On Canadian 'anti Americanism'

[Benjamin Frank]

Since somebody mentioned this, I've been reading a book called '18 men' about the Canadian Prime Ministers from John A MacDonald to Brian Mulroney. The book suggests that there are three reasons behind this (alleged) anti Americanism in Canada.

1.American economic dominance
2.American cultural dominance
3.American foreign policy

I'll breaking this into a post for each, but in my usual meandering way, I'll make a couple points first:

I largely disagree that Canadians are 'anti American' collectively. I think this is mostly media sensationalism. As a not directly related example of this:
I normally listen to the CBC Early Edition while getting up in the morning, but sometime I like to listen to the local sports radio, which in the morning is cohosted by 'Halford and Brough.' One time one of these gentleman commented "I don't mind the Vancouver Canucks not winning the Stanley Cup as long as the Toronto Maple Leafs don't win it."

They don't take callers, but they do selectively read tweets, emails and text messages, and I was pleased when they read a couple hours later a text that went something like "On the one hand you in the media, including yourselves when being more serious decry the divisions in society, but then you turn around and play up this nonsense about how all Canadians are supposed to hate Toronto. Stop it. It's stupid and it makes you out to be hypocrites."

Similarly, according to the Alberta media, every Edmontonion supposedly hates every Calgarian and vice versa.

Nobody should take these stupid media memes seriously, and that includes this sensationalist nonsense that Canadians are supposedly anti American.

[Benjamin Frank]

This book '18 Men' is written by a journalist, Gordon Donaldson. It should disabuse anybody of the notion that media sensationalism is new or a product of the internet era.

Three examples of this:
1.The book claims that Prime Minister Jonn Diefenbaker did nothing domestically of substance and that even Diefenbaker's Bill of Rights was meaningless, arguing that judges and justices ignored it. It may be true that legal rulings initially overlooked the Bill of Rights, but I expect that judges and justices appointed after the Bill of Rights became law used it as part of interpreting Canadian law. Of course, ultimately the Bill of Rights was superseded by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which had the full weight of being in the Constitution behind it.

However, in addition to that in domestic policy, Diefenbaker was, to use today's parlance a genuine 'anti racist.' In addition to ultimately being decisive in forcing Apartheid South Africa out of the Commenwealth, in domestic policy, Diefenbaker fully extended the franchise to indigenous Canadians, and, of ultimately the most significance, opened up immigration to people from all parts of the world, and not just from Europe (or the U.S, I presume.)

In this case, it's possible that this was something that was monumental but not appreciated at the time. For instance, in my large collection of books, I have the 1980 World Book Encyclopedia. I read the entry on President Eisenhower a few days ago, and on his list of domestic accomplishments, somehow the interstate highway system isn't mentioned.

2.For Prime Minister Lester Pearson, a great deal is noted of the scandals and incompetence that dominated the media during his goverment. Most historians now say that 'for all of the day to day scandals and incompetence of the Pearson government, aided by possibly the best civil service in the world, the government had extraordinary accomplishments.'

Laughably in my opinion, the book claims that Pearson's main domestic achievement was in changing the flag. While this was a case where there was some substance behind the symbolism because the old flag contained the Union Jack, so this was a significant move away from Great Britain, I don't see how anybody can overlook:
1.Medicare
2.The Canada Pension Plan (on top of the previously introduced Old Age Security)
3.The Canada Student loan program
4.The legal changes that, although now regarded as half measures, partially legalized abortion, homosexuality and expanded equal treatment for women under the law.
5.The unification of the Canadian armed forces.
6.Following on Diefenbaker opening up immigration, introduced the points system that Donald Trump admires so much but failed to bring to America.

The flag was Pearson's most significant accomplishment? Only a sensationalist but ultimately out of touch journalist could believe that.

3.On Pierre Trudeau, played up the notion that he was essentially a 'wealthy young man about town'* until getting into politics at the age of 46. While it is true that Trudeau was afforded the privilage of travelling and not working until about the age of 30, it is absolutely false that he hardly worked after that. The book falsely claims that Trudeau never practiced law. In fact, after coming back to Canada from Europe in 1948 and working for the Canadian civil service for a year, Trudeau started a labour and civil rights law firm, while he also took an active managment in the famiy trust and was founder and editor of a small but influential journal called Cite Libre. All in all, Pierre Trudeau likely worked about 80 hours a week.

After the Union Nationale government in Quebec was defeated in 1960, Pierre Trudeau was able to become a law professor and ended his legal practice. (Union Nationale Premier Maurice Duplessis blocked him from getting hired in academia in Quebec.)

*"Wealthy young man about town" is the description given for Lamont Cranston AKA The superhero The Shadow for The Shadow radio shows.

[Benjamin Frank]

So, on to the substance of the alleged 'anti American' mindset in Canada.

1.Economic dominance:

The book mentions that after World War II, Canada shifted from being an independent dominion of the United Kingdom to an independent (or maybe semi independent) dominion of the United States.

One thing not appreciated I don't think by many outside of Canada is how Canada depended for a long time on natural resources (I think the Canadian economy is somewhat more diversified now.) The description used was that 'Canadians are hewers of wood and drawers of water.'

Sometime after World War II, American businesses largely bought up the rights to Canadian natural resources and beyond extraction of these resources, owned most of the processing plants in Canada as well. Canada was referred to as having a 'branch plant' economy.

For instance, before becoming Progressive Conservative party leader, Brian Mulroney was the President of Iron Ore of Canada, a subsidiary of an American firm.

Even more than that, Canada was dependent on America for providing American $ foreign exchange. As the U.S economy fell into a recession from around 1958 that it didn't fully recover from until around 1962 (for all the mention of foreign policy in the 1960 election, it was likely the sluggish economy that cost Nixon the election.) President Eisenhower was obsessed, for good and ill, with balanced budgets and refused to engage in any Keynesian spending to boost the economy out of recession.

Of course, Kennedy famously decreasing the top tax rate from 91 to 70% was an example of Keynesian economics, even if not direct government spending.

The book mentions, as I was previously not aware of, that Diefenbaker ran up the Canadian deficit so much ($3 billion over 6 years in 1960s values, at that time the Canadian $ was at par with the U.S $. Foreign currencies didn't trade freely as the world still operated under the gold standard as laid out at Bretton Woods) that not only did the government have to devalue the Canadian $ to $96.5 cents to the U.S $, but had to avoid potential bankruptcy through a $1 billion American loan of U.S foreign exchange.)

However, in return, the U.S government for a time was given considerable say over Canadian fiscal policy (taxes and spending.)  The equivalent to this now is the IMF demanding the same thing to 'third world countries.'

So, I dispute the notion of anti Americanism, but I dont' think it takes much to see why many Canadians would be resentful of the U.S control of the Canadian economy.

Since this time there have been considerable changes, though I don't know how extensive they are.
1.The Canadian economy has broadened out beyond natural resources. This is for good and ill for Canada. Multiple times companies that started in Canada and only selling to Canadians, later expanded operations in the U.S, and then arguing that the U.S consumers  had become their biggest customers, that in order to be more responsive to this, relocated their headquarters to the U.S!

2.Canadian companies own more of Canadian natural resources. For one instance, of course I don't know where the shareholders are located, but all of the six major Alberta oil sands extraction companies head offices are located in Canada.

For another instance, although the B.C government denies it, they are clearly presently pushing out all of the major forest companies (I believe the biggest MacMillan Bloedel is Australian and not American though) in favor of 'community ownership' (whatever that means) and transferring ownership or mangement of forests to First Nations as part of UNDRIP (The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Persons.)

I think a large part of the reason this isn't receiving much pushback is due to the popularism on both the left and the right  for 'local ownership' and away from 'globalization.

[Benjamin Frank]

American cultural dominance.

This of course, is in English Canada, not in Quebec.

I don't know how seriously to take this given that on any weekend people all over the world decry American cultural dominance while watching a Hollywood movie.

Canada has pushed back especially in music where many Canadian musicians have for years received significant American radio play. Also, some Canadian shows are both popular in Canada and the United States. For instance, Red Green was popular in the 1980s and 1990s ("If women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy") and The Trailer Park Boys of the 2000s and 2010s.

Again though, frequently Canadians choose in a free society to 'consume' American cultural products.

I was the most amused with this when some Canadian after hearing Heritage Minister (Culture Minister) Sheila Copps under Prime Minister Chretien go on about the need for 'Canadians to tell Canadian stories in Canada' (I think she was arguing in favor of some tax on American cable networks operating in Canada) pointed out something like "Sheila Copps and Jean Chretien should reflect on America having cultural dominance in the world despite being the only major country to not have a minister for culture. Maybe that isn't a coincidence."

However, even though I find the contradictions bizarre, I don't dispute that at least some Canadians (and not just those with a self interest like those who work in cultural industries) resent American cultural dominance even as they freely consume it.

[Benjamin Frank]

3.American Foreign policy

This might be the most significant and lasting. It's often said that Canadians prefer a Democrat in the White House, and certainly Canadian 'anti Americanism' tends to increase significantly with Republican militaristic foreign policy (although this started under Democrat Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam.)

However, even then, there were contrary views in Canada. For instance, although 'sold' to Americans as part of Canadians supporting the Vietnam War, Canadian broadcaster Gordon Sinclair's 1973 The Americans, was actually about how America was often the first to help out in the rest of the world, but received seemingly no help with their inflation crisis.

Put to music, the commentary went to #4 on the U.S Billboard Hot 100.

Technically, that actually wasn't correct as Saudi Arabia helped the U.S a great deal by allowing the U.S to transition away from the Gold Standard under Bretton Woods to the U.S dollar being the petrodollar/world reserve currency, but I'm sure hardly anybody understood that.

"The United States dollar took another pounding on German, French, and British exchanges this morning, hitting the lowest point ever known in West Germany. It has declined there by 41% since 1971, and this Canadian thinks it's time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous, and possibly the least-appreciated, people in all the world.

As long as sixty years ago, when I first started to read newspapers, I read of floods on the Yellow River and the Yangtze. Well who rushed in with men and money to help? The Americans did, that's who.

They have helped control floods on the Nile, the Amazon, the Ganges, and the Niger. Today, the rich bottom land of the Mississippi is under water and no foreign land has sent a dollar to help. Germany, Japan, and to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy, were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of those countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.

When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. And I was there -- I saw that. When distant cities are hit by earthquake, it's the United States that hurries into help. Managua, Nicaragua, is one of the most recent examples.

So far this spring, fifty-nine American communities have been flattened by tornadoes. Nobody has helped.

The Marshall Plan, the Truman Policy, all pumped billions upon billions of dollars into discouraged countries. And now, newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent, war-mongering Americans.

Now, I'd like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplanes. Come on now, you, let's hear it. Does any country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tristar, or the Douglas 10? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all international lines except Russia fly American planes? Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or a woman on the moon?

You talk about Japanese technocracy and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy and you find men on the moon, not once, but several times, and, safely home again. You talk about scandals and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everybody to look at. Even the draft dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They're right here on our streets in Toronto. Most of them, unless they're breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from Ma and Pa at home to spend up here.

When the Americans get out of this bind -- as they will -- who could blame them if they said "the hell with the rest of the world. Let somebody else buy the bonds. Let somebody else build or repair foreign dams, or design foreign buildings that won't shake apart in earthquakes." When the railways of France and Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both of 'em are still broke.

I can name to you 5,000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name to me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake.

Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them kicked around. They'll come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they're entitled to thumb their noses at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of these. But there are many smug, self-righteous Canadians.

And finally, the American Red Cross was told at its 48th annual meeting in New Orleans this morning that it was broke.

This year's disasters -- with the year less than half-over -- has taken it all. And nobody, but nobody, has helped."

I've criticized America many times here, but with the exception I noted above, this is all true!

[Benjamin Frank]

From then though, there has been certainly legitimate criticism, and much of it from Americans themselves, for Reagan's foreign policy in Central America (mining harbors in Nicaragua and assisting in the murder of Liberation Theology nuns in El Salvador) is outright evil, and obviously for W. Bush's illegal war in Iraq.

Given the number of Americans themselves who thought these policies were horrible, I think it's impossible to claim that a Canadian hating these things makes them 'anti American.'

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

Someone I know who worked in Australia once said that when they weren't sure if someone was American or Canadian, they'd ask if they were Canadian. The reasoning behind this was that in their experience if they called a Canadian an American the former would get mad, while if they did the opposite the American would just laugh it off. There is a fundamental insecurity  held by many Canadians that they need to be as different from America as possible, even though the US and (non-french) Canada are some of the most similar places on earth from a cultural standpoint.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Thanks for this thread.

[Benjamin Frank]

Someone I know who worked in Australia once said that when they weren't sure if someone was American or Canadian, they'd ask if they were Canadian. The reasoning behind this was that in their experience if they called a Canadian an American the former would get mad, while if they did the opposite the American would just laugh it off. There is a fundamental insecurity  held by many Canadians that they need to be as different from America as possible, even though the US and (non-french) Canada are some of the most similar places on earth from a cultural standpoint.

While it's a bit odd that this would be the case in a conservative leaning country like Australia, there is another explanation other than the psychological one you have provided, which is, depending on when this occurred, that the Canadians were concerned with being thought of as Americans, not because they are anti American, but because they were concerned that the locals were anti American.

For example, during the George W Bush Presidency, when Canadians travelled abroard, it became routine to wear a small Canadian flag lapel pin to show to the locals that they weren't American.  I'm not sure if this was revived during the Trump years.

[Torie]

Thanks for the essay. I don't think Americans think about Canada much, and probably would not mind much,  and would kind of understand, if Canada feels overshadowed and resentful of its behemoth neighbor to the south.

I assume Canada is aware that if NAFTA were repealed, and replaced with a trade war with Canada, its standard of living would decrease by a substantial amount.

The whole notion of the advanced industrial democracies viewing each other as threats to their individual nation states, economically or culturally, seems dated to me. In all events, it is as wrong headed as it has ever been.

[SnowLabrador]

Interesting thread. I recently talked to a Canadian on Discord who said that even before COVID, a majority of people wanted the US-Canada border to be closed, because, in his words, "you guys are f**king insane." And we are effing insane. I have never been so embarrassed to be an American as during the height of COVID, when we were international pariahs. To some extent we still are, though, which is one reason I want to move to the UK.

[CumbrianLefty]

Interesting thread. I recently talked to a Canadian on Discord who said that even before COVID, a majority of people wanted the US-Canada border to be closed, because, in his words, "you guys are f**king insane." And we are effing insane. I have never been so embarrassed to be an American as during the height of COVID, when we were international pariahs. To some extent we still are, though, which is one reason I want to move to the UK.

From one international pariah to another!

(of course I jest - well, mostly)

[PSOL]

Very few people are better off in the states than in Canada; worse labor laws, worse relations between anglos and the other European immigrants on account of centralization and lack of respect, immigrants and Indigenous are objectively treated far worse in the states than in Canada, as much as it isn’t that much, and the church casts a tighter leash in the US than in Canada.

The United States has been trying to destroy and complete the upward destiny since it’s inception.

[Benjamin Frank]

Thanks for the essay. I don't think Americans think about Canada much, and probably would not mind much,  and would kind of understand, if Canada feels overshadowed and resentful of its behemoth neighbor to the south.

I assume Canada is aware that if NAFTA were repealed, and replaced with a trade war with Canada, its standard of living would decrease by a substantial amount.

The whole notion of the advanced industrial democracies viewing each other as threats to their individual nation states, economically or culturally, seems dated to me. In all events, it is as wrong headed as it has ever been.

This is from the book I mentioned '18 Men' on page 224

"American ownership of Canadian industry was creeping to past 60%. By the end of the Pearson years (1968), nine out of 10 big plants which employed 5,000 workers or more were controlled by parent companies in the United States. Nearly 3/4 of natural gas and oil resources were controlled in the United States and every nation-wide, integrated oil company was American.

Prime Mininster Pearson declared in February, 1966 "We can maintain our economic sovereignty if we are willing to pay the price, and the price would be nationalistic economic policies which would reduce our standard of living by perhaps 25 to 30%. Not many Canadians are willing to do that and I don't think Canadians should have to do that."