Lapsed:
Actually, there is a lot of open, blatant anti-Americanism in Canada. There’s nothing latent about it. When you’ve got a nation that has been decidedly on the left side of the political fence for a dozen years sitting right beside the proverbial 300lb gorilla, these sorts of things unfortunately breed.
The origin of Canadian anti-Americanism was not Liberal-Leftism. Nor was it beta-gorillaism. The English kept Quebec, the First Nations, and the non-aristocratic colonists in line by playing on their fears toward the Americans to the south.
Kebekers – Catholic at that time – were afraid of being overrun by Quakers. The English addressed that by promising them language and religion rights and then kept them down on the labour market.
First Nations had grudges with the Americans over land claims; the English addressed that by making more treaties which they broke after the American ‘problem’ had been solved. The non-aristocratic colonists were promised ‘inclusion’ but English Family Compact put an end to that.
In the 21st Century, Quebec is no longer Catholic, the First Nations have long since abandonned the notion of trusting the colonizer treaties, and the colonizers themselves are no longer English but from all parts of the world. Yet some of us persist in picking on the American scapegoat in order to silence opposition to the next golf course.
Hate is a blunt instrument. The everyday lives of Canadians are a more finely woven fabric, intimately interlaced with American tourists, American cousins, Americans coming up to play on our hockey teams, football teams, basketball teams; trips to Disneyland and retirement in Florida. Many of us are cognizant of the reality that the US buys 80% of our exports and provides a deterrant for foreign military aggression.
However, Lapsed, I would agree with you that the Liberal-Left has piggy-backed on the rhetoric of Family Compact.
As for American subs in our Arctic waters: the Ambassador is simply trying us on for size. Boston taxi drivers do the same thing. They come on all aggressive and full of strongly held opinions when you first get in the taxi. After you come back at them with a sensible rebuttal with good support, they settle right down and tell you stories of their ancestors in the Revolution. Works for me.
I am not worried about American subs in the Arctic. In the first place, we have bled our own military dry and consistently put our troops at risk by under-equipping them since Hellyer in the 60s. In WWII we had the third largest armed forces in the world. We can hardly fault another country for demonstrating their military might in our waters when we have abrogated our responsibilities for policing those same waters. In this case we can be thankful that it was the Americans up there posing for the cameras, and not someone else.
More to the point, we need to start talking about Perimeter Defence seriously. Either we get Canadian ice breakers up there or decent subs – not English hand-me-downs that burn off the coast of Ireland – or we have to let the Americans patrol for us. What kind of society are we that our priorities revolve around throwing expensive parties for politicans in power – and their friends – rather than requiring them to govern to our standards?
So, in summation:
- Start pulling our weight by restoring our military capability.
- Sit down with the Americans, Mexicans, Carribbeans, and Central Americans and work out the details of Perimeter Defence before Chavez and Castro do it for us.
- Revisit NAFTA by making sure the softwood lumber incident does not happen again (and that Americans can afford to buy houses because their local lumber suppliers are not doing an endrun on competition).
Finally, we need to look at the differences in the ways that Canadian and Americans define themselves. From my experience, Americans tend to see their lives as revolving around the Revolution: one central point where it all began.
Around what do Canadian lives revolve? We can discuss this at length, but I predict that we will all end up acknowledging that Canadian identity is not event-specific; it is process-specific, always evolving like the forests and prairies which have accepted us as part of them.
The American story begins at the beginning. Our story begins in the middle.
