Canada and the World

        Current Events with a Canadian Perspective

 

Last update

21 February 2011

Site map

 

Anti-Americanism in Canada

 

There’s always been a rather smug streak of anti-Americanism in Canada

 

Fred McMahon says that Canadian anti-Americanism is on the decline. Mr. McMahon is director of the Fraser Institute’s Centre for Globalization in Vancouver. He was quoted in a January 2007 issue of Embassy (a weekly newspaper published by The Hill Times in Ottawa) as saying the days of Carolyn Parrish’s “anti-American rants” are over.

 

Ms. Parrish was a Liberal MP who, in November 2004, stomped on a George W. Bush doll on a CBC comedy program. The previous year, an open microphone caught her saying, “Damn Americans...I hate those bastards.”

 

Embassy went on to comment that Fred McMahon might be mistaken; anti-American feeling is alive and well in Canada.

 

Canadians Don’t Like American Politics

Here are some astounding figures to support that. The BBC did a big, multi-nation poll in late 2007. The British broadcaster interviewed more than 17,000 people in 34 countries. Canadians picked, in order, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Japan as countries that play a “mainly positive” role in the world.

 

And, where did Canadians rank the U.S? Right down at the bottom as a country with a “mainly negative” influence in the world. We ranked the U.S. in company with Iran and North Korea, two rogue states that seem bent on acquiring nuclear technology for who knows what purposes?

 

Remember, this survey was about “American influence in the world” not about American people. More than a third of U.S. citizens themselves rated their own country as a negative influence. And, according to a New York Times/CBS poll in April 2008, 81 percent of respondents believe that “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track,” up from 69 percent the previous year, and 35 percent in 2002.

 

But, the downbeat sentiment is not directed against individual Americans. On a person-to-person basis the huge majority of Canadians like Americans; the feeling is mutual.

 

It’s right-wing U.S. governments that Canadians don’t like very much, and in particular the administration of President George W. Bush. The unpopularity of our southern neighbour would be better described as anti-Bushism. A year before Mr. Bush was elected, attitudes in Canada were quite different. In 1999, an Environics poll found 71 percent of Canadians held a favourable view of the United States.

 

Canadians are Centrists

Canadians prefer their politicians to be somewhere close to the middle. Sometimes, such as right now, they move a little to the right of centre. At other times, such as during the prime ministership of Pierre Trudeau in 1970s, they move a bit to the left. But, most Canadians find the pro-business Republican Party of President Bush too extreme for their tastes.

• They find the focus on freedom of the individual and reverence for free-market economics hard to take. Perhaps our harsh climate has made us realize the importance of acting together rather than freezing to death alone;
• Canadians cherish their social programs such as Medicare; they can’t understand why a rich nation such as the United States allows almost 50 million of its people to be without health insurance; and,
• We value cooperating with other nations in finding joint solutions to global problems. We dislike the gung-ho militarism and go-it-alone attitude of the Bush White House.

 

Unpopularity of George W. Bush

The policies of the Bush administration have pushed the anti-Bushism bandwagon into overdrive.

 

In his 2007 book Uncouth Nation Andrei S. Markovits says President George W. Bush has turned off vast numbers of people all over the world. “By his policies, habits, demeanor, and entire being,” writes Mr. Markovits, “Bush represents to [elite] Europeans the quintessential ugly American: arrogant, uncouth, uncultured, ignorant, inconsiderate, and aggressive.”

 

But, Mr. Bush is an extremist. No previous American president has generated so much bitterness in Canada or around the world. Neither the country nor its government should be judged by the actions of a small number of people. But, this is what strongly anti-American Canadians tend to do.

 

Mr. Bush’s replacement, Barack Obama (below with Prime Minister Stephen Harper), has been skillful in changing world opinion to a more positive view of the United States.

 

Extremism is Rare

Typically, Canadians look at American extremes and pat themselves on the back for being better than that.

During the presidential election of 2008 a video from a Republican political rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania went viral on the Internet. A handful of uninformed bigots were caught on camera making repulsive racist comments about then-presidential candidate Barack Obama.

 

Canadians would never be that gross. No? What about the racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic rants of William Grosvenor of Edmonton? Or, the anti-French extremists who stomped on a Quebec flag in Brockville, Ontario a few years ago?

 

The anti-Americans see the tasteless vulgarity of Las Vegas and compare it to the untouched beauty of the Rocky Mountains or Peggy’s Cove. But, we’ve got the equally tacky Clifton Hill area of Niagara Falls, Ontario, and, while we allow clear-cutting of vast tracts of forest, the Americans go to enormous trouble protecting the environment of the Grand Canyon and other natural wonders.

 

 

 

Canada, of course, has…um. Okay, so we don’t have a clutch of unhinged yahoos like these. The point is they are a minority and only fellow wing-nuts take much notice of them. But, they feed the stereotype that Americans are, as one commentator puts it “loud, rude, aggressive, boastful, and ignorant about the rest of the world.”

 

Fear of U.S. Dominance

In a 2007 book, Linda McQuaig says the process has accelerated recently. Holding the Bully’s Coat is Ms. McQuaig’s attack on the closeness between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Bush administration.

 

She claims that Canada has become a helpful assistant to America’s aggressive use of military power. She also alleges that Mr. Harper has become an ally of Washington in attempts to obstruct global cooperation on reducing greenhouse gases.

 

It’s this fear of being swallowed up by our giant neighbour that’s behind much of the anti-Americanism in Canada.

 

At some point, one of the fear-mongers will bring up the War of 1812, when the Americans invaded Canada. This event is taken as proof that the U.S. wants to take over Canada despite the fact that the last person who thought the invasion was a good idea died nearly 150 years ago.

 

That war forever created one of Canada’s most popular national myths - that the United States has both a strong desire to control Canada, but also an inability to win over its people.

 

And, more than a few Canadian politicians have been happy to exploit this streak of anti-Americanism. A century ago, Conservatives played the anti-America card. In the election of 1911, the Liberal Party of Wilfrid Laurier campaigned on a platform of free trade with the U.S. Conservative Robert Borden won under the slogan “No Truck or Trade with the Yankees.”

 

Fifty years later, the Conservatives were still America bashing. The setting up of U.S. missiles on Canadian soil was a big issue. Prime Minister John Diefenbaker loudly beat the Yankees-out drum but lost the election.

 

In the 2006 election, the Liberal Party said a vote for Conservative Leader Stephen Harper would be a vote for the most American-style government in Canada’s history. As though there might be something terribly frightening about this. The Liberals lost.

 

Canadian historian Jack Granatstein chronicles the long story of Canadian anti-Americanism in his 1996 book Yankee Go Home? He decided that the worst of it is past us. “... anti-Americanism,” he wrote, “was once the Canadian way of being different. Now it has faded away, and good riddance to it. Anti-Americanism never was and never could become the basis for any rational national identity.”

 

 

Source

“81% in U.S. Poll Say Nation is on the Wrong Track. ”David Leonhardt and Marjorie Connelly, New York Times, April 4, 2008.

 

© Canada and the World. December 2008

Updates June 2010

All rights reserved

Attempting to find an explanation for Canada’s subtle hostile feelings for the United States is a complicated topic that many Canadians have written about at length. Generally, a commonly held belief is that by trashing America, Canadians are able to create a collective identity for themselves. That is to say, when it is difficult to define ourselves for what we are, it can often be easier to define ourselves based on what we are not. We are not Americans. Therefore, we are Canadians.

 

According to Andrew M. Johnston, Co-Director of the Centre for American Studies at the University of Western Ontario “There are, in fact, only about four or five American studies programs in Canada, and only two institutions solely devoted to the study of the U.S., neither of them in Ottawa…In contrast, there are something like 54 institutions in the United States dedicated to studying Canada.”

 

 

Canadian Association of American Studies

 

Pew Global Attitudes Project

 

The Anti-Americans (a hate/love relationship)

 

“[The University of Toronto historian Frank Underhill] ‘suggested that foreign countries eager to work up public hatred of America should send delegations to Toronto to see it’s done by experts.’ ”

 

Canadian writer Robert Fulford

 

MEDIA PLAYS

UP STEREOTYPES

 

Canada’s media often play up these stereotypes. The TV show An American in Canada ran on the CBC in 2002-03. The comedy was about an American television news host who accepted a job in Calgary. The humour came from the arrogant, self-centred Yank’s attempts to adjust to Canadian values and culture.

 

The shelves in our bookstores carry volumes such as: Too Close for Comfort by Maude Barlow (2005), The Vanishing Country by Mel Hurtig (2003), and The Fight for Canada: Four Centuries of Resistance to American Expansionism by David Orchard (1993).

 

They all explore the same theme: that Canada is being drawn relentlessly into the American orbit and that soon its national identity will disappear.

 

ANTI-CANADIAN MEDIA

 

America has a small army of loudmouth media commentators who trash-talk Canada. Ann Coulter said in 2006 that Canadians “are lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent.”

 

Tucker Carlson, also in 2006 said, “Without the U.S., Canada is essentially Honduras, but colder and much less interesting.”

 

Pat Buchanan, in 2002, denounced Canadians as anti-American and the country as a haven for terrorists, while calling the country “Soviet Canuckistan.”

 

And, then there’s the Reverend Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, who operates the “God Hates Canada” website.