Canada-U.S. Relations

To strengthen its ties with Washington, Ottawa needs to understand what the U.S. wants from Canada. A close study of history helps answer this question.

The back cover of In Roosevelt’s Bright Shadow: Presidential Addresses about Canada from Taft to Obama in Honour of FDR’s 1938 Speech at Queen’s University displays a picture of Peter Milliken, speaker of the House of Commons, presenting a copy of the selfsame book to U.S. President Barack Obama in the splendidly restored Parliamentary Library when he visited Ottawa last year. Obama then received a second copy later that day from member of Parliament Bob Rae.

However, the book, which contains speeches given by American presidents in Canada and Canadian prime ministers in the United States, may prove more useful to Canadians than to Americans.

The American challenge—how to manage the relationship with the United States—has perplexed and frustrated every Canadian government since Confederation.

In Roosevelt’s Bright Shadow helps us understand this challenge. Carefully edited by journalist-scholar Arthur Milnes, it contains a century’s essence of Canadian-American relations, seen through the official words of our leaders. The patterns that emerge are revealing both in terms of what Americans want from Canada and how Canada can influence the United States.

From the American side, securing the homeland has always been the dominant and abiding concern. Until the Civil War gave the U.S. a muscular and tested military, Canada, as adjunct of the British Empire, was viewed as a potential threat. Contingency plans for an invasion of Canada were kept on file until early in the 20th century.

Roosevelt’s unequivocal “assurance that the people of the United States will not stand idly by if domination by Canadian soil is threatened by any other Empire” set the course for an enduring partnership, beginning with the Ogdensburg Agreement of 1940.

The Soviet threat, especially after its acquisition of the atomic bomb, obliged closer security cooperation. Canada became the potential new front line. For mutually advantageous reasons we created a binational “umbrella” in NORAD, and jointly adopted new defence technologies, from BOMARC and the DEW line to the decision to accept the cruise missile. However, to the surprise of both the Americans and many senior Canadian officials, we decided not to participate in ballistic missile defence.

A second theme in the presidential speeches is the ongoing encouragement for Canada to become more involved in the Americas, first as an observer in the Organization of American States and later as a full member. Notwithstanding our longstanding economic relationships in the Caribbean or our humanitarian presence in Haiti, Canadian governments, until Brian Mulroney’s, were surprisingly slow to appreciate how highly Washington valued Canadian engagement in this region.

The book also examines the American delight in the big project, especially the big engineering project. Thus the continuing references to the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Alaska Highway, the Trans-Canada pipeline or the Columbia River project. As the celebrated Chicago architect Daniel Burnham put it a century ago, “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood.”

Therein lies a lesson for Canadian diplomacy. Condoleezza Rice complained of the Canadian tendency to bring up the “condominium issues”—a hassle at a port of entry or a dispute around wheat or potatoes—rather than to lead with the big picture perspective on security and economics.

There are many gems contained in In Roosevelt’s Bright Shadow including Ronald Reagan’s defence of the seal hunt and George H. W. Bush on the thrill of fishing for Arctic char. But two are required reading.