Alice Walker

Alice Walker

Last week, the Omni Hotel on Sherbrooke hosted the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada’s annual conference, this year titled, “Canada and the United States: Conversations and Relations.” The conference brought together high-ranking decision-makers from the U.S. and Canada to engage in conversation with the audience and one another. The conference’s goal was to consider how this close relationship operates at the highest levels of business and government.

The program began with Governor-General David Johnston, a former McGill chancellor who helped found MISC in the 1990s. Returning to the university for the first time since his installation last fall, he announced, “I’m home.” He shared his vision of creating a “smarter, more caring nation,” and emphasized that this can only be done in cooperation with, and not in opposition to, the U.S.

“We have much in common, and much to learn from one another,” he said.”There has been no more beneficial relationship between two nations in history, at least from the Canadian viewpoint.”

The next portion of the program, “Presidents & Prime Ministers,” featured a taped message from former president George H .W. Bush, and a dialogue between former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney—introduced by businessman Charles Bronfman as “one of the most underappreciated and underrated prime ministers of this country’s history” and James A. Baker III, who served in the cabinets of the Reagan and Bush administrations. He appeared from Texas via Skype.

After mostly exchanging compliments and anecdotes related to their work together on NAFTA, the first Gulf War, and the 1991 Canada-U.S. Air Quality Agreement, the guest speakers briefly addressed the nature of the bilateral relationship.

“Through the years the relationship has been extraordinarily strong,” Baker said, adding that the two countries are essentially “joined at the hip.”

Mulroney admitted the partnership between the two countries is not one between equals. “The most important profile any prime minister has or ever will have is our relationship with the United States,” he said. “The president, the Congress, both parties, the interest groups, important members of the media if you don’t have that relationship, nothing happens.”

Throughout the conference, speakers offered various metaphors to characterize the dynamics of the relationship between the countries.

Canadian Senator and former CBC journalist Pamela Wallin compared the relationship to that of a teenage girl who has a crush on a star football player.

“If he walks by and smiles at her, she swoons and says, ‘Oh my God, he’s paying attention to me,’ and is so thankful,” she said. “But if he ignores her, she goes into a fit of depression and tells her girlfriends that she doesn’t really care about him anyway.”

“We live and die by their notice, and it makes us a little vulnerable on some issues,” Wallin added.

Gary Doer, Canadian ambassador to the U.S., disagreed.

“When I go into an office in Washington, I don’t go in as Oliver Twist,” he said in a conversation with David Jacobson, the American ambassador to Canada. “This is not love, trust, and pixie dust when it comes to trading in dollars.”

Quebec Premier Jean Charest and Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin, who spoke about relations between their two governments, agreed in an interview with the Tribune that, at least between Vermont and Quebec, it’s best characterized as a brother-sister relationship.

“It’s very much a relationship of equals—it’s not a question of size,” Charest said. “One can be older or younger, richer or poorer, they’re still brother and sister.”

Most speakers and questioners from the audience seemed to agree that the most pressing issues for discussion were trade and border security. One question to the ambassadors regarding the Omar Khadr case was ignored by both, though Jacobson addressed the general issue of Guantanamo Bay.

Tim Reid, a former U.N. peacekeeper, asked Doer whether Canada ever has foreign interests either opposed or irrelevant to American interests. He objected to Canadian investment in certain African nations with questionable human rights records, like Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

“I think we shouldn’t focus only on [trade],” he said in an interview. “Most Canadians don’t seem to have much of a concept that we have other interests, too.”

Though the conference went smoothly, some attendees were disappointed.

“It hasn’t been factually the most enlightening thing,” said Nicholas Moritsugu, a U2 economics student. “I’d have liked to see some more frank discussion. A lot of the stuff was anecdotal.”

“We didn’t ask people to come to be on the firing line,” added Antonia Maioni, director the Institute for the Study of Canada. “We asked people to come to be in a conversation.”