U.S.-Canada Quarrel Over the War in Iraq

Al Hanners is a retired oil geologist who worked worldwide for a major U.S. oil company for nearly four decades, and who was a Middle East geologist for that company in the early 1970s.

The newspaper headlines screamed, “U.S. Envoy Scolds Canada.” Imagine my shock and concern for it was The Globe and Mail, Canada’s respected national newspaper. I was on a ferry on March 26, en route to see longtime Canadian friends in Victoria, B.C.— fortunate for me because The Bellingham Herald didn’t report the incident, and that in itself is part of the problem. On-the-other-hand, The Globe and Mail devoted most of the first page and much of two sections of the paper to the incident. Here is part of what it said:

“At a breakfast speech yesterday to the Economic Club of Toronto, U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci said, “There is a lot of disappointment in Washington and a lot of people are upset about Canada’s refusal to join the United States in its efforts to depose Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.”

Paul Cellucci went on to hint that the expected visit of President George W. Bush to Canada later this spring might not happen. Prime Minister Jean Chretien said, “Canada is a sovereign nation and makes its own decisions.”

My shock soon turned to realism. The rap on George W., the presidential candidate, was that he lacked experience in foreign relations. George W., the President, quickly proved his critics to be correct. For starters, a newly elected U.S. President traditionally visits Canada, our chief trading partner. Not George W. He visited President Fox of Mexico instead, and Canadians felt slighted.

George W., the President, repeated the slight on 9/11. Our government ordered all American commercial planes to land as quickly as possible, and some 300 American planes landed in Canada. Canadians welcomed them, fed them, and cared for them, but George W. never even thanked Canadians for their compassion except in an accidental way when a reporter asked him about the matter. Now much of the world hates him.

As a child in Wisconsin, I was taught to be proud of our 3,000 mile undefended border with Canada. That was the way people should live. Later while a student at the University of Wisconsin, we always had a significant number of Canadian students, and I learned to respect them as they always were among the students who excelled. Some became my best friends.

Still later, while working in South America, I learned that Americans granted Canadian employees the ultimate privilege by placing them on the U.S. dollar payroll including benefit plans, thus making no distinction between Americans and Canadians. No other non-Americans except a very few Swiss got that privilege.

Much later when Iranians held American diplomats hostage, Canadian diplomats smuggled a few Americans out of Iran. I remember that day very well. We were living in Toronto, Canada, and were driving the freeway to Florida in our car with Canadian plates when we heard a lot of car horns sounding. Finally we realized the horns were sounded at us to thank Canadians for rescuing Americans.

While living in Canada, six years in Calgary, three years in Toronto, I learned that while Americans completely accept Canadians, some Canadians have a love-hate relationship with America. They love to visit and travel in the U.S., but they envy our wealth and power. It seemed that hardly a week would go by without finding a more or less anti-American article in the daily newspaper; but U.S. government policies, not Americans, were attacked.

I never, ever felt any resentment of me personally. Oh, I still practiced the advice I received when I first started work in Venezuela. “Stay out of their politics and let their women alone.” I kept my head down. One of my proudest moments occurred on a business trip with three Canadians to our parent company’s headquarters in a New York suburb. It was only when they noticed that I knew many of the staff in the headquarters office that they realized that I was an American, not a Canadian. I had “passed.”

At least that was the situation before U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci scolded Canadians for not having a knee-jerk reaction to the President Bush war policy, before I wrote this article, and before a few thoughtless Americans left notes on Canadian cars telling the owners to go home. I don’t agree that a lot of Americans “are upset about Canada’s refusal to join the United States” in the Iraqi war—only a few are. As I told my Canadian friends, more Americans than Canadians opposed the war.

East-West strains began years ago as western resentment of eastern freeloaders, because the more populous East enforced freight rates that favored the East. The resentment of what westerners see as eastern freeloading was exacerbated when the Canadian government imposed an export tax on western oil exported to the United States.

The latest Canadian East-West civil war seems to be of words, not deeds. Alberta, a Western province, is threatening to join OPEC. OPEC is an organization of countries not parts of countries, and hence, Alberta threatened Canadian sovereignty.

Populous Pacific Rim states and the province of British Columbia tend to be liberal; prairie states and provinces tend to be conservative. In any case, for example, a rancher or wheat farmer in the prairies has more in common with his counterpart south of the border than with someone in Toronto, New York, or other eastern cities.

Canadians are not only concerned about being overrun by U.S. culture, a few are concerned that U.S. will try to take over their country. With respect to that hypothetical situation, Americans don’t want Canadian problems. No Americans, in their right minds would want to take on Canada’s Quebec separatist problems.

Still, will U.S.-Canadian relations be mended and survive? I think so. Canada has no other good choice. It finds itself in the position of Qatar and Saudi Arabia that tolerate the U.S. for the security of attachment to a powerful nation. Even Tony Blair of Britain puts his career at stake to support the United States, and hence, with U.S. support, to strengthen his voice as a counterbalance to the French efforts to dominate Europe.

However, will the friendly U.S.-Canadian relations of the past be restored any time soon? Not unless we experience our own regime change. §