a border that is done most effectively jointly. It is understood as a “narrow gauge” organization, not transferable to other areas of the management of our relationship with our neighbour.
What about that biggest of big solutions — formally joining the United States, becoming part of the Union? Surely
