part of the premise is that there is a problem to be solved — the biggest of big solutions would not solve the problem either. We would have less power than California. That state, the largest in the union, has a population of over 36 million. It has fifty-three of 435 seats in the House of Representatives. Even with so many seats, California’s voice is never decisive. Canada’s population of 33 million would give us perhaps forty-eight seats. We would, however, do better than California in Senate seats. That state, like all others, has two seats. Canada could be expected to come to the Union as at least five states — perhaps as British Columbia, the rest of the West, Ontario, Quebec, and the Atlantic. Still, that’s only ten Senate seats out of 110. Clearly, formal integration into the Union is not a solution.
With NAFTA we have a dispute settlement mechanism, and now the continentalist right would have us contemplate a NAFTA-Plus to further stabilize our relationship with the U.S. There is an irony that the more deals we do with the U.S., to bring our relationship within special norms, the more we become subject to U.S. practices, to the point that we become a part of U.S. practices.
It’s easy to see how this can and, perhaps in the fullness of time, will happen. Here’s what then-Maryland Senator Joseph Biden said of Prime Minister Martin after they met in April 2004:
He got it right away. I could have just as easily been speaking to the president of the U.S., or governor of a state, or one of my colleagues in the U.S. Senate. It didn’t need any translation. It’s one of those incredible things about the relationship. You don’t have to explain. You sort of finish each other’s sentences. Canada and the U.S., it’s like ham and eggs. It’s kind of hard to separate them whether we like it or not.[2]
“Getting it” is a precursor to “getting together.” You’ve got to wonder if union, despite its shortcomings, isn’t in our future.
One can also imagine scenarios where further integration with the U.S. might happen suddenly. This could happen, for example, if there was a simultaneous terrorist attack on Canada and the U.S. Imagine also that the president was more in the mould of John Kerry — from a northern liberal state, played hockey, and spoke French — and saw the role of the U.S. not in unilateralist terms but in a multilateralist sense. Add to this a president who took a personal interest in Canada and was well disposed to Canada and the Canadian prime minister. Like Ronald Regan was toward Brian Mulroney, and who suggested a Canadian attend meetings of the U.S. cabinet. A president who might advance a joint currency when the Canadian dollar was 25 percent lower than the U.S. dollar, yet still propose that the Canadian dollar be merged at par.
The ball, as they say, is very much in our court. It’s up to us to decide how involved we want to be in this process of integration. Where is our centre of gravity in our relations with the United States? Will it someday be said, “It started with a Canadian cabinet committee on the U.S., and ended with a Canadian in the U.S. cabinet?”
Our Segmented Neighbour
One of the big mistakes we make in dealing with the U.S., in fact the biggest mistake, is that we don’t properly understand how the U.S. political system works.
We imagine that because we are exposed to the U.S. every day that we have a pretty good idea of how things work south of the border. That is a conceit that hurts us. The U.S. is a much more regional country than we realize, and the U.S. political system arrives at decisions in a way that is so foreign to our own that we don’t get it. As a result we misunderstand the U.S. and make wrong decisions.
In our system, the prime minister has only one political constraint — the ability to get decisions through Parliament — in a majority government that is particularly easy. We think the president and the prime minister can agree on something and that’s all that’s necessary. It doesn’t work that way. As former ambassadors to the U.S. have written, “The players are so numerous and dispersed you can never explain what actually happened,” and “If anyone tells you he knows where a particular decision was made in Washington, he is either a fool or a liar.”[3]
Once one considers the sheer size and scope of the U.S. and the division of powers between the president, the Congress, and the judiciary, the concept of building political capital in Washington is of limited value. And yet our pundits and politicians — including senior ministers — insist on analyzing and acting on the basis of a false understanding. Perhaps it’s because their egos get in the way of appreciating both our country’s insignificance and their personal insignificance in how decisions get made in the U.S. capital. Too often senior ministers think that because they have a relationship with their U.S. counterpart that Canada’s policy needs to reflect the views of their American interlocutors.
The U.S. is simply not keeping track of whether Canada has been helpful. Our ministers are stroking their egos and making poor decisions for Canada if they allow their judgment to be clouded by misunderstanding how significant they are to their American counterparts. Think of the U.S. president, as an example, who spends not days but only hours each year thinking about Canada.
The U.S. is preoccupied with so many issues that as long as Canada doesn’t work actively to counter U.S. interests, we don’t register in their thoughts. What Canada does or doesn’t do is more irrelevant in the American political system than we realize. We are taken for granted. It’s a mistake to think that we need to play a “war-fighting” role in Afghanistan because we didn’t go to Iraq. A former chief of staff to our minister of defence says the decision to play our current role in Afghanistan was due to the minister and other government leaders feeling we had to assuage U.S. opinion because we hadn’t supported Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD). In fact, the U.S. was going ahead with BMD regardless of what Canada did and wasn’t that concerned about the Canadian decision.
Moreover, there is no spillover from such a strictly military issue into U.S. economic policy. A dramatic example of this is the U.S. Congress placing stiff tariffs on U.K. steel despite U.K. participation and leadership in Iraq and Afghanistan. And textiles from Pakistan, a key ally of the U.S. in the fight against terrorism, continue to face prohibitive U.S. tariffs. The U.S. is a vast, self-absorbed, and segmented world.
One should not forget the nature of the U.S. bureaucracy in all of this. It is massive and, like Congress, lacks cohesion and reflects divergent and competing views and opinions. So, like Congress, the U.S. bureaucracy is not going to turn as one corporate entity and promote or punish Canada.
This is how Michael Kergin, a former Canadian ambassador to the U.S., put it to me: “Think of at least three kinds of events — political, economic, and military. Three parts of the jungle. The three constituencies are very different. Be skeptical about linkages among them.”[4]
The sheer size and power of the U.S., combined with its system of government, leads to decisions that affect other countries. But these decisions do not make the U.S. bad. Not honouring a NAFTA dispute settlement panel ruling does not really make the U.S. bad; it’s a reflection of its heft, combined with the nature of its Congressional system of government.
We are not going to change either the sheer power of the U.S. or its Congressional system of government, with the prerogatives of powerful senators and members of the House of Representatives to protect their constituents’ jobs and money.
The NAFTA Dispute Settlement Mechanism does not change that, but it does help to condition the outcome of disputes, such as those over softwood lumber. Canada did not get everything it wanted, and was awarded by the dispute settlement mechanism, but in late 2006 it did agree to 80 percent of what it was due, with approximately $1 billion held back from the $5 billion collected in inappropriate penalties.
Interests in our self-absorbed, segmented neighbour often work in alignment with Canadian interests to determine outcomes. On soft wood, part of the pressure in the U.S. to resolve the
