CANADA: The New Reality: Nationalism

“As of this moment, Canada will become part of the United States of America. The Government of Canada is hereby dissolved … To ensure that this transfer of power takes place smoothly and without incident, transport aircraft and helicopters of the United States Air Force carrying troops and equipment are now landing at airports in all major Canadian cities and at all Canadian Armed Forces bases…”

This chilling statement, attributed to the President of the U.S. in 1980, who is retaliating against Canada’s refusal to surrender vast quantities of natural gas to the U.S., is the beginning of a 1973 Canadian bestseller entitled Ultimatum. By the time the novel ends, all is lost; the Governor General of Canada muses sadly, “We fought for our independence as long as possible, but it couldn’t last.” Even while Canadians were mulling over that fanciful prophecy, its stridently nationalistic author, Toronto Lawyer Richard Rohmer, was producing an equally flamboyant sequel, Exxoneration. This time the U.S. invades Canada but is beaten back by Canadian forces with some help from the Soviet Union.

Americans who fondly remember the days when both Canada and the U.S. boasted about sharing “the longest undefended border in the world” may be inclined to dismiss such extremist literary nonsense out of hand. Yet the best-selling Rohmer novels are bizarrely representative of one aspect of the current Canadian mood: a rising nationalism and its inevitable corollary, a growing anti-Americanism. The Toronto Star published a story last September alleging that the U.S. had actually massed tanks and heavy artillery at the border in preparation for an invasion during the terrorist kidnapings and crisis in Quebec in October 1970. The story was patently untrue but was taken seriously enough for the Canadian federal government to feel obliged to deny it.

Irritating Rhetoric. The new nationalistic spirit has been heightened by the energy crisis. Canada is the only Western industrial nation that is self-sufficient in energy, and it has not been hesitant about asserting its new-found strength, sometimes to the discomfiture of the U.S. Without the courtesy of consulting Washington, as it often did in the past on such matters, the Ottawa government last year increased the tax on its oil exports to the U.S. from 40¢ per bbl. to $5.20, thereby making Canadian oil, which accounts for 20% of all U.S. imports, the most expensive crude on the Chicago market. In a subsequent move, Canada announced a 60% price increase for the natural gas it exports to the U.S. Three weeks ago, Ottawa announced that it would sharply reduce oil exports to the U.S., from the present 900,000 bbl. per day to perhaps 650,000 by next summer. Under the new schedule, Canadian oil exports to the U.S. could end completely by 1982.

U.S. officials understand that the Canadians are protecting their own interests; Canada’s present oil reserves will run out in about eight years, and there is no adequate technology to exploit the deeply buried oil deposits in the Athabasca tar sands. Washington was irritated, nonetheless, by the manner of the Canadian actions and the rhetoric that accompanied them. Said one External Affairs Ministry official: “We want to make it clear to the Americans that we’re not just a big warehouse up north. Now they’ll learn to listen to us.”

The anti-American feeling is, in a way, a response to an old identity problem, first resulting from Canada’s colonial status and later from its reliance upon the powerful U.S. Even Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau once called his country “a mouse in the shadow of an elephant”—a proud nation of 22 million people and a G.N.P. of $137.6 billion, lying adjacent to and dependent upon a superpower of 212 million people and a G.N.P. of $1.4 trillion.

After World War II, Canada welcomed an infusion of U.S. capital and technology that helped it attain the second highest standard of living in the world. But as a result, the Canadian automobile, oil and major-appliance industries became dominated by U.S. companies. Similarly, book and magazine publishing, television and the theater have all been heavily influenced by, or even controlled from, the U.S. Small wonder that in a recent poll by the Canadian Institute of Public Opinion, 57% of Canadians questioned said that they felt that “the Canadian way of life was being too much influenced by the U.S.”

In 1956, only 27% thought so.

Protests against American influence cover a wide range of problems—some serious, some not. A few weeks ago, the Ontario legislature attacked the federal government for giving financial aid to the subsidiaries of three U.S. blue-jeans manufacturers, who were allegedly “squeezing true Canadian jeans manufacturers out of business.” Canadian television, which once relied all but exclusively on U.S. programming, must now, by federal ruling, be 60% Canadian in content. Last month the Independent Publishers Association and the Writers Union of Canada called on Canadian authors and publishers not to sell paperback rights to U.S. publishers.*

In part, the growing national pride can be traced to the 1967 centennial celebration—the most visible symbol, perhaps, was Montreal’s Expo—and to a growing awareness of the nation’s long-neglected history and culture: Canadians have been searching out their identity in an unprecedented flood of new novels, histories, plays and critical essays.

Liberating Effect. Canada’s sense of itself can also be traced, ironically, to the country’s cultural dependence on the U.S. Like the American public, Canadians watched live TV coverage of the Kennedy assassinations, the nightly horrors from Viet Nam and the Senate Watergate hearings. Seeing the turmoil in the U.S., often with profound sadness, had a kind of liberating effect on many Canadians; the country that traditionally helped to set Canadians’ standards was now seen as flawed and troubled.

The anti-American spirit is centered in the wealthy province of Ontario, and particularly in burgeoning Toronto. It is much less pronounced in the Maritimes and in the Far West, while Quebec is more concerned about maintaining its own French identity within a predominantly English-speaking country. But as a phenomenon, nationalism is increasing throughout Canada, to the point where many influential Canadians now worry about it.

Low-Key Affair. Businessman William Wilder, chairman of Canadian Arctic Gas Pipeline Ltd., decries the “negative nationalism” that is “reflected in the attitude that whatever is good for the U.S. must be bad for Canada.” Novelist Mordecai Richler (The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz) talks of a “self-indulgent cultural nationalism” that in effect licenses mediocrity.

Since 1969, the Canadian government, which once followed a foreign policy closely aligned with that of the U.S., has pursued what it calls the “third option.” Rather than allow Canada to be increasingly “absorbed” by U.S. power or, conversely, make a total break with U.S. policy, Prime Minister Trudeau has set an independent course by strengthening Canadian relations with Western Europe and the Far East and creating new ties with China and the Soviet Union. Trudeau visited Brussels and Paris in October to seek special trade relations with the Common Market, and early next year he may go to West Germany, Portugal and Italy for the same purpose.

In domestic policy, Trudeau has always refrained from taking a strongly nationalistic line. But this fall he has allowed some of his more nationalistic colleagues in the Cabinet to become more vocal on the subject—partly because of the national trend and partly because his victory last summer was made possible by the support of strongly nationalistic Liberals in Toronto and Southern Ontario.

Trudeau’s 24-hour visit to Washington last week was a rather low-key affair —a chance for Trudeau to meet President Ford and discuss with him matters like Canada’s new oil policy. On that issue, the Prime Minister made it clear that Canada will not change its plans to cut off oil exports to the U.S. Although he conceded that there were disagreements between Ottawa and Washington on energy issues, Trudeau also said that he was “pleased” with the talks.

*The status of the Canadian editions of TIME and Reader’s Digest, both published in Montreal, is also under attack. The government may abrogate a law that permits Canadian firms to deduct as business expenses the cost of buying advertising space in the two magazines; ads in Canadian journals, of course, are also deductible.