Jacksonians and Laurentians

The bottom line is that Jacksonianism is not a threat to Canada’s existence as a nation, however strongly Laurentians may see it as a monster under the bed.

Apr 04, 2023

Let’s be upfront. At some level, Canadian nationalism, at least the longstanding Central Canadian version, believes that the United States has a latent desire to annex Canada, viewing it as both a piece of unfinished Manifest Destiny of the 19th century and the logical end of the American Revolution, meant to expel the British from North America. In 2023, this is of course ridiculous. Canada has existed as a sovereign state for 156 years, and has endured and survived unity crises of its own. Canadians may debate the nature of the Canadian identity, and whether there is a Canadian identity beyond the sum of regional and provincial identities, but few conceive of this identity as part of the United States. Americans find the idea of annexing Canada right now as laughable. Canada is a dependable ally, and political, economic, and military relations run deep. Canada’s distinctive history and political systems pose any threat to American interests or the American identity. Republicans, the more belligerently nationalist of the two American political parties, would recoil from annexation, seeing not an expansion of American values, but as the “Jesusland map” brought to life, with 40 million new citizens creating an unassailable Democratic national majority.

So why does the fear of annexation still lurk in the back of the Canadian mind? There is certainly a history of American rhetoric about annexing Canada. During the Revolutionary War, American forces unsuccessfully invaded Quebec, and the Loyalist exodus to the north established Canada in the American mind as the home of those who rejected the United States, its institutions, and its values. Similarly, the War of 1812 was fought on American and Canadian soil, and had war erupted between the North and Britain during the Civil War, the United States would have faced attack from Canada. But the U.S.-Canada border has been at peace for more than two centuries at this point, the Fenian raids aside, and today is called the world’s longest undefended border. Confederation in 1867 was a reaction in part to thoughts that the post-Civil War United States would rediscover an interest in annexing Canada. While Canadians thought that a political union would make the country easier to defend, it also created a new country that was a much more natural ally of the United States than threat to it.

The most prominent English-Canadian historians of the early to mid 20th century described Canadian history as an effort to build a separate country north of the border in the face of strongly continentalist economic and social forces. Donald Crieighton’s The Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence, written in 1937, put the argument most directly, that Canadian economic development depended on the strength of the cities on the Great Lakes and the St,.Lawrence River, and that the resources of the rest of Canada, especially Western Canada, were important because they helped the cities along the St. Lawrence to develop. There needed to be a strong central government in Canada to ensure that a single national political economy developed, one that would be limited in integration to the United States. The Canadian Pacific Railway, completed in 1885, was an example of federal investment that would tie the regions of Canada into a single economy.

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The Laurentian Thesis of historians grew into what journalist John Ibbitson calls The Laurentian Consensus, which he defines as that “the direction of this country is determined by the political, academic, cultural, media and business elites in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and other cities along the St. Lawrence River or its watershed. On all of the great issues of the day, this Laurentian elite debates among themselves, reaches a consensus and implements that consensus. Their issues define Canada.” These elites view the federal government as the political tool for implementing their consensus, and resist province-building as a reflection of continentalist forces that threaten Canadian unity.

The Laurentian Consensus obviously does not push for greater cooperation and integration with the United States. It is skeptical of free trade agreements or deeper proposals for North American economic union, and has been open to pursuing national policies (oddly enough, including the National Policy) for the sake of making Canada different from the United States. These policies include broadcasting and Canadian content rules, bilingualism, multiculturalism, an emphasis on overseas peacekeeping, and even single-payer universal health insurance. Laurentian elites may even enjoy the perceived anger of the United States at this defiance of continentalist forces.

But is the Laurentian Consensus a little full of itself? Aside from the challenges to this view of Canada emanating from the Canadian political system itself, who in the United States would resent Canadian political independence, or appear to resent it in a way that would stoke Laurentian paranoia? There have been instances of calls for annexation since 1867, but they have been few, and not from important figures, at least not important from the American point of view.

We need to go back to 1891 to find the starkest calls for Canada to seek membership in the United States, and the calls did not come from an American, though they established a pattern of coming from the conservative end of the spectrum. Goldwin Smith, a British conservative, wrote a book entitled Canada and the Canadian Question, an assessment of the first quarter century of the 1867 federation, and concluded that the political economy that the Laurentian Thesis would come to defend was inefficient and unsustainable. The work featured a chapter titled "Annexation to the United States," in which Smith explored the history and politics of the idea of Canadian annexation to the United States. He discussed the various arguments in favor of annexation, focusing on the economic benefits of closer ties and the security benefits of being part of a larger, more powerful country. Smith also considers the objections to annexation, noting the existence of a Canadian national identity as a serious obstacle. Smith’s book found echoes (explicitly so–the first part of the book directly evokes Smith) in Peter Brimelow’s "The Patriot Game: National Dreams and Political Realities," which was published in 1986. The book focused on exploring the complex relationship between Canada and the United States from a hard right perspective, with a particular emphasis on issues such as free trade, and dismissals of Quebec’s distinctiveness, cultural differences, and Canadian nationalism as practiced by Pierre Trudeau’s government..

The Laurentian Thesis was nearly undone when the government of Wildrid Laurier negotiated the Reciprocity of Treaty of 1911, an early form of free trade agreement. Laurier called an early election, seeking a popular mandate for reciprocity, which the Conservative Party opposed, saying it would distance Canada from Britain and lead to annexation by the United States. This might have seemed like typical overblown rhetoric, but in the U.S. Congress annexation was a common argument in favor of the treaty. Rep Thetus W. Sims called for annexing Canada during the House debate over reciprocity. Sims, a Democratic representative from Tennessee, was the most vocal proponent of annexation during the reciprocity debate. In a speech before the House of Representatives on April 27, 1911, Sims argued that the United States should annex Canada in order to counter the growing power of European nations. Rhetoric like this helped doom Laurier.

To find a contemporary American conservative critique of Canada, we need to turn to the “Jacksonian” foreign policy school that Walter Russell Mead has identified. Named after Andrew Jackson, president from 1829-1837, Jacksonian foreign policy is characterized by a strong sense of American nationalism and a belief in the superiority of American institutions and values. Jacksonians sought to expand U,S, territory and influence to spread American ideals abroad. Jacksonian foreign policy did envision territorial expansion as an important element of US foreign policy, though in its time the focus was on expanding U.S. territory to the Pacific, rather than annexing Canada (though Jacksonians led the “54-40 or fight” campaign to control what is now British Columbia). Mead writes that Jacksonians are unlike other more internationalist and commercial schools of foreign policy thought, that “the prime goal of the American people is neither commercial and industrial policy, administrative excellence, or Jeffersonian liberty, but the moral well-being of the folk community,” one with its roots in the white settlers from the British isles that occupied the American interior. The ethos of Jacksonian foreign policy is for “the United States to summon the will and the means to compel others to yield to its demands.” Finally, “for foreigners, the Jacksonian school is the least impressive and the most deplored.” This thought would seem to apply to the Laurentian Consensus, which has perceived Jacksonian ire to be targeted at Canada in recent years. It has also overlapped with the now-dominant wing of the Republican Party, associated with former president Donald Trump.

Scholars of Canada-U.S. relations have explored the idea that bilateral relations, as deep as they run, are dependent on the partisan alignments of the White House and 24 Sussex Drive. There are numerous examples of Democratic presidents working well with Liberal prime ministers, and the ideological commonality between Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan helped make the first Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement possible. Conversely, there were tensions in the Kennedy-Diefenbaker, Nixon-Pierre Trudeau, Reagan-Pierre Trudeau, Bush-Chretien, and notably, Trump-Justin Trudeau. The sharpest disagreements have been between Republicans and Liberals, which has set the stage for a Jacksonian critique of the Laurentian Consensus on issues such as gun control, health care, immigration, climate change, and multiculturalism.

The most recent manifestations of Jacksonianism directed against Canada have been the reaction of American conservatives to the convoy protests in Ottawa, Windsor, and Coutts during January and February 2022, and Republican reaction to the increased number of incidents involving illegal crossings of the border from Canada into the United States in early 2023. In the first matter, some Republican figures poured vitriol on Justin Trudeau including Donald Trump calling him “a far left lunatic,”, and a large portion, perhaps a majority, of the online crowdfunding contributions came from American sources. A paper by the Heritage Foundation claimed that the convoy exposed “Canada’s hollow liberalism.” In the second case, figures such as Marjorie Taylor Greene have used Congressional hearings to accuse Canada of “assisting an invasion of the United States by Mexicans.”

The bottom line is that Jacksonianism is not a threat to Canada’s existence as a nation, however strongly Laurentians may see it as a monster under the bed, since in their eyes it confirms the paranoia about American intentions. Jacksonianism is primarily a domestic American political movement, and at this point in time it cares about domestic cultural issues. Canada, and the Trudeau government, are only criticized when there is a domestic political point to make, like opposition to pandemic lockdowns or opposition to asylum seekers.

References:

https://www.americasquarterly.org/blog/how-canadians-see-the-republican-party/

https://archive.org/details/patriotgamenatio00brim_0/page/n7/mode/2up

https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-effects-of-911-on-canadian-u-s-trade-an-update-through-2008/

https://www.businessinsider.com/tucker-carlson-us-armed-force-liberate-canada-2023-1

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/canada-border-hearing-congress-1.6793361

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/republicans-canada-border-analysis-1.6767883

https://www.cbc.ca/archives/what-will-richard-nixon-s-presidency-mean-for-canada-1.4892277

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/america-justin-trudeau-partisan-1.6357882

https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/62nd-congress/browse-by-date

https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2022/0218/Who-gets-to-protest-GOP-s-support-of-Canadian-truckers-criticized

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/house-republicans-aim-to-make-canada-u-s-border-part-of-national-security-debate-1.6293453