U.S. Influence Feared : Canadians: New Pride in Own Identity

Maclean’s, the Canadian weekly news magazine, once ran a contest asking readers to complete the phrase “as Canadian as. . . . “ The winner: “as Canadian as possible.”

That such a slogan should win demonstrates the ambivalence many Canadians feel about being Canadian, the self-doubt that many say stems directly from Canadians’ inability to define their identity, to distinguish themselves from Americans.

It also reflects insecurity, arising out of conflicting emotions that swing from admiration and envy of American accomplishments to fear of being absorbed by Canada’s southern neighbor, with Canada’s social, political and cultural identity destroyed in the maw of American aggressiveness.

Resentment Growing

So while Canadians may look like Americans, sound like Americans and even act like Americans (baseball is a favorite Canadian sport; the Bill Cosby show is Canada’s No. 1 TV program), many Canadians resent any assumption by Americans that the two societies are identical.

“We are different and we want to remain different,” former Minister of External Affairs Mitchell Sharp said once in a seminar on the future of Canadian-American relations.

Increasingly, this desire to maintain the difference is leading to criticism and even scorn of the United States. Canadians who used to defend the United States now favor a sharper distinction, a Canada separate from the U.S. economy and separate from U.S. foreign policy.

Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, an avowed fan of the United States, is pressing for further integration of the two nations’ economies. He emphasizes that Canada is America’s best friend. But other political and social leaders who in the past rarely questioned the close relationship have had a change of heart. They now contend that Canada has been pulled too tightly into the U.S. orbit.

Role as U.S. Pawn Feared

Thus, a Mulroney proposal for a free-trade arrangement that has clear economic benefits for Canada is in danger of defeat because of growing popular concern that such an arrangement would make Canada virtually an American pawn, with no economic, political or cultural identity of its own.

There also is growing unease here over the U.S. role in Central America. Even the Mulroney government refuses to endorse President Reagan’s policy toward Nicaragua.

Canada also has shied away from following too closely the American lead in South Africa, and has even been ambivalent on the question of arms control. It has refused to take part in Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative--the “Star Wars” space-based missile defense program--and expressed concern about Washington’s apparent willingness to violate the 1972 treaty limiting anti-ballistic missile defense systems.

But what may be the most troublesome aspect of Canada’s unease is a reluctance by the Canadian population, if not the government, to accept a renewal this year of the agreement establishing NORAD, the North American Air Defense Command, which helps to protect the continent against Soviet air attack.

“We should junk the system altogether,” Stephen Clarkson, a University of Toronto political scientist, said not long ago, “and come up with something that we control all on our own.”

There are no signs of that happening, but both opposition parties in Parliament, including the Liberals who negotiated the last NORAD agreement, want serious changes, along with guarantees that NORAD does not become part of Reagan’s SDI.

Beyond economics and politics is an increasingly strident call to exclude as much American culture as possible by requiring more Canadian content in television and radio programming, by restricting American ownership of movie theaters and publishing houses, by censoring American books and magazines that are regarded as pornographic or anti-feminist.

Anti-Americanism Evident

Some Canadians say this is not so much anti-Americanism as an effort to promote Canadian cultural and political independence. But David Kilgor, a member of Parliament from Winnipeg, says it is “pretty hard to argue that much of the nationalism here does not have a strong anti-American element.”

Anti-Americanism is not always readily evident. Many Canadians, particularly on the right, say that what there is of it is not important. Mulroney speaks of the two nations as best friends and full partners, and many business organizations and conservative economists press for even closer friendship. Even the staunchest ultranationalists have been heard to praise the United States.

Mel Hurtig, an Edmonton, Alberta, publisher and one of the country’s most strident nationalists, has said, “We’re lucky to have the United States on our border.”

Another nationalist, Sheila Copps, a Liberal Party member of Parliament whose opinions on U.S. policy are usually expressed in a shrill shout, recently began a speech by saying, “Nobody is a better friend of the United States than I am.” She then proceeded to denounce the United States.

Negative View of U.S.

In an interview, Hurtig described the United States, where he spends several weeks a year playing golf, as characterized by “violence, pornography and a lack of compassion,” certainly not a place for Canada to emulate.

That concept of the United States, as a violent, uncaring place where homeless people fill the streets, which are unsafe to walk on, is pervasive here, so much so that an upcoming government advertising campaign aimed at American tourists will promote Canadian cities as better than those in the States because they are safer.

When hockey fans booed and threw objects onto the ice during a recent game between Canadian and Soviet teams, a newspaper columnist chided the spectators for behaving like Americans. The full range of emotions on both sides of the question have come to the fore in the debate over Mulroney’s proposed free-trade agreement.

The prime minister’s opponents have generally ignored his argument that free trade would create jobs and guarantee access to the American market. They concentrate on what they see as a threat to Canada’s economic independence, its political integrity and its cultural sovereignty.

The debate has opened the door to some deep-seated but often repressed attitudes about the United States, attitudes that go wildly beyond the scope of Canadian-American relations.

At the height of the tension between the United States and Libya over last month’s terrorist attacks on airports in Rome and Vienna, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. polled listeners on the issue. The overwhelming majority of those who responded were critical of the American position. They said Washington was acting in a repressive and imperialist fashion.

Jim Laxer, a York University economist and former policy director for the socialist New Democratic Party, cheers for the New York Yankees and prefers the National Football League over its Canadian counterpart. But even Laxer argues that free trade means virtual integration with the States, and that, he feels, means the end of civility and safety in Canada’s cities and an end to the social welfare system that protects Canadians to a far greater extent than anything in the United States.

“Free trade will force us to give up the support the government gives to places like Newfoundland and the Maritimes,” Laxer said in an interview, referring to areas of severe and chronic unemployment where much of the population is almost permanently dependent on unemployment benefits and other support.

“Without UI (unemployment insurance) those people will flood into the cities, and we’ll end up with overcrowded neighborhoods, racial fights and crime,” Laxer said.

His concern is based on an American argument--that such things as unemployment insurance are subsidies, that they give Canadians unfair trading advantanges and should be subject to free trade negotiations.

Laxer and other opponents charge that free trade automatically means that the Americans will demand and get an end to other unique Canadian social and political and economic programs, but it is not these issues alone that ignite either nationalism or anti-Americanism.

Culture a Key Issue

It is in the fuzzy area of culture that the free trade debate really hits home. Ironically, artists and writers--people who elsewhere have advocated a worldly life without artificial national barriers--have taken the lead in a campaign to protect and isolate Canadian culture.

In recent weeks, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. proposed that all American TV shows be eliminated and be replaced with Canadian programming, which is heavily inclined toward nature shows and family drama.

A federal senator argued recently that foreign firms should not be allowed to own publishing houses in Canada, because they publish the work of non-Canadians. The Ontario Arts Council, which provides financial support to writers and small publishing houses, withdrew a grant from a small but highly regarded house because it was publishing too many “international” books--meaning non-Canadian.

All this points to an attitude that has survived since Canada was populated by British loyalists who fled the United States after the American Revolution, an identity defined more by what it is not than what it is. A Canadian poet once put it this way:

The dream of Tory origins is full of lies and blanks

Though what remains when it is gone to prove that we’re not Yanks?