Anti-Americanism in Canada

The average Canadian seems about as un-American as Everett Dirksen. He drives a car designed in Detroit, watches Bonanza and Batman, reads magazines edited in New York, and frets over international Communist conspiracy. In spite of all this, the average Canadian does not like Americans.

Throughout her history Canada has struggled with the U.S. to preserve her national identity. Canadians regard the 19th century as a period of heroic resistance, when every year brought a new American attempt to achieve manifest destiny in the North. But at the start of the 20th century, the nature of the struggle changed. Americans began to see Canada as a market for manufactured goods and a supplier of raw materials, no longer simply as a source of new territory.

Since the First World War Canada has absorbed more of the total U.S. foreign investment to date than any other country in the world--more, in fact, than all of Latin America or all of Europe, and nearly as much as both areas combined.

Canadian prosperity, at least in the short run, appears to depend on continued American investment. As a result, most anti-Americanism in Canada has not focused on the investment issue, but on peripheral questions like the installation of American nuclear missiles on Canadian soil, or a plan to divert Canadian water into the U.S.

In fact it is the influx of American capital which poses the real threat to Canada. Americans now own or control 60 per cent of the Canadian petroleum and natural gas industries, 52 per cent of mining and smelting, 45 per cent of manufacturing, and virtually 100 per cent of the automobile and synthetic rubber industries.

Many Canadian businesses are subsidiaries of giant American corporations which contribute not only capital but also much of the technical knowhow for their Northern adjuncts. This has made it less necessary for the subsidiaries to hire large research staffs, and forced thousands of highly skilled Canadians, including a large percentage of the engineers and scientists graduating from Canadian universities, to migrate to the U.S.

The same factors that draw scientists away bring business executives from the U.S. to positions of leadership in Canada, thus reducing the opportunities for promotion of Canadians.

The satellite-status of most Canadian industries also affects Canada's export position. American parent concerns, striving to increase their sales to other countries, do not look favorably on attempts by their own subsidiaries in Canada to compete for the foreign market. Many of these subsidiaries sell only to their parent concerns, and therefore may not always operate in their own best interests.

Another limitation on the autonomy of Canadian business is the obligation of American companies to obey American laws. Despite strong protests from Washington, Canada has maintained trade relations with Cuba and mainland China. American business, however, is prevented by the Trade with the Enemy Act from dealing with either of these countries, and parent firms are generally unwilling to allow their Canadian subsidiaries to do so either.

Several years ago, for example, the Ford Motor Company (Canada) Ltd. had concluded a deal to export automobiles, manufactured in Canada, to Communist China. The deal was killed in Detroit.

By far the most serious consequence of American control is that Canadans feel powerless to manage their own economic life. All Canadians realize that decisions made in Washington or on Wall Street, over which they have no influence, can affect their lives as much as decisions made in Ottawa or the provincial capitals.

The Canadian government, however, refuses to take steps to end Canada's dependence on the U.S. At its annual conference earlier this month, the Liberal Party (presently in power) rejected former finance minister Walter L. Gordon's program to reduce the proportion of foreign ownership over the next 25 years to less than one-third, fearing it would destroy Canada's current economic boom.

But until Canada takes meaningful action along these lines, the situation will continue to deteriorate. More of Canada's resources will fall, by default, into the hands of American business, the percentage of American control over the Canadian economy will increase, and there will be greater popular hostility toward the United States. This trend will not be reversed until Canada buys back its economic freedom.