Canadian-American Relations in a Turbulent Era

On September 11, 2001, the turbulence that is characteristic of the post-Cold War inter national system came to bear fully on the Canadian-American relationship. Rumors that the highjackers entered the U.S. from Canada put Canadians immediately on the defensive. Though erroneous, these rumors reflected a willingness on the part of Americans to see the Canadian border as a source of vulnerability. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Ameri can officials intensified their criticism of Can ada for the laxness of the latter's immigration and refugee policies and for their failure to adequately police the country's borders. These perceptions, in turn, stalled the mo mentum that had been building over the past decade or so for a less intrusive border separat ing Canada and the U.S. For example, in a poll taken before 9/11 and released in a special issue of Canada's weekly newsmagazine Ma cleans (December 20, 1999) entitled "The Van ishing Border." 32% of Canadians and 19% of Americans expected that the border separating the two countries would be dissolved within 25 years. The Bush administration's initiative requiring passports or other special-purpose identity cards for all visi tors from Canada beginning in 2007 reveals how far the situation has changed in the after math of the terrorist attacks. "Security trumps trade" is the American response to Canadian efforts to revive the lost momentum toward a more open border (see Cellucci 2005, Ch. 7). Other developments exacerbated and accen tuated Canadian-American tensions in the wake of 9/11. Canada's decision not to join the U.S. led "coalition of the willing" that attacked Sad dam Hussein's corrupt Iraqi regime in March 2003 was by far the most important contributor to the deterioration of relations. The decision in 2005 by Prime Minister Paul Martin to keep Canada out of the U.S. plans for Ballistic Mis sile Defense also irritated Washington. These concerns joined the list of less high-profile but longer-term irritants in Canadian-American relations such as the softwood lumber issue, fishing disputes, and acid rain. Other new diffi culties surfaced. Four Canadian paratroopers serving in Afghanistan were accidentally killed by American "friendly fire" in April 2002. In September of that year a Canadian immigrant from Syria, Maher Arar, was detained at JFK airport where he was in transit from Europe to his home in Canada. He was interrogated by American officials about his supposed links to al-Qaeda, before being deported to Jordan. He was eventually moved to prison in Syria, where he was tortured and held until late in 2003. A number of Canadian developments further raised the irritation level in Canadian-American relations. A series of highly public and unusu ally inflammatory remarks critical of President George W. Bush and the U.S. by Canadian pol iticians and officials exacerbated the difficulties (these are described by the then-ambassador of the U.S. to Canada, Paul Cellucci 2005, 131-46). Liberal legislative proposals to de criminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana (the bill died with the fall of Paul Martin's minority government), the opening of safe injection sites for heroin addicts in Van couver, and the move to recognize the legality of same-sex marriages in 2005 contributed to the popular impression that Canadians were out of step with their more conservative neighbor to the south. Following the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004, the media devoted considerable attention to a possible exodus to Canada of liberals from the so-called blue states. All of these incidents gave Canada an unaccustomed level of visibility and notoriety in the U.S., and rare signs of an anti-Canadian backlash, on some American talk radio for ex ample, were also in evidence. The pre-9/11 discussions of "deep integration" between the two countries seemed a distant memory.