Trade war with Canada?
BOSTON — Americans tend to take Canada for granted and know next to nothing about its history. Take a visit to Ottawa’s war museum and you see conflicts with the United States memorialized that most Americans don’t even know they had fought.
From time to time, the U.S. would send armies north attempting to conquer Canada, most notably during our revolutionary war when General Benedict Arnold — still on our side then — tried and failed to conquer Quebec.
Americans are taught that the British burned down the White House in the 1812 war. But we skip over the fact that it was in retaliation for Americans burning York, as Toronto was called. In 1813 President Madison sent an invasion fleet across Lake Ontario and burned down the provincial parliament, but failed to hold onto any Canadian territory. The next year Madison was forced to flee with his coat tails all but on fire as the British took their revenge on Washington, D.C.
Canada had its own rebellions against the crown. Toronto’s first mayor, William Lyon Mackenzie, led his own rebellion in 1837, which was put down by force. For Americans, Canada became a refuge for loyalists who remained on the British side during our revolution. It became the northern terminus of the underground railroad, smuggling slaves out of the United States before the Civil War. And 40 years ago it became a haven for Americans who didn’t want to fight in Vietnam.
Today any republican sentiments that Canadians might have harbored are long forgotten. A poll taken by the Toronto Globe and Mail showed a low number of Canadians in favor of retaining ties to the monarchy, especially when Prince Charles becomes king. But I doubt that Canada will ever abandon its royal sovereign. A Canadian official once told me that as long as the United States remains a republic, Canada must stay loyal to the throne “because we define ourselves by being what you Americans are not.”
Canada considers itself a safer, more civilized version of the Great Republic to the south, pioneers in health care and gun control in which the United States is lacking.
But tensions between French and British Canada has never quite subsided. A planned celebration of the 250th anniversary of the decisive battle between the French and the British for North America — fought on the Plains of Abraham before Quebec City — had to be cancelled this year because, although English speakers may see it as a great victory, for French Canadians the defeat is still too painful. The opposing generals, James Wolfe and the Marquis de Montcalm were both mortally wounded, and those wounds in bilingual Canada have not yet fully healed. Quebec’s motto, printed on its license plates, is: “je me souviens,” (I remember).
Toronto, which had only one unpaved street in 1830, took over from Montreal as the country’s business hub and financial center in the 1970s when French Canadian threats to succeed from the Canadian Federation scared businesses away from Quebec Province. Those threats have receded now, but cosmopolitan Toronto’s position as Canada’s foremost city is secure.
Canada has long been the major trading partner of the United States, with the largest undefended border in the world. But Canadians often feel slighted — with some reason. In May homeland security chief, Janet Napolitano, told Canadians she wanted to “change the culture” along the 5,500 mile border to make it “a real border,” closer to what we have with Mexico. Americans often say that Canada’s internal security is lax, and that terrorists can take advantage of it. But Canada has to worry about the $1.6 billion in trade that crosses the frontier every day.
Protectionism on our side of the border is one of Canada’s greatest fears, especially from a Democratic Congress. The “Buy America” provisions in the stimulus package are alarming in a country so closely integrated economically with the United States, and Canadians are talking about retaliation.
This would not be “your father’s trade war,” said the Washington Post, “a tit-for-tat over champagne or cheese. With countries world-wide desperately trying to keep and create jobs in the midst of a global recession, the spat between the United States and its normally friendly northern neighbor underscores what is emerging as the biggest threat to open commerce during the economic crisis.”
Canadians hoped that the rumbling trade war that began in the Bush administration would change under Barack Obama. But as the Economist put it: “ For the new occupant of the White House, as for his predecessor, the noisy demands of Capitol Hill will always drown out any whimpers from across the border.”
This is a pity, for our closest ally in the world should not be run-over roughshod by an uncaring and unknowing Congress. We don’t need to add a trade-war exhibit to the Canadian war museum — a war which would be devastating to Canada, but which most Americans would never know we had fought.
More GlobalPost columns by HDS Greenway: