Home Washington Secretariat Essays 2005/01

WORKING WITH AMERICA AFTER 9/11

by Colin Robertson

TODAY WE LIVE IN what the French call the shadow of the 'hyperpower'. America is preponderant. As Colin Powell described it in a recent conversation with P.J. O'Rourke [in The Atlantic Monthly]:

We are a superpower that cannot be touched in this generation by anyone in terms of military power, economic power, the strength of our political system and our values system. What we would like to see is a greater understanding of power, of the democratic system, the open market economic system, the rights of men and women to achieve their destiny as God has directed them to do if they are willing to work for it. And we really do not wish to go to war with people. But, by God, we will have the strongest military around. And that's not a bad thing to have. It encourages and champions our friends that are weak and it chills the ambitions of the evil.

Powell's assessment is reflective of American thinking. The rest of us have to come to terms with an America that is different since 9/11. James Q. Wilson, the American political philosopher, told me it is the most profound psychic shock to America since Pearl Harbour. For 9/11 revealed that America was vulnerable. In response, America has gone to war, first in Afghanistan and now in Iraq.

Canadians do not appreciate how profound a change 9/11 has made to Americans' sense of security (or should I say insecurity). Security concerns are never far from the surface and this is playing out in the current electoral campaign, especially in the presidential race. It manifests itself on four levels, all of which have implications for Canada:

• Economic security: no one feels better off than they did four years ago. Normally, this would work for the Democrats; it did in 1992 when Bill Clinton successfully exploited the issue against George Bush. John Kerry and John Edwards have sounded the claxon on 'outsourcing' and the 'export' of American jobs. Canadians need to be vigilant: nearly ninety per cent of our exports go south. Nearly half of our GDP is dependent on access to the American market.
  
• National security and the campaign against terrorism, coupled with growing unease over the conduct and outcome of the war in Iraq: the world is seen as an increasingly dangerous place for Americans. George W. Bush argues that it is better to take the battle to terrorists rather than let the terrorists come to America and he couples this with a heartfelt conviction that America and the free world have a responsibility, indeed a duty, to establish liberty and freedom, by force of arms if necessary. As he put it at the UN last week, "I have faith in the transforming power of freedom." And as he has also said, in the campaign against terrorism, "you are either with us or not." The challenges for Canada are obvious.
  
• Personal security at home, where no one feels safer than they did before 9/11: concern over personal security helps explain why the ban on sales of AK-47s and the like failed to be renewed, despite the urgings of people like Jim Brady, Ronald Reagan's press spokesman who was paralyzed in the assassination attempt on the president. Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore's last film, is instructive on this count. It was less about the American fixation with the right to bear arms than the 'fear' culture. It's a culture reinforced daily by the media.
  
• Cultural security that manifests itself through the divide over support for gay marriage and abortion: geographically, it is expressed through the red and blue states. As one pundit put it, those in red states 'hunt', prey and execute, while in the blue they just 'play around'.

So how does Canada deal with a changed America in a dangerous world that lacks anchors and needs new governance? We start from the axiom, expressed by Lord Palmerston, that nations have "no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests."

Prosperity pays for those things that help define what is Canadian and our prosperity is dependent on our ability to trade. Nearly half of our GDP depends on trade. And our main trading partner is the United States. More than eighty per cent of our trade is destined for the United States: it's worth over a million dollars a minute. Most of it goes by truck 1,500 cross the border each hour. And then there's the people flow: 300,000 cross back and forth daily.

The Canadian dilemma, even before Confederation, has always been how far to go with the United States. Geography and commerce draws us south. During the mid-nineteenth century, we enjoyed reciprocity with the United States. Then the American Civil War and imperial interests intervened and we recoiled.

Confederation was in part a response to America and the menace of 'manifest destiny'. National cohesion required us to defy market gravity and create bonds that stretched east and west. In trade, this meant a National Policy that gave preference to trade between provinces through the protection of manufacturing and eventually to supply marketing boards for wheat, pork, poultry and dairy products. Internationally, we tried to create counterweights to the United States, through trade arrangements with Britain and the Commonwealth under R.B. Bennett and later John Diefenbaker, then with Japan and Europe under Pierre Trudeau. But while you can take a horse to water, you can't make it drink.

In 1985, Brian Mulroney began negotiations for a comprehensive free trade agreement with the United States. It was an act of considerable political courage. Not only had he derided the idea in his leadership campaign, but traditional Conservative policy opposed free trade. And there was the political lesson of 1911 and the failure of an earlier Quebec prime minister, Sir Wilfred Laurier. At the time negotiations began, only twenty-five per cent of Canadians supported the idea; more were opposed and most weren't sure why it was necessary. It was not the 'leap in the dark' that many critics described. Donald Macdonald had done the intellectual homework in the 150 volumes that comprised his enquiry into Canada's economic union and development prospects. Macdonald's work was probably the most valuable economic study since Rowell-Sirois.

By any measure free trade has been a success. Canada has always been a trading nation. Free trade has made us into a nation of traders. And with success. The economic prosperity of the past decade has been trade driven and that trade has grown mostly with the United States. Look at any of the indicators: interprovincial trade has been flat, but with the U.S. and, since NAFTA brought in Mexico, our trade has expanded sixfold.

Even the CLC has come grudgingly around to recognize its value. So much for the fear that we couldn't compete. We'd seen the same fears expressed in 1965 when we negotiated the first of the great modern free trade agreements, the Autopact. Auto parts continue to be our principal export to the United States.

What free trade has done is to create shared economic space in North America and the access has worked to Canada's advantage and that of the United States.

But for the United States, trade has always been coupled with security concerns. Canada looks south for economic reasons. America looks north and south, for security. The NAFTA was very much a strategic American policy aimed at curbing the increasing Mexican migration north by negotiating a trading framework that would establish the conditions for jobs and growth in Mexico.

Nine-Eleven changed everything. Security now trumps economics. Borders matter again. And the American model of border is one that they have had to maintain on their southern frontier. It is characterized by wires, walls and posses. I know, I've inspected the California border by hummer and helicopter.

We cannot have this model applied to our border. It simply wouldn't work. So what do we do?

The challenge is clear: we have to re-establish our credentials as 'with America on security'. We're not the trap door through which bad guys, B.C. bud and cheap drugs enter at will.

We have to do this to safeguard our economic access, which while we are mutually dependent is asymmetrical. America only sends us twenty-five per cent of its exports, we send them eighty-five per cent of our exports. Trade is much less important to the American economy: exports to Canada account for less than three per cent of their GDP, while over forty per cent of our own. In any debate in America security will always trump trade.

So what are we doing to convince America that we care and share the concern that "our security is indivisible", as Prime Minister Paul Martin put it?

First, we've negotiated the Smart Border Accord to secure and strengthen the passage of goods and people across our frontier. This means closer collaboration and joint customs inspection. It means using technology and risk-management. It means having American inspectors in Canadian ports and Canadian inspectors in American ports. We're experimenting with fast-passes for frequent travellers. It means moving the border beyond the border: bonding trucks as they leave their warehouse and then waving a wand as they cross the border in a fast-lane, to ensure seals are intact.

Second, we're reinforcing public security in intelligence and policy and the structures that support them. In the wake of 9/11, legislation was quickly passed (more quickly in Canada than in the United States) and implemented to more intensely screen immigrants and refugees and visitors. We're deporting those who shouldn't be here. We created the new Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, our version of Homeland Security, but with a more comprehensive mandate. It brings together the core functions of crime prevention, policing and enforcement, security and intelligence, corrections, border services and emergency management. At the end of April, Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan tabled the first Canadian comprehensive statement on national security and the prime minister has named Rob Wright, who headed our Customs Service, as our first National Security Advisor.

We've made progress - good progress. The border is more efficient, but we're not there yet. Crossing the border still involves delay and inconvenience. And there is American legislation on bio-terrorism and cargo supply where the penny is still to drop. The cost of complying with that legislation will be costly. Shippers are going to have to make buying, selling and shipping decisions earlier and get that information to border agencies before the truck arrives at the port of inspection.

It's obliging us to rethink borders and how we apply sovereignty. For example, if our customs and immigration stations have the same basic function, couldn't one do the job of the other? We've done air pre-clearance for fifty years at seven Canadian airports, surely we can create the legal regime that will respect mutual sovereignties but ensure mutual convenience.

Second, we're increasing our presence - we call it 'enhanced representation', from thirteen cities to forty-two. 'Being there', is essential to understanding the United States. 'Smart diplomacy' is the approach.

Small offices mean fewer people with focussed activity. In Tucson, for example, we're renting space with the Greater Tucson Economic Council and our new officer spent the last five years with the University of Arizona working in life sciences - the area that he'll focus on. We're recruiting beyond the traditional foreign service. In San Jose, the head of our office comes from the Export Development Corporation. We're tapping our expatriates and making honorary consuls of these star-spangled Canadians. We'll bring in SWAT teams for big projects like Bio2004 in San Francisco.

At our Embassy in Washington we're establishing a Secretariat that will use the umbrella of the 'Canada brand' to more effectively advance our interests with Congress. The PM has invited the provinces to join the Secretariat. Premier Ralph Klein has already assigned an officer from Alberta. Premiers Doer, Campbell, Hamm and McGuinty have told me that they are giving it active consideration.

And we're going to use our elected officials and the special relationship they have as legislators, with fellow legislators in Congress and the state legislatures. We're building on existing relationships: the interparliamentary group of MPs and senators from our federal parliament and the relationships that already exist between premiers and governors and provincial and state legislators.

The Secretariat is a unique approach. No other country has anything like it. The premiers and parliamentarians have told me that their expectations from the Secretariat are threefold:

• Access through a network of contacts;
• An early warning system on emerging issues and trends;
• Advocacy capacity that will serve as both shield and sword.

They expect these objectives to be achieved through a 'Team Canada' approach drawing on the network of offices in the United States and in collaboration and cooperation with Headquarters, the provinces and legislators.

It's doing diplomacy differently. It's not incremental. It's pathbreaking in the same fashion we approached the FTA negotiations in the mid-eighties.

It's a partnership with the provinces. It builds on the relationship we developed during the trade negotiation of the FTA, NAFTA and at the WTO. At the end of March, for the first time, senior officers from the provinces participated in our planning exercise - determining what will be our objectives in the U.S. for this year. It's no surprise that at the top of the list were public advocacy and trade and investment development.

In practical terms, I see the Secretariat operating as a permanent 'war room'. Our job is to better advance Canadian interests, especially with Congress. We will use our public diplomacy tools - public affairs, culture and relations with the learning communities, and align them to our congressional outreach team and apply the access afforded by our legislators.

My approach is this: preserve Canadian politeness but practise American forthrightness. Take risks. Don't let anything pass. Be in your face. In short, play the game the way Americans play it.

We've begun.

Two weeks ago a Democrat from Texas, in one of the salamander districts, got up in committee and proclaimed that "we all know the terrorists entered through Canada." As in the past we sent a corrective letter from Ambassador Kergin to the Congressman. But we did it the next day. And we also gave the letter to Roll Call the daily newspaper of Capitol Hill. They would write a story about the "feisty Canadians". And we accomplished our point: we got our message out broadly.

Last Monday in the Washington Times, Canadian-born Hoover Fellow Arnold Beichman wrote that Canada was giving the cold-shoulder to America. By 6 p.m. we had a letter to the editor that we also copied to our Canadian watchers. It was brief, blunt and most importantly, in the same news cycle. This we have to do. But more, much more, remains to be done.

• First, and most importantly, we've got to know more about our interests in America so that we can use it as leverage with American legislators. We need to know, by congressional district, what America exports to Canada in goods and services. We need to know about Canadian investment in each district. We need to know the name of the company, its location and the number of people it employs.

  As Tip O'Neill observed, "all politics is local". So when I go on the Hill or my colleagues at our offices in the states go talk with legislators, they will speak in the language that every legislator understand: jobs.

  Towards this end, I am approaching the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters Association and the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, as well as other industry umbrella groups for beef and lumber. I want them to finance this study. And I'd like a consortium of universities and think tanks, on both sides of the border, to do the research and keep it evergreen.

• Second, we need to know more about America. We think we know our neighbours, but do we really? Did you know that there is really only one centre of American studies in Canada. And, as they say on websites, it's 'under construction'. No other country is as well placed as Canada to interpret the United States. We share common economic space, we share a common language, we enjoy the same entertainment. My challenge is to Canadian universities to establish chairs and centres of American studies.

• Third, and this will be the biggest challenge: as a people, we need to cease defining ourselves by what we are 'not'. Too many Canadians when asked to describe what we are start with the negative: "we're not American." A people that defines themselves by what they are not and an identity that begins with the negative cannot inspire. We have to get past the assumption that we are somehow better than Americans. We are different. But we aren't better.

Unfortunately, we continue to leave the impression with our American cousins of the kind of attitude that led Dean Acheson to describe Canada as the "stern daughter of the voice of God". Or as Henry Kissinger put it a few weeks ago when I met him at the Republican National Convention: "Canada - - Canada. I have dealt with Canada since Vietnam. The word that comes to mind when I think of Canada is 'self-righteous'. Yes, self-righteous. In Canada you get to do what is desirable. In America we must do what is necessary."

Insufferability is usually rooted in the insecurity of the mouse living next to the elephant. I think the analogy is wrong. We are not a mouse. We're a moose sharing space with the eagle. We are not American, but we are North American.

As Canadians we need to look through the right end of the telescope when we worry about 'our' cultural identity. By any American measure, by any world measure: the Oscars, the Emmys, the Grammies, the Pulitzers, the National Book Awards, Canada is a net producer of a North American culture of which we are an integrated and essential part. And we bring to them a lightness of touch: our sense of north, our sense of humour, our sense of people and place, that transcends borders.

Having spent a large part of my working career living beyond our borders I can tell you that the idea or 'brand' that Canada represents within North America and within the world is hugely envied. Every day that I am abroad, I meet people who want to come to Canada because of what that brand represents: freedom, cultural diversity, opportunity - values we share with our American cousins.

Our attraction and our strength are rooted in our diversity, a diversity constantly replenished by our open immigration. We are northern people: the north of Hugh MacLennan, Glenn Gould, Roch Carrier, Robert Lepage, the Group of Seven. A Sense of North portrayed in films like Atanarjuat, Men with Brooms, les Invasions barbares. Storytellers like Rohinton Mistry, Carol Shields, Michael Ondaatje, whose tales are at once particular, yet universal, reflecting the impact of successive waves of immigration and the access that is open to all.

Climate and diversity has created a dynamic culture that becomes more original as we internalize diversity. Our culture is now characterized by both a 'diversity of authenticities' and an 'authenticity of diversity'. Without the awful baggage of ethnic or religious divide. We can actually inhabit the shoes of others. We are light on our feet. Our culture understands, preserves and integrates many cultures. And we do so with enormous success because we have a sensibility that travels well.

This sensibility and the commitment we make to learning more about America and our interests in America and the rest of the world, are means to an end. The end they serve is to give Canada the confidence and the knowledge to play an increasingly constructive role in the world.

• First, to defend and advance our own interests, especially with the United States.
• Second, to play the vital role of interpreter. To interpret the United States to the rest of the world. To interpret the rest of the world to the United States. This role is arguably even more valuable today than it ever was, as America rethinks and recalibrates its global involvement.
• Third, to make Canadian diplomacy, like our culture, an authentic Canadian medium that enriches our national life and, incidentally, makes a real contribution to international peace and security.

If the transatlantic world into which we are nestled, is coming undone, we have responsibilities. We have our interests, of course. But we shouldn't get too fixated on border, as important as it is. The Security Agenda is bigger, and it's spelled out in the U.S. administration's 2002 National Security Agenda. As for post-Iraq, what Bush 43 is doing is more likely to create a New World Order than what Bush 41 set out to achieve.

We face a real dilemma. Those who attack the UN and the multilateral system because it would outsource American foreign and security policy to a bunch of garlic-chewing, cheese-eating wimps are wrong-headed. But it is also true that the cheese eaters need to set aside their Chateau Montrose and get real. The 'rules-based order' on which we correctly have placed such emphasis since WWII has always had a trap door for BIG states. The veto in the UN is the least of our worries - at least the U.S. is playing by the rules. Our challenge is to keep the rules-based system appealing enough that the 'hyperpower', and for the foreseeable future there is only one, doesn't take its marbles and go it alone.

As Canadians, as North Americans, we are uniquely placed to respond to these challenges. It requires leadership. It requires taking risks. It means doing things differently. But isn't that the definition of 'being Canadian'?