Canada-US relations

A foreign policy of “America First” seems to pose a significant challenge to the liberal international order and perhaps to U.S.–Canadian cooperation. This paper investigates the bilateral relationship in light of developing disagreements about the status of longstanding international agreements. Will Washington’s new emphasis on placing America First threaten major institutions and the future of cooperation? Can multilateralism and the liberal international order endure without American leadership or, at minimum, a firm commitment to various institutions? Research will explore Canada’s responses to ongoing U.S. attempts to alter or eliminate NATO, free trade agreements (NAFTA and the WTO), and the Paris Climate Accord.

Energy and environmental diplomacy factors were a major, though often unrecognized, part of Canada-United States relations prior to the Cold War. Hydroelectricity was the most important of these factors, particularly power exported from the Canadian side of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence basin. The history of Canada- U.S. hydroelectricity relations, exports, and regulations offered here covers the key steps, institutions, and actors in the evolution of hydroelectricity geopolitics and governance regimes during the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. Most of the earliest large Canadian hydropower projects were built on or planned for border waters, which, after the creation of the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty, required formal coordination with the United States. Over the following half-century, prospective power projects on border waters continued to dominate the diplomatic dialogue. Federal governments or agencies established broad export restrictions, altering them occasionally, but often subnational governments, special interests, and specific power projects played as large a role in shaping the power trade. The result was a constantly shifting political and regulatory context, albeit one that generally trended toward cooperation and reduced barriers to electricity integration.

Eric Wittkower founded McGill University’s transcultural psychiatry unit in 1955. One year later, he started the first international newsletter in this academic field, which became (and remains) the main journal today: Transcultural Psychiatry. However, at the beginning of his career Wittkower gave no signs that he would be interested in social sciences and psychiatry; he originally trained as a specialist in internal medicine in Berlin. This paper describes the historical context of the post-war period, when Wittkower founded a research unit at McGill University with an American anthropologist, Jacob Fried. Using archival material from McGill, I focus on the history of scientific networks and the circulation of knowledge, particularly on the exchanges between the French- and English-speaking academic cultures in North America and Europe. Because the history of transcultural psychiatry is a transnational history par excellence, but also a literature of exile, this leads necessarily to the important question of the reception of this academic field abroad.

A physician by training, Prosper Bender (1844-1917) achieved prominence through his written work on French Canadians. In the 1870s, he joined the flourishing literary scene of Quebec City, a period that culminated with his Literary Sheaves (1881) and Old and New Canada (1882). Then, for more than a quarter-century, Bender lived in Boston, where he practiced homeopathic medicine and again played the part of an intercultural broker. Doubts concerning his native land's future led him to promote the American annexation of Canada; he also wrote for American readers articles on French-Canadian culture. More than a century later, Bender's body of work reflects the challenges facing post-Confederation Canada and the struggle for mutual understanding between French Canadians and their English-speaking neighbours.

Uncertainty about the future strategic environment is a rational impetus for cooperation. Despite a joint reiteration, by the US and Canada, of cooperation’s importance in managing and responding to future threats, interrogations about NORAD’s potential for future contributions in the North American defense landscape are relevant as it marks six decades of operation in 2018. Is NORAD, in its present configuration, sufficient for managing future threats to North America as well as strategic defense? Should NORAD be adapted to meet expected defense challenges? Or, alternatively, should it be replaced with a different structure; and at what risks? This chapter examines those questions through a discussion the importance of cooperation for uncertainty management, the challenges to cooperation as well as the role and limits of NORAD. It continues with a presentation of the possibilities for adapting the command arrangement relative to replacement employing arguments drawn from rational institutionalism. Finally, an exploration of the centrality of NORAD for North American defense cooperation and strategic defense is provided based on a comparison of the risks of adaptation versus replacement. Should the partners decide to participate in strategic defense, a pragmatic adaptation of the NORAD command arrangement is recommended through a use of the institutional provisions denoting flexibility. The chances for a successful mandate adaptation of the existing command are increased if stakeholders manage information transparently and effectively to minimize the risks of politicization.

U.S. Army enlistment records do not merely document military service; they can shed light on otherwise obscure aspects of American immigration history. This is especially true in regard to the Canadian-born men who joined the forces of the Republic during the Mexican War (1846-1848). Newly retrieved data indicates that approximately 1,500 individuals from British North America enlisted—a fairly widespread survival strategy at a time when people from the Canadas and the Atlantic colonies were increasingly seeking opportunities abroad. Enlistment records tell us something of the economic backgrounds of prospective soldiers and the ways in which the creation of a national market in the United States drew British subjects south of the border. Thus they provide a valuable glimpse into an oft-overlooked aspect of Canadian and North American history prior to 1849.

This article analyzes the rescaling of transboundary water governance and explores challenges and opportunities for the twenty-first century. The analysis is grounded in the example of the Canada–United States transboundary water governance regime, and asks two questions: What are the lessons learned since Canada and the United States first signed the Boundary Waters Treaty 100 years ago? And what is the potential of rescaling to influence the tension between the ‘sovereign rights’ of a nation and transboundary water governance protocols based on ‘good neighbourliness’?

Canada's actions during the Cuban missile crisis open a revealing window onto the Canada—USA relationship and the sub-state influences therein. By refusing a US request to raise the alert status of Canadian forces, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker precipitated one of the worst crises in the modern Canada-USA relationship; by secretly defying this refusal, the Canadian military leadership ensured that Canadian forces provided greater military support to the US than any other ally did. In this article, I argue that a significant divergence in the extent to which the Canadian Prime Minister and military leadership trusted their US counterparts represents a critical part of any explanation of this bifurcated response. In so doing, I rely on a new conceptualization of trust and how it influences decision-making in international politics. By applying this model, I develop an explanation for Canada's contradictory behavior that is superior to existing explanations of Canadians’ decision-making during this crisis.

Les actions du Canada durant la crise des missiles de Cuba ouvrent une fenètre revelatrice sur les relations entre le Canada et les Etats-Unis et les influences infra-Statiques s'exercant sur ces relations. En refusant une demande des Etats-Unis d'elever l'etat d'alerte des forces canadiennes, le Premier ministre John Diefenbaker a precipite l'une des pires crises dans les relations canado- americaines; en bravant secrètement ce refus, le commandement de l'armee canadienne a fait en sorte que les forces canadiennes fournissent aux Etats-Unis un plus soutien militaire plus fort que tout autre allie. Dans cet article, je soutiens qu'une divergence significative sur le plan du degre de confiance accordee par le Premier ministre canadien et le commandement militaire du pays a leurs homologues americains represente une partie cruciale de toute explication de cette réponse bifurquee. Pour ce faire, je me base sur une nouvelle conceptualisation de la confiance et la maniere dont elle influe sur la prise de decisions dans le milieu politique international. En appliquant ce modele, j'elabore une explication du comportement contradictoire du Canada qui est superieur aux explications existantes des decisions prises par les Canadiens durant cette crise.

Political borders, which delineate divergent political, social, economic, and demographic systems, affect the management of shared natural resources. Transboundary environmental management will attract increasing global attention as trends of population growth and natural resource scarcity drive coordinated solutions for environmental problems. Water pollution, in particular, will be a high priority for many nations because of the undisputed importance of water to sustain life and the unyielding characteristic of water to flow freely across political borders. The study of the Abbotsford‐Sumas aquifer offers a model to investigate the nature of shared resource management problems within two divergent cultural regions (western Washington and southern British Columbia), bisected by a political boundary (U.S.‐Canada border). Using the newly developed Transboundary Environmental Management Index (TEMI), the coordinated management of the organizations was ranked according to their “institutional capacity.” The research found that groups representing smaller regions were more likely to reduce pollution inputs, however, the community‐based success was largely contingent on the higher‐level political groups to recognize, support, and fund scientific research.

Canada's increasingly diversified trade and investment pattern may eventually give the country more maneuverability in its foreign economic policy than it ever enjoyed during the eras of Pax Britannica and Pax Americana. Frm the conquest of New France until 1914, Canada's economy was firmly within the imperial orbit, dependent upon Britain as a source of capital and as the largest buyer of its exports. The interwar years saw Britain vying with the United States to be Canada's largest trading and investment partner. Although Canadian and imperial preferences attempted to give Britain the edge, the Canadian government shifted policy by entering trade agreements with the US in 1935 and 1938. By 1939, the US was the predominant foreign influence in the Canadian economy. However, since the 1960s, new factors emerged to moderate America's economic influence including the decline of branch plants, the rapid growth of Canadian exports abroad, including the sale of manufactured goods to the American market, and the rise of Canadian multinational enterprises with extensive influence in the US.

This article presents and examines a model of legalization on an original dataset of informal Canadian–US defence and security arrangements (DSA) formed between 1955 and 2005. Non-treaty arrangements permit US presidents to bypass Senate ratification, resulting in expediency and secrecy, both assets in defence and security relations. That withstanding, informal arrangements contain provisions responding to certain strategic problems. They detail aspects of legalization: delegation; obligations; and precision. Leaders select informal arrangements to incur fewer public commitments, but design them to ensure credibility. In that context, what factors shape informal DSA legaliza-tion? Propositions developed from delegation and rational institutionalist arguments identify the factors influencing informal DSA legalization. The Canada–US case is ger-mane due to its ''rules-based'' nature and heterogeneity. An original dataset of the legal design of eighty-two bilateral DSA is introduced and analyzed. Results confirm cabinet shuffles and unified governments decrease DSA legalization while Democrat presidents and rising military threats increase it.

When American Methodist preachers first arrived in Upper Canada they brought more than a contagious religious faith. They also brought saddlebags stuffed with books published by the New York Methodist Book Concern – North America’s first denominational publisher – to sell along their preaching circuits. Pulpit, Press, and Politics traces the expansion of this remarkable transnational market from its earliest days to the mid-nineteenth century during a period of intense religious struggle in Upper Canada marked by fiery revivals, political betrayals, and bitter church schisms.

The Methodist Book Concern occupied a central place in all this conflict as it powerfully shaped and subverted the religious and political identities of Canadian Methodists, bankrolled the bulk of Methodist preaching and missionary activities, enabled and constrained evangelistic efforts among the colony’s Native groups, and clouded Methodist dealings with the British Wesleyans and other religious competitors north of the border. Even more importantly, as Methodists went on to assume a preeminent place in the province’s religious, cultural, and educational life, their ongoing reliance on the Methodist Book Concern played a crucial part in opening the way for what would later become the lasting acceptance and widespread use of American books and periodicals across the province as a whole.

Environment and History is an interdisciplinary journal which aims to bring scholars in the humanities and natural sciences closer together, with the deliberate intention of constructing long and well-founded perspectives on present day environmental problems. ABSTRACT Between 1965 and 1975, the United States and Canada investigated whether they should preserve and enhance the American Falls, one of the two main cataracts at Niagara Falls, by physically reengineering it. This campaign had its roots in local concerns, but tapped into wider sentiments and emotions about the famous waterfall, and came to involve multiple levels of government and the International Joint Commission. Engineers looked at whether it was feasible to remove all the rock at the base of the American Falls -the talus -which led to the dewatering of the waterfall in 1969. Using a range of techniques, including public consultations, the transborder experts concluded that it was feasible to give the waterfall a facelift, and presented a range of engineered options. However, the International Joint Commission ultimately recommended that it would be best to refrain from an interventionist approach and mostly leave the American Falls alone. Employing envirotech and emotional history approaches, this paper argues that over the course of a decade the meaning of 'preservation' in the context of Niagara Falls significantly shifted because of several factors: the emerging environmental movement, the cost of removing the talus and other alterations, evidence that the public wouldn't sufficiently appreciate these changes, and worries about tourism impacts.

This bilingual article explores the possibilities of post-bilingual “Canadian” memory and identity through the literary and cultural history of Canada’s largest extraterritorial diasporic community: the French-Canadians of New England. In examining textual sources through which New England French-Canadians have imagined their affinities and differences in relation to other ethnic groups and nationalities, from the mid-19th century up to the present day (e.g., Tremblay, Beaugrand, Kerouac, Plante, Proulx), an alternative model for the 21st century emerges: a politics of alterity in which an increasingly fragile “microethnic” memory continues to be rearticulated across linguistic and national borders to serve as a parallel narrative to metropolitan discourses of identity, exceptionalism and survivance.

Under a 1950 U.S.-Canada treaty the majority of the Niagara River is diverted to massive hydroelectric complexes. To hide the aesthetic impact of turning Niagara Falls into an energy waterscape, and retain tourism , the waterfall was physically reshaped and shrunk, and remedial works were built to control water flows and hydropower diversions. To achieve this, hydraulic engineers from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and On-tario Hydro relied on hydraulic models of Niagara Falls. Using an envirotech approach, I show how these physical hydraulic models were an integral part of the disguised design approach to remaking Niagara Falls, and I use this Niagara case study to critically explore the evolution of hydraulic modeling in early Cold War North America. The river and waterfall were transformed into a hybrid envirotechnical system, a submerged infrastructure that relied not only on steel and concrete, but also water, ice, and weeds.

This analysis examines the disharmony in American–Canadian relations in the period from 2001 to 2005. Canada and the United States co-operated in the early days after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, managing their mutual border and fighting the war in Afghanistan. Yet they soon came into conflict over American plans to invade Iraq and create a ballistic missile defence (BMD) system for North America. President George W. Bush and Paul Cellucci, his ambassador in Ottawa, were insensitive to Canadian concerns. Canadian leaders sent mixed messages to Washington, hinting that they would support a war in Iraq and participate in the BMD system, but ultimately deciding against each. The article examines the limitations of the tolerant ally interpretation of the Canadian–American relationship and illuminates the role of leadership in the rupture that took place between the two countries.

Canada and the United States share one of the most complex, interdependent, and asymmetrical relationships in the Western world. This article explores to what extent anti-Americanism constitutes an aspect of Canadian national identity. This article argues that there are strong, even at times legitimate, reasons why forms of low-grade, relatively benign, anti-Americanism continue to resonate in Canadian public life. This article focuses on the presidency of George W. Bush as the recent high water mark of anti-Americanism, and is divided into three parts. The first critically engages with definitions of anti-Americanism, employing a typology used by Katzenstein and Keohane (2007). The second part presents an overview of some empirical and interpretive research on Canadian anti-Americanism. Recent manifestations of the phenomenon have been closely tied to anti-Bush sentiments and a fear of ‘deeper integration’ with the US. The third part interrogates whether anti-Americanism is in part fuelled by American attitudes and actions, and concludes that these have played an important role.

The article explores Donald Trump's protectionist rhetoric relating to bilateral trade relations between Canada and the U.S. In particular, it presents how Trump's isolationist economic platform evolved into trade war rhetoric and how this rhetoric affected Canada. To that end, the article analyzes President Trump's statements and policies regarding the renegotiations of NAFTA, his administration's tariff policies relating to imports of Canadian softwood lumber, steel and aluminum, and Trump's opinions published in social media, mainly on Twitter. It also takes a comparative look on Donald Trump's and Justin Trudeau's ideological profiles to explain Trump's lack of sympathy and hardline rhetoric against Canada.

This article discusses the Canadian republicans’ goals during their armed uprising against the British Empire in 1837–38, and analyzes the political and geopolitical North American order in the late 1830s. Whereas the Canadian Rebellion is usually segmented into multiple isolated and short-lived uprisings by historians, this article proposes a more connected North American history that reconsiders the Canadian republicans’ ambitions and contributes to a better understanding of the pro-British and conservative American policy during the Jacksonian period. When they rebelled, the republicans, or “patriots,” of Lower and Upper Canada envisioned forming sovereign states within the American union. However, although many Americans supported an annexation of the two Canadian colonies, U.S. President Martin Van Buren, the Congress, and Wall Street actively collaborated with the British to crush the attempted revolution. In sharp contrast with the War of Independence and the War of 1812, the United States opposed Canadian republicanism in the late 1830s in order to maintain an Anglo-American continental order. In reaction to this alliance, the revolutionaries began to conceive a new republican experiment, distinct from the “corrupted” American republic, and to imagine a new nation—the “Twin Stars” Republic of the two Canadas.

Generally all the long term trends are driving Canada into a continental orientation in foreign and defence policy. There is no major geostrategic or technological trend in the world today running against this North American vector. It could be put off temporarily, but economically, technologically and geostrategically, close cooperation between the United States and Canada, even with an added hemispheric
orientation, is in the future of this country in terms of security affairs. It
will rival, if not surpass, traditional Canadian multilateralist predispositions to engage with European States as geopolitical counterweights.

This paper draws on Judith Butler’s notions of vulnerability, precarity, and grievability to examine two filmic texts: the Canadian Last Night (Don McKellar, 1998) and the American The Mist (Frank Darabont, 2007). Both primary sources feature the apocalypse as their principal narrative and thematic concern –a trope virtually unexplored from the standpoint of the production of vulnerability and the bodily dimensions of political and ethical life. In the present contribution, I conduct a close analysis of both films so as to identify and evaluate the significantly contrasting modes of vulnerability produced in these two narrations. I argue that these conflicting worldviews originate from the differentiated episodes of (de)valuation, legitimization, and recognition experienced by and in bodies in the face of the ultimate phenomenon of vulnerability: the apocalypse. My structuring argument is that Last Night complies with the notion of vulnerability as a locus of ethical cohabitation and affective engagement while constructing a heterogeneous sense of Canadianness. The Mist, on the other hand, deploys vulnerability as a discursive mechanism that causes individual and social bodies to be subjected to a range of violence-prone asymmetries and processes of dehumanization, rearticulating key rhetoric and imagery from American cultural history.

This article looks at the bilateral U.S.-Canada remaking of the St. Lawrence River and Niagara River/Falls during the twentieth century for hydropower and navigation. Utilizing a range of archival records from various governments and organizations, and an envirotech approach, I focus on the role of estimation for controlling water and ice formation on these iconic waterways. The engineers employed an iterative 'cut and try' approach which relied upon considerable place based knowledge of the local Niagara and St. Lawrence environments, which was then used to generate synoptic models that served as the basis for remaking those very environments. But the gap between local and abstract expertise often resulted in uncertainty. To deal with cases where they had only approximate knowledge, engineers and bureaucrats used the qualifying phrase 'as nearly as may be'. Not only did this allow them to proceed in the face of uncertainty, but it required experts to incorporate flexibility into their plans.

THIS IS YOUR CUE: TIME TO TAKE ACTION
Call upon the community or general public, parents and youths, mental health professionals, physicians and nurses, educators, Facebook and other internet social media, religious groups, athletes, celebrities, secular and SBNR, school administrators, news media, Hollywood, academia, scientists, employers and employees, business owners and managers, private individuals and public officials, to join their talents, opportunities, and influence to support student mental health and end school shootings. Sharing this article is one way you can help https://www.academia.edu/35809557

Should New Brunswick and Nova Scotia consider emission trading systems linked with Quebec, California and Ontario under the auspices of the Western Climate Initiative (WCI)? The Government of New Brunswick is currently considering various climate mitigation options to comply with the federal carbon pricing benchmark outlined in the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change. In late 2016, Nova Scotia announced it would establish its own cap-and-trade system though not linked with any other jurisdiction. In this paper, we consider the prospect of climate finance flowing into NB & NS in order to reduce emissions in these two Maritime provinces through the establishment of cap-and-trade systems that are linked to the WCI. Emissions trading under the WCI could see Quebec and Ontario firms buy emission allowances from their counterparts in NB & NS.

America’s attention is once again on health reform. Even as Republican governors preach caution, the Republican controlled Congress continues to vow to repeal the Affordable Care Act and turn Medicaid into block grants. Canada’s health care system is by no means perfect. But as this historical comparative analysis suggests, their embrace of universality, diversity, transparency and flexibility, could well inform America's  next steps.

Written in response to the project Borderline by photographer Andreas Rutkauskas, this essay reflects on the historic, cultural, political, and geographical tensions visually and viscerally experienced along the Canada-US border. Both as an emblem and physical manifestation of the modern nation-state that maintains its authority through the control and surveillance of its boundary, the Canada-US borderline evokes questions about vernacular and official land use, indigenous and settler territorial rights, and the cultural identity inherent in place. Responding to the border points as fraught cultural spaces, Rutkauskas uses his camera to reflect on the visual and spatial similarities—and outright banal ordinariness—found along the vast boundary. Focusing on the western-Canadian portion of the Borderline series, this essay understands Rutkauskas’s photographs as a reflection on the continued human transformation of the landscape. Ultimately, this project provokes the viewer to ask what it means to share an environment divided not by ecology, architecture, or ethnicity but by the arbitrariness of national authority.

Numerous scholars argue that the rules, mechanisms, and bodies established under NAFTA's Chapter 11 for the settlement of foreign direct investment disputes have undermined the policy-making capabilities of governments in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada for promoting public welfare in their countries. This article argues that Chapter 11 has instead contributed to reaffirming governments' power to enact and uphold social-oriented domestic laws. It demonstrates that Chapter 11's dispute settlement mechanisms were created and operate according to the interests of the national governments in facilitating and increasing the flows of trade and investment capital between their countries without compromising their sovereignty and policy-making powers.

In The Fence and the Bridge: Geopolitics and Identity Along the Canada-US Border, Heather N. Nicol adds to growing analyses of the functioning and perception of borders by focusing on the historical development of the Canada-US border-security relationship, tracing it from the present post-9/11 era back into the preceding centuries. While the book does tend to assume Canada as a country subject to US dominance, thereby inhibiting consideration of the growing harmonisation of North American security policies, this a worthy contribution to studies into the contested meanings of borders in the specific context of US-Canadian relations.

Drawing on the fragmentary chain of letters between George Woodcock and Herbert Read, this article uses these materials as a point of departure to consider the development of Woodcock’s cultural politics. Focusing on the memories he explored in his autobiographical writing, his histories of anarchism and Canada, and his project to live off the land, it examines the ways in which Woodcock looked to anarchism’s past to theorise afresh its future.

This is my MA thesis in its entirety.

Climate change represents a challenging problem in public policy. This project examines various
policy solutions to rising emissions, and suggests one that might be best suited to Canada, a highly integrated,
highly-developed economy which relies on natural resources, including fossil fuels, for its balance of payments, governmental revenues, and a small portion of its GDP. It adopts a public policy framework from Simpson, Rivers and Jaccard (2008) to analyze policy solutions using the following
criteria: political acceptability, economic efficiency, administrative feasibility and effectiveness at
reducing emissions. Additionally, it offers substantial discussion relating to the potential constraints
and opportunities to climate change policy presented by NAFTA, compliance with which is key to the
viability of any emissions regime. It advocates an upstream cap-and-trade system, integrated within the NAFTA area and regulated by an empowered Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), as well as complementary policies to lower emissions in inelastic sectors.