Continentalism of a Different Stripe

There is an old saying in real estate—location, location, location. No sooner had the 2004 presidential election been decided than maps began appearing all over the Internet, recasting the North American landscape into two distinct political and cultural regions, with Canada and the Northeast, upper Midwest, and West coast states all coloured in blue, and the rest of the continental United States coloured in red. Although the intent was sardonic, what if the jest did indeed have political legs and there was a very real possibility of redrawing the political map of the continent?

In fact, it is already happening, behind the scenes, in myriad subtle ways, and the long-term implications for the future of North America are profound and far-reaching. Welcome to the incipient rise of the first regional transnational space—a grouping of Canadian provinces and American states whose commercial and political interests and shared vision make them increasingly more compatible with each other than the blue states are with their own neighbours in the American heartland. What is beginning to emerge is a North American Union, combining Canada and the so-called blue states of the US that, in time, may become more semi-autonomous and detached from the rest of America, at least de facto, if not formally.

Of course, trade liberalization advocates (on both sides of the border) have long maintained that Canada, the US, and Mexico ought to expand and deepen the North American Free Trade Agreement (nafta), further integrating their respective economies while maintaining their national sovereignties. However, many Canadians deeply oppose strengthening nafta, arguing that Canada is already being absorbed into the larger US economy and is losing its political sovereignty in the process. These Canadians also worry that “nafta+” will mean having to go along with the dominant American ideology, with its emphasis on an older American Dream, the central tenets of which are at odds with Canada’s deeply held cultural and social values. They fear that the new “continentalism” is merely coded language for erasing the forty-ninth parallel, having a customs union, a common currency, and a fully integrated economy protected by continental security agreements, including President Bush’s missile defence initiative. In short, they fear that it is a front for a twenty-first-century high-tech American colonialism designed to grab hold of Canada’s rich resources and remake its citizenry in the American image.

Critics of nafta, and of international trade-liberalization treaties in general, argue that such mega-initiatives often overlook particulars, and cite the ongoing softwood lumber and “mad cow” disputes as examples of the clumsy and often unjust consequences of such agreements. Opponents of the “one container fits all” approach to continentalism also worry that Canada is becoming so dependent on exports to the US (currently 86 percent of Canadian exports flow south) that the country may eventually be forced to accept whatever commercial and political terms the US chooses to impose. This is why Canada’s nafta critics insist on trade, investment, and fiscal policies that encourage the growth of a robust internal market and overseas trade, on reforms to safeguard Canadian industries from US protectionism, and on measures to redress the current trade imbalance between Canada and the US.

There is, however, another option. According to former Canadian Minister of External Affairs Lloyd Axworthy, the 1990s saw the emergence of a spider’s web of regional cross-border networks. In the US, owing to both its tradition of states’ rights and a Supreme Court looking askance at “commandeering” (i.e., the use of state legislatures for the implementation of federal initiatives), states are mostly free to determine economic agreements. And during the 1990s, significant steps were taken by border states to increase ties with Canadian provinces—a development that found a receptive audience in the north. In 1999, then-Ontario Premier Mike Harris, in a speech to American governors, said, “We really see you as very strong allies, more so than many parts of Canada, something far more significant than perhaps my national government understands.” Indeed, regional associations from coast to coast (e.g., the Conference of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers; Ontario and Quebec and the Council of Great Lakes Governors; the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region) have all signed mutually beneficial memoranda of understanding covering issues such as trade, border security, and the environment, all with an eye to harmonization.

The aftermath of 9/11 placed a temporary chill on this activity. With Canada being wrongfully accused of having porous borders and being a safe haven for terrorists, and with Washington asserting its authority over all aspects of domestic life, state administrations felt hamstrung and more deferential to the central government. At the same time, power in Canada was devolving from the centre to the provinces, a trend, based on statements by provincial premiers following Canada’s new health care accord, that appears now to be accelerating. In a November speech to his provincial Liberal party, Quebec Premier Jean Charest stated flatly, “If Alberta can get rich selling oil, why not Quebec with its hydroelectricity?”

While Canadian nationalists may bristle at such an assertion of provincial rights—to say nothing of Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams’ insistence on maintaining full equalization payments on top of 100 percent of the revenues from offshore oil—Charest’s statement clearly resonates through the halls of US state administrations, especially in those states hungry for energy security. The irony of the current situation, however, is that as Prime Minister Martin awaits the next salvo from this or that provincial premier, in his second term President Bush is consolidating power in Washington. US citizens can look forward to a national sales tax, an ultra-conservative judiciary and, in Alberto Gonzales and Condoleezza Rice, an approach to justice and national security that places Washington’s interests at the top of the heap. Despite the diplomatic niceties uttered by Bush during his Canadian visit last December, he is unmistakably a man on a mission, and foreign countries, as well as blue-state governors, are expected to fall in line.

Within hours of President Bush’s re-election, Canadian immigration offices were flooded with inquiries from Americans seeking information on Canadian citizenship requirements. On November 3, 2004, Immigration Canada’s website registered 116,000 hits from the US, up from a daily average of roughly 20,000. While traffic on the Web site returned to normal by mid- to late November, a series of December 2004 seminars in Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles conducted by Vancouver immigration lawyers Rudolf Kischer and Joshua Sohn on how to move to Canada, attracted hundreds. Reports from these meetings suggest that the election produced a new kind of refugee in search of “cultural asylum,” people hoping to escape the clutches of a heartland way of life that makes them feel like aliens in their own land.

Indeed, the US election results provided a stark picture of two Americas: one whose views about human nature, morality, and political beliefs are locked into an older frontier past; another whose perspective is more cosmopolitan and tied to a global consciousness. The latter group is concentrated almost exclusively in the clusters of Northeastern, Great Lakes, and Pacific states that border on, or are near, Canada.

For the most part, the anti-Bush voters share a greater cultural camaraderie with their Canadian neighbours than with heartland America. Canada’s Supreme Court ruling allowing for gay-marriage legislation came shortly after the US election, and one of the subgroups attending the seminars were gay Americans whose partners happened to be foreigners. As it currently stands—and with voters in eleven states favouring a constitutional ban on same-sex unions, there is no reason to anticipate any change—such foreigners cannot claim “family ties” in order to gain permanent U.S. residency status. Intriguingly, only two blue states (Michigan and Oregon) passed the anti-gay-marriage initiative. Polls also suggest general blue-state support for the other hot-button social issue, the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes, an area in which Canada is again taking a progressive position.