Cover Profile: Canada Necessary Neighbors: Envoy Touts Vital U.S.-Canada Interdependency by Michael Coleman Goodwill between the U.S. and Canadian governments has always ebbed and flowed. Sometimes it streams easily across the two nations’ massive borders; other times the positive vibes recede as each side stubbornly protects its own interests. Michael Wilson, Canada’s ambassador to the United States, started his work in Washington nearly two years ago—at a time when the countries were at odds over everything from the war in Iraq to border-crossing documentation to tariffs on lumber imported to the United States from the great Canadian wilderness. Immediately after presenting his credentials to President Bush in March 2006, Wilson predicted a “different tone” in U.S.-Canadian relations. A key factor in helping to improve that tone was the 2006 election of Canada’s first conservative prime minister in 12 years, Stephen Harper—with whom fellow conservative President Bush has enjoyed warmed relations. During a recent interview in his spacious office overlooking the U.S. Cap-itol on Pennsylvania Avenue, Wilson conceded that Canada’s decision to sit out the war in Iraq annoyed the Bush administration and for a time, cast a pall over the entire bilateral relationship. “I think it did affect relations at the time,” he says. But the towering, white-haired ambassador believes the chill is beginning to thaw. “In my direct experience here, [the Iraq issue] has not had any apparent effect.” And besides, he adds that the U.S.-Canadian relationship is simply too important for both nations to allow one or two disagreements to sour the entire bargain. “This relationship is easily the most important foreign relationship that Canada has,” says Wilson, a 69-year-old former businessman in investment banking and government finance minister who helped broker the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). “We have a huge amount of trade and a very substantial and lengthy border, so there is a lot of interaction.” Many Americans might not realize it, but Canada—not the Middle East—supplies the most oil to the United States, accounting for 17 percent of U.S. imports last year. “That’s right, Canada, not Saudi Arabia or any other OPEC [Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries] producer,” Wilson noted in a speech at the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce last year. “And Canadian production is growing, mainly because of the oil sands in Alberta. Currently, Canadian oil production is some 2.5 million barrels a day, roughly 1.0 million from the oils sands. With announced investments, the oils sands are expected to rise to 2 million by 2010 and potentially 3 million by 2015.” But oil is just one component of the extensive ties between the two neighbors. In 2006, Canada imported $230 billion worth of American goods and exported $302 billion to the United States—79 percent of its total global exports. Canada also recently purchased $17 billion worth of new military equipment from the United States. Of course, the relationship goes be-yond mere economics. There are now Canadian studies programs at 56 U.S. colleges and universities. Americans routinely travel to Canada to ski, hunt and fish (or to buy cheap prescription drugs), while the white sands of Florida’s beaches remain among the most popular destinations for Canadians seeking to thaw out during a long, freezing winter. But in the post-9/11 era, those cross-border excursions have inevitably become more difficult. The U.S. Congress, worried that porous borders entice terrorists, passed the controversial Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) in 2004 (see also May 2007 issue of The Washington Diplomat). The measure requires people crossing from Canada (as well as Mexico and the Caribbean) to produce passports for entry by land, sea or air. The air phase of WHTI took effect in January 2006, and the new passport requirement for land crossings was supposed to go into effect in January 2008, but U.S. officials—at the strong urging of the Canadian government—recently agreed to postpone the new edict until the summer of 2008. Wilson called it “cumbersome” to carry a passport for a simple border crossing, and the Canadian government is pressing the U.S. Homeland Security Depart-ment to consider some other form of acceptable identification. “We are in agreement on the motivation for it—to have a new, secure set of documents that would be used,” Wilson said. “But we have been pushing back on the Department of Homeland Secur-ity to make sure the implementation is right. “A border, like ours, can be seen as either a gateway or a checkpoint. For the bulk of our shared history, Canadians and Americans have seen our joint border as a gateway. However, since 9/11, it has been viewed by some as more of a checkpoint and this has us concerned,” the ambassador told the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce Policy Forum earlier last year. “Canada, like the United States, has increasingly allocated resources to border security and infrastructure. Canadian and American police forces man the Integrated Border Enforcement Teams, we share information and intelligence every day, and we cooperate extensively on immigration activities. While we once proudly said that the Canada-U.S. border was ‘the longest undefended border in the world,’ we really now should be saying, ‘We share the longest, secure border in the world,’” Wilson explained, adding, “It is not made secure because we have extensive physical barriers. It is secure because our peoples are peaceful and law-abiding. In that sense, it is a ‘friendly border.’” And a “friendly border,” Wilson argues, is necessary so as not to disrupt the massive flow of commerce between the United States and Canada—a fact the ambassador often stresses in his speeches across the country, citing the statistic that cross-border commerce produces more than $1 million worth of transactions every single minute. He also often points out that some 300,000 people cross the two countries’ shared border each day. In November, the Toronto Star newspaper reported that only 39 percent of Canadians polled were aware that a passport would soon be required to enter the United States by land. The survey also found that 42 percent of Canadians don’t even own a valid passport. “I’m not sure how much Canadians are really paying attention to it,” Wilson admitted of the pending new travel rules. One thing Canadians have paid attention to are the two U.S. wars raging in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although Canada decided to sit out the war in Iraq, its government has helped to fund reconstruction projects there. Wilson says Canada’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan was more easily justified because al-Qaeda had a stronghold there. “That’s where their senior commanders were, so they had a safe haven,” he says. “We, with other NATO members and U.N. members, decided that this was important.” Canada currently has about 2,500 troops serving in Afghanistan, mostly in Kandahar and elsewhere in the southern part of the country. So far, 71 Canadian soldiers have been killed in the war-torn nation—a fact Wilson admits makes many Canadians angry. “The largest portion of [those deaths] was in the last couple of years,” Wilson says with a tinge of regret in his voice. “It’s a very visible engagement and people don’t like that.” Next Page

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