Front Burner - Canada-U.S. tension, a history

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

In the latest whiplash from the White House, U.S. President Trump told reporters on Sunday that he would announce 25 per cent tariffs on all steel and aluminum imported to the U.S. – including from Canada – on Monday.This, of course, comes a week after he decided to give Canada a 30-day reprieve from blanket and crippling tariffs on all exports to the U.S.This is an incredibly tense and chilling time for two countries that have been allies and trade partners for a long time. But the current fear and anger over the tariffs, and annexation talk aren’t new.Asa McKercher has been studying the Canada-U.S. relationship for years. He is the Hudson Chair in Canada-U.S. relations at the Brian Mulroney Institute of Government, and teaches at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In Scarborough, there's this fire behind our eyes. A passion in our bellies. It's in the hearts of our neighbors. The eyes of our nurses. And the hands of our doctors. It's what makes Scarborough, Scarborough. In our hospitals, we do more than anyone thought possible. We've less than anyone could imagine.

But it's time to imagine what we can do with more. Join Scarborough Health Network and together, we can turn grit into greatness. Do need at lovescarborough.ca. This is a CBC podcast. Hey everybody, I'm Jamie Prosson. You know, they don't pay very much for military and the reason they don't pay much

is they assume that we're going to protect them. That's not an assumption they can make because why are we protecting another country? In the latest whiplash from the White House, Trump told reporters on Air Force One Sunday that on Monday he would announce 25% tariffs on old steel and aluminum imported to the U.S., including from Canada. This of course comes a week after he decided to give Canada a 30-day reprieve from blanket and crippling tariffs on all our exports to the U.S. He said that the pause would give the two countries time to make a quote,

economic deal. Who knows what that means at the moment, but on Friday Trudeau told a group of business leaders that he thinks the president is serious about wanting to annex Canada, and that he's motivated by access to our critical minerals. Trump has it in mind that the easiest way to do it is to control the entire country. And it is a real myth. In my conversation with him— To state the obvious here, this is an incredibly tense and chilling time for two countries that have been allies and trade partners for a long time. And I think it's fair to say that after last week, a lot of Canadians felt like a

ton of trust had been shattered. But the current fear and anger over tariffs and annexation talks, this isn't actually a new thing. For example, I want to play you a part of this liberal attack ad on the conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulrooney ahead of the 1988 federal election where trade with the U.S. was a big issue. The ad shows two diplomats, one American, one Canadian, sitting at this table looking at a map of North America.

Since we're talking about this free trade agreement, there's one line I'd like to change. Which line is that? Well, this one here. It's just getting in the way. And the American diplomat just erases the border between the US and Canada. Just how much are we giving away

in the Mulrooney free trade deal? Our water, our healthcare care, our culture? The line has been drawn. Which side do you stand on? The tensions over sides, trade, national identity have been around since Canada became a country. So how does this current crisis compare and what lessons might those past fights offer? Aziemkircher is here with me to talk through all of this and more. He's the Hudson Chair in Canada-U.S. Relations at the Brian Maruni Institute of Government and teaches at St. Francis Xavier University in Anaganish, Nova Scotia.

Asa, it's so great to have you here. Thank you so much for making the time. Hi, Jamie. Pleasure to be here. So here we are, a week out from a really dramatic escalation in Canada-U.S. relations that is currently sort of on pause, though basically I think it's fair to say holding this country hostage. As a student of Canadian and U.S. history, big picture, how does this current moment stack

up against other tense moments in our history together? Sure, yeah. I mean, we've had a lot of periods of tension in Canada's relations. You know, younger listeners might remember the Iraq War and the differences between the Bush administration and the Christian administration about whether to support that conflict. Canada worked very hard to find a compromise to bridge the gap in the Security Council. Unfortunately we were not successful.

If military action proceeds without a new resolution of the Security Council, Canada will not participate. Or Richard Nixon and Pierre Trudeau over a host of issues including trade matters. We do not have a wall between us. But we do have this great unguarded boundary. This does not mean that we are the same.

It does not mean that we do not have differences. But it does mean that we have found a way to discuss our differences in a friendly way and without war and this is the great lesson for all the world to see. Older listeners might remember some of the differences between Lyndon Johnson and Lester Pearson around the Vietnam War. Party leader Lester Pearson becomes the Dominion's 14th Prime Minister. Immediately upon taking office, Mr. Pearson announces that the first task of his new government, a task expected to

be completed within the month, will be to mend U.S.-Canadian relations. It was the refusal to accept nuclear warheads for U.S. supplied missiles that cost former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker his office. Or even the Kennedy-Diefenbaker years of the 1960s when there were personality differences between presidents and prime ministers and often policy differences. But what we haven't really seen for a really long time is a president who seems to be going out of his way to question the very existence of our country. And so that, I think, is a big difference between sort of past crises or tension points in relations that

I think listeners could kind of rattle off off the top of their heads. And this current moment, we haven't really seen something like this in well over a century, if not a bit longer. And when you say that we haven't seen something like this in well over a century or maybe a little bit longer, like what are you referring to? Yeah, so I think tariffs are a very long-standing issue, or tariffs and trade issue in Canada's relations. One of the reasons Canada actually formed as a country

in 1867 is because we had a trade agreement as British colonies with the United States and the Americans had gripped it up in 1864 because of their anger at British support for the South or the Confederacy during the American Civil War. And so the colonies, the British colonies, as it came together, one of the reasons was this lack of a trade issue, lack of trade with the Americans. They said, well, better to trade with ourselves. There were other issues as well in railroads and also the fear of an actual American invasion. There were Americans talking about turning the Union Army

North into Canada. There was a bill into the House, a draft bill in the House of Representatives calling for the annexation of Canada. It didn't actually go anywhere, but there were these threats out there. If we sort of then flash forward to the late 1890s, the Canadian government by that point under Sir John McDonald had put in place some tariffs. It's called the national policy, essentially a way to kind of build up our little Canadian industry, sort of parallels to what Mr. Trump I think wants to do with his tariffs and but was hoping to have trade a trade deal with the Americans and in 1891 there were some kind of negotiations sort of that began between the the McDonnell government and the American administration at the time and

essentially the American Secretary of State a guy named James Blaine said essentially unless you're willing to join with us in a single country, we're not going to have any kind of trade agreement. So essentially what Donald Trump is exactly saying, join us as the 51st state, although at the time we would have been in the 46th state or something like that. And tariffs then won't be an issue because we'll be one country. And it's no coincidence that this is a period that Mr. Trump seems to be really attracted to, the kind of era of William McKinley and kind of the muscular kind of American expansionism of that period. Can you just, that's so interesting, can you just tell me a little bit more about why you think he's so attracted to that period? You know, it's a period in which William McKinley

at first as a congressman and then later as president put in place a whole series of tariffs really to protect growing American industry, worried about competition from the British and from the Germans and if that matter from the Canadians. So put in place a series of really big tariffs that actually caused an economic depression. Mr. Trump kind of forgets about that word. But was also a president who oversaw the kind of overseas expansion of the United States. So there's a war with Spain in which the United States then cobbles up Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. And a few years later, the US takes part in a kind of

bizarre expedition to take over parts of Colombia, which then become Panama and then to build the Panama Canal. So this is a period in which the Americans are using muscle to make themselves a great power, and there's fears in Canada that that kind of attention actually at the time would be turned towards us. For Mr. Trump, you know, he's concerned about kind of great power competition with China, with Russia, and is probably also looking to burnish his reputation. And so, I think, you know, territorial expansion seems to be a great way to do that, whether it's Greenland or Panama or craziest fantasy perhaps, and addicts in Canada. The Prime Minister said this weekend to a group of Canadian businessmen, he was at a

private meeting, he said that your wish for Canada to be the 51st state is a quote, real thing. Is it a real thing? Yeah, it is. Can you kind of take me through, I know we got a lot of ground to cover, but when it comes to trade and tariffs and tension points, like where else we would have seen fights with the Americans over that kind of stuff? Yeah.

So, you know, the classic example I think that historians like to point to is the federal election in 1911. There was a liberal government of Wilfrid Laurier who had been in power for 15 years was, you know, Canada had experienced a period of economic growth and they were looking to keep the economic ball rolling and so they thought, well, a trade deal with the Americans was really good. At that time, the American president was going in William Howard Taft, who had a very favorable view to Canada. He had a summer cottage on the St. Lawrence River in Quebec. And so they negotiate a free trade agreement

and it sails through the US Congress, which makes a lot of Canadians suspicious because normally Congress was pretty protectionist. And what's then worrying is that a guy named Champ Clark, who was due to become the Speaker of the House, pretty important character, makes a statement to the effect basically, I can't wait to see the stars and stripes fly over Canada.

That of course alarms a lot of Canadian nationalists who say there's a plot afoot between the liberals and the Taft administration to essentially bring Canada into the United States. They're a very viciously fought election in 1911 in which the conservative opposition wins under Robert Borden essentially painting the loyal liberals as Yankee sellouts, as traitors. That really cast the shadow over the next 60, 70 years. For a long time, Canadians were the ones really concerned about annexation. You had that great opening attack ad from the 1988 election. Yeah, because obviously, like, this fear never went away, right? Because here we were in 1988 talking about it again.

Talk to me a little bit more about the 1980s and the eventual signing of NAFTA. You know, I know that we've talked about it on the show before. It was actually a really big fight. But just remind me a little bit more about what happened there. Yeah, so there'd already been a kind of a relaxation of tariffs on a whole host of items between the Canadians and Americans,

going right back to the 1930s to try to get out of the Great Depression. But then the 1980s, flash forward, there's rising protectionism in America, partly due to fears about Japan and Japanese imports in the United States, particularly in cars, but other items as well. This is where Mr. Trump, you know, as a young as a younger guy, really becomes really opposed to free trade on particularly around the issue of Japan.

Something's gonna happen over the next number of years with this country because you can't keep going on losing 200 billion and yet we we let Japan come in and dump everything right into our markets and everything It's not free trade if you ever go to Japan right now and try to sell something forget about it. I'll put just forget about it It's almost impossible, but there's this growing kind of protection sentiment in the country Also in Congress and so the Mulroney government is very concerned about about that And just what happens that Ronald Reagan, the American president is a free trader at least in terms of thinking about the Canada US relationship and so they're able to sign that free trade agreement.

North Americans are bound in our vision, in our optimism and in our commitment to moving forward together. We settled this continent to change the world and this agreement proves It faces some opposition in the US Congress but passes through and it's in Canada where it stirs up these kind of fears about American annexation through kind of back door means. It was a battle of wills, a battle Windsor police officers eventually lost as they threw up their hands and let 2,000 anti-free trade demonstrators swarm onto the Ambassador Bridge. Thousands marched through the heart of downtown Toronto in one of the biggest demonstrations held so far against free trade. We don't want to be Americanized. We don't want the American health system.

We don't want everything that goes with it. I don't think it's a good deal for anybody. I have three sons and this country is going to be for them when I leave, and not for the United States. And John Turner, the liberal leader, gives a speech that's making the rounds on social media today, warning about what it will mean to be so close to the United States, to rely on the Americans so much, and what that would mean potentially in the future, particularly if there's an American government that's not so keen towards us, not as friendly as where all the Reagan was in his vision in Canada. We're just as Canadian as you are, Mr. Mulroney, but I'll tell you this. You mentioned 120

years of history. We built a country, east and west and north, we built it on an infrastructure that deliberately resisted the continental pressure of the United States. For 120 years we've done it, with one signature of a pen. You've reversed that, thrown us into the north-south influence of the United States, and will reduce us, I'm sure, to a colony of the United States, because when the economic levers go, the political independence is sure to follow. Mr. Turner, with a document. But the Moorooi government wins that election, although actually if you do the kind of popular vote totals, the opposition, NDP and liberals actually win the majority of the vote, the popular vote, which suggests perhaps that the majority of Canadians were not in favour of free trade. But the way the first pass of the post system works, the Moorooi government emerges

with the government and the free trade agreement passes through. In Scarborough this is fire behind our eyes. A passion in our bellies. It's in the hearts of our neighbors. The eyes of our nurses. And the hands of our doctors. It's what makes Scarborough Scarborough. In our hospitals we do more than anyone thought possible. We've less than anyone could imagine. But it's time to imagine what we can do with more. Join Scarborough Health Network and together we can turn grit into greatness. Donate at lovescarborough.ca.

Growth is essential for every entrepreneur. At BDC, we get that. And the businesses we support grow at double the average rate. Accelerating the pace. We're on it. BDC. Financing. Advising. Know-how. Asa, what would you say happened to the fears that we would, you know, be taken over through the back door, right, by the Americans? What do you think happened to those fears in the intervening years after NAFTA and before, I guess, 2016, probably, right? Before the first Trump administration. Yeah, I think, you know, this kind of anti-Americanism is a big part of Canadian identity, whether it's kind of Margaret Atwood's kind of fears

of the way she paints America in the hand, in the handmaid's tail as a kind of evil theocracy as opposed to Canada, which is kind of a land of freedom in that kind of thing. So there's that kind of, you know know that kind of negative view of America. We've been told this deal is just about money. It's not just about money. Money talks and right now it's screaming but it should not be allowed to hog the conversation.

But there's kind of a just a sense of being different and I think that's the way Canadians have often defined themselves. What we call culture is not just the opera. Culture is the fabric of society. It's what kind of beer you can buy. It's what you hear on the radio. It's how the society works. That's what Canadians tend to mean by culture, and that's what we feel is threatened by this

deal. And I think what we see in the wake of the kind of NAFTA, NAFTA in particular in 1993, NAFTA comes through, is a kind of a way to sort of define ourselves as being different from America, not necessarily in a kind of a, you know, openly hostile way. There's a certain element of kind of complacency there and sometimes, you know, we might, you know, we spend so much defining our healthcare system as different from America and so we might not look at other countries that do healthcare in different ways, but we have this kind of focus on there. I think this is where we see the rise of a kind of a nationalism that's somewhat defined around some of those consumer products. The Hudson's Bay red mittens at Olympic time or the mania around Tim Horton's defining ourselves that way. The Moulson Canadian, Joe Canadian beer ad.

We find ways to define ourselves differently from Americans. I think what we take for granted, I sort of took for granted maybe till now, is the idea that there will be a North America economy and that so we better get on with it and it's largely been beneficial for a lot of Canadians to have lower prices and products and to greater labour mobility and a whole variety of other kinds of things. And I think what you're seeing then the kind of popular anger that many Canadians have expressed over the last few weeks is a disbelief that, you know, there's the sense that we took this chance in 1988, a tort free trade and now the Americans are ripping up that agreement and the kind of consensus that had seemingly been built around that between our peoples. And I suppose they're even now ripping up USMCA, right?

Like the agreement that we negotiated with them in good faith several years ago. Do you think there's a part of us here that was too complacent? Like, you know, I see in 2023, nearly 77% of our total exports went to the US. That's not a very diversified economy, right? Yeah, and like, what would you say to that? Yeah, I mean, in the 1950s, John Diefenbaker, the conservative leader wins election in 1957 and then

there's another election could be called in 1958 on essentially a policy warning about kind of over reliance on the United States, which he blamed on the liberals who'd been empowered by that point for 20 years or so. It said essentially, we need to find new partners elsewhere. The problem was that was just a really difficult thing to do. Geography is really important. There were many other countries that were looking to trade with Canada. The Europeans at that time were forming what becomes the European Union and were really far more interested in trading with themselves. Flash forward then to the 19, early 1970s and Richard Nixon imposes actually a 10% tariff

on all goods coming into the United States, including from Canada. And the Canadians, you know, lobbied then in Washington to be exempted from that. And the Nixon administration backs away. But then Richard Nixon came to Canada the following year and gives a speech in the House of Commons where he essentially says, you know, I thought you guys wanted some separation.

I thought you guys were worried about, you know, being too reliant on us. Wasn't this tariff, basically he says, wasn't this tariff what you guys kind of wanted to make some distance. And he says very pointedly, there is no special relationship between our countries. We're just two countries which have our own interests. And that spooked a lot of Canadians. very pointedly, there is no special relationship between our countries. We were just two countries which have our own interests. And that spooked a lot of Canadians. And so the government undertook a report.

It was eventually sort of popular. They called it the third option because they ran through three options. One was kind of closer relations with the Americans. One was sort of the existing kind of status quo. And the third option, the one the government settled on was to diversify our trade economic prospects with all countries all around the world. And it doesn't really try that very hard. And so subsequent governments have sort of tried to do similar kinds of things.

Under Stephen Harper, to show this is like a part of nonpartisan kind of consensus, Stephen Harper and his government signed a record number of free trade agreements with other countries, most importantly perhaps the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the free trade agreement with the European Union, I think diversified Canadian economy, particularly in the wake of the financial crisis in 2008. The number you just said indicates that we still have a long way to go. I think there is this complacency in the business community amongst government that you can't really blame them.

Geography is important. America has a huge, huge economy. Why not trade with them? I think it's now times like this where we're seeing the chip-ins come home to a ruse. I just want to pick up on that quote you mentioned from Nixon that there is no special relationship between our two countries. I think for a lot of Canadians, they don't feel that way, right? And the Prime Minister hit on that last week in his speech when he talked about how we have fought and died with Americans in wartime.

From the beaches of Normandy to the mountains of the Korean peninsula, from the fields of Flanders to the streets of Kandahar, we have fought and died alongside you. And I know that you talked about this a little bit at the beginning of our conversation, but I wonder if you could elaborate for me a little bit more on how conflict has shaped

our relationship with the US. Yeah, I mean, obviously in Canadian history, Canadian history with the United States, conflict has sometimes been a bad thing. So we obviously had the war of 1812 and the kind of memories of that. 200 years ago, parts of North America erupted into battle. Soldiers from here and around the British Empire successfully defended Canada from American invasion. Mr. Trump interestingly enough kind of mentioned apparently to Mr. Trudeau that we had burned down the White House, and so that was one of the reasons he viewed us

as a national security threat when he imposed tariffs on us in 2018. But the Americans were a threat for a while, but then obviously in the 20th century, they become allies. Allies briefly during the First World War, they become allies again in a much more concerted manner obviously during the second world war. And what we see then during the Cold War years

is the kind of growing close cooperation in terms of defending the continent. As the Prime Minister noted in his comments, the Canadians are part of the Korean War. And so we become allies, but we also stand aside from New York sometimes. So Canadians, for instance, we're not a part of the Vietnam War. Obviously, the Iraq war more recently, we kind of stand apart.

I want Canada to do what it feels comfortable doing in Iraq. And that's what I've told the Prime Minister before. Canada is an independent nation. Canada makes its decisions based upon her own judgment. And so, you know, it's kind of a complicated thing, but the, you know, the kind of sentiment around, you know, wars are hugely important kind of events in human affairs.

Obviously, you know, a lot of blood and treasure is kind of spent on these things. People give their lives for these kinds of things and that forges a lot of sentimental kind of ties that Mr. Trump, as Mr. Trudeau noted, seemingly kind of throwing away. So I think that gets to some of the popular anger I think that many Canadians feel, a sense of disbelief that we are allies and at this very moment Canadians are in uniform or with our American allies at NORAD and other places. And Mr. Trump seems to be giving the middle finger

to that kind of history. And so that strikes many Canadians as being not right. The other thing I wanted to ask you about, obviously people matter in history too, characters, right? And you mentioned earlier that there was animosity between Deven Baker and JFK. Trump loves to mock Trudeau. He calls him the governor of the great state of Canada.

It doesn't seem like he likes him very much. Has a relationship between a prime minister and a president ever been this ugly? Yeah, probably, Just not in public. And so, you know, you talked about Kennedy and Diefenbaker. It's clear they didn't, you know, they kind of got on a little bit in 1961, but then they had a falling out, you know, late 1961 into 1962 over nuclear weapons and some other issues. And to the point where Diefenbaker, and this kind of famous story,

Kennedy, when he'd visited Ottawa in 1961, he dropped essentially a briefing note out of his pocket that was a kind of a series of bullet points of issues he wanted Canada and Canadian help on. And Diefenbaker kept this, and in 1962, there's a kind of a diplomatic dispute between the Canadians and Americans on some issues. Deacon Baker called in the American ambassador to Ottawa and says, essentially, if you guys

don't back down, I've got this little list that is your president's briefing note and I'm going to publish it in the press or leak it to the press and prove that your president is trying to boss us around. That's blackmail. And Kennedy responds, I'm not going to swear on your family podcast here, but responds with some good Boston Irish expressions to describe the prime minister. And their relationship never recovers. Then Nixon, his four-letter words that he liked to describe Trudeau with actually became public

only because the Watergate tapes or the presidential tapes were released as part of the Watergate thing. He kind of thought Pierre Trudeau was this kind of airy-fairy, philosopher-king sort of person who needed to come down to the real world and deal with real-world matters. So, these things were often in private. What's different about Mr. Trump is, and maybe this isn't surprising given he's a Twitter troll and he's comporting himself in the presidency in that manner. That's what's new. I don't know what Richard Nixon would have done if he had access to Twitter, but maybe it would have been a similar story to Mr. Trump, who knows? knows.

This has been so fascinating. I could really ask you about this all day. Obviously, none of us really know where this is headed exactly. But do you think that what we're seeing right now is likely just another pendulum swing in our history together? A tension point, we've talked about many of them today. Or do you think that this is something fundamentally different? Sure, you know, I think, you know, historians make really bad profits, so... So do journalists. You know, I would think... know, historians make really bad profits. So. So do journalists. You know, I would think, well, fair enough.

Yeah. Um, you know, I would think if this is a pendulum shift, it's toward not a decoupling of, of carriers relations, because again, the geography is important. The United States will remain a huge economic market that we'll want to trade with. You know, Canadians will still want to fly down

to Florida and go to Disney world or Las Vegas. But I think, you know think if this is a pendulum shift, we'll see us trying to build some of those more serious bridges to other countries. I think we're already seeing movement on things like inter-provincial trade. I think we're seeing a swing back to a bit more of a kind of a flag waving patriotism

on the part of Canadians. So I think we're seeing, if there's a pendulum shifting, it's in those kinds of areas. We'll still, you know, be allies probably of America, you know, unless we become the fifth year state, in which case it'll be a difference issue. But I think, you know, if we remained a sovereign

country, it'll be as a sovereign country, more aware of our over-reliance on America, probably not trying to fall into the complacency we've had in the past. Just before we wrap up, I just want to note, you know, you seem to be taking this idea that we could become a 51st state at least somewhat seriously, right? Like just listening to you right now. I think for a lot of people it sounds so ludicrous that it's not serious.

Do you think that it's actually a serious threat? Well the Prime Minister does and he's, you he's been in the room with Mr. Trump. There's an interview that Global News did with Steve Bannon, who's a Trump whisperer within the MAGA movement. He seems to be talking about Canada not becoming a 51st state, but at least becoming a protectorate of the United States in part for access to critical minerals and art of defense. If you're part of that market, which is what I think he's talking about in making you a state or agreeing through the state, then you're inside the golden door. The compelling logic of the 21st century,

geostrategically and geoeconomically is going to make this at least something that Canadian people have to weigh and measure and consider. Look. I mean, it's a pretty wild interview in that sense. And I think, you know, maybe they don't want to bring us in as the 51st state, but I think they're interested in keeping us close in the

kind of great power rivalry that they envision with China. And so, I think we really need to think about what that means in terms of, I think Nordic Canadians don't want that. And so I think that means we really need to get serious about diversifying our economy and doing more to defend ourselves, not in an actual shooting war, which I don't think would

happen, but just having the presence in the North and the presence elsewhere on our seas and our airspace to just be the kind of markers of a sovereign country. I think that's perhaps the task that is facing us today, but you know, I don't think the Marines are going to be marching in Dado anytime soon.

Well, you know, Jamie, I just don't know. Yeah. I just don't know. Yeah. I think that's as good a place as any for us to end this conversation. Asa, this was great. Thank you so't know. Yeah. I think that's as good a place as any for us to end this conversation. Asa, this was great. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening.

Talk to you tomorrow.