Home Washington Secretariat Council of the Federation

Notes used for an Address to the Council of the Federation

Colin Robertson
Minister (Advocacy) and Head, Washington Advocacy Secretariat
Banff, Alberta
August 11, 2005

(Several of you, and some of your premiers, asked that I forward the notes I drew from in speaking to the premiers at the Council of the Federation session on Canada and the US in Banff.)

The relationships between provinces and states, especially those between premiers and governors, are the hidden wiring of the Canadian American relationship. A relationship that can be increasingly characterized as 'intermestic': where issues blur between the traditional 'foreign affairs' responsibilities of the two federal governments, and that within the jurisdiction of the 63 state and provincial/territorial governments in North America. Cooperative instruments between states and provinces now number more than 300 and cover everything from mutual support on fire-fighting to cooperation on life science research.

Nothing beats a personal relationship and the advantages of meeting your peers the governors individually and through joint meetings in the West and New England. Or at the legislator level through the regional associations like the National Council of State Legislators, the Pacific Northwest Economic Region or bilaterally like between Manitoba and North Dakota. Politics in the US is vocational and, with term limits, there is increased movement from city/county to state to federal legislatures and off-ramps to the executive. There are ten governors now sitting in the Senate, Mike Johanns of Nebraska and Mike Leavitt of Utah sit in cabinet, four of the last six presidents were governors. Fifty of the 80 new members in the 109th Congress served in local levels of government.

Most of the fires we fight in Washington begin at the state or provincial level: a mad cow in Alberta, a water diversion in North Dakota, oil drilling in Alaska. And as we’ve long known in lumber, whenever our market share in weanlings or wheat expands or threatens, redress is sought from local legislators. Ours is an asymmetrical relationship: nearly half our GDP depends on access to America while for America the GDP generated through trade with Canada is about 4%. Institutions, conventions and ongoing dialogue are the way we ‘level the playing field’. The FTA and NAFTA initiated over a decade of prosperity and we want to take the next step. The Security and Prosperity Partnership opens that door. Tariffs matter less. The agenda will be about things like regulations and standards; much of them fall under state and provincial jurisdiction. The process won’t succeed without your active involvement.

Ambassador McKenna is leading the charge and actively out there, taking on Newt Gingrich and Lou Dobbs and anyone else who gets it wrong. On Devils Lake we ran a daily war-room. And we depend on you for the facts and figures that we need as ammunition. Because we speak with many voices and in different fora, we learnt the importance of getting the message right and sticking to it. We have no ‘Canada’ lobby so we’re working to create one beginning with the ‘star-spangled’ Canadians. We need your help to reach them and once enlisted we’re using the internet www.connect2canada.com to keep in touch.

On security, governors (who are also commanders of their state's National Guard) and state legislators, for whom the war is real, need to hear our story from you. Another terrorist attack in America and the risk, as Ambassador McKenna puts it, is that “they’ll zipper up the tent and we’ll be left outside.” The right-of-center American political class increasingly relies on FOX. Its coverage of Canada is neither ‘fair’ nor ‘balanced’ and they’re shifting perceptions aboutCanada amongst its viewers. Even on the other networks, the only ongoing ‘Canadian’ coverage is about our weather (another cold front) and sports ( hockey and the Jays). They need to hear what we're doing in Afghanistan, Haiti and Darfur in global war against terrorism and how the Canada-US border is fundamentally different from ‘ The Border’ to their south. And on energy. Most have no clue that we’re their main source of imported energy. A tenth of American consumption. That it’s gas from Alberta and hydro from Quebec that lights up Broadway. Uranium from Saskatchewan, processed in Ontario that goes into US nuclear plants. That hydro from BC keeps the lights on in Silicon Valley. That there is more energy potential in the oil sands in Alberta and Saskatchewan, gas in pipelines through the Yukon and NWT and offshore Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, and hydro from Manitoba and Quebec and Labrador.

At home we have a problem with growing ‘anti-Americanism’. It’s fueled by the headlines that distort the reality of the 96% of our trade that passes without problem. Cries of retaliation forget the hard fact that we need them more than they need us. And that economic integration generates our prosperity. Each province now trades more with America than inter -provincially. Canadians need you to put in perspective the ‘American relationship’ and the fact they’re our biggest customer. Rather than getting mad, we need to develop better early -warning and defensive mechanisms when we make market gains and threaten American producers. Because they’ll seek redress. So we need to better identify allies who’ll counter calls for protection.

Ambassador McKenna wants to change the atmospherics for the long-run. We look to you to help lead:

• In recruiting ‘star-spangled’ Canadians as our eyes, ears and mouth, during your trade missions. Encourage them to sign on to www.connect2 canada.com
• In recruiting American students and creating centers of American studies at your universities and colleges
• In encouraging service clubs to create student and young leaders exchanges that will given American leaders of tomorrow a ‘Canadian experience’.
• In getting to know American legislators. Their most common experience in Canada is hunting and fishing, it brings people like VP Cheney to Canada. Create a ‘Larry’s Gulch’ type experience.

Mindful that so many of our ‘challenges’ start in Montana and the Dakotas (think lumber, cattle, wheat, pork and Devils Lake) we’ve started a ‘charm offensive’ with our Consuls General, Kim Butler in Minneapolis and Michael Fine in Denver taking a lead. But it can only succeed with your active collaboration, especially western premiers. This fall, on Capitol Hill, our priorities include finding an alternative to the 2008 passport requirement. You have told us it is already having a chilling effect on tourism. Working with you we need to reach out to border state legislators and business and develop the kind of coalition that was key to changing a similar requirement (section 110) a few years ago.

As to the Secretariat, the PM created it as an integral part of the Embassy, to serve provincial and legislator interests through ongoing advocacy and liaison, including regular reporting to you. In advancing our interests, joint development of messaging and then staying on message makes sense. We're developing better tools to track legislation and determine our investment and trade interests at the state and congressional district level that we're sharing with your officials. The PM invited you to situate within the Embassy: Murray Smith can speak to the Alberta experience and we’re looking at other arrangements including the Manitoba experience on Devils Lake. Our objectives continue to be the ones you set for me: timely information and early warning; a rolodex of who counts on Capitol Hill; more, coordinated action with our consulates. In pursuit of our objectives, your ongoing advice, participation and help are essential.

Note on America, Bush and Congress

America is at war. 9-11 remains the most profound event in America since Pearl Harbour. Everything we do has to be put through the litmus of the threat Americans believe is just a mistake away. Republican Congressman Peter King put it this way: “It's like we live in two parallel existences. You know something could happen, and yet you don't want to alarm people constantly, or get too specific in your recommendations.”

These are anxious times. The threat is personal. The implications are cultural and economic. It’s a Sputnik moment: one of those periodic alarms about some foreign economic menace. It was the Soviets in the 1950s and early 1960s, the Germans and the Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s, and now it's the Chinese and the Indians. ‘Outsourcing’ is shorthand over concern that maybe America can’t compete; the cover of a recent Fortune Magazine says it all: “America the new 97 pound weakling?”. There is also a growing sense that the balance between ‘fairness’ and entrepeneurship has swung to far to the latter.

Bush's statement 'you're either with us or not' captures the mood. Disagreement is fine, silly words wind up on FOX and feeds the ‘Canuckistan’ lobby. On borders we continue to differentiate between our border and the one America shares with Mexico. The bureaucratic inclination to always apply the model they know best for borders: ‘walls, wires and minutemen’ that characterize the southern border. Linked to this is the requirement to show a passport at the border by 2008 (although there are signs it is already having a chilling effect). We need to aggressively make our business case. Early feedback from calls on Capitol Hill is that while we have allies, and the issue may breathe life into the moribund northern border caucus. One challenge is the politics of not seen to ‘differentiate or discriminate’ against Mexico and the growing political weight of Latinos who while less cohesive, now outnumber blacks, and at 40 million, well outnumber Canadians.

The President’s second-term agenda is ambitious but setbacks on Social Security reform and declining support for the war taken a toll: Bush’s popularity hovers around 48%. He wants to be a “transformational president” by reforming Roosevelt's New Deal for the entrepreneurial “ownership society”. The gradual retirement of nearly 78 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964 will put unprecedented pressure on the social safety net but the more they look at it the less the public likes the idea of privatization of social security. Abroad the warrior-president’s approach is unchanged: to destroy the terrorists in their home base and, second, to revolutionise the Middle East through ‘freedom’. Bush is in permanent campaign and as he put recently: “My strategy is pretty simple. Explain the problem to the American people, and keep explaining it and explaining it.”

Lame duck? Not yet. Bush is skilled at taking much less than he asked for and declaring victory witness the budget, education and Medicare reforms. Bush’s legislative success – an energy bill, a transportation bill, CAFTA, before Congress adjourned for its summer break, highlights the value of the Republican majorities in the House and Senate. Education reform appears to be working and the budget deficit is shrinking, although US must still borrow $5 billion daily to finance balance of payments deficit for energy and imports. Karl Rove’s involvement in a scandal over the unmasking of a CIA official is slipping from the headlines. John Roberts was a shrewd pick for the Supreme Court and he will likely win Senate approval in September. John Bolton goes to the UN through a recess appointment. Coming up: entrenching tax changes, tort reform, and another go at Social Security and battles with Congress over embryonic stem cell research and immigration. And who will be Alan Greenspan’s successor?

Election 2006: Republicans hold majorities in both the House and Senate and how they handle the war and the economy will play large. The anti-war movement now has a face in Cindy Sheehan and there is growing criticism that there is no coherent plan in Iraq. Look for significant draw-down of troops next summer, GOP strategists would rather the war is rear-view than front-screen. Republicans campaign better and as DLC chair Governor Vilsack of Ohio put it, “much of the concern that Democrats have today is that we have no common purpose, we have no common direction in this country.” There are now as many self- identified Republicans as Democrats. The reckoning is that only 30-50 of the House races are competitive. Power and population continue to shift from Midwest and North to South and Pacific: a net shift of 50 seats since 1954. The new centers tend Republican. More than half of all congressional districts are suburban and, increasingly, in gated, homogenous communities. In candidate selection both Republicans and Democrats favour those with service in a uniform.

Election 2008: Even more speculative but everyone's favourite parlour game. The record favours governors from the Sun Belt (Carter, Reagan, Clinton and GWBush); the last time a serving senator won the presidency was 1960. For the Democrats, Hillary Clinton is formidable. She is making all the right moves on defence (strong), abortion (‘safe, legal, rare’) and energy and, of course, she starts with ‘brand’ recognition. She is outdistancing in polls and money the other contenders, new (governors Warner, Vilsack, Rendall, Richardson and senators Feingold and Bayh) and old, (senators Biden, John Edwards and Wesley Clark). On the other hand, she has yet to an define overarching set of themes, like her husband had. And the question of pundit is that she could win the party nomination, but can she win the country? John McCain leads a Republican race that includes fellow senators Frist, Brownback, Allen, Hagel and governors Pataki, Romney and Barbour as well as Rudy Guiliani. John McCain's problem is the opposite of Clinton: while he could win the country can a maverick on issues like abortion win in a party for which right-to-life is a litmus test?