Exploring the US-Canada Relationship

The new US Government just paused its announced tariffs on its long-term trading partner, Canada. With tensions rising quickly, let’s explore the deep relationship between the two countries.

Long before there was a Dominion of Canada, the nation’s official name, there were Inuit and First Nation communities throughout. In the Great Lakes region lived Iroquois and other Huron-Wendat nations. In northwest Canada lived Cree and Dene nations, along with Inuits. Sioux nations roamed the land. All of the nations’ peoples lived off the land, hunting the forests and fishing the seas and lakes.

The arrival of European traders, missionaries, and colonists brought with it all of the communicable diseases we in America know all too well: cholera, bubonic plague (“Black death”), typhoid, smallpox, and a host of others. Those diseases spread rapidly and killed untold numbers over the centuries.

The new residents and original residents of the land went through growing pains in those early years similar to those of America. Treaties between Nations and the French, first, and later the British, were made and broken. Alliances were formed and splintered apart. Wars were fought between some of the Nations and, mostly, France. The period between 1700 and 1800 was a time of great turmoil, just as it was in America.

Eventually strong cultural and economic bonds formed between Canada and the United States. The first US consulate was set up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1833. We now have consulates in Calgary, Montreal, Quebec City, Toronto, and Vancouver.

We hold a batch of treaties with our great neighbor to the north, including the USMCA (revised NAFTA), Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909, Columbia River Treaty, to name but a few. We also belong to many of the same worldwide organizations, including the United Nations, NATO, Organization of American States, Group of Seven, and Group of Twenty.

Roughly 400,000 people cross the US–Canada border every day, and the two countries exchange billions of dollars in goods and services each day. That trade is critical for both nations, more so one over the other depending on the product. Take oil, for example. The United States imports about 60 percent of its oil from Canada; Canada imports nearly 100 percent of its oil from the United States.

Both nations have benefitted greatly from their partnership, as have nations throughout the world. Both nations are bound tightly together by similar histories and cultural backgrounds, and they share a common language.

I hope the current administration examines more closely its recent decisions. Canada is a great neighbor, one we should treat well. We know they would do the same.