Canada and the United States: Differences That Count, [5 ed.] 1487544197, 9781487544195

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-Title Page
Title Page
Copyright page
Dedication
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: No Longer Plus ça change?
Part One: Populations, Impressions, and Values
1. North America’s New Demographic Destiny
2. Imagining Each Other
3. American Backlash, Canadian Compromise: 30 Years of
Divergence
4. Together and Apart: Canada and the United States and the
World Beyond
Data Sources for Future Research: Perceptions, Impressions,
Values, and Culture
Part Two: Governance and Governing Mechanisms
5. Elections: Why Such Differences?
6. Past Futures: Federalism under yet More Stress
7. Prime Ministers and Presidents: Institutional Differences and
Political Convergence
8. How Partisan Polarization Affects the Workings of the US
Congress and the Canadian Parliament in the Twenty-First Century
9. Courts and the Law
Data Sources for Future Research: Governance and Governing Mechanisms
Part Three: Economic Systems, Taxation, Safety Nets, and Democracy
10. The Complex World of Budgetary Policy: Made Even More
Complex by COVID-19
11. Health Care in Canada and the United States
12. Choose Your Parents Wisely: Economic Inequality and
Mobility in Canada and the United States
Data Sources for Future Research: Economic Systems, Taxation, Safety Nets, and Democracy
Part Four: Policy Differences, Policy Challenges, and Policy Change
13. Protests, Diversity, and Differences That Matter … for
Some
14. Twin Crises, Twin Ambitions, Twin Vulnerabilities:
Confronting Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss in Canada and the United States
15. Canada–US Energy Futures in an Age of Climate Change:
Balancing Market, Environment, and Security Imperatives in Uncertain, Disruptive Times
Data Sources for Future Research: Policy Differences, Policy Challenges, and Policy Change
Conclusion: Counting the Differences That Count in Canada–United States Relations
Contributors
Index

Citation preview

CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES

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Canada and the United States Differences That Count, Fifth Edition

EDITED BY DAVID M. THOMAS AND CHRISTOPHER SANDS

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

©    University of Toronto Press 2023 Toronto Buffalo London utorontopress.com Printed in the USA ISBN 978-1-4875-4419-5 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4875-4422-5 (paper)

ISBN 978-1-4875-4420-1 (EPUB) ISBN 978-1-4875-4421-8 (PDF)

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without prior written consent of the publisher – or in the case of photocopying, a licence from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: Canada and the United States : differences that count / edited by David M. Thomas and Christopher Sands. Names: Thomas, David M. (David Martin), 1943– editor. | Sands, Christopher, editor. Description: Fifth edition. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20230187110 | Canadiana (ebook) 20230187188 | ISBN 9781487544195 (cloth) |   ISBN 9781487544225 (paper) | ISBN 9781487544201 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781487544218 (PDF) Subjects: LCSH: National characteristics, Canadian. | LCSH: National characteristics, American. | LCSH: Political   culture – Canada. | LCSH: Political culture – United States. | LCSH: United States – Social policy – 1993– |   LCSH: Canada – Social policy. | LCSH: Canada – Economic policy –   21st century. | LCSH: United States –   Economic policy – 2009– Classification: LCC FC97.C23 2023 | DDC 303.48/271073–dc23 Cover design: EmDash Cover images: Byron Layton/Shutterstock.com; Wirestock Creators/Shutterstock.com; Photo composite by Matthew Jubb We welcome comments and suggestions regarding any aspect of our publications – please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or visit us at utorontopress.com. Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders; in the event of an error or omission, please notify the publisher. We wish to acknowledge the land on which the University of Toronto Press operates. This land is the traditional territory of the Wendat, the Anishnaabeg, the Haudenosaunee, the Métis, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario, for its publishing activities.

As was the case for the fourth edition, this edition is again dedicated to all those who have worked on Canada-US studies past and present.

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Contents

List of Illustrations  xi Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction: No Longer Plus ça change? 1 david m. thomas

Part One: Populations, Impressions, and Values   1  North America’s New Demographic Destiny  23 darrell bricker and john ibbitson

  2  Imagining Each Other  39 stephen brooks

  3  American Backlash, Canadian Compromise: 30 Years of Divergence  56 michael adams

  4 Together and Apart: Canada and the United States and the World Beyond  73 roy norton and deanna horton

Data Sources for Future Research: Perceptions, Impressions,Values, and Culture  104 barbara boyle torrey and joshua baker

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Part Two: Governance and Governing Mechanisms   5  Elections: Why Such Differences?  109 michael boda and keith archer

  6  Past Futures: Federalism under yet More Stress  130 david m. thomas

  7 Prime Ministers and Presidents: Institutional Differences and Political Convergence 152 thomas m.j. bateman

  8 How Partisan Polarization Affects the Workings of the US Congress and the Canadian Parliament in the Twenty-First Century  177 melissa haussman and lori turnbull

  9  Courts and the Law  201 chios carmody

Data Sources for Future Research: Governance and Governing Mechanisms  218 barbara boyle torrey and joshua baker

Part Three: Economic Systems, Taxation, Safety Nets, and Democracy 10 The Complex World of Budgetary Policy: Made Even More Complex by COVID-19 223 munir a. sheikh

11  Health Care in Canada and the United States  251 antonia maioni and pierre martin

12 Choose Your Parents Wisely: Economic Inequality and Mobility in Canada and the United States  272 john harles

Data Sources for Future Research: Economic Systems, Taxation, Safety Nets, and Democracy 294 barbara boyle torrey and joshua baker

Contents

Part Four: Policy Differences, Policy Challenges, and Policy Change 13  Protests, Diversity, and Differences That Matter … for Some  303 kathy brock and andrea migone

14  Twin Crises, Twin Ambitions, Twin Vulnerabilities: Confronting Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss in Canada and the United States  330 andrea olive and debora vannijnatten

15 Canada-US Energy Futures in an Age of Climate Change: Balancing Market, Environment, and Security Imperatives in Uncertain, Disruptive Times  347 monica gattinger and julien tohme

Data Sources for Future Research: Policy Differences, Policy Challenges, and Policy Change 369 barbara boyle torrey and joshua baker

Conclusion: Counting the Differences That Count in Canada-United States Relations 373 christopher sands List of Contributors  381 Index  387

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Illustrations

Figures   3.1.   3.2.   3.3. 10.1. 10.2. 10.3. 10.4. 10.5. 10.6. 10.7. 10.8. 10.9. 10.10. 10.11. 10.12. 10.13. 10.14. 10.15. 10.16. 10.17.

The values divergence of US Republicans and Democrats  59 Comparison of support for patriarchy across regions in Canada and the US  64 Country trumps religion when it comes to patriarchy  65 Canada-US growth performance 2008–15  227 Closing of the output gap 2009–15  228 Canada-US general government revenues 2008–15  228 Canada-US general government expenditure 2008–15  229 Canada-US comparison of budget deficits 2007–15  229 Canada-US comparison of the structural budget balance 2007–15  231 Canada-US comparison of primary budget balances 2007–15  231 Canada-US-OECD comparison of general government expenditure 2001–20  233 Canada-US comparison of functional distribution of spending 2019  233 Canada-US comparison of changes in the functional distribution of spending 2008–19 234 Canada-US comparison of division of responsibilities across central and other levels of government  234 Change in Canadian provincial budget balances from 2010–11 to 2020–1  235 Canada-US-OECD comparison of government revenue 2001–20  236 Canada-US-OECD sources of taxation 2018  237 Canada-US comparison of corporate tax rates 2021  238 Canada-US-OECD comparison of budget balances 2001–20  239 Canada-US-OECD comparison of structural balances 2001–20  241

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10.18. 10.19. 10.20. 10.21. 11.1. 11.2. 12.1. 12.2. 12.3.

Canada-US-OECD comparison of gross debt to GDP ratio 2001–20  241 Canada-US comparison of quarterly GDP growth rates: 2008–9 vs. 2019–20  244 Canada-US comparison of changes in the unemployment rate  244 Canada-US comparison of fiscal response: 2008–11 vs. 2019–21  246 Health care spending as percentage of GDP in selected OECD countries 2019  253 Health care spending per capita in US dollars in selected OECD countries 2019   254 Gini coefficient and 80/20 split for G7 countries 2004–5 and 2019 (or most recent) 274 Top 1% pre-tax national income share in the US and Canada 1920–2019  275 United States, net personal wealth inequality 1962–2019  278

Tables 10.1. 12.1. 12.2. 13.1. 13.2. 14.1.

Canada-US comparison of tax structures  238 Pre-tax national income share, Canada and United States 1980–2019  276 Pre-tax national income share, Canada and United States 1980–2019  277 Distribution of US and Canadian population by race 2016  305 Monuments removed in Canada and the United States 2015–21  315 Chronology of climate change and biodiversity goals by administration  334

Acknowledgments

When I think back, and look back, at the first four editions, the people I want to thank are in three groups. Firstly, there are the people who get a book published: Don LePan and Michael Harrison at Broadview Press took on the first two editions, and then when the University of Toronto Press took over the Broadview social science catalogue, once again it was Michael Harrison who was central to the book’s development and publication. Now it has been Stephen Jones, Marilyn McCormack, Jennifer DiDomenico, Rebecca Duce, Stephanie Mazza, and Christine Robertson at the University of Toronto Press who have brought this edition to fruition. And we owe a special thanks to Eileen Eckert, who did all the final copyediting, just as she did for the second and fourth editions. Working with Eileen is always such a pleasure. Secondly, I want to thank all the authors, past and present, and for editions 3, 4, and 5 my American co-editors – Barbara Boyle Torrey, David N. Biette, and now Christopher Sands. Chris brought to the table his vast knowledge of key people we should approach, along with the resources of the Canadian Studies Institute at the Wilson Center, where he is the Director. I am grateful for the efforts of Jacqueline Orr, an economic analyst on staff at the Wilson Center, who helped to organize our authors’ workshop in June 2021. We have also been able to use the work of Chris’s graduate assistant at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Joshua Baker. Josh was able, with the authors’ input, to update all the data sources and manage most of our communications. So, thank you, Josh, for doing this, often at exam time! Thirdly, I want to thank those with whom I was able to discuss federalism and Canada-US differences, especially now. There are the two Davids – David Cameron and David Biette. Here in Alberta, I was able to be in touch with Gary Mar and Colleen Collins at the Canada West Foundation, with David Taras at Mount Royal University who gave generously of his time when he was so gravely ill, with Trevor Tombe at the University of Calgary, and with a veteran of Canada’s federal-provincial struggles, Oryssia Lennie. Plus, my old friend and mentor Roger Gibbins critiqued my first drafts. My own views on Canadian federalism have been, I know,

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Acknowledgments

shaped by all the help and advice I have received in the past, especially from Jean-Luc Pepin, Claude Ryan, Alan Cairns, and Roger Kerans. A generation passing away. Above all I want to acknowledge the support and forbearance of my wife Maureen. She has always been a wonderful sounding board and source of advice. When thinking about Canada-US differences one often feels like a historian – someone who tries to explain change through time. But in other ways, one feels like a participant in events because of being a contemporary of them, and watching things unfold. As the late Tony Judt pointed out, “Being there invites a degree of engagement lacking in the detached scholar,” and at this stage in Canada-US relations my degree of engagement is at an all-time high, and undoubtedly made “detachment” difficult. I am sure this is a fairly general feeling. And now I turn these acknowledgements over to someone who works with international events on a daily basis, my co-editor Christopher Sands. David Thomas is a generous and patient collaborator and like many Canadians he is more comfortable highlighting the contributions of others than his own. This book owes its existence to David, who conceived of a comparative politics and policy text that would include data sources so that readers could draw inspiration from each chapter to further explore topics on their own. When the first edition appeared in 1993, I was the coordinator of the Canada Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement on the horizon sparked new interest in Canadian public policy and society in Washington, DC, and the United States. C ­ anada and the United States: Differences That Count countered the tendency to see the two ­countries as similar in all the ways that were then-thought to count: language, politics, economics, culture, and demographics. Instead, David showed that the differences were not only significant, but they could also be quantified and examined and mined for insights. Today, thirty years later, Canada and the United States are more integrated than ever and the need for a comparative, evidence-based approach is essential in more individual lives on the continent than ever. Historian John Bartlett Brebner (b. 1895 Toronto, d. 1957 New York) once quipped that “Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States.” Through five editions, David and his authors have countered American ignorance and Canadian malevolence, while demonstrating that we can learn about our own country by thoughtful comparison with our neighbours. Working on this book with David has given me a new friend and mentor and he will not find it easy to relinquish these roles. In closing, as David did, I want to express my gratitude to Jaqueline Orr and Joshua Baker for their help with this book; they are two of the next generation of outstanding Canadian scholars I have known and worked with, and without their help I could not have fulfilled my responsibilities as a co-editor alongside my university and think tank work. Above all, I am deeply grateful to my wife and intellectual companion Victoria Corke for helping me to discern what counts in relationships, international and domestic.

Introduction: No Longer Plus ça change? David M.Thomas

Given that it has been eight years since the last edition of Canada and the United States: Differences That Count, what has changed in terms of making reasonable, useful, Canadian-American comparisons?1 Are we not always dealing with the same differences? Certainly, some differences are foundational, as several chapters in this volume make so clear. Our institutions really are very different. But we must surely be at a point and a time when we now question many of our long-held beliefs and assumptions, be they political, economic, social, scientific, or religious. In the view of many scholars, Canada and the United States are both at a critical juncture in their internal and foreign policies and thus also in their bilateral relations, which for the United States will often take a back seat to their domestic and other foreign policy challenges. We want at the outset to recognize that we are indebted to all those who have worked in the field of US–Canada studies over the years.2 The fourth edition was dedicated to those who have done so, and we want to say exactly the same thing for this edition: we are deeply grateful to all the contributors who have taken time out of their very busy schedules to work on this project. Since the first edition appeared in 1993 we have seen a new generation of scholars emerge, and an extraordinary generation start to pass away. As the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a famous US political figure and senator, once roared at Barbara Boyle Torrey, who co-edited the third edition of this book, “The only international comparison that really matters to the US is the comparison with Canada. Tell me why we are different.” What we know is that, given the events of 2020–2, our authors will have key points they wish to make: things that matter and make a real difference to how we are coping with these extraordinary times. In spite of all their other work and commitments, we hope that writing for the fifth edition has enabled our authors to say things that they know need to be heard and understood. We have been fortunate to retain and recruit a wide array of authors with both outstanding academic credentials and, in many cases, deep personal experiences of the world of

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politics, diplomacy, public service, electoral regulation, journalism, and other relevant fields: for example, the CEOs of two of Canada’s leading survey research firms; two senior diplomats well acquainted with Washington politics; the former head of Statscan who was one of the architects of Canada’s tax reforms in the 1980s; and scholars who also head research institutes. It is always with deep regret that chapters get dropped. The fourth edition included an insightful analysis by Kathryn Lavelle and Tony Porter of our two banking systems and what happened in the crash of 2008. This has been supplanted by other topics but should remain relevant for anyone interested in our respective financial institutions. (Recall also the savings and loans crisis in the 1980s: more than 2,000 US banks failed between 1985 and 1992.) One of the all-time favourite chapters has been Henry Srebrnik’s discussion of higher education, which was completely updated by David Thomas for the last edition. It too is gone, because what is now happening in higher education remains uncertain in so many ways, from content to delivery to costs. Srebrnik’s central point about the much more powerful ways in which American higher education socializes and acculturates future citizens, and the fees charged by elite institutions, will, however, remain central to Canada-US differences, and is always worth rereading. There is extraordinary competition for entry into America’s top colleges, and the whole meritocratic machinery demands it, at a great cost to parents and applicants in all sorts of ways. Michael Martinez has written about electoral outcomes for the last three editions, but this time we decided that the focus needed to be not on the results themselves, but on electoral processes and how elections are being run, at a time when electoral rules are being challenged across the United States. We thank Michael Martinez for his work over the years. The all-important chapter on demographic trends and change which starts the book has now been taken on by Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson (authors of Empty Planet), and Barbara Boyle Torrey’s other previous contribution, her invaluable work on data sources, has been updated by Joshua Thomas Baker with input from all contributors. David Biette could not update his foreign policy chapter (written with Alexandra Kushner) due to his new job as the Director of the Council of State Governments (East), so this vital chapter has now been taken on by veteran diplomats Deanna Horton and Roy Norton. Chios Carmody has written the legal comparison chapter formerly written by the late Mr. Justice Roger P. Kerans. And Kathy Brock, who has written the chapter on comparative Aboriginal issues for every edition, has, working with Andrea Migone, contributed a new chapter on social protests and dissent in general, which of course includes Aboriginal protests and concerns. With regret we also dropped the chapter written by Jon Lampman and David Thomas, which compared a state and a province. In So Near and Yet So Far it was shown how adjacent jurisdictions that appear so similar – Washington State and British Columbia – are in key ways so very different. This had to be sacrificed, as energy, COVID-19, and protests had to be tackled instead. All chapters retained have been updated: overall there are nine revised chapters and six entirely new ones. In several cases the original author has been joined by a colleague, and in total eight chapters have been co-authored.

Introduction

The overall structure of the book remains more or less the same as it was in the fourth edition. Following the introduction (David Thomas) that sets the current scene for the whole book, the fifth edition commences in Part One by taking a new and completely different look at our demographic futures and their very significant implications (Darryl Bricker and John Ibbitson); Stephen Brooks discusses and dissects in a very even-handed way our historical and current perceptions of each other; and Michael Adams analyses our changing value structures based upon the latest survey data. The new foreign policy chapter, moved to Part One of the book, provides a sobering and comprehensive look at current foreign policy challenges and joint concerns (Deanna Horton and Roy Norton), written after a Canadian federal election in which foreign and defence policy were barely mentioned, but which now loom so large in our thoughts. This is the longest chapter in the book, but even before the war in the Ukraine began it was decided not to attempt to reduce its length because it paints such a comprehensive and clear picture of Canada’s overall historical and current relationship with the United States and with the world. It also reveals the weak cards Canada holds, why any discussions of Canada-US differences are inseparable from the international arena, and the fact that, as Horton and Norton say, “new Canadian governments can find themselves touting policies substantially disconnected from government’s capacity to implement them.” We hope that it provides a context within which we can assess more effectively some of the detailed components of our two systems. Part Two then moves to institutional and governance questions, commencing with a new chapter on elections by Michael Boda and Keith Archer, which sets the scene for the entire institutional discussion, and which once again reveals how simple and straightforward the Canadian arrangements are compared to what takes place in the United States. Boda and Archer make the vital point that institutions are sometimes saved only by individual integrity: it was key individuals who maintained electoral independence in the United States. This section then moves to a discussion of federalism and change, when both systems are still trying to deal with the lasting effects of the pandemic (David Thomas), followed by an analysis of presidents and prime ministers and political convergence (Thomas Bateman), the polarized environments in Congress and Parliament (Melissa Haussman and Lori Turnbull), and a seminal new chapter on law and our judicial systems (Chios Carmody), a system which in the US case has been much in the news. This is followed by Part Three on economic questions and safety nets. It commences with a look at the all-important, complex world of budgetary and tax issues in COVID-19 times (Munir Sheikh), when budgets, deficits, and fiscal stabilization challenges loom large. It then moves on to an absolutely key chapter on health care (Antonia Maioni and Pierre Martin), and then discusses the vital topic of inequality (John Harles). Part Four deals with three key policy areas and challenges, commencing with a new chapter reviewing social protest movements and diversity issues in two federal systems, at a time when these are very much front and centre in our concerns (Kathy Brock and Andrea Migone).This chapter, also one of the longest ones in the book, includes a discussion of the all-important question of Indigenous relations in Canada.

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This is followed by a revised chapter on environmental issues co-authored by Andrea Olive and Debora VanNijnatten, who tackle the critical question of our respective approaches to climate change and species extinction. It concludes with a new chapter on a key issue – energy interdependence and national energy policy, and how to move forward on these vital issues (Monica Gattinger and Julien Tohme). The conclusion, by Christopher Sands, summarizes some of this volume’s key overall comparative issues, highlights how our trading relationship is changing, and should set the scene for some lively debates about our choices. One central concern in a volume such as this, which covers so many interrelated but disparate topics, is the need for thematic unity. We did not want to try to impose any sort of rigid template on our authors.That sort of formulaic approach can adversely affect style and can rob a piece of its creativity. We have instead chosen what we hope is a more nuanced approach. What is intended is more like a map than a prescription – we believe it allows for differing approaches depending upon the area under review, while keeping the comparative focus clear.We have also shied away from a specific focus on either institutions or political cultures: they seem inseparable, and shape each other. We have asked our authors to focus first on the common challenges we face in the area under discussion: What are now the common challenges for both countries, and what challenges are still quite starkly different? Second, they look at how our two systems tackle such challenges. In what key ways do our values and our institutions drive alternative responses to what needs to be done or not done – and with what results? Certainly our differing institutions create different responses, but quite often institutions are subservient to political values and public expectations. We wanted our authors to bear the above questions in mind as they wrote and explained our differences, so that it is possible to see how these key thematic questions cohere and reinforce each other. One can argue that now, certainly, is a moment when scholars on each side of the border should try to take stock of what has happened, what is happening, and whither we are headed. Keeping contemporary polemics at bay is increasingly difficult at this juncture, when so much is in question, so much is at stake, and feelings run so high. Our respective political cultures, through which we all evaluate and interpret situations and proposed solutions and remedies, are in a state of flux. The state of our world is such that so many of the things we, in both Canada and the United States, have ignored – or done little to change – are now front and centre in our political debates. We are trying, and often failing, to find new, pragmatic, cost-effective, honest solutions and approaches to a growing list of concerns, including racism and intolerance, growing inequality, the quality of long-term care for the aged, the needs of the working poor, the provision of affordable and well-run daycare, affordable housing, the challenge of what kind of public health care system is in place, how much it costs, and who pays. To this list one has to add climate change and its effects, especially fires and floods. And of course there has been the pandemic itself, which has had catastrophic effects and has caused governments and the public to react

Introduction

in ways not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and which will have ripple effects for years to come. For a while the pandemic has forced us to consider what’s right and what’s wrong not just in terms of efficiency and inefficiency, but in terms of risk, the kinds of public risks governments should assume, and the public wrongs that governments should correct.3 There has also been the public backlash in Canada to governmental controls, culminating in the convoys, the blockades, and the invoking of the Emergencies Act.4 This action by the federal government reveals quite starkly that there are major differences between our two countries in terms of “rights and freedoms.” In Canada people can get confused because they believe they have untrammeled “First Amendment rights” to freedom of speech and assembly, not seeming to realize that Section One of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms states that the Charter’s rights and freedoms “are subject to such reasonable limitations as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” In addition to freedom “to” there will be freedom “from,” which means that the rights to express oneself and assemble can be limited by federal or provincial governments if it is deemed to be causing significant harm to others, and that the courts will weigh in on this if necessary. Our judicial systems are very different indeed. At the same time, while we were still dealing with the pandemic, an international crisis that affects both countries – and the whole of Europe – erupted: the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. This is surely going to cause Canada to reassess its defence budget and try to make up for its awful record in terms of the timely acquisition of modern equipment and adequate personnel. What other effects it will have remain to be seen. At this stage of the pandemic, in early 2022, we should perhaps remind ourselves of the late Tony Judt’s point that “we have freed ourselves of the mid-20th century assumption – never universal but certainly widespread – that the state is likely to be the best solution to any given problem. We now need to liberate ourselves from the opposite notion: that the state is – by definition and always – the worst available option.”5 How much truer is this observation now, after what countries have had to do to deal with COVID-19 and what citizens have expected them to do, even as there is still distrust regarding state activities in both countries, especially in the United States. Opposition to centralized control and direction remains a hallmark of the US scene, as does the assumption that if you have to pay for something yourself it will be better than anything the government provides. At the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, governments found themselves flying blind: none of the economic and political theories that purported to be guides for public policy proved to be of much use and were rapidly abandoned. Instead, driven by the need to “do something” and be seen to be “doing something,” governments innovated on the fly. Economic practice has left theory far behind. We seem to have moved out of an era when fiscal balance was at the centre of political life. Now we are playing with new economic theories, an enormous run-up in debt, and in Canada every major federal party was prepared to spend its way to victory in 2021. Chickens may well come home to roost in future, as interest rates rise, inflationary pressures grow, and there is still strong resistance to tax increases. This is occurring at a time when,

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according to economist Trevor Tombe, “the central issue in Canadian public finance is provincial debt.”6 This crisis has enhanced the public sector, caused us to ask searching questions about the state of public health, led to more centralization and control at federal and state/provincial levels, and created a changing awareness of the role of the state in terms of providing protection for citizens. The crisis also produced a backlash, and, as the need for protection and security diminishes, old grievances, accompanied by new ones, will inevitably emerge. The federal governments in both countries acted swiftly to provide assistance, with strong leadership in evidence in Canada at both federal and provincial levels: the prime minister holding daily press conferences, provincial health officers such as British Columbia’s Dr. Bonnie Henry reassuring and explaining things to the residents of BC and of Canada as well. In the United States the situation was a lot murkier. Congress acted, but the president and many of those around him offered very mixed and strange messages, and the country did not trust what he said, for good reason. In some key ways Donald Trump was a boon to Canadian identity fears, although Canadian feelings of superiority will have been dented by the protest convoys of 2022.There are concerns about Canada’s place in the world and our past sins, and always concerns about what is happening south of the border, but Canada seems to have turned inward. It still wrestles with a highly regionalized multi-party system, which includes a separatist party in Quebec and mutinous thoughts in Alberta – and it is trying to deal with what Michael Wernick sees as a dominant issue in Canadian governance for the next couple of decades: “working through how Indigenous peoples fit into the Westminster model and into the federation.”7 Canada also has to come to terms with its changing role in a complex interdependent globalized world, and so does the United States: the enormous range of responsibilities that fall upon a US administration is hard to overestimate. US leadership is crucial, as the war in the Ukraine reveals so clearly. In a text such as this there is always the danger that there will be an overreaction to the swirling mass of discrete current issues in the news – an emphasis on what the great French historian Fernand Braudel called “histoire evénémentielle” – at a time when one should instead stay focused on the underlying structural, economic, and sociological drivers of change, what Braudel saw as matters of “longue durée.” Right now, given all that was noted above, it is difficult to distinguish between major current but transient events and the longer-term forces driving change, but all the contributors have attempted to step back and take a longer view.8 Given how long it takes to publish a book, this was essential. So much that is happening now in our world has a historical and an Orwellian tinge to it: big brothers really are watching. In current academic language, we may be at a “critical juncture” when forces align and there are abrupt changes in institutional regimes with the emergence of a new consensus and new collective understandings. Usually such changes are driven by depressions, wars, revolutions – or a pandemic, accompanied in Canada’s case by heightened concerns over climate change, new economic realities, public health arrangements, a changed awareness of Indigenous issues, and a war in Europe involving Russia. In the US case, the war,

Introduction

the pandemic, and the environmental challenges have been accompanied by a president’s attempt to remain illegally in power, the cataclysmic divide between the parties, ongoing race and equality challenges, and changing great power relationships.9 The US may also be set up for critical juncture changes, but their institutions, the type of populism that has been fostered and cultivated, and vicious partisanship will make it very difficult to make major, lasting alterations. In sum, we may have reached a new reference point, what some would call a “secular milestone” that we will look back on as a turning point in our history, just as the 1930s were.10 However, the Canadian election results of 2021 were in many ways just a restatement of the status quo, and did not endorse the Liberal argument that this was the most important election since the end of the Second World War. But there are major challenges ahead for both countries, and the US scene looks ominous. All of the challenges our governments face are compounded by the vastly changed role of the media, and it seems wise to mention, in this introduction, some major media issues in our two countries. To win elections it is now vital to have an effective and significant online presence for a wide range of essential things, including data collection, fund-raising, and getting out the vote. Without one – “forget it.”11 All of the old “conventional” media are in trouble. Local newspapers used to be a major source of political information that people relied on in both countries – but not now. Often now a community’s media presence is only its Facebook page. Issues become nationalized and polarized. Thousands of local papers have folded. and there has been a massive decline in revenues, in readership, and in coverage.12 Traditional outlets used to be credible, authoritative, and well-staffed, operating under a set of journalistic standards. Accountability was important. In the recent past, the Calgary Herald employed far more journalists. Now there is not even one full-time Herald journalist stationed in the Alberta capital, Edmonton, to cover the legislature and all the issues related to budgets and the energy sector. And Calgary is a city of 1.4 million people in a wealthy province. This has happened across the country as newspaper readership plummeted – and continues to do so. Social media in Canada plays by the rules of US social media, because the platforms are the same, with the same divisive, polarizing effects, although these still appear to be far less in Canada: during the last Canadian election there was a remarkable consensus on the major issues. Shock-jock radio coverage in the US, which appeals to an older audience, is not a factor in Canada. During an election the Canadian TV audience gets its news from relatively nonpartisan network sources: CTV, CBC, Global, and, in Quebec, TVA and Radio-Canada. (As always, Quebec media are in a different situation.13) In the United States the hostility between networks is visceral: Fox News is battling with MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC. PBS tries to be balanced, but has a much smaller audience. Canada simply does not have the kind of outrageous US television and radio commentaries and commentators that seem to often dominate the airwaves.14 But it is the extreme forms of populism and outrage that now do so well in the online universe of politics. However, in some ways Canada has been more media dependent than other countries in terms of how it sees itself. A vast land, with a very diverse population

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and major linguistic divisions, situated next to the overwhelming power of US media, Canada has struggled to maintain a separate media identity under federal controls. The future for traditional media in Canada is really uncertain, including the future of state-sponsored CBC radio and television.15 All traditional media face “digital shock,”16 which has had a particularly corrosive effect on the coverage of political issues. Public opinion is highly fragmented, and many commentators are gravely worried about citizens not only being uninformed but in fact being misinformed.17 Only the wealthiest newspapers can have a formidable online presence, like that of the New York Times or the Washington Post, and people are reluctant to pay for online information. “According to a 2020 Ipsos report 70% of Canadian ‘strongly’ or ‘mostly’ agreed that they will only consume news they can access for free.”18 They expect this news to be instant and interactive. So the media world faces a very uncertain future in both countries, and yet it plays an ever-increasing, pervasive, divisive, political role, and was under relentless attack from a sitting US president who referred to journalists as “scum” and “enemies of the people” – surely the most ominous phrases one can imagine given their historical roots – and whose favourite word seemed to be “hoax” when referring to elections and media coverage.19 Once again Canadian media is a very pale reflection of the media wars in the United States, but will in future face the increasing pressure of “hot” issues percolating north via the internet. Stay tuned. In Canada as well as the United States “the person of the executive is now uppermost in people’s minds; party, policy, and to some extent ideology fade in significance.”20 Of course, the ways in which the pandemic has affected us all in our respective nations will be reflected not only in the chapters on healthcare, budgets, and equality, but also in the chapters on cultures, values, institutions, and finances. And the United States has to wrestle with the Trump legacy: given Trump’s refusal to accept the election results, and the extent to which millions still appear to believe that the election was stolen, what longer-term effects will this have as events play out? This may not be as major a factor as many have assumed it will be, but it is affecting US party politics and the future of the Republican Party in significant ways, and at the time of writing Trump could well run again. Many think he will.21 The startling number of Americans who voted for Trump is surely an indicator of how vulnerable the US system may be to the appeal of authoritarianism.22 Race, class, culture wars, conspiracy theories, and economic and social status issues provide the context for the enormous appeal of Trump-style demagoguery. Intolerance on both the left and the right is rampant. Forms of populism, attacks on privilege, and appeals to nationalism will continue to put pressure on political parties in both countries in different ways and with different results. American institutions are in crisis mode, and have great difficulty in pursuing long-term goals and effective policy development.This was not always the case, and the seminal Pal and Weaver study of how our two systems took unpopular but necessary decisions (The Politics of Pain) should have removed Canadian complacency about the superiority of the parliamentary system to do this.23 But this was a study undertaken eighteen years ago, and the US situation has really worsened.

Introduction

During years of such economic and political turmoil, one might expect that the things that differentiate the two countries would be altered. In some ways this has happened, and many of the chapters in this volume reflect rather different approaches to dealing with the world we are in, as Canadian values change, new governments and their ideologies take over, and the United States pursues its own goals and deals with grave internal issues – as it did in the 1960s and 1970s. However, even in these periods there may not have been, in Canada, the level of concern that there is now about where the US is heading internally, and there will surely have to be in-camera discussions in Canada, at the highest levels, about contingency planning in the event that US democracy falters.24 In this fifth edition it is still clear, as it always has been, that some differences between the United States and Canada are simply so deeply rooted as to be foundational. These differences are foundational for all sorts of reasons: institutional, constitutional, cultural, historical, the lived national experiences, and the policy legacies of earlier decisions, especially in areas such as healthcare, pensions, rights and freedoms, and welfare. These differences roll on, and are reflected in the American debates over the role of government, guns and gun control, taxation, debt, ­immigration, foreign policy, health care, abortion, electoral financing, voting, and police brutality – to mention but some of the key areas. This is not to argue that everything is more or less so predetermined that we pretty well know what course of action will be taken in each country under most circumstances. Contingencies matter; outcomes are not predictable. (As British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan is reported as saying when asked what was the greatest challenge for a statesman: “Events, dear boy, events.”) Personalities do play a major role, especially if they happen to be a president who lied routinely and tweeted unceasingly, and who was certainly capable of calling on well-armed civilian bully-boys, such as the Oath Keepers, to support him. Campaigns are even more focused on a single figure – the leader.What good social science and comparative analysis can do is show us that things are often not the same; policies (and institutions) cannot be transferred or replicated in an easy way and will have unanticipated contingent effects for good or ill, as will leadership and trust. Canadians may of late have learned quite a lot more about presidential powers, and the workings of Congress and the Electoral College, but structurally complex comparative questions like taxation, environmental regulation, trade regulations, and supply chain management will remain a mystery even for Canadians who tune in all day to US news. For Americans there will be an occasional headline or brief essay on something Canadian that has popped up. Given the state of our world, bilateral irritants are likely to take a back seat for President Biden! As ever, the United States seems at once more complex, more extreme, more conservative, more religious, more divided – and sometimes more progressive, as the environmental chapter points out. Americans do not look at things the way Canadians do, and Canadians often find this hard to figure out, or even accept. Many chapters reflect these dichotomies, which have been the stuff of debate about our respective political cultures for decades. Michael Adams’s analysis of the latest survey research shows us how far apart some of our core beliefs now are, even as

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American values change in ways that move some beliefs and attitudes closer to those dominant in Canada. For many Canadians, “America is hardly awe-inspiring. It is more like a traffic accident on a grand scale and Canadians slow down to gawk … prolonged viewing may cause nausea and/or delusions of moral superiority.”25 The United States is an outlier in so many ways compared to other advanced democracies: maternity leave, health care, pre-school care, murder rates, the size of the prison population, gun violence and gun ownership, private education at all levels, the death penalty, abortion laws, electoral restrictions. Canadians looked at the spectacle of masked men, armed with fully automatic assault weapons, showing up on the steps of and then inside a state legislature, with horror, as did many Americans.The continuing US debates about whether to inject, electrocute, gas, or shoot condemned prisoners who have already spent years on death row, and are in so many cases individuals who have been horribly abused themselves, seems incomprehensibly medieval. When the US system works well, it is enviable.26 Legislators at every level have far more independence compared to their Canadian counterparts, Congress can really hold an administration to account if it so chooses, and state legislatures are not subservient entities as provincial legislatures often are. Congressional enquiries can act quickly. A president can choose outstanding people from all walks of life for a cabinet.27 In turn, for most Americans, Canada is just not on the radar screen: Canadians are seen as essentially unarmed Americans who queue up for second-rate health care and more expensive products, in a country that relies on the United States for its defence, and really only has one highway, closed frequently by avalanches, mudslides, and floods. Such perceptions roll on, regardless of the era and even as our value systems change and media coverage alters dramatically. Canadians view with something approaching despair the gun-inspired rhetoric south of the border, the frequent mass murders, and the potential arming of, for example, school teachers – as do so many Americans, particularly following the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012 and all the other mass murders since then. Americans are faced with the continuing spectacle of little schoolchildren, killed by automatic weapons fire, who have to be identified by their DNA. However, Canadians still own a lot of guns – more than 12 million, which is 34.7 weapons per 100 people – and Canada has a fairly strong gun lobby. But the US is in a class all its own: 393 million weapons in private hands, which is 120.5 per 100 people. Millions of these are militarygrade assault rifles.28 Americans have good reason to fear what citizens who possess military-grade equipment and weapons are capable of doing. In the internet age, it is easy to assemble a group of “armed citizens” to defend and protect something, be it property or “freedom” or electoral justice.29 In the US there are tens of thousands of men, usually white, who would respond to this kind of call for armed, militia-style, vigilante action. In such scenarios the police may be confronted by men (and a few women) with superior weapons and considerable military training. Organized militia violence to defend “freedom” and “the constitution” and the counter-protests that

Introduction

would develop would be a new kind of civil war, and Canadians have reason to fear that this is a direction that, if not likely, is still possible in the US. The indelible stain on the US used to be slavery; now it is guns. They are seen not only as necessary for hunting, sport, and self-defence, increasingly they are being seen as a vital defence against government in all its forms, and as a guarantee that there could be an insurrection if one is needed. When it comes to crime statistics, especially homicides and prison populations, there is a mass of useful information available from the data sources cited at the end of Part Three. Overall the US rates seem to be triple or quadruple Canada’s: almost triple Canada’s homicide rate, more than six times the rate for gun homicides, well over quadruple the percentage in prison. (The US prison population is disproportionately Black [40 per cent] and Hispanic [20 per cent] and Canada’s is disproportionately Aboriginal [30 per cent].) The US southern border is frequently in the news as well, especially with the efforts to build a wall along it, and Canada can count itself lucky that it can have a more orderly process and does not face this level of illegal immigration problem so fraught with human drama and difficulty.  As chapter 1 points out, more than one in five Canadians is foreign born, compared to 13 per cent of Americans. Overall, two specialists who know the field well conclude that “Canada has done a better job than the US in shaping immigration policy to the nation’s needs and in emphasizing the positive value of diversity, including devoting resources to ease integration.”30 Perhaps one final example will really illustrate the enormous differences of scale we are dealing with. The US Marine Corps alone dwarfs the entire Canadian armed forces: 182,000 personnel compared to 72,000 for the whole Canadian Army, Navy, and Air Force. And the Marine Corps has far more aircraft: 350 fighters compared to Canada’s ninety-three aging CF-18s, as well as hundreds more helicopters. Such differences in scale make so many comparisons difficult. In Canada the provinces have been in financial trouble, but now with oil and gas prices far higher than predicted, oil-rich Alberta is projecting a 2022 surplus budget. However, as Munir Sheikh’s chapter shows, provincial deficits are still a major concern.The situation is quite different for US states: they do not allow operating deficits. Budgets in both countries remain huge documents that often bury and hide what is actually going on. Now, with massive new spending rolling out, this is more true than ever before in both countries. Just perusing the categories of spending and the astronomical amounts involved in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act is so illustrative of this. This was followed by the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed in 2021, the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act and the $500 billion Inflation Reduction Act, both passed in August 2022.31 The Affordable Health Care Act (“Obamacare”) moved the United States more in the direction of a comprehensive system. But Antonia Maioni and Pierre Martin show in their chapter how different the systems still are, as does any consideration of how health care is paid for at the state level. As with so many things in the US, the system is extraordinarily complicated. In Canada the pressure on the system will come not only from the effects of the pandemic, which

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may be significant, but from demographic changes, wait lists, the availability of medical services (especially intensive care beds), the state of care for the elderly, the increased need for trained personnel, and the inexorable rise in costs. A willingness to increase federal payments to the provinces was a key plank of all the major party platforms in 2021. Both systems are concerned with “efficiency” as it relates to costs, but in this realm efficiency alone is a completely inadequate criterion, as each system wrestles with questions of safety, accessibility, appropriateness, acceptability, and effectiveness. The US case also wrestles with profitability. In these matters there is much to be learnt from each other’s specific practices. Health care remains by far the most complex and expensive system of all to operate. Politically there have been significant changes that have moved the countries in different directions. The Trump effects and party polarization drive the US political scene. Turnout in the 2021 Canadian election was the lowest ever: 62 per cent. Many felt this was a completely unnecessary election. The winning party got only 32 per cent of the vote and another minority government.The results almost duplicate the 2019 election, with the exception of the emergence of the People’s Party of Canada as a major vehicle for protests, and it garnered more than 5 per cent of the vote.32 Turnout in the United States is now higher than it is in Canada, even though Canada has a far easier and very straightforward voting system (see chapter 5). In 2012, 2016, and 2020 US voters stood in lines for hours in all sorts of conditions, with poll workers spending days doing the counts and recounts under intense pressure; turnout in 2020 was 66.7 per cent, and twenty states had turnout rates of over 70 per cent. But running for Congress has never cost more, and bears out Senator Mark Hanna’s oft-quoted line that “there are two things that are important in politics.The first is money, and I can’t remember what the second one is.”33 The rise and judicial legitimation of the super-PACs, the raising through them of vast amounts of money, and elections for Congress every two years mean that the US scene is startlingly different. The United States has constant electioneering and extraordinarily lengthy campaigns. Although Canada has moved in the direction of permanent campaigning, Canada’s 2021 election campaign was only thirty-nine days! Another reminder of institutional differences is Senator Chuck Grassley, at eighty-eight years of age, announcing he will run again in 2024, after eight terms in the Senate (forty-eight years). In Canada he would have had to retire thirteen years ago, at age seventy-five.34 Stephen Harper’s government in power in Canada in 2012 produced the strange situation of a Conservative government that saw itself in more American terms (support for free enterprise, privatization, lower taxes, less state intrusion; desire for an elected Senate; more responsibility passed to the provinces; fewer government programs; looser gun controls; more prisons; less judicial activism; putting more politically charged US-style titles on acts of Parliament) still trying, as all Canadian governments do, to emphasize how different and Canadian (and British) we are.35 Where our two nations are in terms of our differences will, as always, be a matter of opinion, not just an empirical question; given the enormous range of opinion within the United States itself, and the differences between each region and each state, it is hardly surprising that generalizations are suspect. Canada remains “as Canadian as possible under the circumstances,”

Introduction

avoiding what one former Canadian prime minister, Lester Pearson, saw as “the twin dangers of subservience and truculent touchiness” living next door to what he also saw as a sometimes “intoxicated” nation.36 Canadian realities are not American realities, as the chapters in this volume so clearly show. Canada is a country that is “officially bilingual, officially multicultural, and de facto multinational, and we recognize a special place for indigenous people within the constitution.”37 And these things are still works in progress across a vast land governed by a very complex federal system – in which every province except Ontario feels hard done by and not as well served as other provinces.38 Our population mixes are also still significantly different. Out of a Canadian population of more than 38 million, 98.2 per cent speak either French or English, with over 75 per cent saying that English is their first language and 22.8 percent saying that French is. And the French speakers are geographically concentrated. Canada also has a very significant and rapidly growing Indigenous population of more than 6 per cent of the national total. Twenty-two per cent of Canadians were foreign born, and millions live abroad, including one million in the US. The United States has a significant African-American population of more than 12 per cent, but it is not geographically concentrated; 13 per cent of Americans are foreign born; and 18.7 per cent of the population is now Hispanic. The United States is a country that has been affected by a race question for its entire history, and the impact of race still affects the politics of social spending and policing, the allocation of public goods, and regional support for the two political parties.39 In terms of values and beliefs, the US now wrestles with serious institutional problems and a viciously divided electorate in a federal system that often exacerbates these divisions. And this worsening situation comes at a time when the challenges to be faced internally and externally are ever more complex, and require for their resolution a sustained, collaborative effort, not knee-jerk political responses.40 Our hope is that this fifth edition of Canada and the United States not only reveals what our differences are, but also helps prevent us from distorting or exaggerating them. It should make readers more aware of the causal variables that drive our systems. Canadians are always going to compare themselves to Americans, and so should try to be cognizant of the direction of change in the United States, the lessons to be learned, the difficulties of transferring policies or institutions, and the need to remain open to new evidence, particularly when it runs counter to Canadian biases and assumptions. Americans need to be less parochial, less convinced that United States “exceptionalism” is such a good thing, and must be willing to tackle – carefully and comprehensively – the social and economic challenges that are faced in both the short and long term.The recent massive budgetary spending plans are indicative of a totally new approach, which may produce major social and economic change. We also hope that these essays encourage undergraduates to think for themselves. The data sources are intended to provide the kind of detailed evidence that is often needed, and thoughtful study questions have been added to each chapter by the authors. As Munir Sheikh wrote when questions were being discussed, “I hope someone has the answers!” Just reading them gives one a real sense of the new challenges we face.41

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Political scientists (and others) have a distinguished record for being wrong in some remarkable ways: wrong about the fall of the USSR; wrong about the demise of the Shah and the rise of Khomeini; wrong about Iraq; wrong about Afghanistan; wrong about the health of the banking system; failure to predict the 9/11 attacks, the Arab Spring, and the rise of ISIS … The list of the our intellectual communities’ failures to foresee major events is a long one, and should make us aware of how necessary it is to “attend more exactly” to what is weighing down the regimes in question, and how important it is to take a really close look at what is actually going on before we rush to judgment.42 We hope that this volume makes such assessments easier and more useful, and that in assessing each other and our deep and extraordinary interconnectedness, we continue to strive to find ways to improve collaboration and cooperation, especially now, as we recover from a massive global pandemic, as we face a war in Ukraine, and as the United States wrestles with its own demons. Canada’s “defining relationship” is with the United States. Annually there is $714 billion in Canada-US trade, and it is fairly evenly balanced. In 2019 Canadian exports to the US were $336 billion, which represents 75.4 per cent of all exports (and were only $17.5 billion, 4 per cent of the total, to China).43 But Canada is now third in US imports after Mexico and China – a drop to 12 per cent in 2020 from 18 per cent in 2000. However, Canada remains by far the main export market for a large number of US states. It is imperative that Canada and the United States work to improve their relationships both public and private. As Canada’s former finance minister Bill Morneau argued in the 2022 Tom Enders lecture,44 Our two countries need to find ways to collaborate more directly, more personally, and more regularly; we should try to lead together when dealing with new realities that transcend borders; and Canadian governments at every level must stay on US radar screens at a time when their own domestic and other international issues dominate the news.

NOTES 1 A large number of very good books on this topic have of course appeared over the years since the first edition was published in 1993, one of the most recent being the collection edited by Paul J. Quirk, The United States and Canada: How Two Democracies Differ and Why It Matters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019). Many of the key points made and conclusions reached in that collection are echoed here, but since it was written we have experienced the pandemic, the January 6th insurrection and former president Trump’s refusal to accept the election results, and other vital changes to our economic and political world. 2 For a historical look at a key centre for Canadian-American studies, see Donald K. Alper, Bridging the Longest Border: A History of Canadian-American Studies at Western Washington University (Bellingham, WA:Village Books, 2021). The author was also the founding director of the Border Policy Institute at Western Washington University. 3 For a comprehensive discussion of what political systems should and can do, see Tony Judt with Timothy Snyder, Thinking the Twentieth Century (New York: Penguin Books, 2012). We may now

Introduction be at a point where the range of policies that are deemed acceptable to the population has shifted ­markedly – what is referred to in the literature as an “Overton window.” 4 The full economic, social, political, and medical effects of the pandemic are of course as yet unclear, and will take a considerable time to become apparent. For a discussion of how pandemics have affected society and what this one portends, see Nicholas A. Christakis, Apollo’s Arrow:The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live (New York: Little, Brown, Spark, 2020). Chap. 5, “Us and Them,” describes the disproportionate effects of the pandemic. Note also chap. 7, “Things Change,” and chap. 8, “How Plagues End.” 5 Tony Judt, Ill Fares The Land (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 202. In some ways it seems as if we are still dealing in nineteenth-century ways with twenty-first-century problems, and are avoiding the hard thinking needed to face our future. See, for example, James Barrat, Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2013). 6 See Trevor Tombe, “Provincial Debt Sustainability in Canada: Demographics, Federal Transfers, and COVID-19,” Canadian Tax Journal 68, no. 4 (2020): 1083–122. This was also discussed with Dr. Tombe. 7 Michael Wernick, Governing Canada A Guide to the Tradecraft of Politics (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2021), 207. See also Ian Brodie, At The Centre of Government:The Prime Minister and the Limits of Political Power (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018). Brodie takes serious issue with “the Prime Minister is a dictator” thesis, based upon his experience as Prime Minister Harper’s chief of staff and his own academic research and work. 8 In What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2020), Carlos Lozada makes essentially the same point. After reading 150 books on Trump, he argued that “[t]he books that matter most now are the ones that enable and ennoble a national re-examination.” 9 A graphic and startling illustration of the fear that Donald Trump might even try to use the military to cling on to power is contained in the open letter sent to him and his administration on January 3, 2021, signed by all ten of the living former Secretaries of Defense (five of whom had served Republican presidents). They felt they had to say that “efforts to involve the US armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory.” They said the election was over (“All 10 Living Former Defense Secretaries: Involving the Military in Election Disputes Would Cross into Dangerous Territory,” Washington Post, January 3, 2021). Another extraordinary illustration of the former president’s state of mind, his anger, and his impulses is the fact that he asked for the court-martial of two distinguished four-star generals – McChrystal and M ­ cRaven – who, after their retirement, had publicly criticized him. See Mark T. Esper, A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times (New York: Harper Collins, 2020). 10 For a heart-rending analysis of what happens when a political culture falls apart, see Marc Bloch, Strange Defeat: A Statement of Evidence Written in 1940 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1968). Bloch was an eminent historian whose account of the fall of France is a disturbing classic. He was executed by the Gestapo in 1944. 11 See David Taras and Richard David, eds., Power Shift? Political Leadership and Social Media (New York: Routledge, 2019). Also note David Taras, Digital Mosaic: Media, Power, and Identity in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015). 12 Over the past fifteen years it is estimated that more than 2,000 local newspapers in the US have closed (one in five), and there are only half as many journalists working on local news stories. In Canada there have been similar trends, especially after 2017 and now with the effects of COVID-19.

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David M. Thomas See https://j-source.ca/we-mapped-all-the-media-impacts-of-covid-19-in-canada. Also note George Packer’s comments regarding the nationalization of all news in the US, the hostility to free expression, and the transformation of the information economy, in Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2021), 204–12. 13 It may be hard for American readers, and even Canadians, to remember how different Quebec television really is. The vast majority of the most popular top thirty shows in Quebec are produced in the province. Outside Quebec only a handful of the top thirty shows are domestic productions. Television news and current affairs programs are also very different. 14 For graphic and clear examples of the kinds of extremist media that play such an important role in the US, see the PBS Frontline documentary, “America’s Great Divide: Obama to Trump,” parts 1 and 2, season 38, episodes 10 and 11 (January 13–14, 2020). It’s a shattering look at what has happened to the Republican Party, and how the US media scene operates. 15 See David Taras and Christopher Waddell, The End of the CBC? (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020). I wish to acknowledge the assistance and advice of the late David Taras for this brief section on the media situation in both countries. Even though gravely ill, he was willing to have an extensive conversation about current issues. The study cited above provides a very clear picture of the precarious state of traditional media in Canada, as does Taras in Digital Mosaic. 16 See Tamara A. Small and Harold J. Jansen, eds., Digital Politics in Canada: Promises and Realities ­(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020). For an earlier discussion of what he sees as ten of the key characteristics of media shock see David Taras, Digital Mosaic, 3–4. 17 See “Are Journalists and Politicians Abandoning the Public?,” chap. 8 in Taras, Digital Mosaic. 18 Jessica Johnson, “Tomorrow’s News,” Walrus, January/February 2022, 46. 19 Brian Stelter, Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2020). 20 See Thomas Bateman’s analysis in Chapter 7 of this volume. A counterculture of political skepticism and distrust grows apace in both countries even as leaders remain the focus of intense personalized attention. 21 See, for example, John W. Dean and Bob Altemeyer, Authoritarian Nightmare:Trump and His Followers (New York: Melville House, 2021); Michael Wolff, Landslide:The Final Days of the Trump Presidency (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2021). Wolff does not explicitly say the former president will run again, but his portrayal of Trump’s personality and temperament leads directly to this conclusion: “here we are, him with his grip on the heart of only slightly less than half the nation, the once and future Donald Trump, licking his wounds and, eyeing his public, figuring out what new, absurd, and rash exploit to embark on” (xvi). Wolff argues that Trump has “weaponized his defeat” and will continue to do so.Veteran journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein echo these concerns. Woodward is the author of three books on Trump: Fear (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018), Rage (2020), and Peril with Robert Costa (2021). In an essay comparing Nixon and Trump, Woodward and Bernstein think that Trump is a prisoner of his compulsion to dominate and to hold power by any means, with no self-doubt. See “Woodward and Bernstein Thought Nixon Defined Corruption. Then Came Trump,” Washington Post, June 5, 2022. 22 For a very informative discussion of morality and politics see Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York:Vintage Books, 2013). For an informative discussion of the current politics of belief and disbelief and morality see Thomas B. Edsall, “Trump True Believers Have Their Reasons,” New York Times, October 6, 2021. Note also Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (New York:Viking/Penguin Press, 2018). They worry that even if Trump does not return to power the US is entering a period of “democracy

Introduction without solid guard-rails.” Note also Daniel Kalder’s point that the problem with wannabe dictators is “[t]heir sheer awfulness makes it impossible to believe in their power to infiltrate and transform brains until is much too late,” in Daniel Kalder, The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2018), 135. 23 Leslie A. Pal and R. Kent Weaver, The Government Taketh Away:The Politics of Pain in the United States and Canada (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003). 24 One can foresee a revival of the view that Canadian defence policy should incorporate a strong “defence against help” component. See Donald Barry and Duane Bratt, “Defense Against Help: Explaining Canada-US Security Relations,” American Review of Canadian Studies 38, no. 1 (2008): 63–89. 25 Will Ferguson, Why I Hate Canadians (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 2007), 146. For a more recent and extensive version of such thoughts see the essay by noted anthropologist Wade Davis, “The Unravelling of America,” Rolling Stone, August 6, 2020. He sees Trump as someone who “lives to cultivate resentments, demonize his opponents, and validate hatred. His tool of governance is the lie … Inverting the words of Abraham Lincoln, this dark troll of a man celebrates malice for all and charity for none.”These sentiments should remind us, as someone who was interviewed for this volume noted, that Trump’s approach was rooted in his career in the wrestling world as a promoter. Frenzied entertainment where you demonize and ridicule your opponents, give them demeaning nicknames, whip up the crowd, arrange staged and fake events, knock out the referee and take over, and provide what the crowd wants – that creates a winner.This was an analysis by someone who knew this world well. See also “Donald Trump Is a Pro Wrestler Masquerading as Commander-in-Chief,” Economist, April 13, 2019, https://www .­economist.com/united-states/2019/04/13/donald-trump-is-a-pro-wrestler-­masquerading-as -commander-in-chief.The same point is made by Dean and Altemeyer, Authoritarian Nightmare, 121. 26 For example, the 89th Congress under the presidency of Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s. It passed an amazing array of legislation including the Voting Rights Act; it created Medicare, Medicaid, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities. It also passed an array of acts dealing with pollution and safety and immigration. 27 There is also a significant difference in the size of each cabinet.The US cabinet has twenty-five members including the president and the vice-president; Canada now has thirty-nine plus the prime minister. This is apparently the largest cabinet of any in the developed world. See Andrew Coyne, “The Price of Cabinet Inflation Is the Declining Value of Cabinet Ministers,” Globe and Mail, October 30, 2021, D2. 28 The second edition of Differences That Count (published in 2000) contained an essay by Leslie A. Pal titled “Between the Sights: Gun Control in Canada and the United States.” Pal’s conclusion is that a crucial difference is US political institutions “and the way they channel policy and protest.” If any gun controls pass through Congress they will undoubtedly be modest. 29 See Paige Williams, “American Vigilante,” New Yorker, July 5, 2021, 30–45. 30 For a stimulating discussion of these issues see Irene Bloemraad and Doris May Provine, “Managing Diversity: Civil Rights and Immigration,” in The United States and Canada: How Two Democracies Differ and Why It Matters, ed. Paul J. Quirk (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 266–89. 31 For detailed information see the Council of State Governments website, csg.org. ARPA alone provides $1.9 trillion in funding, of which $350 billion goes to the state, local, territorial, and tribal governments. 32 See Nik Nanos, “Wake Up Call,” Globe and Mail, October 16, 2021, O3. Note also Nik Nanos, The Age of Voter Rage:Trump,Trudeau, Farage, Corbyn and Macron – The Tyranny of Small Numbers (London: Black Spring Press/Eyewear Publishing, 2018). 33 Quoted in Earl Fry, Lament for America (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 13.

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David M. Thomas 34 For a very good discussion of Senate reform issues in Canada, and recommendations as to how reform might best be brought about, see Matthew Mendelsohn, A Viable Path to Senate Reform ­(Toronto: Mowat Centre, University of Toronto, 2013). 35 In 2012 the Harper government chose to emphasize Canada’s British connection, and in particular the “Canadian” triumph over the invading Americans in 1812 (won in the main by British regular troops, French-Canadian militiamen, and First Nations’ warriors). The government spent $30 million on advertising this victory, and the ads ran extensively during the 2012 Olympic Games broadcasts. So much for Olympic traditions of a truce during the games. See Chapter 2 in this volume for more details. The Canadian Air Force and Navy also became “Royal” once more, and British-style pips and crowns appeared on Army uniforms. 36 See “Lester B. Pearson” in The Dictionary of Canadian Biography, http:www.biographi.ca/en//bio /pearson_lester_bowles_20E.html. 37 Alan Cairns, “Conclusion: Are We On the Right Track?” in The Comparative Turn in Canadian Political Science, ed. Linda A. White, Richard Simeon, Robert Vipond, and Jennifer Wallner (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008), 239. 38 For a fascinating overview of opinions on the Canadian system see Environics Institute for Survey Research, Survey of Canadians. Canada: Pulling Together or Drifting Apart? (April 2019), https://www.environicsinstitute.org/docs/default-source/project-documents /confederation-of-tomorrow-2019-survey---report-1/confederation-of-tomorrow-survey -2019---report-1-pulling-together-or-drifting-apart---final-report.pdf?sfvrsn=9abc2e3e_2. See also Environics Institute for Survey Research, Attachment and Advantages: How Canadians View Their ­Country,Their Province and Their Neighbour (July 2021), https://www.environicsinstitute.org/projects /project-details/attachment-and-advantages-how-canadians-view-their-country-their -province-and-their-neighbour. Also from the same source are Changing Opinions about the United States, China and Russia (October 2020), https://www.environicsinstitute.org/projects /project-details/changing-opinions-about-the-united-states-china-and-russia, and Political Polarization in Canada and the US (March 2020), https://www.environicsinstitute.org/projects /project-details/political-polarization-in-canada-and-the-u.s. 39 For a discussion of the impact of race on US health insurance programs, see Gerard W. Boychuk, ­National Health Insurance: Race,Territory and the Development of Public Health Insurance in the United States and Canada (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2008). 40 For a recent blistering study of inequality and related political issues in the United States, see George Packer’s book Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2021). Packer argues that “equality is the hidden American code, the unspoken feeling everyone shares” and believes that the years that Americans are living through “feel like the 1850s – one crisis after another, an impending collapse that keeps being postponed.” He hopes he is wrong, and he makes a powerful case for systemic changes rooted in the work that has gone before. 41 See Stephen Poloz, The Next Age of Uncertainty: How The World Can Adapt To A Riskier Future ­(Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada, 2022), 145. He makes the key point that COVID-19 “has accelerated some of our tectonic forces, which will test the elasticity of the economy in the years ahead.” 42 For a discussion of the kinds of world-shattering events that economists, political scientists, diplomats, sociologists, and commentators in general got wrong, see Ferdinand Mount, “When Our World Turned Upside Down,” New York Review of Books, June 20, 2013, 35–8. See also Philip E. ­Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? (Princeton: Princeton

Introduction ­ niversity Press, 2017). For a list of major British intelligence failures see Paul Lashmar, Spies, Spin U and the Fourth Estate: British Intelligence and the Media (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), 4–5. 43 World Bank: World Integrated Trade Solution 2019 figures. 44 Bill Morneau, 2022 Tom Enders Lecture, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, February 25, 2022.

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PART ONE Populations, Impressions, and Values

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CHAPTER

ONE

North America’s New Demographic Destiny Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson

While many disagree with French philosopher and sociologist Auguste Comte’s assertion that “demography is destiny,” the shape of the Canadian and American populations – the interaction of age, race, and fertility – will influence their individual futures and their shared future on the North American continent. Both confront the challenge of societal aging and decreasing fertility shared by many nations. Each has the potential to mitigate the impact of those forces through immigration. Canada has an advantage over the United States because of its ability to renew itself by importing human capital, while the United States potentially has a similar advantage over China and Russia. Though many other factors will come into play as the early twenty-first century gives way to mid-century, to the extent demography truly is destiny, both Canada and the United States can look to the future with guarded optimism.

THE GEOGRAPHY OF DEMOGRAPHY Demography, like geography, places a nation in context. Just as landlocked countries develop differently from island or coastal countries, or mountainous countries from those dominated by plains, so too countries with older populations and low fertility have different preoccupations from those with younger and more fertile populations. Countries with disproportionately large numbers of young men available for military service, for example, can be a threat to their neighbours.1 Demographic shifts are slow-moving but inexorable.The best way to understand a country’s medium-term future is to review its dominant demographic trends. Most other aspects of a society – its culture, economics, politics, institutions – evolve in reaction to demographic forces.

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To be clear, demography and geography are not deterministic. Countries with similar geographies and demographic profiles can develop differently. Political systems, cultures, and even political leaders still matter. Events matter too. But how a people or nation reacts to events tends to be shaped by demographic and geographic realities. This is as true of Canada and the United States as anywhere else.

DEMOGRAPHY AND DECLINE Demographically, Canada and the United States are quite different. They are aging at different rates, have different life expectancy and birth rates, and are ethnoculturally different due both to historical patterns and to recent patterns of immigration. These differences, however, pale in comparison to other regions of the world. Canada and the United States may appear very different to each other; they are much harder to tell apart when viewed from afar. Both are influenced by external trends in ways few inside their own borders may fully understand. The greatest of all is impending global depopulation. A growing number of demographers, and a growing body of evidence, suggests that the world’s population will peak somewhere between eight and nine billion souls and will start to decline to around where it is today – just under eight billion – by the end of the century if not sooner.2 While this might have once been regarded as an aggressive estimate, more recent data on how COVID-19 has reduced global fertility shows it is certainly in the realm of possibilities.3 Even the United Nations Population Division, which has aggressively predicted a peak population of 11 billion plus, is starting to revise its predictions downward. Its latest population projection in 2022 reduced its estimate of global population growth for the century by 800 million to 10.4 billion.4 Global population decline will certainly influence the future course of Canadian and American development over the course of this century, as potential immigrants become more and more difficult to locate, and more valuable.

CAUSES OF DECLINE Three interrelated demographic trends are causing the decline of the global population: urbanization, the collapse of fertility, and societal aging. The largest migration in human history, which began in the late nineteenth century and continues to this day, is the migration of people from the countryside to the city. As late as 1950, only 30 per cent of the world’s population lived in urban areas.5 By 2021 that figure had doubled to 57 per cent.6 By 2050 it is expected to reach 68 per cent.7 Both the United States and Canada were transformed by the migration to town from country. Today, more than 80 per cent of their populations live in urban areas,8 and those numbers continue to inch up every year.

North America’s New Demographic Destiny

As urbanization increases, fertility rates steadily decline around the world. For any society to maintain a stable population, the total fertility rate must equal 2.1 children per woman. (The .1 makes up for children who don’t reach adulthood.) In 1950, the average woman globally had five children during her lifetime.9 Today, the official figure, as determined by the UN, is 2.2. Though demographers differ, the global fertility rate is likely to be at or near replacement rate by mid-century, if not sooner.10 Both the US and Canada have already dropped below replacement rate fertility and that decline is accelerating.11 Urbanization profoundly influences fertility. On a farm, it makes sense to have lots of kids, who provide free labour. But in the city, a child is simply an expense. In the city, women are exposed to educational opportunities and the possibility of paid employment, which increases autonomy. The more autonomy a woman enjoys, the fewer children she is likely to choose to have, and the later in life she is likely to have them. In both Canada and the US for a few decades now the pattern for having children has been one or two and done, which has resulted in a fertility rate of 1.6 today in the US compared to 3.2 in 1960.12 The comparable numbers in Canada are 3.7 for 1960 and 1.4 today.13 While the trend to lower fertility is similar in both Canada and the US, the absolute fertility numbers are meaningfully different. The US’s fertility rate is still higher than the fertility rate in Canada. One reason for this is that the US population overall is younger on average than Canada’s.14 Younger populations tend to be more fertile populations. Also, the US trails Canada when it comes to reducing poverty.15 Higher poverty levels are correlated with higher fertility rates.16 One factor that could advantage Canada when it comes to fertility is its higher rate of immigration.17 While the levels of both regular and irregular immigration are hotly contested between progressives and conservatives in the United States, all major political parties in Canada support high levels.The absence of immigration as an election issue was itself notable in the 2021 federal election. Despite the pandemic, the federal government has set a target of 401,000 new permanent residents in 2021, 410,000 in 2022, and 420,000 in 2023. With little or no debate, Canada has moved to a policy of importing more than 1 per cent of its population each year. Some of the groups that make up the immigrant mix in Canada come from countries with higher fertility rates, which could help to close the fertility gap with the US. But since fertility rates among immigrants tend to align with the prevailing fertility rates of the host culture within about a generation, any such advantage should prove short-term.18 Declining fertility increases the average age of the overall population, because there are fewer babies born every year. Lifespans are also increasing, as a result of improved nutrition, sanitation, and medical treatments. In 1950, average global life expectancy was just forty-seven years. ­Seventy years later that number had jumped to seventy-three years, an increase of more than 50 per cent. By 2050 the UN estimates that global life expectancy will be seventy-seven years.19 Both Canada and the US are aging too.The median age today in the US is thirty-eight years and in Canada is forty-one years.20 While a three-year difference may not seem like a lot, it has implications for both the speed of fertility decline and the rate of population aging. Simply put, Canada is in a more fragile position today on both fertility and aging than the United States.

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Lower fertility unquestionably benefits the environment, as fewer people place demands on the earth’s resources and contribute to global warming. But an aging society is one in which fewer young people are available to drive growth through consumption, and to support the increasing health care and pension costs of the large cohort of seniors. Countries with low fertility and a declining population, such as Japan, struggle to maintain balanced books and economic growth. What can be done to increase fertility rates in Canada and the United States? The answer is, not much. While there is much advocacy about implementing more generous childcare plans or improving the work-life balance to benefit families, the truth is that these programs are expensive and not especially effective.21 For example, in Canada the province of Quebec is lauded for having an especially generous state-run childcare program, but its fertility rate is on par with the overall fertility rate for Canada.22

THE INFLUENCE OF THE PANDEMIC Contrary to speculation that enforced confinement would produce a baby boomlet, the pandemic has accelerated the baby bust.23 This was to be expected, since periods of economic uncertainty in the past have suppressed births, as couples wait until the situation becomes more secure.There is also speculation that the shift to working from home could reverse urbanization. We think it more likely that patterns will shift within urban environments, though this too is speculation. Emerging life expectancy data from some countries shows that longevity has taken a step back due to the pandemic.24 In the longer term it is expected that the world will return to increasing life expectancy but this short- to medium-term correction could push the world’s population to peak sooner and at a lower level than even the more pessimistic pre-pandemic forecasts suggested.

THE FEMALE FACTOR There are more boys than girls born each year. In the United States, the ratio of boys to girls is 1.05:1.25 In Canada it is 1.06:1.26 The global birth ratio for boys to girls is 1.07:1.27 Cultural preferences for male offspring in some large-population countries account for the difference between the North American and global rates. In China, for example, the gender birth ratio is 1.15:1.28 Historically, the country’s one-child policy skewed the average in favour of boys. India, a rigidly patriarchal society, has a male-to-female birth ratio of 1.11:1.29 But the women have their revenge. Overall, 49.6 per cent of Canadians are male; 50.4 per cent are female.30 In the US the ratio is 49.4 per cent male to 50.6 per cent female.31 The reason

North America’s New Demographic Destiny

is that older women outlive older men. Among Canadians who reach eighty, the gender ratio is 56.1 per cent females to 43.9 per cent males.32 In the US it is 56.6 females to 43.4 per cent males.33 Woman at all ages have lower mortality levels than men. The reason, as the World Health Organization tells us, is that of the twenty things that most frequently cause premature death, sixteen of them are more common among men.34 These include road accidents, heart disease, and cirrhosis of the liver, which correlate with a greater tendency of males toward risky behaviour and lifestyles. Of the four causes of premature death that are most frequent among women, two are exclusive to women (death in childbirth and ovarian cancer). The third cause, breast cancer, is mostly women. The fourth cause, dementia, is related to women living longer than men. Complications in childbirth used to be a significant killer of healthy women in both Canada and the US. But declining fertility, improvements in maternal health care, and reduced teenage pregnancies have combined to dramatically decrease the number of women who die in childbirth each year.35 Declining fertility is a significant but underappreciated reason for why women both outlive men today and are becoming a bigger proportion of both the Canadian and American populations. North America’s future will be female. The interaction of gender, age, and fertility trends point to a future in which both the US and Canada will see women make up an even greater share of their respective populations. Some demographers may challenge this assertion because male longevity has been improving in both countries over the last several years.36 But this improvement may not offset the effects of declining fertility, which disproportionately reduces the number of young males entering both countries’ populations. Men have the advantage at birth; women over the long haul. If there are fewer births, there are fewer advantaged men. Also, while male longevity is improving at a faster rate than female longevity, women are also living longer on average every year.37

THE GREYING OF A CONTINENT Due to the combination of reduced fertility and longer life expectancy, both Canada and the United States are getting old, fast. While American longevity trails that of Canadians by a little, the average American is living about three decades longer today than they did back in the 1920s. It’s the same in Canada. Population aging isn’t unique to North America. In all regions of the world the proportion of over-sixties will at least double in the period spanning 1980 to 2050. Globally, one in five will be over sixty by 2050.38 The authors, who are both in their sixties, believe that living longer is a good thing. But because of the size of the baby boom generation, the 2030s will be a transformative decade for both countries.The year 2030 is when all baby boomers in both countries will have reached age sixty-five. At that point, there will be more seniors in both populations than there are children

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under the age of fifteen. This is already the case in Canada and has been since 2016.39 Such a skew in favour of the older will influence public policy, especially in health care and pensions, as well as consumer and cultural trends. The 2040s is on track to be a particularly unhappy decade. All baby boomers in both countries will reach their expected age of longevity, at just over eighty years. Since population growth in Canada and the US is mostly sustained now by people not dying as early as they used to, by 2050 both countries could be staring at population decline, unless immigration is significantly and successfully ramped up, fertility increases, or someone discovers a cure for both heart disease and cancer. We are already seeing the effects of accelerating retirement due to population aging in the workforce.40 Labour shortages in many industries are growing every year. But the less obvious and more troubling consequences will be lagging economic growth, sluggish innovation, and an increasing strain on public services such as pensions and healthcare.41 Since the end of the Second World War, economic growth in North America and much of the world has been driven by the growth of middle-class consumerism and of industries to satisfy this demand. Consumerism also made possible the expansion of international trade, the creation of global consumer markets, and the supply chains required to serve them. Boomer consumption was consumption by the young. Previously, children were a marginal market, but after the war, young people in developed countries accumulated disposable income either through allowances or work. In disposing of that income, they created the youth culture: pop records, trendy clothing, their own car, and other cultural necessities.42 Society after the war was unique. Because of increased affluence and leaps in medical technology, people with secure incomes married young, moved to the new suburban developments, purchased new and modern appliances such as refrigerators and washing machines, and often acquired a second car to ferry around all the healthy, vaccinated children they were having.This was unique in history and is still unique compared to today’s smaller and more blended families.43 The needs and assets of the boomers and their parents drove the postwar global economy. In the US the boom peaked in 1958, when the birth rate reached its all-time high of 3.6.  In  Canada the baby boom peaked a year later, with a record high birth rate of 3.9. The ­consensus is that the baby boom’s last year was 1964.44 Today there aren’t enough young to drive the economy, as they grow fewer in number each year.The population structures of the US and Canada are now completely different. Both countries will need to find ways to grow their economies despite fewer young consumers and more older citizens with few consumer wants but many health-related needs. Declining fertility and population aging are helping to create another significant shared demographic trend in Canada and the United States – people living alone.45 Many factors contribute to the phenomenon: for example, better pensions and more working women who are economically independent. Older women tend to outlive their male life partners. When partnered women become divorcees or widows, they are also much less likely to remarry than men in the same circumstances and are more likely to remain on their own.46

North America’s New Demographic Destiny

One-person households are now the most common household category in Canada, having surpassed the previous most common category: married couples living with kids. Back in 1951 only 7 per cent of Canadian households were persons living alone; now it’s 28 per cent and growing. What will rapidly expanding solo living do to the population structures of both Canadian and American societies? What will it mean for social cohesion in communities, for the future of community and infrastructure planning, real estate, consumer goods, and politics? We aren’t hearing much about this yet, but the explosion of solo living is one of the most consequential demographic changes happening in both Canada and the US today.

BIG SHIFTS While fertility and age structures are important to the demographic transition story for both the United States and Canada, where people decide to live has a vital influence on the politics of both countries, which rely on representation-by-population to elect their lower houses federally and at the state/provincial level. The places with the people have the power. And those places are changing. The Canadian version of rep-by-pop is almost quaint in comparison to what has developed in the US. In Canada, seats in the House of Commons are distributed every ten years based on population growth and shifts, as determined by the national census and administered by the nonpartisan Elections Canada.There’s a bit of overrepresentation in Atlantic Canada and among rural ridings based on constitutional and political conventions, but this has only a marginal effect on election outcomes. Winning and losing elections is easy to determine in Canada. The party that wins the most seats (which is based on first-past-the-post races in each of 338 constituencies, also called ridings) is the one that forms the government. That party’s leader becomes prime minister. It can be more complex than that if, as in the last two elections, a single party doesn’t win a majority of seats, but the basics still apply. Importantly, party vote totals don’t correlate perfectly with seat counts. There are circumstances, including the elections of 2019 and 2021, where the party that won the popular vote did not win the most seats and so did not form the government. That’s why the winning strategy in Canada is one that focuses on optimizing vote efficiency across ridings. Winning many ridings by a few votes is better than winning fewer ridings with many votes, regardless of how the total vote adds up at the national level. The American system resembles the Canadian system in theory, at least when comparing the House of Commons to the House of Representatives. However, partisan considerations often lead to the distorted drawing of district boundaries, in favour of whichever party holds the power in the state when redistricting is undertaken. Gerrymandering can

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produce distorted outcomes that favour both Republicans and Democrats, depending on who gets to draw the boundaries. At the level of the Senate, the principle of two senators per state has traditionally worked to the advantage of Republicans, who are more often dominant in smaller states such as Wyoming or North Dakota. The president is elected through an arcane system of votes in the Electoral College, which can reflect the popular vote but often does not. Vote efficiency applies in the US as it does in Canada. The 2016 election is a good example of this. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College to Donald Trump, who became president based on narrow wins in key swing states. In both the US and Canada, as geographic distribution has shifted, so has the strategy for winning national elections. In Canada, the traditional winning election strategy has required doing well in Canada’s two most populous provinces, Quebec and Ontario, and not worrying too much about what happens in the rest of the country. The importance of Quebec to this strategy meant that squaring the circle between Quebec’s cultural and national aspirations and Ontario’s desire for national unity becomes the primary preoccupation for Canada’s political leaders, the Laurentian Elite.47 In the United States, political cleavages between North and South, rural and urban, people who identify as Republican and those who vote Democrat are more intense than in Canada, and at times – during the Civil War, the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, and over the Trump presidency – partisanship has threatened political cohesion. But the big story for both countries has been the rise of the suburbs as all-powerful determinants of who wins elections. The 2020 US Census reports that the ten fastest growing significant communities in America are all suburbs in the south or west of the country.48 The Canadian situation is the same. Most of Canada’s population growth over the last two decades has been in car-commuting suburbs west of the Ontario-Quebec border, especially around Canada’s biggest city, Toronto, and cities in the West, such as Vancouver and Calgary.49 This doesn’t mean big cities in both countries aren’t growing too. They just aren’t growing as fast as their adjacent suburbs. At the same time, small town and rural populations are going through a tremendous contraction due to the population shift to suburban and urban areas. There is a looming rural population crisis in both countries, especially in rural communities that don’t have easy access to a significant town or city. Young, ambitious people are leaving their hometowns in droves. There are few jobs to keep them there. The result is a growing mass of hollowed-out small town and rural communities with a disproportionate number of seniors, diminished fertility, a shrinking skilled workforce, and a dwindling local tax base.50 Also, immigrants, who could revive these communities, don’t choose to move there. If they do, they tend not to put down roots. It is far too soon to know whether the urban exodus observed during the pandemic slows or even reverses the decline in rural communities that are not within reasonable commuting distance of a major city. As we said earlier, all speculation is simply that.

North America’s New Demographic Destiny

In addition to moving from the countryside to the suburbs and cities, populations in both Canada and the US are moving west. In the US, Texas, Utah, Idaho, North Dakota, and Nevada experienced the largest percentage population growth of any states over the last few years. The states with the largest percentage of population decline were West Virginia, Alaska, Illinois, New York, and Hawaii. In Canada, the three prairie provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta have the fastest growing populations in the country. Both Ontario and Quebec, the two most populous provinces, are now below the national average in population growth. British Columbia, Canada’s most western province, is also slightly below the national average in population growth while Atlantic Canada, which includes the country’s most rural provinces, is on the verge of population contraction. In both the US and Canada, the western regions used to be an afterthought for political strategists. Due to the westward shift of the population, they are becoming more powerful pieces on the political chessboard.51 In addition to the suburban and western shift in the US, there has also been a significant move of population to the south. The west and south constitute what is referred to as the Republican Sun Belt.52 Now, states such as Florida and Georgia are increasingly important in the American political calculus, along with Texas – although it is questionable how long Georgia, Arizona, and even Texas can be regarded as easy wins for Republicans. All three states have become more competitive due to population changes including racial diversification due to immigration.

NORTH AMERICA’S SECRET WEAPON What keeps the populations of both the United States and Canada growing even while many of their comparator countries are either experiencing or facing population decline? Immigration. Over the decades the US and Canada have both pursued aggressive immigration strategies to build their populations in order to occupy their vast lands and grow their economies.This hasn’t always gone well. Indigenous communities in both countries have a strong case that the lands settlers were settling were already occupied. And, despite the words on the Statue of Liberty exhorting the world to “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” slavery and racist immigration policies over the years in both countries tell a different story about the immigrant experience. Apart from the influence of slavery on the population structure of the US, until recently both the US and Canada had similar immigration experiences. By far, most immigrants to both countries came from the United Kingdom and Europe.They settled the vast rural expanses and filled out the cities. Since the end of the Second World War, this has changed, but particularly since the 1960s and ’70s, when both countries began to liberalize their immigration policies, opening up the

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possibility of immigration from more countries, increasing diversity. For the US, this meant an expansion of immigration from South and Central America (including Cuba) across their southern borders. In Canada, this meant a major expansion of immigration from Indo-Pacific countries including China, India, Pakistan, and the Philippines. While immigrants from Pacific countries are a significant part of the mix for the United States, immigrants from Central and South America are a small (but growing) part of the mix of immigrants coming to Canada. Immigration has had a differing impact on the structure of the two countries’ contemporary population.The United States has the world’s largest absolute number of foreign-born residents at around forty-five million,53 although a precise figure is hard to come by, given the substantial number of undocumented migrants in the US.54 The Canadian equivalent is about eight million. Canada’s foreign-born population is above 20 per cent; the United States figure is about 14 per cent. Given Canada’s increasingly ambitious approach to immigration – as noted, the annual intake is now above 1 per cent of the population – the gap compared to the US will only grow.55 That’s because the US only brings in about one million regular immigrants, or one-third of 1 per cent of its population, annually. Nonetheless, by 2030 it’s estimated that the largest source of population growth in the US will be through immigration. Canada has already reached this important milestone. In both Canada and the US, immigrants don’t settle equally in all parts of the country. They go mostly to urban centres and to places that already have large immigrant populations. In the US nearly half of all immigrants live in just three states: California, Texas, and Florida. All three states share a border with Mexico or are proximate to Latin America. In Canada, more than 90 per cent of all immigrants live in a major metropolitan area, with the largest number living in the Greater Toronto Area, which has a foreign-born population of 50 per cent and rising. Western Canadian cities also have rapidly rising foreign-born populations. Montreal, on the other hand, has a much lower percentage of foreign-born residents at around 25 per cent.56 This is likely due to the difficulties associated with finding immigrants who are prepared to adapt to the French language. While the effect of immigration on the populations of Canada and the United States is roughly similar, the political differences are enormous. America’s inability to control irregular immigration along its southern border with Mexico has turned immigration into a whitehot political issue that influences election outcomes. Donald Trump became president of the United States largely based on his commitment to build a wall to block irregular migrants at the southern border. Joe Biden’s presidency is being threatened by his administration’s inability to improve the situation. This toxicity has made it almost impossible to have a rational discussion about immigration policy with the American public today. The Canadian situation is very different. As noted, immigration is not much of a political issue in Canada. Granted, the lack of a border with any country other than the United States makes it a far easier situation to manage. Nonetheless, all three major Canadian political parties support an expansive, liberal approach to immigration. One reason is that the logic of needing

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to offset low fertility and population aging is understood by most mainstream politicians. The other is that suburban ridings now decide elections in Canada, and they have populations that are disproportionately foreign born. Parties that don’t connect with the new Canadian population lose elections. And the new Canadian population doesn’t respond well to anti-immigrant rhetoric or policies from politicians. However, popular acceptance of immigration in Canada could decline, if the crossing of irregular migrants such as at Roxham Road in Quebec prior to the pandemic becomes an established practice. Canadians are not likely to be any more willing than Americans to have their borders breached by those seeking asylum. Public opinion polling at the peak of the border crisis show Canadians also have their limits.57 Overall, Canada is in a strong position when it comes to using immigration to offset the negative effects of infertility and population aging. Conversely, the US will struggle to do this, given the political environment.The irony is that the US continues to be the most popular destination for the world’s immigrants. If Americans could take a page from the playbook of their northern neighbour, it would go a long way to assuring their position as a global superpower through the rest of the century and beyond. The demographic profile of the major geopolitical competitors to the United States is nothing less than catastrophic. China’s population will start to decline by mid-decade, if it is not in decline already. Even according to official statistics, the working-age population is shrinking, both in absolute terms and as a share of the overall population, even as population of the aged swells.58 Urbanization and the draconian one-child policy, which succeeded far too well before it was lifted in 2016, lie behind this demographic tidal wave. The economic drain on the country will be enormous, along with the risk of civil unrest, as the population both plummets and ages. With a fertility suspected to be as low as 1.0, China stands to lose half or more of its population over the course of the century. The situation is Russia is no better. Deaths from the pandemic and low fertility combined to reduce the country’s population by almost a million – 997,000 – between October 2020 and September 2021.59 Both countries either do not accept, or have difficulty recruiting, immigrants, leaving both confronting a future of population, economic, and geopolitical decline. If the United States can maintain respectable levels of immigration, it will be singularly advantaged in the strategic conflict with its largest rivals. To the extent it fails to do so, the harm will be self-induced.

CONSEQUENCES By mid-century humanity will start to become smaller. Even today, the biggest issue facing many countries, including two of the world’s three superpowers, Russia and China, is population aging and decline. Unless both countries stabilize their populations, they will fall behind

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higher-fertility, younger populations such as those of India and Nigeria. It is likely that India has already passed China as the world’s most populous country. Where will Canada and the US fit into the mix? The US might take some comfort in projections that show their population continuing to grow marginally through the century. That’s because the US has a younger population than most competitor countries (including China and Russia) and a higher birth rate. But the US is headed to the same place as Russia and China, just more slowly. The US could change this trajectory, however, if it got its act together on immigration, for America remains the world’s most popular destination for immigrants. The United States must find a way to depoliticize its immigration policies if it is to maintain a demographic competitive advantage over Russia and China. Looking at the twenty-first century, Canada finds itself in a relatively strong position. While it too will need to deal with decreasing fertility and an aging population, a robust and relatively consensual approach to immigration gives it the ability to offset the worst effects, at least in the medium term. However, Canada must remain vigilant about keeping immigration as apolitical as possible.60 This is a feat virtually no country has achieved. Without immigration, Canada’s low fertility and aging population will send it into the spiral of aging and decline that countries from Spain to South Korea already face, in a world that will soon be growing smaller by the day.

STUDY QUESTIONS 1. Based on the demographic changes described in the chapter, what will the electorates in both Canada and the US look like in 2050? How would you advise party strategists to prepare for these changes? 2. How will the public policy agenda in both Canada and the US be shaped by the demographic changes described? What challenges should the US and Canadian governments be preparing for? 3. Sub-national governments (cities, states provinces) will have specific challenges due to the demographic change. Which parts of both Canada and the US will grow in influence? Which will decline in influence? What will this mean for politics in both countries? 4. As we go through the twenty-first century, how will global demographic change affect the international status of Canada and the US relative to other nations? Will Canadian and US influence grow or decline? Which nations will be their rivals for global influence?

North America’s New Demographic Destiny NOTES 1 Economist Staff, “Of Men and Mayhem:Young, Single, Idle Males Are Dangerous. Work and Wedlock Can Tame Them,” Economist, Special Report, January 21, 2016, https://www.economist.com /special-report/2016/01/21/of-men-and-mayhem. 2 Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson, Empty Planet:The Shock of Global Population Decline (New York: Crown, 2019), 3, 4. See also Rick Gladstone, “World Population Could Peak Decades Ahead of UN Forecast, Study Asserts,” New York Times, July 14, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020 /07/14/world/americas/global-population-trends.html. 3 If Asia isn’t having children, which is the case, considerable population decline is inevitable. See Krzysztof Mamiński, “Depopulation of Asia: The Not Too Distant Future,” https://krism123 .medium.com/depopulation-of-asia-the-not-too-distant-future-8dd08573ed9b. This is the slightly modified English version of the article that was originally published (in Polish) in the quarterly Mysl Suwerenna 2, no. 4 (2021): 41–52, dedicated to the issue of demography. 4 United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs. World Population Prospects 2022: Highlights, https://population.un.org/wpp/Publications/Files/WPP2022_Highlights.pdf. 5 UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Dynamics, “World Urbanization Prospects 2018,” https://population.un.org/wup/DataQuery/. 6 UN, “World Urbanization Prospects 2018.” 7 UN, “World Urbanization Prospects 2018.” 8 UN, “World Urbanization Prospects 2018.” 9 UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Dynamics, “World Population Prospects 2022,” https://population.un.org/wpp/DataQuery/. 10 Stein Emil Vollset et al., “Fertility, Mortality, Migration, and Population Scenarios for 195 Countries and Territories from 2017 to 2100: A Forecasting Analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study,” Lancet, July 14, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30677-2. 11 Statistics Canada, “Annual Demographic Estimates: Canada, Provinces and Territories 2020,” https:// www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/pub/91-215-x/91-215-x2020001-eng.pdf?st=ltFjFh_M; Jonathan Vespa, Lauren Medina, and David M. Armstrong, “Demographic Turning Points for the United States: Population Projections for 2020 to 2060,” Current Population Reports February 2020 (United States Census Bureau), https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library /publications/2020/demo/p25-1144.pdf. 12 Brady E. Hamilton, Joyce A. Martin, Michelle J.K. Osterman, “Births: Provisional Data for 2020,” Report No. 012, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: National Center for Health Statistics, May 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr012-508.pdf. 13 Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson, “Covid-19’s Demographic Fallout Has Begun: We Have Fewer Babies, Fewer Immigrants and More Trouble Ahead,” Globe and Mail, May 29, 2021. 14 UN, “World Population Prospects 2022.” 15 OECD, “Poverty Rates,” https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm. 16 Bricker and Ibbitson, Empty Planet. See chap. 5, “The Economics of Babies.” 17 Bricker and Ibbitson, Empty Planet. See chap. 12, “The Canadian Solution.” 18 Bricker and Ibbitson, Empty Planet, chap. 12. 19 UN, “World Population Prospects 2022.”

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Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson 20 UN, “World Population Prospects 2022.” 21 Bricker and Ibbitson, Empty Planet, chap. 5. 22 Statistics Canada, “Crude Birth Rate, Age-Specific Fertility Rates and Total Fertility Rate (Live Births),” https://doi.org/10.25318/1310041801-eng. 23 Hamilton, Martin, and Osterman, “Births: Provisional Data for 2020”; Sean Boynton and David Leo, “The Number of Births in Canada Has Fallen to a 15-Year Low Amid Covid-19 Pandemic,” Global News, October 2, 2021, https://globalnews.ca/news/8235350/covid-declining-birth -rate-canada/. 24 Theresa Andrasfay and Noreen Goldman, “Reductions in 2020 US Life Expectancy Due to Covid-19 and the Disproportionate Impact on the Black and Latino Populations,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, February 2, 2021, https://www.pnas.org /content/118/5/e2014746118. 25 UN, “World Population Prospects 2022.” 26 UN, “World Population Prospects 2022.” 27 UN, “World Population Prospects 2022.” 28 UN, “World Population Prospects 2022.” 29 UN, “World Population Prospects 2022.” 30 UN, “World Population Prospects 2022.” 31 UN, “World Population Prospects 2022.” 32 UN, “World Population Prospects 2022.” 33 UN, “World Population Prospects 2022.” 34 World Health Organization, “WHO Mortality Database: Interactive Platform Visualizing Mortality Data,” https://platform.who.int/mortality. 35 Meagan Campbell, “Forget Teen Pregnancies. Older Moms are the New Normal,” Macleans, August 30, 2016, https://www.macleans.ca/society/health/forget-teen-pregnancies-older -moms-new-normal/. 36 UN, “World Population Prospects 2022.” 37 UN, “World Population Prospects 2022.” 38 United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, World Population Ageing 2017 – Highlights (ST/ESA/SER.A/397), http://www.un.org/en/development/desa /population/publications/pdf/ageing/WPA2017_Highlights.pdf. 39 Statistics Canada, “Population Trends by Age and Sex, 2016 Census of Population,” https://www150. statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-627-m/11-627-m2017016-eng.htm. 40 Caroline Castrillon, “Why U.S. Talent Shortages are at a 10-Year High,” Forbes, September 22, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinecastrillon/2021/09/22/why-us-talent-shortages-are-at -a-ten-year-high/?sh=687407d079c2; Michael Cocolakis-Wormstall, “Labor Shortage: Here to Stay” (Surrey, BC: Business Development Bank of Canada, 2018). 41 Darrell Bricker, Next:Where to Live,What to Buy, and Who Will Lead Canada’s Future (Toronto: Harper Collins, 2020), especially chap. 15, “The Silver Tsunami: Why a New Wave of Older Canadians Matters Most”; Charles I. Jones, “The End of Economic Growth? Unintended Consequences of a Declining Population” (Stanford GSB and NBR, August 28, 2019),Version 0.3. 42 Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Group, 2005). See part 2: “Prosperity and Its Discontents: 1953–1971.” While Judt’s focus is postwar Europe, his description of the emergence of middle-class and youth consumerism applies equally to the US and Canada.

North America’s New Demographic Destiny 43 While this might seem like a typical family going back over a long period of time, it was unique for its time. A read-through of historic census data shows how families from earlier times could be quite complicated. There were many circumstances that led to the premature death of parents (including death in childbirth for mothers), which created many blended families. See Bricker, Next. 44 Bricker, Next, part 1: “Who We Really Are.” 45 Bricker, Next, part 1: “Who We Really Are.” 46 Gretchen Livingston, “The Demographics of Remarriage,” chap. 2 of Four-in-Ten Couples Are Saying “I Do,” Again (Pew Research Center, November 14, 2014), https://www.pewresearch.org /social-trends/2014/11/14/chapter-2-the-demographics-of-remarriage/. 47 Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson, The Big Shift:The Seismic Change in Canadian Politics, Business, and Culture and What it Means for Our Future (Toronto: Harper Collins, 2013). 48 “The Ten Fastest Growing Communities Are All Suburbs, All in South or West,” Legally Sociable, September 19, 2021, https://legallysociable.com/2021/09/19/the-ten-fastest-growing-american -communities-are-all-suburbs-all-in-south-or-west/. 49 Bricker, Next, chap. 8, “McFuture: Why Suburbia Will Beat Out Downtown, Every Time.” 50 Macrotrends, “US Rural Population 1960–2021,” https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA /united-states/rural-population#:~:text=U.S.%20rural%20population%20for%202019%20was%20 57%2C592%2C357%2C%20a,2017%20was%2058%2C333%2C412%2C%20a%200.45%25%20 decline%20from%202016; Bricker, Next, chap. 8, “McFuture”; Amy Symens Smith and Edward Trevelyan, “In Some States, More Than Half of Older Residents Live in Rural Areas,” US Census Bureau, September 24, 2020, https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/10/older -population-in-rural-america.html. 51 “As the U.S. population continues to shift to the South and West, states in those regions will likely gain congressional seats at the expense of states in the Northeast and Midwest, changing the political landscape. Texas gained four seats after the 2010 Census and is expected to gain two or three more after the 2020 count.” Population Reference Bureau, “What the 2020 U.S. Census Will Tell Us About a Changing America,” June 22, 2019, https://www.prb.org/news/what-the -2020-u-s-census-will-tell-us-about-a-changing-america/. 52 The term is usually attributed to Kevin Phillips, who first used it in his 1969 book The Emerging Republican Majority. A good update can be found by Amanda Briney, “The Sunbelt of the Southern and Western United States,” Thoughtco, August 7, 2019, https://www.thoughtco.com/sun-belt-in -united-states-1435569. 53 Abby Budiman, “Key Findings About U.S. Immigrants,” Pew Research Center, August 20, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/20/key-findings-about-u-s-immigrants/. 54 Mark Hugo Lopez, Jeffrey Passel, and D’Vera Cohn, “Key Facts about the Changing U.S. Unauthorized Immigration Population,” Pew Research Center, April 13, 2021, https://www.pewresearch .org/fact-tank/2021/04/13/key-facts-about-the-changing-u-s-unauthorized-immigrant -population/. 55 John Ibbitson and Janice Dickson, “Canada Aims to Accept Far More Immigrants in Next Three Years,” Globe and Mail, October 30, 2020, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics /article-canada-aims-to-accept-far-more-immigrants-in-next-three-years/. 56 Ontario Ministry of Finance, “2016 Census Highlights: Factsheet 8,” https://www.ontario.ca /page/ontario-demographics. 57 Ipsos, “Six in Ten (62%) Believe Trudeau Lacks Solid Plan to Fix Migrant Issue in Quebec and Majority (67%) Believe Migrants are Just Trying to Skip the Line, Not Legitimate Refugees,” August 16,

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Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson 2017, https://www.ipsos.com/en-ca/news-polls/six-ten-62-believe-trudeau-lacks-solid -plan-fix-migrant-issue. 58 Mamiński, “Depopulation of Asia.” 59 “Russia Marks Record 12-Month Population Decline,” Moscow Times, October 13, 2021, https:// www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/10/11/russia-records-record-12-month-population -decline-a75262. 60 Canada’s system is based on three broad categories – family sponsorship, economic contribution, and refugee status. Between 2011 and 2016, 60 per cent were economic, 27 per cent were family, and 12 per cent were refugees. By 2019, 58 per cent were economic, 27 per cent were family, and 14 per cent were refugees. These percentage numbers may change by 2022. Government of Canada, “2020 Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration,” https://www.canada.ca/en /immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/publications-manuals/annual-report-parliament -immigration-2020.html.

CHAPTER

TWO

Imagining Each Other Stephen Brooks

Among the differences between Canada and the United States that affect the relations between these two countries are the images, beliefs, and sentiments that each population has of and toward the other. Living side by side for nearly 250 years, most of the time peacefully, these are two peoples who should know each other well. But as Canadian historian J. Bartlet Brebner once observed, “Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States,” while Americans are “benevolently ignorant about Canada.”1 Brebner’s generalization about how differently Canadians and Americans view each other is, as generalizations so often are, too sweeping. Some Americans are, in fact, quite knowledgeable when it comes to their northern neighbour,2 and not all of them, informed or otherwise, like what they think they see. On the other side of the border, although most Canadians believe that they know quite a lot about the United States and Americans, this does not mean that they are well informed. Often, what they think to be the case is either false or nothing more than a jumble of stereotypes and vague surmises. And it is too much to say that malevolence either was, when Brebner made his observations three generations ago, or is now the prevailing sentiment among Canadians when it comes to their rather overwhelming neighbour to the south. It is, however, quite true that relatively few Americans give more than an occasional thought to Canada and that most Canadians, by contrast, are very aware of the United States. It is a rare Canadian who cannot name the sitting American president or the capital of the United States, or who has not heard and thought about such issues as race relations and gun violence in America. Comparatively few Americans, by contrast, can correctly name the current Canadian prime minister (Justin Trudeau has been an exception: about half of Americans identify him as PM)3 or Canada’s national capital (many believe it to be Toronto),4 or can identify a political issue that is central to the Canadian condition. For Canadians, ideas about their neighbour have long been

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crucial to their image of themselves. It is a rare American who would give much, if any, thought to Canada when reflecting on their national identity. The question of how each country views the other might, therefore, seem to be a bit lopsided. There is obviously much to say from the Canadian side, but perhaps little except friendly bafflement and, as Brebner puts it, benevolent ignorance on the American side. Moreover, does it even matter what these two populations, whose economies, cultures, and social structures are joined at the hip, think about each other? Is a dollar of trade, a piece of legislation, or the individual or group behaviour of people on either side of what is still sometimes – though these days quite misleadingly – called the “world’s longest undefended border” affected in any significant way by these ideas and sentiments? These are the issues addressed in this chapter.

CANADIAN IMAGES OF THE UNITED STATES The centrality of the United States for Canadians’ image of themselves and their country began early. Indeed, it dates from the American Revolution when British North America was divided between the thirteen colonies that would form the United States of America, and the northern colonies that remained loyal to and under the control of Great Britain. At the heart of what might be called the semi-official nationalist narrative of Canadian history – as expressed over the years through the state-owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and school textbooks, among other purveyors of ideas about Canada-US differences – is the belief that those who rejected independence and remained loyal to the British crown were significantly different from those who founded the United States. Of course they were different in some obvious ways. The population of New France, which would become Quebec, was overwhelmingly French-speaking and Catholic. But in the case of the English-speaking founders of Canada,5 they spoke the same language as Americans and they were not significantly different in ethnic, religious, or socio-economic terms. Nonetheless, the semi-official narrative insists that there were important cultural differences and that among these was the rejection by the Loyalists of what they saw as a foreign and undesirable system of political values and institutions. In other words, this narrative maintains that these early Canadians and also French-speaking canadiens perceived the fledgling United States and Americans in a negative light and, moreover, that this hostile perception led them to create and defend a society and institutions that were self-consciously and by design not American. The main truth conveyed by this narrative is that the Loyalists’ rejection of independence from Britain was an important line of division between Canada and the United States at that moment in history. But it exaggerates both the extent of the differences that separated Canadians and Americans culturally and the degree to which general opinion among Canadians and canadiens – as distinct from influential elements of elite opinion – embraced a negative image of America and Americans. Speaking of those who settled in what would become Ontario,

Imagining Each Other

Kenneth McRae writes, “The Upper Canada Loyalists became simply a phase in the unrolling of the North American frontier, living with [those already there] and indistinguishable from them in any social sense.”6 Fred Landon makes the same argument in his meticulously documented history of Upper Canada (Ontario) during the first half of the nineteenth century.7 The War of 1812, he says, operated as a sort of watershed after which time anti-Americanism grew in force, promoted by the colonial authorities and nurtured by a population that would increasingly consist of immigrants from Britain. But this anti-Americanism did not emerge organically from the population of British North America. Rather, it was part of a deliberate policy pursued by the colonial elites in order to reduce the influence of Americans and American values, particularly in Upper Canada. In Canada and the Canadian Question (1891), Goldwin Smith argued that the cultural differences separating the mass of Canadians from their cousins – indeed, often literally their cousins – on the other side of the border were of little consequence. “Canadians who live on the border, and who from the shape of the country form a large proportion of the population,” he wrote, “have always before their eyes the fields and cities of a kindred people, whose immense prosperity they are prevented from sharing only by a political line, while socially, and in every other respect, the identity and even the fusion is complete.”8 Frank Underhill, another of Canada’s foremost historians, echoes this view about general public opinion in Canada being less nationalist and less anti-American than much of elite opinion. “[M]ay it not be that our ordinary rank-and-file Canadians have shown a deeper intuitive wisdom than most of their intellectual leaders?” Underhill asks. He doubts whether the concern of Canadian elites to build protective walls and barriers of various sorts around Canadian culture and Indigenous industries has been shared by ordinary Canadians who, he observes, “have been adopting the American way of life.”9 Many of them expressed their preferences with their feet. It is well known that most immigrants to Canada between the mid-1800s and the Great Depression of the 1930s did not remain in Canada. They moved on to the United States.10 And even among the native-born, the demographic evidence shows that over the course of their shared history, many more Canadians have immigrated to the United States than have left that country for Canada.11 Some will object that much, and perhaps most, of this immigration has been due to economic factors and says nothing about whether those who made the decision to leave Canada for the United States preferred the values and institutions they found in their new home. But based on the hundreds of interviews that Jeffrey Simpson did for his 2000 book, StarSpangled Canadians,12 published at a time when the migration of professionals from Canada to the United States was exceptionally high, it seems that many Canadians who have left for jobs and economic opportunities – while usually lamenting the fact that they could not find the same opportunities at home and continuing to feel warmly toward Canada – also preferred aspects of American culture and lifestyle. Moreover, it is simply wrong to think that the decision

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to leave one country for another in the hope of having a better job or bigger income does not also express a cultural preference. It is, however, a misguided preference, Canada’s nationalist elites have always argued. Throughout the twentieth century, English Canada’s foremost intellectuals, including historian Pierre Berton, writer Margaret Atwood, philosophers George Grant and Charles Taylor, and a host of others, agreed that Canada was less materialist and meanly individualistic than its southern neighbour, and morally superior on this account. In Canada and Her Great Neighbor (1938),13 the first empirically based study of the Canadian image of the United States to use survey data, the popular belief in Americans as more concerned with money and material possessions at the expense of other values – superior values! – was corroborated. Indeed, it may be true that Americans have long been more individualistic and materialistic than Canadians, although it is doubtful that the difference between the populations has ever been as significant as some have argued. But whether the reality is more nuanced than stark, it is not hard to locate the historical sources of this image of difference. They may be found in the schools and the materials used in teaching about America. A study by Amy von Heyking of textbooks used in Canada throughout the twentieth century found that most characterizations of American values and behaviour were negative. “In the early part of the twentieth century, there’s a sense of moral superiority in our treatment, and it’s coming from a conservative education elite,” observes von Heyking. “By the end of the century,” she says, “there’s the same sense of cultural and even moral superiority – we as Canadians understand the world – but it’s now coming from a left education establishment.”14 Anyone who has taken a political science, sociology, or communications studies course at a Canadian university will probably know that the teaching of Canadian cultural and moral superiority to the United States does not stop with elementary and secondary school. Indeed, so deeply is this belief entrenched that it is often impossible to convince educated Canadians that some of the certainties on which this sense of superiority rests are either patently false or grossly exaggerated. At the level of popular culture, perhaps the best known embodiment of this Canadian sense of being superior to their woefully uninformed neighbour was comedian Rick Mercer’s hugely popular “Talking to Americans.” It was a regular segment of the CBC current affairs comedy program, The Mercer Report, that aired between 2004 and 2018. The premise was simple: comedian Rick Mercer posed as a Canadian journalist and presented unsuspecting Americans with preposterous claims about Canada. The popularity of “Talking to Americans” rested on Canadians’ well-founded belief that most Americans are woefully ignorant of their northern neighbour and on the sense of resentment that this inspires. Mercer transforms this resentment into humour; humour that enables Canadians to feel superior to gullible, rather stupid-seeming Americans. How can Americans believe that we have a National Igloo, let alone that we have just covered it with a dome to protect it from global warming, or that they should sign a petition to stop the annual Toronto polar bear hunt?

Imagining Each Other

On a more intellectual level, several of the most influential contemporary interpreters of Canada construct a narrative of cultural differences that has embedded in it an argument for the superiority of Canadian values and institutions over those of the United States. In Reflections of a Siamese Twin,15 John Ralston Saul offers a revisionist telling of Canadian history as a sort of deliberate and more or less successful attempt to create a more collectivist, collaborative, group-based model of society, instead of the individualistic, assimilationist model to the south. Although Saul’s book has been widely criticized by Canadian historians, its popularity does not depend on the probability of the account Saul offers or on the credibility of the evidence that he adduces in support of this thesis. Saul tells a story that resonates with many Canadians, and especially with their opinion leaders, because it makes them feel good – indeed rather superior – about themselves and their history. Pollster Michael Adams’s award-winning 2003 book, Fire and Ice, and his 2017 book, Could It Happen Here? Canada in the Age of Trump and Brexit,16 perform much the same function. Adams uses survey data to demonstrate that not only are there important cultural differences between Canadians and Americans, but these differences help insulate Canada from what he argues are the populist excesses that led to the election of Donald Trump. Mark Kingwell’s status as perhaps Canada’s reigning pop philosopher rests in large measure on his ability to communicate a comforting image of Canadian moral superiority to the United States. “For generations,” he says, “we have been busy creating [in the shadow of the United States], a model of citizenship that is inclusive, diverse, open-ended and transnational. It is dedicated to far-reaching social justice and the rule of international law … And we are successfully exporting it around the world.”17 This image of Canada as culturally and morally superior to the United States is widely held by young Canadians and taught in the country’s universities. In 2016 the CBC interviewed students and professors on the campus of Toronto’s Ryerson University (now renamed Toronto Metropolitan University), asking them what it meant to be Canadian and what they thought of the United States. “To be Canadian is to somehow live on a higher moral plane” was how the CBC journalist summarized their responses to the first question. In answer to the second question, students’ responses included such descriptors as “ignorant,” “discriminatory,” “addicted to war,” “pushy,” “arrogant,” “power-hungry,” and “frenemies.” Readers who wonder whether this might have been an unrepresentative group of young Canadians simply have not spent enough time on the country’s university campuses. 18 After more than two centuries of predominantly unfavourable interpretations of the United States from their opinion leaders, the wonder is that most Canadians are generally well disposed toward their southern neighbour. This, at least, is what public opinion surveys show. Canadians seem able to find mental space for these negative stereotypes of the sort found in the CBC’s 2016 story about university students’ perceptions of their neighbour, alongside more positive images of and sentiments toward America.19 Canadians are, in a word, ambivalent when it comes to the United States and all that they believe it represents. In this they are like many, if

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not most, of the world’s populations, admiring some of what are seen as American traits and achievements and disliking others.20 Any treatment of how Canadians view the United States and Americans requires at least an acknowledgment that French- and English-speaking Canadians have not always been in agreement. Quebeckers, the vast majority of whom are francophones, were more likely than other Canadians to support free trade with the United States when this issue roiled the waters of Canadian politics in the late 1980s. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, and especially leading up to and after the invasion of Iraq, a rift appeared between English- and French-speaking Canadians in how favourably they viewed the United States.21 In more recent years, Quebeckers were somewhat more unfavourable toward President Trump and his policies, and somewhat more favourable toward President Biden and his policies, than other Canadians.22 In the end, however, the most striking and persistent feature of the Canadian image of America is that it is so central to any serious conversation on what it means to be Canadian. As a determinant of Canadians’ self-image, it does not have the field all to itself.The past treatment and current status of Indigenous Canadians has become an increasingly prominent part of Canadian reflections on their country’s history and identity. It may be that the Canadian self-image has, in recent years, become somewhat less dependent on gazing through what Margaret Atwood once called the world’s longest one-way mirror.23 We will return to this in the conclusion of this chapter.

AMERICAN IMAGES OF CANADA Any discussion of how Americans have viewed Canada and Canadians must and should be briefer than the view from the other side of the border. Devoting equal time to American perceptions would give a misleading impression that Americans have given as much thought to Canada as Canadians have to them. This is very far from the truth. On the contrary, for most of their shared history the prevailing American sentiment toward Canada has been indifference, tinged with a sort of vague warm feeling toward their northern neighbours. But an image of Canada has never been important – not even marginally significant – to what it means to be American or to any aspect of most Americans’ lives. Americans, as Margaret Atwood put it, inhabit the reflecting side of the one-way mirror separating the countries: “We see you, but you can’t see us.” From the early days of the American republic Canada was seen as simply a cluster of British colonies to the north. It was that bit of North America that the British had managed to hang on to and that – unlike Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Alaska, and other parts of what became the modern United States – could not simply be bought (or did not seem worth making an offer) and was not worth the expense of conquest. George Washington, along with many of his contemporaries, believed that joining the United States offered Canada an opportunity for liberation from imperial despotism.24 Indeed, Article

Imagining Each Other

XI of the Articles of Confederation, adopted by the original thirteen states in 1781, specifically anticipated the entry of the British North American colonies into the fledgling republic. The War of 1812 and the burning of Washington, DC, alerted Americans to the possibility that their northern neighbour could be both unfriendly and dangerous. But the hostility and wariness that Americans felt was not directed at Canada or Canadians as such: they were aimed at Britain and the British authorities who controlled the northern colonies. “The acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1812, “will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us experience for the attack of Halifax the next, and the final expulsion of England from the American continent.”25 England and its government was the enemy, not Canada and Canadians. The bicentennial of the War of 1812 highlighted the differences that continue to exist in the historical memories that Americans and Canadians have of the other. In the United States this conflict is not well known and its causes and consequences are shrouded in obscurity.26 It is best known for the British sacking of Washington and the victory of General Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans. Some may know that the “Star-Spangled Banner” was written by Francis Scott Key at Baltimore during the conflict. None of this occurred near the border with Canada. But from the Canadian perspective – and Canadians are much more likely to know about this war and to think that it was a crucial episode in their history – the conflict was all about defending Canadian territory from American invasion and preserving a society and community separate and independent from the United States. In a television ad paid for by the Government of Canada and shown repeatedly during the 2012 Olympic Games, the narrator intoned, “Two hundred years ago, the United States invaded our territory. But we defended our land. We stood side by side and won the fight for Canada.”27 The War of 1812 is, for Canadians, about survival against tall odds. For Americans, however, it is a largely forgotten conflict in which the enemy was not Canada, but Britain. In the aftermath of the War of 1812 the British colonial authorities intended to reduce the influence of Americans by giving free land to the British soldiers and sailors who served in the war.The authorities also passed laws prohibiting Americans not already in British North America from buying land there. Nevertheless, the Canada-US border remained a very porous affair, although now most of the traffic headed south. Indeed the number of Canadians leaving for the United States alarmed the Canadian colonial authorities so much that they described it as an “exodus … that must of necessity be the consequence of a radical social defect.”28 With the exception of the French Canadian guides and explorers who, from the Lewis and Clark expedition, were important to the westward expansion of the United States, these immigrants from Canada seem to have gone almost entirely unnoticed. Specific mention of a Canadian cultural type was almost entirely limited to the adventurous canadiens who are found in such works as Francis Parkman’s The Oregon Trail or James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans. There was, however, one important portrayal of Canada as a place and culture quite different from America. This involved slavery and the image of Canada as a refuge for escaped slaves, the

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promise of freedom at the end of the underground railroad as portrayed in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. This was the first widely read portrayal of Canada as a place of refuge from certain pathologies of American life. It would be repeated one hundred years later in the draft-dodging years of the Vietnam War, when American liberals constructed an image of Canada as a gentle, more civilized, rather European alternative to some of the harshness and injustice of American life. As the United States was assuming its place as a world power during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Americans spared little thought for their northern neighbour. When they did, the prevailing image of Canada was that of a rather quaint, somewhat backward and Old World place, lacking the vitality and individualism of America. Sometimes this comparison was clearly unfavourable. “In Canada,” wrote Henry David Thoreau after a visit to Quebec City, “you are reminded of the government every day. It parades itself before you. It is not content to be the servant, but will be the master.”29 Henry James and Willa Cather, on the other hand, thought the Old World character of Quebec City to be charming. Ernest Hemingway wrote a pair of poems in 1923 called “I Like Americans” and “I Like Canadians.” The contrasting traits that he ascribes to these two peoples are ones that continue to be typical of American images of Canada and how Canadians differ from Americans. Canadians are portrayed as the less ambitious, quieter, more law-abiding but eminently likeable neighbours. (Hemingway even remarks on their ice-skating prowess!) Quiet, law-abiding, and friendly, though perhaps a bit boring and inhabiting a cold land: these have been central to the American image of Canada and Canadians since the beginnings of film in the United States. Pierre Berton describes the Hollywood image of Canada as northern and snowy (pure), peaceful (all those Mounties!), leavened with the occasional rowdy French-Canadian lumberjack or trapper.30 This is an image of Canada that was popularized in Jack London’s stories of the Yukon and probably came close to capturing the image that most Americans had of Canada throughout most of the twentieth century. The image of outdoor simplicity wedded to a humorous brand of wisdom and north-of-the-border quirkiness, provided the premise for The Red Green Show, a Canadian comedy that won a loyal cult following on PBS in the United States between 1991 and 2006. A rather romantic and even somewhat bucolic image of Canada continues to exist in the United States. It is, by the way, an image of Canada that is shared by most populations throughout the world. A good illustration of this image is found in “Nova Scotia, Mon Amour,” by Boston Globe journalist Alex Beam. Beam waxes nostalgic about a place and pace of life from the past, “a treasure that I would prefer to keep to myself,” he says, rather than see overrun by hordes of tourists and the modern attractions and amenities they would doubtless expect.31 “There are more people in California than in all of Canada!” remarked sporting host Al Michaels during a video narrated by Tom Brokaw at the beginning of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Vast pristine spaces and unspoiled nature that would have warmed the hearts of Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir provided the wallpaper for Brokaw’s six-minute introduction to Canada

Imagining Each Other

for American television viewers.32 Canada surfaces occasionally in American popular culture. When it does, it is almost always in some way that is at best only marginal to the story or, in some cases, as something comic. The creators of South Park, an animated TV sitcom, made the Canadian invasion of the United States the ridiculous premise for their 1999 film, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. In one of the episodes of this long-running TV series, it is discovered that Saddam Hussein has gone into hiding and then surfaces as the prime minister of Canada. A handful of episodes from The Simpsons include segments in Canada, including one from 2002 in which Homer asks “Canada? Why should we leave America to visit America Jr.?” Boston Legal, How I Met Your Mother, and 30 Rock are among the more recent successful primetime television programs that have included Canadian characters or episodes set in Canada.With the exception of How I Met Your Mother, in which Robin Scherbatsky, one of the main characters, is a dualnationality Canadian journalist living in Manhattan, references to Canada are usually fleeting and involve fairly predictable elements of comedy and irony. Canada is the somewhat quirky, but friendly, northern neighbour. Canada also gets on the radar screen from time to time as either an exemplar or cautionary tale in America’s culture wars. For those on the liberal end of the political spectrum, Canada has long been a place to be envied and emulated. Actor Martin Sheen, upon being awarded the 2004 Christian Culture Medal by Assumption University in Windsor, Ontario, captured this sentiment: “I feel more human when I cross this border … You are more civilized [than us].”33 A rather similar view was expressed by President Barack Obama in his 2016 address to the Canadian Parliament when he warmed Canadian hearts by saying, “The world needs more Canada.” Senator Bernie Sanders has regularly pointed to Canada as the model that the United States should follow when it comes to negotiating lower drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. Sanders and virtually every progressive Democrat in the United States have long argued that Canada’s single-payer health care model should be adopted in the United States. This idea of Canada as a sort of Nirvana North emerged in the 1960s. Disillusioned by the Vietnam War and violent race relations, liberal-leaning Americans discovered on their northern border what appeared to be a social democratic refuge, a model of what America could and should be. The election of Justin Trudeau in 2015 blew fresh air into the sails of this idea, producing such northern-envy stories as Rolling Stone’s 2015 article, “Justin Trudeau: Is the Canadian Prime Minister the Free World’s Best Hope?,” The New Yorker’s 2017 piece, “We Could Have Been Canada,” and Nicholas Kristof ’s 2017 article, “Canada: Leader of the Free World,” in the New York Times.34 As Jerry Bannister says about what he refers to as the American liberal gaze, “What we [Canadians] enjoy is what America lacks: peaceful evolution, social-democratic commonwealth, and more cultural sanity, social equality, and public rationality.” But in the end, he argues, “American liberals’ gaze towards Canada may be rose-coloured, but more than anything it’s myopic. They just don’t seem to see much.”35 This very positive image of Canada embraced by many liberal opinion leaders, sometimes bordering on the rhapsodic, has never been shared by their conservative counterparts in the

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United States. In recent decades Canada has been criticized by social conservatives for its recognition of same-sex marriage in 2004, more than a decade before the US Supreme Court’s ruling on this matter, its unwillingness to pull its weight when it comes to defence spending, and, in the years after 9/11, lax immigration rules that both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, to say nothing of conservative talk show hosts, believed made the Canada-US border a security problem for the United States.36 Canada’s health care system, admired by so many American liberals, has long been reviled by conservatives as “socialized medicine” and a model to be avoided.37 Even among American liberal opinion leaders, however, their generally positive image of Canada has taken something of a hit in recent years. As concern over climate change became more widespread, the Alberta oil sands and the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, which would have carried much of that province’s oil across five states to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico, galvanized enormous opposition among liberals, environmentalists, and Indigenous groups in the United States. Far from being a beacon of progressivism, these groups saw Canada as a poster child for an outdated and globally irresponsible model of energy generation. But despite all this, it must be said that, most of the time, for liberals and conservatives alike in the United States, Canada is simply not on the radar screen. Spikes of attention occur when something bad happens, such as the interception in 1999 of the so-called Millennium bomber at the border between Washington and British Columbia, the 2003 discovery of BSE (“mad cow” disease) in Canadian cattle herds, and the shocking revelations in 2021 of unmarked graves containing the bodies of hundreds of Indigenous children who had attended residential schools run by churches and the federal government in the provinces of British Columbia and Saskatchewan.38 Such stories almost always have a rather short shelf-life in the American media system. They may receive coverage in such places as the New York Times and the Washington Post (often in articles written by Canadian journalists) or on NPR, but it is unlikely that the vast majority of Americans will read or hear them. The ripples that they send across the American conversation tend to be weak and short-lived, and their impact on the ideas that Americans have about their northern neighbours are barely perceptible.

DOES IT MATTER HOW WE IMAGINE EACH OTHER? The depth and durability of the Canada-US relationship are based on sinews of history, trade, culture, and people. Its demonstrated resilience over the years might seem to suggest that what each population knows – or thinks it knows – about the other is not that consequential. There are, however, three ways in which these ideas and images may matter.The first involves the material consequences that can result from these perceptions of the other. The second has to do with the limits on policy convergence between Canada and the United States. The third involves the effects that these ideas and images have on those who hold them.

Imagining Each Other

In regard to material consequences, in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Canadians who crossed the border with the United States were reminded that how Americans – or at least some American lawmakers – view their country’s immigration and security policies can affect their ability to travel. A “thickening” of the border, including longer delays, more regulations, and additional costs for commercial traffic became a new fact of life in Canada-US relations, fuelled by American lawmakers’ view of Canada as a security risk for terrorism.39 More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic led to the closure to non-essential travel across the land border between Canada and the United States, a situation that lasted for roughly eighteen months. Polls taken throughout this period showed that Canadians were overwhelmingly supportive of a border closed to Americans, believing that their neighbour had done a very poor job in managing the pandemic and that their own government had done a much better job.40 It would be incorrect to attribute the Canadian government’s border closure to public opinion, but there can be little doubt that the views of most Canadians provided very little serious pushback against this action. On the other side of the border, survey data showed that Americans believed that other countries handled the pandemic better than theirs did, particularly polls taken before 2021. But no survey asked Americans how their country’s performance compared to Canada.41 Indeed, while Italy, China, the UK, Israel, Brazil, and India regularly received mention in the American media over the course of the pandemic, the country next door was mainly invisible. The fact that the Biden administration kept the land border closed to non-essential travel longer than did the Trudeau government can in no way be attributed to a view held by American lawmakers or the public that vaccinated Canadians posed a public health risk. Instead, it was almost certainly due to administrative reasons regarding vaccination validation and similar matters.42 When relations between Canada and the United States hit a rough patch, how Canada is viewed by Americans, and particularly by opinion-leaders and lawmakers, may make a difference. This, at least, is the view of some policy insiders including former US Ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci.43 He argues that the decisions taken by the Liberal governments of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin in 2003–5, when the Canadian government refused to support the American-led invasion of Iraq and then declined the US government’s invitation to participate in a continental missile defence system, contributed to a sense in Washington that Canada was a bit of a soft ally when it mattered, unlike the British and Australians. At the same time, however, Cellucci insists that little concrete or long-term damage was done to the Canada-US relationship as a result of this image of Canada as a rather unreliable friend, testifying, he says, to the overriding durability of the relationship. A second way in which perceptions of the other may matter involves policy and, more particularly, the ability for governments in Canada to adopt policies that are seen by some to be “too American.” John Herd Thompson argues that, to the extent that Canadians believe that their values and institutional differences from Americans are significant, this will limit policy

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convergence between the two countries.44 This is truly a one-way street. It is hard to imagine that the warning “But that will Canadianize this or that aspect of American life” could become a politically effective rallying cry in American politics. In the case of health care, the one policy area where one often hears references to Canada in the American conversation on reform, no one refers to the bogeyman of “Canadianization.” Instead, critics of the Canadian model use such terms as “socialized medicine” and “statism” in rejecting Canada’s example. In Canada, however, as in much of the world, “Americanization” is freighted with negative associations. It is a bogeyman that has been a tried and often effective strategy for Canadian political parties and interest groups opposed to reforms that, in their view, copied American values and institutions and in doing so eroded distinctly Canadian ones. It is worth noting that this consequence is not necessarily based on the reality of significant differences in the values and institutions of Canada and the United States, although such differences do exist. Rather, it is based on the perception of these differences.Thus, what is objected to may not be policy convergence as such, but the fear that convergence will lead to Americanization. This makes the task of Canadian critics of American-style policy reforms easier than it might otherwise be. Instead of spending their time arguing against proposed reforms on other grounds, they are often able to dip into the considerable well of anti-Americanism that has long existed in Canada, including tropes whose factual basis may be shaky or downright false. Third, the images that Canadians and Americans have of each other may affect the understanding that each population has of itself. It may be that Americans would understand their own society better if they knew more about Canada. The ignorance of most Americans when it comes to the most basic aspects of Canadian society and history prevents them from understanding why their own society and history are as they are, to say nothing of blinding them to the possibility of other values, institutions, and policies that lay at their doorstep. Similarly, Canadians’ perceptions of the United States affect how they see themselves and their society. These perceptions occasionally encourage traits and attitudes that may be smug and less than noble, what writer Luke Savage has referred to as “maple washing.”45 How we imagine others, particularly others who are important in our lives, affects our own character and behaviour. When J. Bartlet Brebner remarked that “Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States, [while Americans are] benevolently ignorant about Canada,” the intimacy of the Canada-US relationship was just beginning the rapid acceleration that would see this become the world’s single largest trading partnership and certainly one of the most intimate security partnerships in modern history. Over the subsequent years America would loom ever larger in the Canadian imagination while Canada and its importance to the United States and its citizens would go largely unnoticed on the other side of the border, at least among average citizens. But today, when the connective tissue of trade, security, and culture is about as dense as it has ever been, these images of the other may be changing in ways that could matter. In some ways Canada is less than ever on the American radar screen.46 Globalization and the rise of China have focused the attention of Americans and their leaders elsewhere.

Imagining Each Other

Polls show that Britain, not Canada, is perceived by Americans to be their country’s most important ally.47 And activity at America’s southern border with Mexico is much more often in the headlines, contributing to the impression that the United States’ relationship with Mexico is far more important, and not simply more problematic, than that with Canada. On the Canadian side, some would argue that America is today far less important to the Canadian self-image than in the past. Half a century of official multiculturalism and four decades living under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms certainly have done much to change Canadians’ ideas of their politics and national identity, such that measuring their culture and institutions against those of the United States is less important than in the past. This is difficult to know with any certainty. As is also true for Americans, Canadians are exposed to the winds of globalization and share with many peoples throughout the world (including an increasing number of Americans!) the sense that the global centre of gravity may be shifting – may already have shifted to some significant degree – away from America.48 The images and beliefs that the populations of these two countries, “Children of a common mother” and “Brethren dwelling together in unity” – the inscriptions on the two sides of the Peace Arch at the border between British Columbia and Washington – may be changing. But the shared history and level of intimacy reflected in the Peace Arch inscriptions ensure that whatever changes take place, Canadians and Americans will continue to share, albeit in very different ways and much more intensely on the Canadian side, an imaginative space that spills across the border that separates them.

STUDY QUESTIONS 1. Indicate where you think Canadians and Americans fall on this 10-point scale: Friendly

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Racist

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Multicultural

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Respected

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Intelligent

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Powerful

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Religious

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Caring

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Freedom-loving

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Now go to question #2.

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2. American readers, reflect on the sources of the ideas that you have about Canada and Canadians. Canadian readers, do the same for the United States and Americans. Include all that you believe may have influenced your perceptions and knowledge of the other in some manner. They may include film, television, news coverage, social media, family relations and/or friends, visits, books and magazines, school, or other sources of information and images. Try to identify what you believe to be the most important source or sources of your ideas about the other. 3. Would you say that J. Bartlet Brebner’s observation that “Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States,” while Americans are “benevolently ignorant about Canada,” is still true? Why or why not?

NOTES 1 John Bartlet Brebner, North Atlantic Triangle:The Interplay of Canada, the United States and Great Britain (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1945), 3. 2 Among these very knowledgeable Americans are what might be called the professional Canadianists who are associated with universities and think tanks in the United States. See Stephen Brooks, “Getting on the American Radar Screen: The Growth, Achievements and Limitations of Canadian Studies in the United States,” in Promoting Canadian Studies Abroad: Soft Power and Cultural Diplomacy, ed. Stephen Brooks (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). 3 Canadian Press, “Almost 50 Per Cent of Americans Don’t Know Who Justin Trudeau Is: Poll,” Global News, June 12, 2017, https://globalnews.ca/news/3522282/justin-trudeau-us-poll. 4 Zoe Mintz, “What’s The Capital Of Canada? Harvard Students Don’t Know The Answer,” International Business Times, November 21, 2013, https://www.ibtimes.com/whats-capital -canada-harvard-students-dont-know-answer-video-1480448. 5 The word “founders,” in reference to those of British and French ancestry who settled in what would become Canada going back to the early seventeenth century, has become problematic in recent years. It ignored the fact that the territory where this settlement took place had long been occupied by Indigenous peoples. The term “founders” is used here and elsewhere in this chapter in a way consistent with how Canadian identity and nationhood was understood by those who wrote about such matters for a very long time, with full acknowledgment that the original occupants of Canada were not of European ancestry. 6 Kenneth McRae, “The Structure of Canadian History,” in The Founding of New World Societies, ed. Louis Hartz (New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1964), 236. 7 Fred Landon, Western Ontario and the American Frontier (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1967). 8 Goldwin Smith, Canada and the Canadian Question (Toronto: Macmillan, 1891), 268–9.

Imagining Each Other 9 Frank Underhill, “Foreword,” in Nationalism in Canada, ed. Peter Russell (Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1966), xix. 10 One study suggests that in the century ending in 1930 an estimated 2.8 million people left Canada for the United States. See Bruno Ramirez, Crossing the 49th Parallel: Migration from Canada to the United States, 1900–1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001). 11 Cited in John Porter, The Vertical Mosaic (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965), 30–1. 12 See Jeffrey Simpson, Star-Spangled Canadians: Canadians Living the American Dream (Toronto: HarperCollins, 2000), chapter: “History.” 13 H.F. Angus and R.M. MacIver, Canada and Her Great Neighbor: Sociological Surveys of Opinions and Attitudes in Canada Concerning the United States (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1938). 14 Amy von Heyking, “Talking about Americans: The Image of the United States in English-Canadian Schools, 1900–1965,” History of Education Quarterly 46, no. 3 (2006), 382–408. 15 John Ralston Saul, Reflections of a Siamese Twin: Canada at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 1998). 16 Michael Adams, Fire and Ice:The United States, Canada, and the Myth of Converging Values (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2003) and Could It Happen Here? Canada in the Age of Trump and Brexit (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2017). 17 Mark Kingwell, “What Distinguishes Us from Americans,” National Post, March 5, 2003, A16. These sentiments are also expressed in Michael Adams, Unlikely Utopia:The Surprising Triumph of Canadian Pluralism (Toronto:Viking Canada, 2007). 18 Neil Macdonald, “What Canadians Think of Americans,” CBC News, March 10, 2016, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-u3o2hvdUg. 19 See Michelle Walkey, “O Canada! Canadians Unspoken Feelings About Canada and the United States,” Maru Group, August 6, 2020, https://www.marugroup.net/insights/blog/how-canadians -view-themselves-and-americans. 20 Pew Research Center, Global Attitudes Project, “US Global Image: International Attitudes Toward the US, NATO and Russia in a Time of Crisis,” June 22, 2022, https://www.pewresearch.org /topic/international-affairs/global-image-of-countries/us-global-image/, and Mara Mordecai, “As Border Remains Closed, Canadians Are Critical of US Pandemic Response But Still View Their Neighbor Favorably,” Pew Research Center, July 22, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org /fact-tank/2021/07/22/as-border-remains-closed-canadians-are-critical-of-u-s-pandemic -response-but-still-view-their-neighbor-favorably/. 21 David Haglund, “Anti-American Obsession: Quebec v. the United States,” Ninth Annual Seagram Lecture, McGill University, April 11, 2005, http://www.mcgill.ca/reporter/37/14/anti-american/. 22 Mordecai, “As Border Remains Closed.” 23 Margaret Atwood, “Through the One-Way Mirror,” The Nation 22 (1986): 332–4. 24 Holly A. Mayer, “Canada and the American Revolution,” https://www.amrevmuseum.org/canada -and-the-american-revolution. 25 Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Colonel William Duane (August 4, 1812), quoted at https://www .nps.gov/articles/a-mere-matter-of-marching.htm. 26 Donald R. Hickey, The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2012), http://www.pbs.org/wned/war-of-1812/essays/american-perspective/. 27 Ian Austen, “Canada Puts Spotlight on War of 1812, with US as Villain,” New York Times, October 7, 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/world/americas/canada-highlights-war-of -1812-casting-us-as-aggressor.html.

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Stephen Brooks 28 From the 1857 “Report of the Special Committee on Emigration,” Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, quoted in Ramirez, Crossing the 49th Parallel, 1. 29 Henry David Thoreau, A Yankee in Canada (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1866). 30 Pierre Berton, Hollywood’s Canada:The Americanization of Our National Image (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1975). 31 Alex Beam, “Nova Scotia, Mon Amour,” Atlantic Monthly (January/February 2006), https://www .theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/01/nova-scotia-mon-amour/304519/. 32 YouTube, “Tom Brokaw Explains Canada to Americans,” February 12, 2010, https://www.youtube .com/watch?v=lrA4V6YF6SA. 33 Sheen’s remarks were made during a speech he gave in 2003 at Assumption College in Windsor, Ontario, on the occasion of his receiving the 2004 Christian Culture Gold Medal awarded annually by the college. 34 Stephen Rodrick, “Justin Trudeau: Is the Canadian Prime Minister the Free World’s Best Hope?,” Rolling Stone, 2015; Adam Gopnik, “We Could Have Been Canada,” New Yorker, May 8, 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/15/we-could-have-been-canada; and Nicholas Kristof, “Canada: Leading the Free World,” New York Times, February 4, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/04/opinion/sunday/canada-leading-the-free-world. html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fnicholas-kristof&_r=0. 35 Jerry Bannister, “The American Gaze: Adam Gopnik’s Canada” (May 29, 2017), https:// earlycanadianhistory.ca/2017/05/29/the-american-gaze-adam-gopniks-canada/. 36 Alexander Moens and Nachum Gabler, “What Congress Thinks of Canada,” Studies in Canada-U.S. Relations (Fraser Institute, May 2011), 19. 37 See, for example, https://www.heritage.org/health-care-reform/report/how-socialized-medicine -hurts-canadians-and-leaves-them-worse-financially. 38 Paula Newton, “More Unmarked Graves Discovered in British Columbia at a Former Indigenous Residential School Known as ‘Canada’s Alcatraz,’” CNN, July 13, 2021, https://www .cnn.com/2021/07/13/americas/canada-unmarked-indigenous-graves/index.html. 39 Moens and Gabler, “What Congress Thinks of Canada.” 40 Mordecai, “As Border Remains Closed.” 41 Kat Devlin, Moira Ragan, and Aidan Connaughton, “Global Views of How US Has Handled Pandemic Have Improved, But Few Say It’s Done a Good Job,” Pew Research Center, June 10, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/06/10/global-views-of-how-u-s-has -handled-pandemic-have-improved-but-few-say-its-done-a-good-job/. 42 Elizabeth Thompson, “Washington’s Reasons for Keeping Border Closed to Canadians Still Murky a Week Later,” CBC News, July 29, 2021, https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-us -border-closure-1.6121549. 43 Paul Cellucci, Unquiet Diplomacy (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2005). 44 Thompson’s argument was made during his presentation titled “The Limits of North American Cultural Convergence,” delivered at the biennial meeting of ACSUS, Portland, OR, November 22, 2004. 45 Luke Savage, “Accounting for Histories: 150 Years of Canadian Maple Washing,” Open Canada, June 1, 2017, https://opencanada.org/accounting-histories-150-years-canadian-maple-washing/. 46 One measure of the diminished attention paid to Canada by US lawmakers is the Congressional Record. While the number of mentions of Canada can vary considerably from session to session, it was 756 in 2015–16, 802 in 2017–18, and 877 in 2019–20, compared to 1,282 in 1997–8, 1,452 in

Imagining Each Other 2001–2, 1,441 in 2003–4, and 1,249 in 2009–10 (https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record /congressional-record-index/114th-congress/1st-session/canada/632453?s=4&r=1&q =%22canada%22). 47 Kathy Francovic, “The United Kingdom Is Seen as The United States’ Greatest Ally,” YouGovAmerica, March 8, 2021, https://today.yougov.com/topics/international/articles-reports/2021/03/08 /united-kingdom-seen-united-states-greatest-ally. 48 Richard Wike, Janell Fetterolf, and Mara Mordecai, “U.S. Image Plummets Internationally as Most Say Country Has Handled Coronavirus Badly,” Pew Research Center, September 15, 2020, https:// www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/09/15/us-image-plummets-internationally-as-most-say -country-has-handled-coronavirus-badly/#few-in-europe-name-the-u-s-as-the-worlds -leading-economic-power-but-most-in-south-korea-and-japan-do.

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THREE

American Backlash, Canadian Compromise: 30 Years of Divergence Michael Adams

As a young teenager in the early 1960s, I used my own spending money to subscribe to Time magazine because I wanted to read the news from America. Like many Canadians, I saw the United States as a bustling place where exciting developments of all kinds were constantly taking shape. American cultural products were thrilling – from Hollywood to Motown. We gaped at American technological advances and prospects, especially President Kennedy’s promise to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. American social and political movements were compelling: civil rights, feminism, environmentalism. And the products of America’s consumer society – especially the sleek machines rolling out of Motor City every fall – were endlessly alluring to a teenage Canadian boy. Today, as Canadians regard the United States from the outside, a society that was once marked by dynamism and possibility across so many areas of life can look not only diminished but dangerous. One aspect of American life seems to overwhelm and contaminate all others: a furious, dysfunctional political culture where opponents are enemies. So disparate are the two realities that Americans of different political stripes inhabit that even an armed insurrection – during which a gallows was erected – failed to engender bipartisan condemnation for more than a couple of weeks. Some observers on both sides of the border fear that another civil war could move beyond the hypothetical. Some US political practices radiate outward to Canada, with right-leaning politicians occasionally testing the popularity of “Trumpy” talking points, and left-leaning politicians trying to harness the activist energy associated with charismatic progressives like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But even a brief look at values and opinion data shows that when it comes to political polarization and hostility, there is no comparison between the two societies. The centre of gravity in each of our cultures is in a radically different place, and each is moving along a different trajectory.

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Far from being divided on the virtues of the previous US president, Canadians are united in condemnation of Donald Trump: just 15 per cent of us expressed support for him in 2020. As for their own political leaders, of course Canadians have differing opinions, as is normal in a democracy. But our research finds that Canadians generally trust their government and institutions, and their likelihood to feel good about the country and take pride in it does not fluctuate hugely according to which party is in power.1 (That is, Conservatives don’t sour on Canada to an extreme degree when Liberals are in government and vice versa). A plurality of Canadians sense the growing difference between their own country and its next door neighbour. Today (in 2020), 35 per cent of Canadian adults think Canada is becoming less like the US and only 22 per cent think the two countries are becoming more similar. These views have changed dramatically over the last twenty years. A 2001 survey by a federal agency, the Centre for Research and Information on Canada (CRIC), found that most Canadians (56 per cent) thought Canada was becoming more like the United States; only 9 per cent thought we were becoming more different.2 In short, of the many differences between Canada and the United States, an important one is that Canada, the country that celebrates difference, is relatively united, and America, whose motto is E Pluribus Unum (Out of Many, One), is divided against itself. The divisions that have been on vivid display in the United States in recent years – especially since the election of Donald Trump – are products of social changes that have been increasingly apparent in our social values data over the last three decades.

PUTTING A LID ON THE “RISING AMERICAN ELECTORATE” In my 2014 contribution to Differences That Count, I traced some contrasts between traditional conservative voters – disproportionately older, white, married men – and what American political scientist and commentator Ruy Teixeira and others have called the Rising American Electorate (RAE): the diverse population of voters who are younger, less likely to be white, less likely to be married, and less likely to be male. Traditional voters are • more likely to believe in strong hierarchies and deference to authority, including patriarchal and religious authority; • more insistent on father-led family structures and less accepting of variations; • more insistent that there is just one way to be a good American, and that immigrants should “set aside their cultural backgrounds and try to blend into American culture”; • less likely to see a robust role for government in the lives of ordinary Americans; and • more likely to believe that racism is a thing of the past, as opposed to an ongoing presence that shapes the life chances of present-day Americans.

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The RAE are by and large on the other side of most of these issues: less deferential to authority, more accepting of diverse family models, more at ease with a multicultural society, more likely to believe in active government, and more likely to believe that racism is a contemporary reality that deserves ongoing attention. It was the growing presence of RAE voters that made the election of Barack Obama possible in 2008 and 2012. But as I wrote in 2014, “Despite the election and re-election of Barack Obama … America remains deeply divided. The traditional electorate remains a strong and influential force both culturally and politically. Mid-term election results tend to produce more conservative outcomes than presidential elections because mid-term turnout is lower overall, and traditional voters more reliably show up at the polls.”3 Since that time, the election of Donald Trump served as a powerful reminder that the traditional electorate has by no means exited the scene. Perhaps even more importantly, it has become clear that making it more difficult to vote is central to Republican political strategy, as it was for post-Reconstruction states in the former southern Confederacy. Many traditional voters and their elected representatives understand that some of their core values are at odds with the direction of social change in America. My last Differences That Count essay described a values landscape in the United States where traditional modes of authority and rules hold less sway, and where more people emphasize individual fulfillment and flexibility.4 The strong expressions of conservative – even authoritarian – political feeling in the last few years do not disprove these findings, but represent a political backlash against a direction of social change that is increasingly clear for all to see.

DECLINING DEFERENCE, BUT NOT AMONG REPUBLICANS Between 2016 and 2020, values associated with traditional authority continued to decline in the United States. On average, our social values surveys found weakening attachment to religion – with Americans becoming less insistent that religion is important in their own lives and that it’s important for children to have a religious upbringing. It was not just religious authority whose influence declined: Americans expressed less inclination to heed authority in general, becoming less likely to insist that one’s position in society should engender others’ automatic deference. The spirit that inspired America to break away from Britain and then the south from the north was now a spirit that divided Americans from each other as it had prior to and during the Civil War of the 1860s. As deference to authority, including religious authority, weakened, so too did Americans’ overall attachment to traditional rule-following: the values Duty and Saving on Principle declined between 2016 and 2020. Americans were less likely to identify with those who put duty first – ahead of their own happiness – and less likely to feel they should sock away money simply for the moral hygiene of deferred gratification.

American Backlash, Canadian Compromise

Figure 3.1.  The values divergence of US Republicans and Democrats

But while values associated with deference, hierarchy, and rule-following were in decline on average, they continue to have their adherents. Indeed, authority-related values are those that most sharply differentiate Republicans from their fellow Americans.5 On our social values map (figure 3.1, a rectangular two-by-two matrix), constructs associated with traditional authority are concentrated at the top of the map.While the average position of society has been drifting steadily downward since our measurements began in 1992, with Americans on average expressing less attachment to traditional rules and hierarchies, the average Republican position has been holding fairly steady around the middle of the north-south axis, suggesting that Republicans are relatively firm on traditional authority even as society at large has become more likely to question it.

AMERICA FIRST? Although “being a racist” is now such a reviled status that few Americans would own up to it, debates about race – for example, the extent to which racism has shaped American institutions and whether racism is an ongoing fact of American life or a thing of the past – have been topics of bitter conflict in the United States over the last decades and especially since the election of Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008. Despite his insistence that he doesn’t “have a racist bone in my body,” many observers have noted that Donald Trump frequently channels and stokes racial resentments. In one early statement that shocked many Americans, including members of his own staff, he declared that there were “very fine people on both sides” after a clash between avowed white supremacists and protesters in Charlottesville,Virginia, in August 2017.

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On average in the United States, we find weakening scores on values that reflect both overt racism and forms of nationalism that are tinged with chauvinism and hostility to outsiders. We find a growing embrace – both over the long term and in the four years between 2016 and 2020 – of values associated with respect for diversity and an open exploration of cultural difference. For example, Americans are scoring higher on the value Multiculturalism, expressing comfort with living in a diverse society and acceptance of the ongoing expression of cultural difference as normal, not a problem to be overcome through assimilation. Americans also express increased acceptance of people of different races being connected through marriage and family. Scores have risen in the US (in recent decades and since 2016 in our research) on the value Global Consciousness, suggesting that Americans feel more connected to people beyond their borders and identify more as citizens of the world. On average, Republicans are moving in the opposite direction. Donald Trump finds a receptive audience among many Republicans (and some former Democrats and independents) when he trumpets American national superiority, casts aspersions on people from other countries, and warns immigrants and others who might not be “real” Americans that they had better heed the codes of the dominant culture. Republicans stand out on the value National Pride, expressing a strong sense of attachment to and pride in their American identity. Notably, patriotism in the United States has taken on a partisan cast, with people who describe themselves as right-leaning being more than twice as likely (77 per cent) as those on the left (36 per cent) to express pride in being American. (North of the border, 70 per cent of all Canadians express pride in being Canadian; those on the left (73 per cent) and right (67 per cent) are each within three points of that average.) Although pride in country is not necessarily harmful, it can be accompanied by a sense of national chauvinism that has darker edges and worrying prospects for the nation. Republicans score higher than their fellow Americans on the value Xenophobia. This value is composed of three separate survey questions. One asks respondents to agree or disagree that “Overall there is too much immigration. It threatens the purity of our country.” About half of self-identified Republicans (53 per cent) agree with this statement, as compared to 30 per cent of independents and a quarter (25 per cent) of Democrats. Republicans are also more insistent on cultural assimilation for newcomers: that immigrants should not only integrate and participate but “set aside” their cultural backgrounds to become fully American. There is one more value related to diversity and identity that bears noting – but in this case, Republicans are moving in line with the direction of social change.The value Modern Racism reflects the belief that racism is largely a thing of the past and that contemporary efforts to redress racism essentially constitute an unfair weighting of the scales (“reverse racism”). Modern Racism has been on the rise since 2016 – especially among Republicans but also in other quarters of society. Strong partisan divides remain, however: in 2020, 68 per cent of Democrats totally disagreed that “Racism in the United States is by and large a thing of the past,” compared to 23 per cent of Republicans who totally disagreed. The fact that many Americans – and especially

American Backlash, Canadian Compromise

Republicans – doubt that racism continues to exist in their society and feel impatience with those who insist that it does may help to explain why conservative activists feel they have found such a promising new front in partisan culture wars with the denunciation of the ill-defined project of “social justice warriors,” Critical Race Theory.

STATUS AND SURVIVAL Above I described a shift away from authority-oriented values such as duty and religiosity toward more individualistic values. But individualistic values can take on different qualities. They can reflect an all-against-all social Darwinistic mindset or a thoughtful, empathetic autonomy: an awareness of oneself as an individual and a desire to negotiate a unique, fulfilling relationship with the world. In my last Differences That Count essay, I reported that we saw the latter form of individualism gaining strength in the United States. Americans’ scores were rising on values associated with personal creativity, self-expression, personal spirituality, introspection, and empathy. Between 2016 and 2020, all those values weakened in our research: we’ve seen a move away from fulfillment-oriented values and back toward a hard-edged selfishness.This selfishness is reflected in two different sets of values – one focused on status, and the other on raw survival. In our social values approach,“survival” values express less a will for harsh competition than a kind of resignation to everyone doing what they feel they need to do in the short term. Ecological Fatalism, for example, expresses an acceptance of environmental damage for the sake of jobs. Although people can’t survive without a healthy planet, the mindset of Ecological Fatalism – on the rise between 2016 and 2020 – says that people have to do what they have to do (clear-cut a forest, kill animals, emit carbon), and if nature takes a hit, that’s life. Sexism (growing 2016–2020) is also a survival value: men are superior; they have the power, and there’s no point exploring why; it’s in their nature; the power itself is what matters. Civic Apathy (growing 2016–2020) is a survival value: signing a petition isn’t going to make you any richer. These values essentially eschew enlightened self-interest: I do what I want to or need to now, without much regard to consequences, fairness, or ideals. While survival values verge on nihilism, status-oriented values – several of which have been on the rise in recent years – suggest a high level of engagement with society, but one that focuses heavily on gaining the approval and esteem of others. Over the past several years Americans have become more likely to express a need for others to admire them and in particular the things they own. Ostentatious consumption is on the rise in our data, with Americans expressing a stronger desire to acquire belongings that will impress others. Social media are happy to spread the word or, more likely, the image. (We don’t measure people’s actual shopping habits.) Americans have also become more likely to express a desire for others to admire their homes, a trend that was evident even before the constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic sparked a home renovation frenzy.

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As for partisan differences, Republicans stand out on some of the Survival-oriented values that are growing in the United States. Notably, they score particularly high on Ecological Fatalism. But in this case, they are aligned with – not at odds with – the general direction of societal change. In addition to measuring deeply held values, some of our surveys measure attitudes on more specific or topical issues. For example, we measure the value Just Deserts: the general belief that people tend to get what’s coming to them in life, whether that’s success, riches, failure, incarceration, or some other fate. We’d expect someone who scores high on Just Deserts to agree that current levels of income inequality in the United States are acceptable: if everyone gets what they deserve, the vast gulf between rich and poor can be explained by hard work and merit. No problem. When we measure public attitudes on topical issues that are connected to survival values, we find sharp partisan differences, with Republicans tilting strongly toward a survivaltinged mode of individualism. In contrast, US Democrats are significantly more likely than Republicans to express concern about current levels of economic inequality in their country, and more likely to believe that “The rich should be highly taxed to help the poor.” Republicans across all income levels are more likely than Democrats at any income level to reject this protax statement. In other words, poor Republicans are less supportive of redistribution than either rich Democrats or poor Democrats. To summarize, between 2016 and 2020 we observed three broad social trends in the United States: • increased questioning of authority, including religious and patriarchal authority • increased acceptance of social diversity and rejection of chauvinistic (sometimes racist) nationalism • an uptick of “survival” values that reflect a competitive outlook on society, often verging on a kind of amoral selfishness. In the first two categories, the values of self-described Republicans are at odds with the movement of society. In the third category, the story is more mixed, but the competitive, mefirst values that are on the rise in our data are not in obvious conflict with the values Republicans express. In a scenario where Donald Trump had to choose between his authoritarian gestures or his “winners-versus-losers” rhetoric, our data suggests the latter would be the winner in the eyes of the public. He channelled the cynical, apocalyptic version of the American Dream. He won once and nearly won again.

MEANWHILE, IN CANADA All of the values that distinguish Republicans from their fellow Americans have their constituencies in Canada – but their adherents are fewer and less fervent. Those who believe in

American Backlash, Canadian Compromise

unwavering deference to authority, see diversity within their country or internationally as an inherent threat, or believe in a no-holds-barred approach to advancing their own interests represent a much smaller share of society and struggle to gain ground politically. Between 2000 and 2021, Canadians continued to grow weaker on most authority-oriented values, including Duty, Obedience to Authority, and Traditional Family. Canadians have also been growing steadily weaker over the past two decades on most statusand-survival values, expressing a diminished need for status recognition and less inclination to look to advertising for guidance and inspiration. On values related to diversity and social inclusion, Canadians have either been growing more open or holding steady, scoring steadily lower on the overtly hostile value Xenophobia, becoming less insistent on Cultural Assimilation, and more positive about multiculturalism.The value Global Consciousness is also on the rise – with more Canadians saying they feel connected to people in other countries. The upshot of these trends is that both Canadians and Americans are moving away from authority-oriented values and toward values associated with individualism – but Americans are tilting toward a harder-edged survival-tinged individualism while Canadians are more inclined to personal fulfillment (freedom from rigid rules, but thoughtful engagement with others through community involvement and meaningful communication). Setting aside social change in the two countries and focusing only on where each society stands in our most recent surveys (2020 in the United States, 2021 in Canada), Canadians by and large remain less focused on authority, exclusion, and status than Americans. Today, the values that most sharply differentiate Americans from Canadians are Americans’ higher scores on Religiosity, Patriarchy, and Traditional Family (all close to the Authority pole of our social values map) and Confidence in Big Business, Need for Status Recognition, and Ostentatious Consumption (all at the Survival pole). In other words, the values that are the animating forces of the Trump/Republican backlash in the United States are some of the values on which Canadians and Americans differ most strongly. Because these “backlash” values are so much less prevalent in Canada, society is less divided by them. In Canada as in the United States, people who identify as conservative and religious are more accepting of certain forms of authority, for example. But while the shape of some of these dynamics is similar in Canada, the scale and intensity of the differences are less, and a greater proportion of Canadians share more common ground. For example, residents of Alberta – generally said to be the most conservative Canadians, with their province sometimes characterized as the Texas of Canada – are more likely than other Canadians to agree that “The father of the family must be master in his own house” (see figure 3.2). But Albertans are much less likely than the least patriarchal regions of the United States to hold this attitude. On this dimension, they are more similar to all regions in Canada than to any region in the United States. Religion is widely seen as an important driver of US political preferences, and the values of religious Americans – especially members of conservative Protestant denominations and Catholics – differ sharply from those of other Americans. This divide was exacerbated by the 1973

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Agree: father of the family must be master in his own house, 2020* USA

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Figure 3.2.  Comparison of support for patriarchy across regions in Canada and the US

Roe v Wade US Supreme Court decision that gave American women the right to an abortion. Broadly the same pattern holds true in Canada, with religious Canadians expressing more traditional values when it comes to authority, but the differences are much smaller in scale. Conservative Protestants in Canada are about half as likely as their American counterparts to strongly believe that “father must be master,” meaning they resemble Canadians of all faiths – and no faith – more than they resemble American Conservative Protestants who ostensibly share their theological convictions (see figure 3.3). That national context trumps religious identity when it comes to some pretty fundamental values such as patriarchy is one of the most important insights to come out of our three decades of binational tracking research. With Canadians relatively united on bedrock issues such as the authority structure in the family, perhaps it’s not surprising that only about three in ten Canadians (28 per cent) express the belief that their society is divided by a culture war. The proportion of Americans who hold the same belief about their own society is about twice as high (57 per cent). In addition to tracking changes in social values, we also ask Canadians and Americans about their views on issues of the day. Here too we find substantial differences between the two countries, which help to explain the relatively large political divide in America and the absence of such deep ideological cleavages in Canada. Three quarters of Americans think their country is in a state of moral collapse whereas in Canada only a minority, albeit a large one (47 per cent), has the same apocalyptic view. It is therefore no surprise that only a quarter of Americans (28 per cent) think their country is going in the right direction while the majority (54 per cent) of Canadians have the same sunny view. If most Americans

American Backlash, Canadian Compromise % Strongly Agree that “The father must be master in his own house” 24

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Figure 3.3.  Country trumps religion when it comes to patriarchy

believe their country is badly off track, it’s perhaps also not surprising that only 53 per cent are satisfied with way democracy works in their country. A considerably larger majority of Canadians (70 per cent) feel good about the way their country’s democratic system works. Finally, it is fascinating that fewer than a third (31 per cent) of Canadians think the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is bad for Canada whereas close to half (46 per cent) of Americans think BLM, which began in response to events in the United States, is bad for their country. These attitudes help explain why the two main American political parties use divisive wedge issues to mobilize their partisans while all parties in Canada try to attract voters in the middle of the ideological spectrum whether they wish to form government or simply a few seats in Parliament.

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Where Did American Backlash and Polarization Come From? In June 2007, American literary lion Gore Vidal was a guest of the Toronto Grano restaurant series of public lectures. During the Q&A, I asked him whether America could be considered a democracy. He said, “The United States is not a democracy. It is an unruly republic.”The Economist magazine’s Intelligence Unit ranks 165 countries on a Global Democracy Index composed of sixty indicators. In its 2020 report, the United States ranks twenty-fifth in the world and is labelled a “flawed democracy.” Canada is ranked fifth, just below Scandinavian countries and New Zealand, and is labelled a “full democracy.”6 The social values tracking that Environics has conducted in the two countries provides some hints as to why the two countries are both distinct and diverging in ways that have a significant impact on the lives and prospects of ordinary people living north and south of the forty-ninth parallel. Three decades of tracking in the United States show a country fitfully moving away from moralistic, authority-focused values to a more flexible individualism (permissive of the fulfillment quests of women, members of the LGBTQ community, and others) and also away from chauvinistic nationalism toward a more open embrace of diversity within and beyond America. But this fitful progression has caused a cultural and political backlash. Politically, the United States is now a fifty/fifty nation among the politically engaged. And political polarization has increased over the past three decades. Democrats are becoming more pluralistic and global, Republicans more xenophobic and parochial. Historically, America sometimes appears to be staring into the abyss of a second Civil War. The first took place over the abolition of slavery in the 1860s. The second has been gathering steam over a period of social change that began in the 1950s and blossomed in the 1960s – marked by increased egalitarianism in general (feminism, the War on Poverty) and specifically by the effort to achieve fuller citizenship rights for Black Americans with the passing of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson observed at the time that the alignment of the Democratic party with the movement for racial justice would mean his party would lose the south for a generation – a prediction that has turned out to be an underestimate. (If Johnson continues to observe US politics from his current station, however, he might have been intrigued by his party’s 2020 Senate victories in Georgia, as slim as his own first electoral victories in Texas.) The authors of How Democracies Die observe that the era of relative post–Civil War bipartisanship was predicated on the consensus of white supremacy and anti-Black racism known as Jim Crow, a consensus that was unsettled by an uneven moral awakening in the 1950s and idealistic lawmaking in the 1960s.7 Just as post–Civil War Reconstruction led to the backlash of Jim Crow, they argue, so too have the idealistic 1960s led to the conservative backlash that

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began in the 1970s and has shaped American politics for the past half century, culminating in the election of Donald Trump in 2016. The US political trajectory is not a straight-line vector but rather a dialectic of progressive thesis followed by backlash antithesis, with each wave becoming a bit more extreme than the last. Richard Nixon was the first president to exploit Johnson’s prediction with his so-called “Southern Strategy” benefitting from the backlash to the civil rights activism in the mid-1960s. Watergate threw Republicans off stride until Ronald Reagan was able to consolidate the backlash again, both in the south and in other parts of the country where an estimated eight million Black people had migrated to escape Jim Crow in the south. Although anti-Black racism in northern states long predated the so-called Great Migration, this racism was inflamed and enacted in new ways as millions of migrating Black people sought new homes and jobs in the industrial midwest and on the east and west coasts. Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, was able to win the election in 1988 by stoking the fires of racial hatred, but only for a term, until Democratic centrist Bill Clinton was able to pull together a moderately progressive coalition of Blacks, immigrants, and white Liberals. But Clinton’s presidency also stoked the fires of backlash that contributed to the election of Republican candidate George W. Bush in 2000. The terrorist attacks on New York and Washington defined the politics of Bush’s two terms, with anti-Black racism receding to subtext as the country reacted to an existential threat of terrorism in the homeland. Charismatic mixed-race, Black-identifying Illinois Senator Barack Obama was able to reassemble Clinton’s coalition, inspire new voters, and win two terms – but much more than Clinton he inspired a deeper and more virulent xenophobic anti-Black backlash that provided sufficient incendiary fuel to narrowly elect reality TV star Donald Trump in 2016. In the fall of 2020, former vice-president Joe Biden was able to sell a majority of the American electorate on a return to “normalcy” – a replay of the Clinton/Obama coalition – and narrowly defeat Trump. This back and forth dialectical process of thesis versus antithesis has yet to produce an American synthesis. Instead, a deepening of each political force is evident, leading to the political polarization that few deny exists. The bipartisanship that characterized politics in the United States for a century is now only a memory. As our social values evolution demonstrates, the secular evolution to a more egalitarian and pluralistic society has engendered a political backlash among those who are threatened by the demands for equality and social justice from traditionally marginalized Americans: women, Blacks, immigrants from non-Christian and non-European cultures, and members of the ­LGBTQ community. The status and privilege of older white men are particularly threatened. Those who are less educated are also threatened by the export of their jobs from the industrial heartland to other lower-wage countries, particularly China – and especially since that country entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. Job insecurity, income inequality, declining opportunities for socio-economic mobility, and status anxiety have given rise to the

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toxic witch’s brew of existential anxiety, racism, and xenophobia that characterize the value structure and mindset of the Trump coalition, which as of this writing appears to comprise a comfortable majority of self-identifying Republicans. The last time America was this divided was in the period prior to the Civil War. Today, America is experiencing a low-grade civil war, with random shootings, unregulated armed militias, and self-styled vigilantes. According to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, in 2020 and early 2021 there were more than sixty demonstrations that included visibly armed protesters or counter-protesters; these were spread across twenty-four states and the District of Columbia.8 There are also political efforts to erode American democracy via voter suppression, as well as conspiracy theories and an increasingly fragmented – and in many corners toxic – online discourse where, contrary to Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous separation of entitlement to fact and opinion, everyone these days seems entitled to their own opinions, facts, alternative facts, and malicious fantasies. Who can know where this will lead? Will Americans synthesize their current bitter debates into a livable compromise through politics, or will the low-grade, cool civil war turn hot as the world looks on in horror? Sometimes evolutionary change cannot assuage the tensions in a society, and a cataclysmic break occurs. In America’s case, the consequences for Canada and the world of such a break are difficult to fathom in the world of non-fiction. As for Canada, the evolution over the past thirty years has been a fairly monotonic one. There is little evidence of deep ideological divides or political polarization. As in the United States, the critical decade was the 1960s. In Canada, the rise of Quebec nationalism led to compromise and accommodation rather than a battle for independence, armed or otherwise (setting aside the efforts of the Front de libération du Quebec [FLQ], a short-lived movement that, though its violent tactics sent a shock through the country, remained marginal and ultimately faded away). Policies such as bilingualism and biculturalism led to multiculturalism and de facto multilingualism. Canada stayed on the road of mutual accommodation, a popular version of the elite accommodation that had kept the country from the experience of violent civil wars since the European conquests began in the fifteenth century. Canada has political debates, but our political culture is characterized by a fairly broad consensus that government has a role to play in delivering universal health care, robust old age security, generous child tax benefits, and policies that help the unemployed transition to new jobs. By and large Canadians accept equalization among the provinces and territories and other federal government transfers that keep the level of educational, health, and social services at about the same level across the country. There is relatively little debate about taxation policies that keep income inequality more in the range of northern European countries rather than the extreme models of countries like the United States and China. Immigrants and refugees do not perform as well as their qualifications would suggest they should – attesting to discrimination and other systemic failures – but the children of immigrants on average eclipse the standard of living of those whose families have been in the country for three generations or more,

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suggesting that social mobility in Canada is not a mirage, as many find it to be in the United States (and as some economists increasingly affirm that it is). Another factor that promotes inclusion and mitigates against economic resentment in Canada (especially when compared to the United States) is significantly higher levels of unionization: whereas one in ten American workers is a member of a union, the proportion in Canada is around one in three. Indeed, rates of union coverage in Canada range from a low of 25.6 per cent in Alberta to a high of 40.2 per cent in Newfoundland and Labrador, while the states with the highest proportion of workers represented by unions, Hawaii and New York, are tied at 24.1 per cent.9 In other words, every Canadian province has a higher rate of unionization than any American state. Union members enjoy higher wages, better benefits, and more generous pensions than those who are on their own. As World Values Survey leader Ron Inglehart has shown, people who feel safe and secure are much more immune to the xenophobic appeals of populists than those who are insecure.10 As sketched in my discussion of our social values data, the values divides among regions in Canada pale in comparison to those in America. Similarly, there is a much smaller gap between Canadians in urban and rural areas than between American city-dwellers and country-dwellers. Canada does have angry people at the edges of our political spectrum, but the share of Canadians who see their political opponents as enemies is negligible. The closest political entity in Canada to the Republican Party as styled by Donald Trump is Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada, but not only are the supporters of that party less authoritarian and xenophobic than their Trumpist counterparts, they make up a vastly smaller share of the Canadian population and political landscape. As for the Conservative Party of Canada, the social values of its supporters are much more similar to those of Liberal supporters than the values of Republican supporters are to those of Democrats. Indeed, Canadian Conservatives look more like American Democrats than American Republicans. These northern Conservatives by and large support universal health care, immigration, and multiculturalism. Some observers saw evidence of American-style polarization north of the border in the so-called Freedom Convoy – a protest against vaccine mandates and other public health measures – that occupied the streets abutting Parliament Hill in February 2022, and inspired sympathetic blockades at several Canada-US border crossings. But direct participants in these events reportedly numbered in the low thousands nationally, and the most generous estimates of wider public support suggested at most a third of Canadians had some sympathy with the movement. (In published polls it was difficult to disentangle fatigue with pandemic rules from sympathy with the protesters’ overall demands and tactics.) It’s certainly cause for concern if 10 or 20 per cent of Canadians are so alienated from the other 90 or 80 per cent that they begin to consistently challenge the rule of law. But even if the “trucker” movement proves a durable minority, the fact remains that a broad majority of the Canadian public continues to trust institutions and accept the legitimacy of governments they didn’t personally vote for.

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It’s not that some of the hard-edged sentiments evident in the United States don’t exist in Canada. Populist, xenophobic, far right, anti-government, and even overtly white nationalist feeling exists here. (Indeed, some of the important exponents of these movements in the United States have come from Canada, such as key figures in the Proud Boys movement. Canada has also had a string of hate-motivated mass murders, including Islamophobic and misogynistic killings.) The question is not whether Canada is free of attitudes and behaviours that represent the extreme edge of a backlash against social change. No society is free of these dynamics. But how much purchase are these views able to gain in the wider political landscape? Americans are consistently divided down the middle on almost every issue – and the national partisan culture war seems to be able to engulf every issue, from the shoes of cartoon characters to the election of elementary school volunteer parents’ committees. Many polls now find that majorities of Republicans believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen. To say that Canadians share more common ground is not to say that the society is free of political divisions, or immune to the harms that come when even small groups begin to reject the political process. Former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau, addressing the Press Club in Washington in 1969, observed “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping next to an elephant. No matter how friendly and even tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”11 The problem for Canada is how to get out of the way when America grunts (with punitive tariffs) or rolls over (toxic social media). We seem to be able to have a version of free trade with the United States (and Mexico) without losing our sovereignty or our governments’ ability to tax and provide public services and social programs either directly or through the provinces, for all Canadians. In a sense, Canada has done what Quebec has done: retained its sovereignty in ways important to the public while remaining connected in a world where interdependence is increasingly inevitable. Journalist J. Bartlett Brebner once quipped that Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States. It’s certainly true that Canadians can be smug, peering over the fence at a society that is nine times our size and faces pressures and challenges we don’t have – from the dilemmas of superpower status to a land border with an economically and politically challenged region to the south. Although we might be an imperfect peanut gallery, most Canadians wish America well: Americans are our cousins and friends, our business associates and military allies, and still the creators of many of our favourite things, from cultural products to digital gadgets. But the greatest country on Earth, for all its strengths, has recently been showing some alarming deficits in the arts of compromise, accommodation, and governance as well as ensuring that the excesses of individual freedom (guns, extreme speech, violent hostility to the most benign government initiatives) don’t trample the country’s other historical virtues – such as equality of opportunity, a robust civil society, technological innovation, and, of course, the peaceful transition of power.

American Backlash, Canadian Compromise

STUDY QUESTIONS 1. How are the roots of the diverging trajectories seen in the ­Environics social values research visible in the early history of each country? 2. How does the role of government in each country explain the diverging trajectories? 3. How does the way each country has dealt with racial, ethnic, and religious differences explain current social values trajectories in each country? 4. How does the difference between Canada as a middle power and the US as a military superpower help explain the evolving social values trajectories in each country? 5. How does each country’s electoral system shape national political outcomes? 6. What do you find most surprising about how each country has evolved? If you’d been asked to make a prediction about the two countries’ future directions of social change on the day you were born (but with your current analytical capabilities!), what would you have gotten right and what would you have gotten wrong?

NOTES 1 The research cited in this chapter, unless otherwise indicated, is conducted by the Environics Institute for Survey Research, or by the Environics Research Group. The Environics Institute is a non-profit agency that conducts in-depth public opinion and social research on the issues shaping Canada’s future. The author is the Institute’s founder and president, as well as the founder of the Environics Research Group. The Institute’s research studies are available at https://www.environicsinstitute .org/projects. 2 Environics Institute for Survey Research, “Changing Opinions about the United States, China and Russia” (October 15, 2020), https://www.environicsinstitute.org/projects/project-details/changing -opinions-about-the-united-states-china-and-russia. CRIC data is unpublished archival data, available from the author on request. 3 Michael Adams, “America Pivots Toward Progressive Canada: Recent Trajectories of Social Change in North America,” in Canada and the United States: Differences That Count, 4th ed., David M. Thomas and David N. Biette (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 46–60. 4 Adams, “America Pivots.” 5 Our questionnaire asks respondents whether they identify as Republicans, Democrats, or independents. If they self-identify as independents, we ask whether they tend to lean toward either the

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Michael Adams Republican or Democratic party. Our partisan groupings therefore include people who identify with or lean toward each party. 6 “Global Democracy Has a Very Bad Year,” Economist, February 2, 2021, https://www.economist .com/graphic-detail/2021/02/02/global-democracy-has-a-very-bad-year. 7 Scott Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (New York: Crown, 2017). 8 Robyn, Thomas “Armed Protesters Inspire Fear, Chill Free Speech,” Giffords Law Centre to Prevent Gun Violence, January 28, 2021, https://giffords.org/lawcenter/report/armed-protesters -inspire-fear-chill-free-speech/. 9 The US figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics refer to “both union members and workers who report no union affiliation but whose jobs are covered by a union or an employee association contract” as a percentage of employed persons.The Canadian figures from Statistics Canada refer to “employees who are members of a union and/or covered by a collective agreement as a percentage of all employees.” 10 Ronald F. Inglehart, Cultural Evolution: People’s Motivations are Changing, and Reshaping the World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 11 Pierre Elliott Trudeau, “Speech at Washington Press Club,” Washington, DC, March 25, 1969, CBC, https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1797537698.

CHAPTER

FOUR

Together and Apart: Canada and the United States and the World Beyond Roy Norton and Deanna Horton

The fourth edition of Canada and the United States: Differences That Count (2014) included a foreign policy chapter. David Biette and Alexandra Kuschner reviewed the bilateral relationship since Canada acquired full responsibility for conducting its own foreign policy (in 1931) – as well as interactions globally, highlighting different approaches to Cuba, Vietnam, Iraq, and the broader Middle East. Their chapter offers valuable context. We encourage you to read it. We will concentrate on issues and developments since 2014, projecting into the future, offering as many illustrations as space permits of how Canada and the US approach each other (and the world) similarly and differently. We’ll also look at how the two countries organize themselves to develop and conduct foreign policy.

MULTILATERAL COOPERATION (OR NOT) G7 and G20 If ever there were a theatre where Canada could be said to punch above its weight, it would be through its G7 membership – which it holds courtesy of the USA. Government policies are defended according to a G7 yardstick. While President Trump was dismissive of its value, so far his successor appears to view the G7 as a vehicle to pull in allies for the USA’s “rules-based order” agenda. A challenge is that the G7 is viewed by many, as characterized by former US diplomat Chas Freeman, as “superannuated imperialists,” with much of the world’s political and economic power excluded.1 Canada strongly supported creating the G20 to bring in China and developing economies – although that forum’s future will be challenged by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (by contrast, G7 countries reacted cohesively in opposing Russia’s aggression). The

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G20 has tackled issues of interest to both Canada and the US, such as fighting internet terrorism, anti-corruption, digital trade, quality infrastructure, and – at the 2021 G20 in Rome – an agreed minimum corporate tax rate. However, G20 (or G7) initiatives embraced by Canada that ultimately fail to garner US congressional approval can magnify policy differences between the two countries.

Climate Change US President Obama and Chinese President Xi were instrumental in achieving the 2015 Paris COP climate change breakthrough. Newly elected Prime Minister Trudeau offered enthusiastic support. Action to achieve greenhouse gas reduction targets, principally in the form of a carbon tax (set at C$30/metric tonne in 2021, rising to C$170 in 2030) became central to Trudeau’s agenda. The business community’s concerns that Canadian operations could lose competitiveness if the USA did not follow suit were compounded in June 2017, when President Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Accord, dismissing the magnitude of the climate change “threat” and claiming that the deal profoundly advantaged China. On his first day in office in January 2021, President Biden signalled that the US would “rejoin” Paris – although the US has no carbon tax and no (realistic) plan to introduce one. Via executive action, Biden might be able to implement some – but not all – of the measures necessary to achieve American commitments. Congress, even with Democratic majorities, is unlikely to legislate tax or compliance measures necessary for Biden to fully deliver as promised. Political realities constrained both Biden and Trudeau from making highly ambitious new commitments at the Glasgow COP 26 in November 2021, although the two countries’ leaders largely share a view on the threat represented by climate change.

UN System Both countries are committed to supporting the United Nations system, although Canadian Conservative and US Republican administrations have shown a tendency to criticize the UN and certain of its agencies. Until the 2000s, Canada had served every decade on the UN Security Council. Highlighting Canada’s 2010 loss to Germany and Portugal, candidate Trudeau in 2015 resolved to restore Canada to its “rightful place.” After four self-proclaimed years of Canada “being back” on the international stage, the 2020 loss (to Norway and Ireland) was even more stark. Voting is secret – but it’s unlikely the Trump administration supported Canada’s effort. While both countries initially opposed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007, Canada passed legislation in 2021 to implement its principles. President Obama embarked on an extensive consultation with Indigenous leaders and announced that the US would “lend its support” to the Declaration – initially celebrated as a victory by Indigenous groups who (now) want the Biden administration to ratify the Declaration.

Together and Apart

Beginning with the Suez Canal crisis in 1956 (and the subsequent Nobel Peace Prize for Lester Pearson for his role in its peaceful resolution), Canada styled itself a “peacekeeper,” sending military personnel in support of numerous UN-led initiatives. The US has been the largest financial contributor to UN peacekeeping missions and has provided military training and logistical support. While Canada’s operational involvement has massively diminished, it augmented its training missions’ role in conjunction with the US and other allies.2 In late 2021, however, the Biden administration made clear it would like the Trudeau government to honour its (unfulfilled) 2017 promise to contribute 200 UN peacekeepers.3 The USA is the largest single funder of the World Health Organization (22 per cent); Canada contributes 2.7 per cent of WHO’s annual assessment, and China 12 per cent. In April 2020, with COVID-19 starting to grip the world, the Trump administration suspended US funding, pending a review, asserting that the WHO was “severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus” – and later announced complete US withdrawal, claiming that the WHO had “misused funds” and had a “cozy relationship with China.” The Biden administration rejoined WHO, and has largely reverted to a UN-supportive stance.

NATO The US and Canada were NATO founding members in 1949; the US considers it their most important military alliance. It is Canada’s second most important military arrangement after NORAD (the bilateral North American Aerospace Defense Command, formed in 1958). Under pressure from President Obama, NATO’s (then twenty-eight) member countries agreed in 2014 to aim to spend 2 per cent of their GDP on defence by 2024. At the time, US defence spending equalled 3.7 per cent of GDP, Canada’s barely more than 1 per cent. Obama – who periodically expressed irritation at defence “free riders” – persisted; in a speech to Parliament in Ottawa on June 29, 2016, he said “NATO needs more Canada.” At the subsequent NATO Summit in Warsaw, PM Trudeau agreed to NATO’s proposal to “forward deploy” multinational battalions in the three Baltic countries and Poland (all considered at risk of Russian attack). Canada committed to lead the battalion group in Latvia (deploying more than 500 militarized infantry and supporting troops), with support from eight other NATO countries (the US leads the battle group in Poland).4 In March 2022, during a visit to Latvia shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, PM Trudeau announced that Operation Reassurance would be indefinitely extended (Canada’s presence had been scheduled to end in 2023). Earlier (in 2018), Canada began leading a NATO training mission in Iraq;5 in 2022, Canada relinquished command of that mission to Italy, while maintaining a modest military contribution. President Trump roiled NATO allies by refusing to commit to “collective defense” (the principle that an attack against one ally is considered an attack against all, enshrined in NATO Article 5). Like Obama – but more aggressively – he accused NATO countries spending less than 2 per cent of GDP on defence of being “delinquent,” pointedly criticizing Canada at the 2018 London NATO Summit of being a laggard: “It’s Canada, they have money.”6 By 2020

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more progress (toward 2 per cent) had been made: after some “accounting massaging” (e.g., factoring in spending on the Coast Guard, which Canada had not previously included in its calculation but the US always had), and due to shrinkage in the size of the economy due to COVID-19, Canada surpassed 1.4 per cent of GDP on military spending, while US spending fell below 3.4 per cent of GDP. The Biden-Trudeau Roadmap for a Renewed US-Canada Partnership (emanating from their February 2021 Summit)7 included very specific defence-related commitments: “The leaders agreed on the importance of investment in modern, ready, and capable forces in line with their commitments to NATO under the 2014 Wales Summit Defense Investment Pledge” – presaging possible friction as the 2024 “deadline” approaches. The Trudeau government has presented no budgets to achieve that goal; their 2021 election platform made no mention of 2 per cent.8 Canada’s April 2022 budget was presented after the war in Ukraine had begun, after Germany had announced it would finally honour its 2 per cent of GDP defence spending commitment, while Finland and Sweden were musing publicly about joining NATO, during a period of intense NATO “solidarity,” and shortly after the minority Liberal government reached a deal with Canada’s New Democrats (a left-wing party opposed to the 2 per cent of GDP commitment) to avoid provoking a general election before 2025. The budget committed to significant increases in domestic social spending, but the slight uptick in defence spending it pledged will not bring Canada much closer to achieving the 2 per cent of GDP goal. Accordingly, a significant narrowing of Canada-US differences on NATO funding seems unlikely.

TRADE LIBERALIZATION The two countries’ different trajectories on trade are revealing. Canada and the EU launched free trade negotiations in May 2009, concluding CETA (the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) in February 2016.The US and the EU launched similar negotiations (TTIP – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) in 2013. Obama pulled the plug on those talks late in 2016, just before leaving office. Negotiations across the Pacific tracked a similar timetable; efforts to conclude the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) began in March 2010. Canada joined the talks in 2012, which successfully concluded in October 2015. However, after taking office in January 2017, President Trump withdrew the USA. The remaining parties, led by Japan, proceeded to renegotiate without the US, concluding a newly named pact – CPTPP (the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) in February 2018. CPTPP came into force for Canada in December 2018. Excepting the renegotiated NAFTA, US administrations since Obama have been “allergic” to trade liberalization negotiations. By contrast, Canada continues to prioritize such negotiations (for example, the launch in November 2021 of discussions toward a Canada-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement,9 and in March 2022 of negotiations toward free trade agreements with both the UK and India).

Together and Apart

World Trade Organization (WTO) Although both Canada and the USA were founding members of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, US support for its successor (the WTO) has waned. While the Trump administration was especially vitriolic concerning the dispute settlement mechanism,10 the Biden administration has not changed course. Canada has suffered due to the USA’s effective sabotage of the Appellate Body.11 Styling itself a “strong proponent of the multilateral trading system, with the WTO at its core,” and in opposition to the US position, Canada created the Ottawa Group (of thirteen countries) with the objective of WTO reform.12 There is little indication of renewed enthusiasm for the WTO in the United States, despite the fact that, as the US Chamber of Commerce contends, “(the) US has been a major beneficiary of WTO dispute settlement, bringing and winning more cases than any other WTO member.”13

RELATIONS WITH “THIRD” COUNTRIES Considerable selectivity is required here. This section will focus on just four countries: Russia, China, and two countries in the Americas – Cuba and Venezuela. There have been noteworthy developments in US and Canadian relations with all four since Differences That Count (2014).

Russia Post–Cold War Russia joined the G7 in 1997, making it the G8 until Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine and “annexation” of Crimea. The G8, scheduled for Sochi, Russia, that year, became a G7 meeting in Belgium. A 2021 report credits sanctions on Russia implemented by the USA, Canada, and others immediately after that 2014 invasion with deterring Russia from proceeding with its “preannounced military offensive into Ukraine that summer.”14 In 2017, a Republican-dominated Congress enacted the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, converting measures previously taken by executive order into law (to prevent presidents from easing, suspending, or ending sanctions without congressional approval). In tandem with the USA, Canada took measures against Russia on more than thirty occasions (to April 2021)15 under its Special Economic Measures Act of 2014 (implementing regulations for which having been periodically updated). As the world learned in February 2022, however, sanctions may have delayed, but certainly did not deter, further Russian assaults on Ukraine. Russia’s invasion provoked intense collaboration among NATO partners and G7- and OECD-member countries. Canada and the US were very much aligned on how best to proceed.

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Canada was slow in providing lethal weaponry to Ukraine – and given the parlous state of its military stocks, quickly ran out of materiel to supply (although the 2022 budget provided $500 million to purchase needed equipment that would be given to Ukraine). As NATO’s leader, the US responded more generously (although not quickly enough to satisfy Ukraine’s embattled president). Canada and the US variously led in arriving at more stringent new sanctions. Both countries committed to accepting many displaced Ukrainians (although the number of North America–bound refugees paled in comparison to neighbouring countries such as Poland). That Canada hosts a large Ukrainian diaspora – the world’s third largest Ukrainian population (after Ukraine and Russia) – undoubtedly helped encourage the government’s supportive response.16 That the Canadian deputy prime minister (and finance minister) during this period was Chrystia Freeland, herself of Ukrainian heritage, ensured laser-like focus at the centre of Canada’s government on what could be done to increase the price Russia would pay for its aggression.17 Russia’s invasion, coming just months after the debacle of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, rekindled US geo-political leadership. Putin may have believed that the US was a spent force, maybe even that the “West was dead.” Perhaps Russia concluded that President Trump’s hostile posture toward Ukraine18 was the “new normal.” President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken proved otherwise, rallying like-minded countries to recognize the threat represented by the Russian attack, and to respond with impressive cohesiveness. From the end of the Cold War until the Trump administration, US and Canadian policies toward Russia and Ukraine barely diverged.They became almost totally aligned once again in response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

China China is and will continue to be the biggest challenge to the “liberal international order.” Even as its trajectory to overtake the US as the world’s largest economy has slowed, or perhaps derailed entirely, it has replaced the US as the largest trading partner for most countries. China perceives the West to be in irreversible decline,19 and regards its own model as increasingly attractive. While China’s military spend is less than half the USA’s, its resources are regionally concentrated, creating great apprehension in countries like India and Japan; it utilizes its “Belt and Road Initiative” to curry favour in Asian countries and beyond. President Obama “pivoted to Asia” – essentially a two-track policy of intensified engagement with China (e.g., on climate change) while strengthening economic ties with AsiaPacific economic partners (e.g., the 2015 TPP agreement). Contemporaneously, Canada’s Harper government finalized a Foreign Investment Protection Agreement (FIPA) with China in September 2014. Prime Minister Trudeau made official visits there in 2016 and 2017, hoping, on the latter trip, to achieve an undertaking to launch negotiations for a Canada-China Free Trade Agreement. However, the Chinese weren’t interested in embracing “progressive”

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components sought by Canada (e.g., entrenched labour and Indigenous rights), and pressed for an Extradition Treaty (of no attraction to Canada). Applying a favourite foreign policy tool, the Trump administration imposed tariffs of 10–25 per cent on more than $200 billion of Chinese exports. China retaliated, then negotiated a deal – which it only partially honoured – to increase imports from the US (diverting to the US some purchases previously made from Canada). With the advent of COVID-19 (which Trump called “the China virus”), China’s “wolf warrior” diplomacy, its growing menacing of Taiwan and repression in Hong Kong, and its treatment of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang Province, the US-China relationship spiralled downward. Kurt Campbell, Coordinator for Indo-Pacific ­Affairs on Biden’s National Security Council, asserted, “The period that was broadly described as engagement has come to an end” – with competition, not cooperation, likely defining the future.20 Canadian interests were caught up in all of this. The PRC government arbitrarily stopped importing certain goods (e.g., canola) from Canada. In December 2018, pursuant to a US request under the bilateral Extradition Treaty, Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou (Huawei CFO and daughter of the company’s president). Days later, two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, were seized and incarcerated by the Chinese government. The detention of the “the two Michaels,” charged with spying, dominated the Canada-China relationship (and all media related to it) for almost three years. Shortly after the September 2021 Canadian election, Meng reached a plea agreement with US authorities. The US withdrew its extradition request; Meng was released and departed the same day for China. The Chinese immediately released Kovrig and Spavor.21 Despite COVID-19 resurgences, US-China and Canada-China goods trade continued to grow in 2022, although prospects for the longer term may be affected by US trade restrictions. For the most part, the Canadian government had refrained from emulating Trump administration rhetoric on China (perhaps anxious not to worsen prospects of securing the hostages’ release). That changed with the February 2021 Biden-Trudeau Summit Roadmap – when the leaders agreed to “more closely align … to deal with (China’s) coercive and unfair economic practices, national security challenges, and human rights abuses.” From hopefulness about a much-expanded relationship with China, to dealing with an increasingly toxic Canadian public opinion on China, the Trudeau government tracked the US lead on adopting an Indo-Pacific strategy designed to create a like-minded coalition to “contain” China and expand relationships with other Asian partners. The Trump and Biden administrations, along with members of Congress, had been urging Canada for some time to fall into line with its “Five Eyes” colleagues and ban Huawei from its 5G networks. That decision, finally announced in May 2022, was “welcomed” by the US State Department. Huawei aside, both the US and Canada continue to struggle to develop coherent policies (to say nothing of strategies) to address the advent of a China determined to flex its muscles and upset the global order.

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Cuba As Biette and Kuschner detailed in the fourth edition of this book, US and Canadian policies toward Cuba diverged starting in the early 1960s. For a brief period beginning in 2014 they began to converge. Canada hosted many of the US-Cuba negotiating sessions that led, in December of 2014, to (temporary) “normalization” of relations between the two countries. Obama made an historic visit to Cuba in March 2016, followed eight months later by Trudeau. This improvement didn’t endure, however; five months into his presidency, Donald Trump cancelled the liberalization measures (which had included lifting some restrictions on travel and remittances). Embassies were again downgraded to offices responsible for “interests”; Cuba was restored to the US list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. In 2019, in a direct blow to Canada, Trump tightened the extraterritorial application to third countries of America’s (1996) Helms-Burton Act.22 As a candidate, Joe Biden argued that Trump’s policies advanced neither human rights nor democracy in Cuba, and said he would reverse Trump’s actions. However, Cuba-wide protests in July 2021, to which the government responded aggressively, incited Florida’s politically powerful ex-pat Cuban community to demand a US hard line. They were supported by New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, Chair (beginning in 2021) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (Menendez’s parents immigrated from Cuba in the early 1950s). Biden called on Cuba’s government to respect the right to protest, following up with successive rounds of tightened sanctions. While Canada did not (immediately) replicate the US measures, it did call on the Cuban government not to crack down on the protestors. The US embargo seems unlikely to be relaxed in the foreseeable future.23

Venezuela The hemisphere’s principal political organization, the Organization of American States (OAS), was formed in 1948. Canada joined only in 1990. In the 2010s, the collapse of democratic governance in Venezuela created the Americas’ greatest political and humanitarian challenge. After Maduro’s first election “victory” in April 2013, more than five million Venezuelans fled, placing the greatest strain on neighbouring Colombia. Efforts by Obama’s administration to drive an OAS-led response foundered, largely because Caribbean countries dependent on subsidized Venezuelan oil resisted. The Trump administration assumed a more aggressive posture, ratcheting up sanctions against Maduro’s acolytes.To a significant extent, Canada matched those sanctions. In August 2017, thirteen countries, including Canada, created the Lima Group “to address the critical situation in Venezuela and explore ways to contribute to the restoration of democracy.” Canada worked hard to achieve consensus declarations at the Group’s periodic meetings, including those it hosted.24 While the US did not become a member (doing so would have

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diminished the Group’s effectiveness), both the Trump and Biden administrations signalled support for its efforts. In addition to its Lima Group involvements, Canada joined the US and EU in issuing statements on the Venezuela situation.25 While Canada was generally apprehensive about working hand-in-glove with the Trump administration on common foreign policy challenges, on Venezuela the government found a multilateral means of pursuing an objective it shared with the USA – and likely deepened its ties with many western hemisphere governments in the process.

US AND CANADIAN APPROACHES TO MULTILATERALISM AND TO THIRD COUNTRIES: DIFFERENCES THAT COUNT The vignettes above illustrate recent differences (and similarities) in Canadian and US global objectives or approaches.There is, however, a long history of differences that count pertaining to US and Canadian engagement with multilateral institutions and relations with third countries. To some extent, the two countries have wanted different things from the multilateral system. The US fostered the creation of post–Second World War institutions to promote stability and secure a dominant voice in determining global priorities and practices, ensuring that the rules created were consistent with America’s interests. As the systemic “leader,” the US would consult (at least ritually) with its institutional partners before proposing major changes. Distinguished Canadian diplomat Charles Ritchie caustically observed that “the US version of consultation with their allies meant listening patiently to their views and then informing them of American decisions.”26 Enjoying near-absolute hegemony at the Cold War’s end, the calculus began to shift. Many American leaders became less interested in preserving “liberal internationalism” for its own sake, ascribing greater weight to maximizing US freedom of action. Increasingly partisan divisions at home over the merits of bodies like the UN Human Rights Council or the World Health Organization underscored a unilateralist trend. Allan Gotlieb, Canada’s longest-serving ambassador to the USA, recalls being told by leading US diplomat Lawrence Eagleburger that “unilateralism is the mood of the United States.”27 Growing doubts within the USA about the extent of US benefits from multilateral institutions aren’t universal, however: in both the IMF and the World Bank the shareholder structure gives the US, uniquely, a veto over all important decisions. One notable shift in the US has been the growing reluctance of administrations to seek ratification of treaties they helped negotiate (since 1991, twenty-two treaties have been approved and two rejected, but eighteen were not even submitted to the Senate). As a middle power, Canada is attracted to multilateral institutions to magnify its influence and increase its range of contacts.28 Canada consistently (if sometimes slowly) ratifies the treaties it signs on to. Canada is keenly interested in large powers being constrained from arbitrarily setting (or interpreting) rules to their advantage.29 The WTO is a good example. Because the

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USA has a massive internal economy, only 26 per cent of its GDP (in 2019) was reliant on trade (exports plus imports). The comparable (2020) figure in Canada: 60 per cent.30 Adherence by trading partners to entrenched rules is much more important for Canada than it is for the USA. Canada is a member of two multilateral organizations to which the US is not party: the Commonwealth and La Francophonie. Both have more than fifty member nations. While neither organization is at the centre of global policy-making, each has played roles in bringing peace and stability to parts of the world.31 Canada has sometimes been able to cultivate stronger trust relationships with many more developing countries than has the USA. To be sure, governments everywhere are more interested in knowing what US positions might be than they care about Canada’s. But third countries are alert to when Canada-US relations seem strong (or stressed). When countries perceive strong Canada-US relations, Canada’s usefulness in the world is elevated. Leaders friendly with Canada’s PM will probe for “what the US really wants” (the assumption being that America’s public position may not be its bottom line). Canada occasionally finds itself in the role of messenger, assisting Washington and X country to better understand one another. When Canadian leaders invest themselves in this brokerage or interpretation function, everyone wins. It should be noted that whether relations are warm or cool, US and Canadian leaders have significant contact with one another, including on the margins of multilateral meetings they both attend. Good relations with America enhance Canada’s scope to be different on third-country policies. Canada’s engagement with Central America’s Contadora Process in the mid-1980s – with the objective of helping end civil wars raging in Nicaragua and El Salvador – is an example.32 As in the South Africa case, the Reagan administration was unenthusiastic about Canadian involvement; the Nicaraguan government was too friendly with Cuba. Mulroney’s stellar relationship with Reagan (and Foreign Minister Clark’s with Secretary of State Shultz) created running room for Canadian engagement. Two countries highly aligned on most issues were pursuing different paths (although not necessarily divergent objectives) in a region of vital strategic importance to the US. If the relationship had been tepid at the top, it’s easy to imagine that Canada’s more vital ask of the US – negotiation of a free trade deal – might have been jeopardized. But when the Canadian government is disciplined enough to refrain from negative rhetoric about US leadership or policies, a certain measure of freedom to diverge results.33

BILATERAL RELATIONS The Canada-US relationship is multifaceted and multilayered. There’s the array of multilateral issues already discussed, plus matters of “high policy” like defence and intelligence collaboration (the two countries, along with the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, constitute the “Five Eyes” – with, at least in theory, all intelligence being shared). Trade (rules, irritants, facilitation) always features in high-level discussions. Likewise, border management/people flows, energy

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integration, and environmental protection (transborder waters, the Arctic, fisheries) preoccupy leaders and officials regardless of which parties hold office. As former US ambassador to Canada (and governor of Michigan) James Blanchard put it: “We deal with Canada on every issue.”34 There are more than 300 Canada-US treaties and formal agreements pertaining, for example, to the Great Lakes (the International Joint Commission, St. Lawrence Seaway Agreement, Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement), to western water management (the Columbia River Agreement35), and to other environmental management issues (e.g., the Canada-United States Air Quality Agreement, to abate causes of acid rain). Generally, these are not well-known in either country. Notably, as the Canadian School of Public Service determined in 2004, “the bulk of official contact now takes place ‘beneath the surface’ of formal diplomatic arrangements.”36 Often Canada and the US seek similar policy outcomes, but periodically the two countries have distinctly different objectives. There are similarities in how they structure themselves to conduct diplomacy, but also major differences. One constant is Canada’s drive to be taken seriously, an obsession which is generally unreciprocated. In political and public discourse, except for flowery trappings of mutual admiration during official visits, Canada is rarely a “topic” in Washington, DC; American leaders invoke the term “special relationship” in relation to the UK (or Japan). Perhaps, as Charles Ritchie observed, “it could be argued that the reason Canada doesn’t figure largely in the US imagination is because it has a status as a ‘not quite foreign country.’”37

2014–16 In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, President Obama and Prime Minister Harper worked constructively to save the integrated automotive industry. Their personal relationship, however, was more formal than warm. Like most Democratic administrations, Obama’s tilted toward protectionism. While not “pure” on all cross-border trade matters (e.g., access for US producers to Canada’s dairy market), Harper’s was a “trade-liberalizing” government. Harper had identified construction of a new Detroit-Windsor bridge as Canada’s “number one national infrastructure priority” (the existing eighty-year-old privately-owned one carried approximately 25 per cent of total two-way goods trade). To secure Michigan’s collaboration, Canada – amazingly – committed to finance the entire cost of the bridge and road infrastructure on both sides of the border (at an estimated cost exceeding $4 billion). Obama’s administration then announced that due to demands on their infrastructure budget, the US would not fund construction of its customs plaza (a high-security facility where federal agents process all vehicular and truck traffic). Rather than jeopardize the project, Canada reluctantly committed, in February 2015, also to finance that component.38 Simultaneously, Obama’s officials began sending signals that a (required) presidential permit for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline might not be forthcoming. US environmentalists strongly opposed the project; the voice of “big labour” was muted. Canada was already the

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USA’s largest foreign oil supplier; KXL would deliver an additional 870,000 barrels/day (almost 5 per cent of US consumption). The alternatives (rail transport, greater offshore imports) seemed less safe and less beneficial to the joint economy. Obama saved his rejection announcement for after the election in which Justin Trudeau defeated Stephen Harper. Trudeau, whose Liberal Party had officially endorsed KXL, said he was “disappointed.” Obama and Trudeau soon met (at the November 2015 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Manila); commentators perceived a “bromance.” They collaborated on climate change days later at the Paris COP. Obama feted Trudeau at a White House state dinner in March 2016, the first for a Canadian PM in almost twenty years. Obama came to Canada in late June (officially for a North American Leaders’ Summit with Trudeau and Mexican President Peña Nieto) and addressed Parliament. Laura Dawson and Sean Speer wrote of “managing the Canada-US relationship from the honeymoon to the long-term,” discussing the wonderful possibilities ahead.39 And, in an act of great foresight, Trudeau hosted outgoing Vice-President Joe Biden in Ottawa, a month after Donald Trump was elected president.

2017–21 Two months after Trump’s inauguration his State Department issued a permit approving KXL. Trudeau said he was “very pleased.” From that point forward, however, most everything emanating from Trump’s Washington was unwelcome in Ottawa. During his campaign, Trump described NAFTA as “the worst trade deal ever.” His threat to kill NAFTA if negotiations for a replacement “didn’t go his way” was interpreted in Canada and Mexico as existential. NAFTA had fundamentally altered all three economies; new supply chain relationships – especially in the automotive sector – created one (much bigger) continental economy. Fear that Trump’s plan could lead to the Canadian economy (and the Canada-US relationship) being totally upended led to the unprecedented creation, in the Prime Minister’s Office, of a Canada-US relations “war room.” After more than twenty years, NAFTA would have benefitted from updating. Liberalization of labour mobility was a pressing need, but Trump and his base were phobic about easing migration. The “reform” agenda was set by the USA: tighter rules of origin in the automotive sector, ending NAFTA Chapter 11 Investor-State Dispute Resolution, etc. Faced with this “America First” agenda, Canada and Mexico were on the defensive throughout.40 Astutely, as Canada had done on executive-led initiatives for decades, leaders and diplomats focused intently on Congress (which had to approve any replacement). In Washington in 2017 and 2019, Trudeau met with congressional leaders and, during one visit, with the entire House Ways and Means Committee membership (responsible for approving trade agreements).41 In November 2019, during travel to Ottawa by members of that committee, the PM hosted a meeting with its chairman, Richard Neal (D-MA). These investments proved worthwhile. The USMCA/CUSMA/T-MEX deal that came into effect on July 1, 2020 (after ratification by

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the three countries’ legislatures) reflected numerous tweaks undertaken by the Democraticcontrolled House of Representatives.42 Trump was willing to accept congressional Democrats’ “progressive” demands43 (which were welcomed by Canada); he could say he had “gotten rid of NAFTA.” Mary Lovely and Jeffrey Schott described the Canadian (and Mexican) dilemma: “The only reasonable explanation for acceptance of these terms (i.e., the final deal) by Canada and Mexico is that they feared that in the absence of an accord, Trump would carry out his threat to cancel NAFTA. For them the USMCA is an insurance policy, with an expensive premium, against a catastrophic event.”44 Canada has generally relied on the US to consume three-quarters of its global goods exports, and consistently purchases about 20 per cent of total US goods exports (for decades Canada has been the USA’s principal export market). Impressive as those numbers are, they also indicate that Canada is almost four times more dependent on the US market than vice-versa.45 Trade flows have been quite impervious to decades of Canadian discussions about potential benefits of trade diversification. Governments pursue free trade agreements and sometimes shift exportpromotion resources but, fundamentally, individual businesses decide where to concentrate their export efforts. Laura Dawson concluded that for Canada, “diversification away from the United States is impractical.”46 As if to render the discussion moot, a 2021 study by Export Development Canada indicated that two-thirds of Canada’s global export shortfall (i.e., potential exports vs. actual exports) is with the United States!47 Given COVID-19-inspired imperatives to shorten supply chains, it’s possible that USMCA/ CUSMA will grow the two countries’ mutual trade reliance. Advocacy from within the US for “near shoring” (i.e., taking USMCA/CUSMA/T-MEX to a “next level,” with China-dependent supply chains replaced by North American ones),48 or “ally shoring” (a similar “off-China” concept, but broadening the range of country suppliers),49 gained some traction, particularly with respect to critical minerals and strategic components such as semiconductors. Renegotiating NAFTA was the major bilateral trade issue from 2017–20, but not the only one. The PMO war room was kept busy, reacting to nonstop provocations. In June 2018, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer invoked Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, imposing tariffs of 25 per cent on imports of Canadian steel and 10 per cent on imports of Canadian aluminum.While Canada wasn’t uniquely targeted, government, industry, and Canadians generally were outraged that trade in highly integrated sectors was considered, for the first time ever, a threat to US national security. After a consultative process to identify imports from the US which, if sanctioned, would cause greatest grief (including to members of Congress), Canada retaliated proportionately. In August 2019, after extensive negotiation (impacted by private sector and legislator pressures on both governments), the US and Canada repealed their tariffs and countermeasures, and ended WTO litigation. “Peace” prevailed until the US, in August 2020, reimposed a 10 per cent tariff on certain Canadian aluminum exports (again under Section 232). While this was in effect only for a month,50 Canadians’ take-away message was that even with a “new NAFTA” in place, Canada was susceptible to what seemed arbitrary (and hostile)

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US-initiated trade measures. This helps explain why only 20 per cent of Canadians surveyed by the USA’s Pew Research Center in 2020 expressed confidence that the US president “would do the right thing regarding world affairs” (compared to 83 per cent during Obama’s final year in office).51 Canadian softwood lumber exports to the USA have been contentious since 1982. Friction continued under Trump; just two months into his presidency a 20 per cent tariff was applied to softwood from Canada. Canada launched a legal challenge under NAFTA’s Chapter 19 dispute settlement process and took the issue to the WTO. The NAFTA panel concluded unanimously in Canada’s favour in September 2019.52 After the 2020 WTO decision (also in Canada’s favour), the Commerce Department lowered the tariff to approximately 9 per cent, but pledged to do an annual administrative review. Dairy is another sector of periodic contention. In his April 2017 speech railing against NAFTA, Trump assailed Canada’s dairy supply management system (the speech was given in Wisconsin, America’s largest dairy state – which Trump narrowly flipped from the Democrats in the 2016 election).The US dairy industry has long complained about Canadian “protectionism” (ironically, had Trump not withdrawn from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the US would have gained greater access to Canada’s dairy market by virtue of Canadian concessions to secure that deal). In December 2020, in one of its final trade acts, the outgoing Trump administration filed its first enforcement action under the USMCA/CUSMA, challenging Canadian measures to protect its dairy market. There’s a linkage, of sorts, between softwood and dairy. The US and Canada implement different taxation systems on softwood production (most US softwood is produced from private land; in Canada most comes from land owned by provinces). The US contends that Canada’s system subsidizes lumber producers (allowing them to undercut US competitors); the WTO has now adjudicated the issue several times, generally dismissing the US’s arguments. In the case of dairy, both countries protect their industries – but do so in different ways. Canadian producers in both sectors (as well as successive Canadian governments) react viscerally against the notion that any systems different from America’s are, by definition, illegal.53 There are precedents for (occasional) bad blood between US presidents and Canadian PMs. But the Trump-Trudeau relationship was fraught throughout. One particularly low point came right after the 2018 Canada-hosted G7 Summit. Trump left early to meet North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in Singapore. As the summit was ending it was unclear whether leaders could agree on a closing communiqué.To the host’s great relief, the US signed on (albeit to a relatively anodyne statement). On behalf of all leaders, Trudeau then met the assembled Canadian and international media. Asked about US trade measures, he said Canada “would not be pushed around.” Trump’s reaction, from Air Force One, was volcanic, resulting in an instruction to US officials not to endorse the communiqué. This was followed by unprecedented personal attacks by senior White House staff.54 The downward trajectory continued at the London NATO Summit later in 2018.55

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It’s hardly surprising, then, that the Washington Post story on Trudeau’s February 23, 2021, summit with Biden noted the PM’s obvious “relief.” To emphasize the point, Trudeau said: “US leadership has been sorely missed over the past years.”

2021–Onward Joe Biden was inaugurated on January 20, 2021. That same day he cancelled the permit for the KXL pipeline. Prime Minister Trudeau expressed “disappointment.” Two days later, Biden telephoned Trudeau – his first call to a foreign leader. The “readout” was standard boilerplate; the two leaders covered a predictable set of bilateral and multilateral issues. When the two met (virtually) for a summit just a month later, the improved leader-level relationship was palpable.56 The Roadmap emanating from their meeting was the most detailed set of joint commitments since the 2011 Obama-Harper “Beyond the Border: A Shared Vision for Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness” declaration.57 On the multilateral front, Trudeau’s upbeat tenor seemed warranted. Climate is an issue vital to both leaders; for the entirety of Trump’s administration Trudeau was constrained from “pushing the envelope.” The Washington Post quoted him drawing the contrast: “It’s nice when the Americans aren’t pulling out all references to climate change, instead of adding them in.”58 Trudeau enthusiastically participated in Biden’s Leaders’ Summit on Climate, April 22–23, 2021; both countries announced emissions reductions commitments higher than those committed to at Paris.59 At least initially, however, Trudeau’s warm embrace of Biden yielded little of import to Canada on bilateral irritants. Shortly after taking office, Biden announced he would tighten “Buy American” policies, increasing to 75 per cent (from 55 per cent) the minimum amount of US-produced content in all federally funded procurement projects.60 Former Ambassador to Washington David MacNaughton asserted in February 2021, “I don’t think we’ll get a full exemption, but I think we can work our way towards getting key elements of that not to apply to Canada.”61 When the rules were released in July 2021, however, Canada’s concerns were not accommodated.62 The president took “Buy American” to another level in his Build Back Better Act – which, in the Canadian government’s assessment, could have killed Canada’s auto industry (the issue had to do with subsidies for electric vehicles). In DC for the first North American Leaders’ Summit since 2016, PM Trudeau made clear to Biden and to Congress Canada’s strong opposition to the automotive provisions.63 When this entreaty had little effect, Canada ramped up its lobbying effort, ultimately helping to kill Biden’s signature legislative effort.64 However, Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which, somewhat surprisingly, became law in the summer of 2022, incorporated significant changes to “Buy American” provisions on electric vehicles that had been sought by Canada. In accommodating Canadian demands, the US was signalling

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an expectation that the Trudeau government, as a matter of highest priority, would facilitate development in Canada of critical minerals necessary to the production of electric vehicle batteries. In his conversation with Biden two days after Inauguration,Trudeau had asked the president to remove US duties on Canadian softwood lumber.65 Far from obliging that request, the US Commerce Department announced in November 2021 that the tariff would double (to 17.9 per cent)!66 The fact that President Biden very narrowly won Wisconsin (“America’s Dairyland”) in the 2020 election and that Chuck Schumer (D-NY), a long-time critic of Canadian dairy policies, became Senate majority leader, may have decided the administration’s direction (on dairy). Staying true to Trump’s approach, on May 25, 2021, US Trade Representative Tai announced the US had established a USMCA/CUSMA Dispute Panel to review Canada’s dairy policies.67 On January 4, 2022, that panel ruled against Canada. After Canada threatened $1 billion in trade sanctions in 2015, Obama’s (and subsequently Biden’s) Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack withdrew plans to introduce Country-of-Origin labelling requirements (for meat). In January 2022 President Biden announced new “Product of USA” labelling rules – notwithstanding that US and Canadian standards in the industry are virtually identical.68 The KXL cancellation provoked its owner, TC Energy, to abandon it in June 2021, resulting in billions of dollars of losses to it and the Government of Alberta (under legacy provisions of NAFTA, the US could be liable for some of those costs).69 But KXL wasn’t the only bilateral pipeline issue. “Line 5,” owned by the Canadian firm Enbridge, brings western Canadian oil through Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan to Central Canada (while significantly serving midwestern states). Fully 45 per cent of the petroleum consumed in Ontario and Quebec arrives via that pipeline. Any disruption would threaten Canada’s national security.70 Gretchen Whitmer became Michigan’s governor in 2019, having campaigned to shut down Line 5. Whitmer subsequently helped Biden win Michigan’s sixteen electoral college votes in 2020; he named her vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee. Enbridge took Michigan to court, contesting the order to close Line 5. Canada filed an amicus curiae brief supporting Enbridge,71 specifically referencing a 1977 treaty governing “transit pipelines” (hydrocarbons flow from country A through country B on their way back to country A).72 That treaty was negotiated at the USA’s behest, to prevent Yukon, British Columbia, or Alberta from impeding the flow of Alaskan oil to the lower forty-eight states. Then-senator Joe Biden voted to ratify it. Jennifer Granholm, Biden’s energy secretary (and a former Michigan governor), responded to Canada’s ask for US government intervention pursuant to the Treaty, saying, “We don’t wade in on that. It will be decided in court.” Shortly after prevailing in the 2021 Canadian election, the Liberal government formally invoked the dispute settlement provision of the 1977 Treaty with the objective of finally resolving the issue.73

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The Border In their 2014 chapter, Biette and Kuschner highlighted the overarching importance to Canada of a relatively free-flowing border with the USA. When “the border” makes US headlines, it’s almost always the southern one. That’s generally good for Canada; the northern border doesn’t attract calls for wall-building. It also means, though, that the US feels less compelled to properly resource their northern border – whether in terms of infrastructure or personnel. There were no significant border-related issues from 2014 until COVID-19. In March 2020, however, the two governments closed the entire 8,891-km (5,525-mile) border to “non-essential” traffic. Goods trade continued; discretionary travel (e.g., by vehicle for tourism) halted. Public health concerns dominated decision-making. The February 2021 Roadmap stipulated: “Both leaders agreed to take a coordinated approach based on science and public health criteria when considering measures to ease Canada-US border restrictions in the future.” Neither government appeared to make border reopening an urgent priority – remarkable given historical Canadian fears about “border thickening.” When Canada finally moved, under great pressure from businesses (especially in the tourism sector) – as well as from members of the US Congress and other US opinion leaders – it did so unilaterally, welcoming US visitors starting August 9, 2021. Notwithstanding pressure from border-state members of Congress, the Biden administration did not immediately reciprocate.74 Perhaps apprehensions about opening the USA’s northern and southern borders simultaneously drove US Homeland Security and White House decision-making on the issue. If so, that should concern Canada – which has always resisted any notion that the US treat the two borders identically. Early in 2022, a so-called “Freedom Convoy” (some genuine truckers; many anti-vaccination militants) blockaded border crossings in BC, Alberta, Manitoba, and Ontario. Most significantly, the Ambassador Bridge linking Detroit and Windsor was closed for a week, resulting in plant shutdowns and layoffs in both countries, particularly in the automotive sector. The White House expressed its serious concern. Canada invoked its Emergencies Act, triggering powers to forcibly remove the protestors, if necessary. Some analysts believe this episode may have damaged Canada’s reputation as a reliable supplier to the US, perhaps strengthening the hand of US “Buy American” advocates.75

North American Defence Finally, NORAD. Allan Gotlieb concluded, while representing Canada in DC, that “defence plays to the very top of the US agenda.”76 So it was no surprise that the Roadmap stipulated: “The Prime Minister and the President agreed to expand cooperation on continental defence and in the Arctic, including by modernizing the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).”77

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Michael Dawson, a former Canadian diplomat specializing in Canada-US military relations, wrote in 2019: “as NORAD evolves, Canada’s commitment to it must evolve too. If there comes a point at which the US believes that the alliance is no longer sufficiently securing its northern frontier, it may forge its own path and impose its own defence plans for Canada, on Canada.”78 On August 14, 2021, just hours before Canada’s election campaign began, the minister of ­defence and the US secretary of defense issued a “Joint Statement on NORAD Modernization” which ticked the appropriate Roadmap box.79 Some of that language found its way into the ensuing Liberal platform.80 Subsequent use by adversaries of hypersonic missiles drew increased attention to the importance of upgrading NORAD.81 So did Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The government’s announcement, in March 2022, that Canada would procure the F-35 fighter jet might eventually convince American officials that Canada is beginning to take northern ­defence seriously.

FORMULATING – AND CONDUCTING – FOREIGN POLICY Differences That Matter in the Roles of Legislators and Policymakers Any comparative analysis of how the two countries organize themselves to determine and advance foreign policy interests and goals must address differences in legislators’ roles. In Canada, foreign policy-making is overwhelmingly the executive’s preserve. Apart from treaty ratification, very little of what Canada does internationally is legislatively driven. A handful of House of Commons and Senate committees review relevant legislation, including proposed budgetary allocations; periodically they initiate studies or policy reviews, generally at the government’s request. When the government commands a majority (and often when it doesn’t), there is less contention around most foreign policy issues than domestic ones. If the PM or a minister says to US counterparts that Canada will do something and fails to follow through, it almost certainly isn’t because Parliament refused. By contrast, in America’s “co-equal” system of government, much congressional foreign policy activity derives from constitutionally mandated powers (e.g., to declare war, approve treaties, and ratify nominations, including ambassadors). Literally dozens of committees and sub-committees, with large professional staffs, have a hand in determining policy and evaluating its implementation. This makes all legislators – not just occupants of leadership positions or committee chairs – appropriate targets for Canadians advocating in the US (Americans advocating in Canada heavily focus attention on the executive). Periodically, funds are not secured for something the president or a cabinet secretary committed to during discussions with Canadian counterparts; in Canada, if Parliament denied the government’s budgetary

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request, an election likely would be forced. When Canadian elections yield a new government, Canada’s ambassador to the US might remain at post for a long time; if the new government wishes someone different in Washington, he/she can be on the job quickly. Newly nominated US ambassadors to Canada, by contrast, often wait six months or more to receive a Senate hearing, a process sometimes held hostage to demands that have no bearing on US-Canada relations. When new US ambassadors finally get to Canada, however, they can count on meeting ­anyone they want to see. Members of cabinet, parliamentarians, senior government officials, business leaders, provincial premiers, and, maybe most importantly, all media personalities quickly make themselves available (representatives of other G7 countries enjoy decent access, but they might have to wait). The USA has seven consulates general/consulates across Canada; those heads of mission enjoy comparable access within their territories. By contrast, the Canadian ambassador (and the twelve Canadian consuls general across the USA) confront a more competitive environment for face time with those they wish to see (perhaps especially in the media). Relative ease of access impacts how quickly and broadly the two countries’ representatives can communicate their messages. Ambassadors and diplomats carry heavy loads in representing their country’s interests to the other. The best mould their tactics to changing realities. Allan Gotlieb, Ambassador to the US from 1981 to 1989, was transformative in bringing a traditionalist government bureaucracy into the modern advocacy age.82 Gotlieb predated social media – although given the profile he built, he likely would have used it effectively. “Diplomacy through dinner parties” is now the exception rather than the rule, as US politicians chase the twenty-four-hour media cycle, along with fundraising imperatives. Social media influencers are well entrenched along with think tank experts and other pundits, meaning Canada must compete with a wide range of actors vying for attention in a crowded field. Gotlieb’s successor, Derek Burney, wrote of the importance of “build(ing) coalitions of support in the United States.”83

Provinces and States Both national governments draw on extensive supporting casts, including broad networks built by elected officials (at all levels of government),84 as well as linkages between US governors and Canadian premiers, and state and provincial legislators. Governors and premiers meet frequently – both bilaterally and in the regional context to discuss trans-border issues;85 Canadian premiers ritually attend the winter meeting, in Washington, DC, of the USA’s National Governors’ Association. Most provinces are dues-paying members of the US Council of State Governments (CSG) and/or of the CSG’s proximate regional organizations (CSG East, Mid-West, and West) – all of which have institutionalized US-Canada Relations Committees.86 Several provincial legislatures are members of the USA’s National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), which also has a Canadian-American

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Relations Committee.87 Regional organizations, like the Pacific Northwest Economic Region (PNWER) and the Council of the Great Lakes Region (CGLR) do valuable research and build awareness of the mutually beneficial nature of the cross-border economy.88 Their efforts are complemented by academic institutions and umbrella organizations (like the Association for Canadian Studies in the USA) and think tanks (like the Canada Institute at the Congressionally-funded Wilson Center for Scholars in Washington, DC) doing cross-border work.89 There are multiple binational business councils or chambers (e.g., in the Windsor-Detroit area and the Niagara Peninsula), plus the very high-profile, Washington, DC–headquartered CanadianAmerican Business Council.90 Because of this array of mechanisms, solutions often emanate from the efforts of motivated and pragmatic problem solvers working at provincial/state levels. Former US Ambassador Blanchard, in Living History, extolls the extent to which national leaders and diplomats depend on functional networks built and maintained by provinces, legislators, and businesspersons for their ultimate success in resolving outstanding US-Canadian differences.

Multiple Actors in Policy-Making Structural differences also affect policy processes and outcomes. In both countries, the agencies principally responsible (US State Department; Global Affairs Canada) have seen their authority and ability to develop foreign policy diminish.The transitory nature of senior officials in the US (thousands of new officeholders being nominated and confirmed after a president takes office) presents continuity downsides but has spawned the creation of expert “farm teams,” often resident in well-financed think tanks (there are upwards of 2,000 of them, many working on foreign policy, broadly defined). In a “normal” presidency (Trump’s perhaps being an exception), many of a new administration’s policies have been debated and honed, often in highly public fashion, while the party is in opposition. Canadian policy development has also shifted to the political sphere, away from career officials. But comparatively fewer outsiders are involved. Canada has only a handful of think tanks (working on foreign policy or anything else). Since there’s very limited scope for movement in and out of government (at the bureaucratic level) in Canada, those ultimately responsible for implementing a new government’s policy rarely were involved in developing it (or in exercising a “challenge function” along the way). Which isn’t to say that officials resist implementing the government’s foreign policies (invariably, the head of the Canadian civil service will instruct that departments prioritize the delivery of the successful party’s campaign platform). It is to say that new Canadian governments can find themselves touting policies substantially disconnected from government’s implementing capabilities. Which may, in part, be why Adam Chapnick, Professor of Defence Studies at Canada’s Royal Military College, lamented in 2021, “today, foreign policy seems to be about making Canadians feel good inside. It is chauvinistic, opportunistic, and depressing.”91

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CONCLUSIONS Canadians, like all US allies, observed wild gyrations in American foreign policy since Differences That Count (2014). Post-Trump, the US nominally reverted to supporting (most) multilateral institutions, closer consultation, and coalition-building among the like-minded. But US behaviours between 2017 and 2021 planted doubts; when the founder of the globe’s multilateral institutions so disparages and undermines (at least some of) them, can US leadership be relied upon? While Biden’s America has re-engaged allies, uncertainty about the durability of that posture causes headaches in Canada, a country that’s so reliant on institutions to curb the worst excesses of “hyperpowers” – especially when there’s no realistic alternative model in view. Meanwhile, Americans who paid attention could conclude that on the multilateral front, with limited exceptions, Canada is resolutely committed to the status quo, including as a “free rider” (or at least an “easy” one) on defence. Early in the period covered in this chapter, Canada was fully aligned with the US on Russia and North Korea, took a (slightly) harder line on Iran, and a softer one on China. One year into the Biden presidency, on all the major geo-political issues facing the world (including China), there are no major Canada-US differences.92 Opportunities occasionally will arise for Canada to follow its own path toward third countries not considered existential threats to “Western” interests. But doing so in a fashion that contributes to improved American relations with them requires an investment by Canadian leaders of time and resources not recently displayed. Even if Canada were again to seek the role of “helpful fixer,” taking advantage of Canada’s standing with any third country requires a level of interest not recently observed in Washington. Any American insistence on Canadian uniformity with US policies will further diminish Canada’s scope to helpfully make a difference. On withdrawing from Afghanistan, US military forces ceased to be engaged on the ground in any major conflict. However, the Biden White House’s emphasis on the “Quad” in Asia (USA, Japan, Australia, India), and reinvigorated support for NATO (particularly after the invasion of Ukraine), might signal US selectivity in determining (and pursuing) its national security interests. Canada could play a role in taking initiatives with other like-minded countries which could draw US support, but that would require a concerted Canadian effort. A period of Canadian introspection was triggered in September 2021 with the creation of AUKUS (a trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) – to the evident surprise of many US allies, including Canada. The significance of this move in terms of its definitive statement on countering China was without question. Canada joined other allies, notably France (whose commercial interests were at stake), in being left out of the loop. The Canadian prime minister dismissed AUKUS as being about nuclear-powered submarines (in which, he made clear, Canada has no interest). Increasingly, though, AUKUS’s mandate seems to be growing – perhaps at the expense of the Five Eyes intelligence partnership on which Canada relies dearly.93 The US released its security-focused Indo-Pacific Strategy

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early in 2022, followed by its Indo-Pacific Economic Framework – viewed as the economic afterthought.94 Elites puzzled at the absence of a Canadian counterpart95; Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy was finally released in late 2022.96 While the strategy does call for incremental spending on security, Canada remains unequipped to discharge any significant geo-strategic role in the region. Having initially played down the relevance to Canada of the USA’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, immediately after a meeting in Ottawa in October 2022 with US Secretary of State Blinken, Canadian Foreign Minister Joly announced that Canada would, in fact, seek to join the Framework. The picture is no clearer bilaterally. In 2018, Christopher Sands (co-editor of this volume) wrote that “Canada shouldn’t always count on special treatment from the US.”97 In fact, it’s been a long time since either government accorded the other special treatment, in the sense of expending domestic political capital to buttress the relationship. Canada has successfully influenced US policy decisions by aligning with American domestic interests and/or by stimulating potential allies in the US through threats of economic retaliation. Similarly, the US reaches out all the time to Canadian business interests, encouraging them to pressure Canada’s government to act in a particular way. But in the face of clear asks from the US (for example, on missile defence, defence spending generally, and banning Huawei from its 5G network), the US received no special treatment. And, as detailed above, almost without exception, the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations displayed little interest in accommodating Canada’s bilateral asks. As Biden was taking office, Sands also wrote, “The US can sometimes take Canada’s support for granted. With a new administration in place, Trudeau should push back and change the dynamic.”98 Good advice – not immediately taken! Normally, Canada’s governments want Canadians to believe that US relations are being well-managed.That was challenging during Trump’s years. Even though the list of bilateral irritants grew no shorter with the arrival of Biden (it may even have lengthened), Canadians like Biden much more than they liked Trump.99 That, plus the fact that neither Trudeau nor Canada any longer were being subjected to bitter, gratuitous Twitter assaults by the US president and senior officials, gave an impression of normalized relations. Any focus on fixing irritants with the US would have highlighted to Canadians how many of those remained, that “fault” for their continued existence could not be ascribed exclusively to the Trump administration, and would have detracted from the 2021 goal of regaining a parliamentary majority. Sands is correct that it would fall to Canada to generate any “big” agenda for bilateral reforms. The US likely has no such inclination, given other challenges it faces (“bandwidth” always diminishes as elections approach). Canada has periodically taken this kind of initiative. In the past 35 years, there were four major overtures to the US seeking significant bilateral policy change: free trade, acid rain, participating in NAFTA (all Mulroney government-generated), and “Beyond the Border” (Harper). In the thirty-five years before that, there (arguably) were only

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two: the St. Lawrence Seaway (St. Laurent) and the Auto Pact (Pearson). In other words, it’s rare for Canada to invest resources and political capital to press the USA for priority attention to any reordering of the bilateral relationship. The likelihood of that happening further diminishes as policy capacity within Canada’s bureaucracy is challenged, and as political leaders, in both countries, increasingly seem more interested in crisis- and image-management. All of which is to say that insofar as bilateral relations are concerned, both countries seem likely to continue to be more reactive than proactive – with Canada likely having more to react to. Perhaps the status quo is now the default on which both countries have converged?

STUDY QUESTIONS 1. In what different ways might the US and Canada aspire to drive significant reforms of multilateral institutions? a. Is it realistic for Canada to hope that the US will become a partner in pushing for realistic reform of the World Trade Organization? 2. Does either Canada or the US have advantages (or disadvantages) in building and conducting bilateral relationships with third countries? a. How would you characterize differences in US and Canadian approaches toward China? What would you recommend in terms of possible avenues for US-Canadian cooperation vis-à-vis China? 3. Given large differences in absolute and relative power between the two countries, is the US destined to prevail in all bilateral disputes with Canada? a. Do you think an agreement like the US-Canada Acid Rain Accord could be achieved today? Is it realistic to expect that the two countries could negotiate and then jointly implement common approaches on other environmental issues (integrated manufacturing of zero emission vehicles being one example)? 4. Is it your sense that Canada’s or the USA’s system of foreign policy-making is more effective at advancing the country’s national interest? a. Given the challenges of getting trade legislation (or even fasttrack authority) through Congress, what do you think the prospects are for the USA joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP)?

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Roy Norton and Deanna Horton NOTES 1 Ambassador Chas Freeman, “The Sino-American Split,” Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, September 10, 2021, https://peacediplomacy.org/2021/09/10/ipd-remarks-ambassador-chas -freeman-sino-american-split/. Canada, of course, is the only G7 member without an imperialist past. 2 Andrew Rasiulis, “Military Training and Co-operation: Diplomatic Instrument and Combat Force Multiplier,” Canadian Global Affairs Institute, June 2018, https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net /cdfai/pages/3879/attachments/original/1529357272/Military_Training_and_Co-operation. pdf?1529357272. 3 Lee Berthiaume, “US Presses Canada to Make Good on Promised 200-Soldier Peacekeeping Force,” CBC News, November 29, 2021, https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/biden-presses -canada-for-peaekeepers-1.6267014. 4 Alexandra Richards et al., “Four Years On, the Latvia Mission Is Canada’s Quiet Success,” Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Ottawa, January 26, 2021, https://www.macdonaldlaurier.ca/latvia-mission -canadas-quiet-success/. 5 David Pugliese, “Justin Trudeau Announces New 250-Troop, Canada-Led NATO Training Mission in Iraq,” National Post, July 11, 2018, https://nationalpost.com/news/world/newsalert-canada -will-command-new-nato-training-mission-in-iraq. 6 Quoted by Eugene Lang in a Globe and Mail op-ed, “Canada Is Rich – and Cheap,” December 9, 2019, A13, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-canada-is-rich-and-cheap/. Lang was chief of staff to two Liberal defence ministers in the early 2000s; he has no known sympathies for Trump or MAGA. 7 The White House, “Roadmap for a Renewed US-Canada Partnership,” February 23, 2021, https:// www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/02/23/roadmap-for-a-renewed -u-s-canada-partnership/. 8 Liberal Party of Canada, Forward for Everyone, September 2021, https://liberal.ca/our-platform /strong-secure-engaged-and-inclusive/. The Conservatives said in their 2021 platform that they would increase spending “to move closer to our 2% aspirations”: Conservative Party of Canada, Secure the Future, Summer 2021, 99, https://cpcassets.conservative.ca/wp-content /uploads/2021/08/16102359/f8279981721e07a.pdf. 9 For background, see Dan Ciuriak et al., “Canada’s Pivot to the Indo-Pacific: The Strategic Importance of Prioritizing a Trade Agreement with ASEAN,” C.D. Howe Institute, February 10, 2022, https://www.cdhowe.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/ASEAN-Canada%20Trade%20Study.pdf. 10 Keith Johnson, “How Trump May Finally Kill the WTO,” Foreign Policy, December 9, 2019, https:// foreignpolicy.com/2019/12/09/trump-may-kill-wto-finally-appellate-body-world-trade -organization/. 11 See Bryce Baschuk, “US Says WTO’s Appellate Body Is Invalid, Balks at Compliance,” Bloomberg.com, April 22, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-22/u-s-says-wto-s -appellate-body-is-invalid-balks-at-compliance?sref=kKB52T5t. 12 Government of Canada, Global Affairs Canada, “Ottawa Group and WTO Reform,” May 23, 2019, https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2019/05/ottawa-group-and-wto-reform .html. 13 John G. Murphy, “Why American Business Needs the WTO,” US Chamber of Commerce, February 6, 2020, https://www.uschamber.com/series/above-the-fold/why-american-business -needs-the-wto.

Together and Apart 14 See Anders Aslund and Maria Snegovaya, “The Impact of Western Sanctions on Russia and How They Can Be Made Even More Effective,” Atlantic Council, Washington, DC, May 2021, https:// www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/the-impact-of-western -sanctions-on-russia/; and Dianne Rennick and Cory Welt, “US Sanctions on Russia: An Overview,” US Congressional Research Service, June 2021, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IF10779.pdf. 15 Government of Canada, “Canadian Sanctions Related to Russia,” April 23, 2021, https://www .international.gc.ca/world-monde/international_relations-relations_internationales/sanctions /russia-russie.aspx?lang=eng. 16 For a more detailed treatment of efforts by diaspora communities, including Ukrainian-Canadians, to secure specific foreign policy objectives, see Roy Norton, “Ethnic Groups and Conservative Foreign Policy,” in Diplomatic Departures:The Conservative Era in Canadian Foreign Policy, 1984–93, ed. Nelson Michaud and Kim Richard Nossal (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2001), 241–59. 17 See Doug Saunders, “How Ukrainian Politics Became the Most Canadian of Politics,” Globe and Mail, July 5, 2019, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-how-ukrainian-politics -became-the-most-canadian-of-politics/; and Konrad Yakabuski, “Opinion: On Russian Sanctions, Chrystia Freeland Is in the Right Place at the Right Time,” Globe and Mail, March 2, 2022, https:// www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-on-russia-sanctions-chrystia-freeland-is-in-the -right-place-at-the/. In 2016, as trade minister, Freeland successfully concluded a Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement (the US has only a Bilateral Investment Treaty with Ukraine). 18 Reported by Adam Taylor, “Trump Complains Ukraine ‘Hated’ Him as a Candidate, But Lots of Foreign Officials Opposed Him,” Washington Post, November 22, 2019, https://www .washingtonpost.com/world/2019/11/22/trump-complains-ukraine-hated-him-candidate-lots -foreign-officials-opposed-him/. 19 Economist, “China Is Betting That the West Is in Irreversible Decline,” April 3, 2021, https://www .economist.com/china/2021/03/31/china-is-betting-that-the-west-is-in-irreversible-decline. 20 Peter Martin, “Biden’s Asia Czar Says Era of Engagement with Xi’s China Is Over,” Bloomberg, May 26, 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-26/biden-s-asia-czar-says-era -of-engagement-with-xi-s-china-is-over?sref=kKB52T5t. 21 Scott Kennedy, “Beijing Suffers Major Loss from Its Hostage Diplomacy,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, September 29, 2021, https://www.csis.org/analysis/beijing-suffers -major-loss-its-hostage-diplomacy. 22 See Mark Entwistle, “Opinion: The Trump Administration’s New Cuba Restrictions Are Harmful and Belligerent,” Globe and Mail, April 19, 2019, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion /article-the-trump-administrations-new-cuba-restrictions-are-harmful-and/. 23 For context see Deanna Horton and Roy Norton, “Canadian Encouragement Needed! Time to Reverse Trump’s Reverse on Cuba,” Canada Institute, Woodrow Wilson Center, June 2021, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/canadian-encouragement-needed-time-reverse-trumps -reverse-cuba. 24 A statement emanates from each Lima Group meeting; a comprehensive one was issued on October 14, 2020: https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/international_relations -relations_internationales/latin_america-amerique_latine/2020-10-14--lima_group-groupe _lima.aspx?lang=eng. 25 US Department of State, “US, EU, Canada: Joint Statement on Venezuela,” June 25, 2021, https:// www.state.gov/u-s-eu-canada-joint-statement-on-venezuela/. 26 Charles Ritchie, Undiplomatic Diaries (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2008), 433.

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Roy Norton and Deanna Horton 27 Allan Gotlieb, The Washington Diaries 1981–1989 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2006), 192. 28 For elaboration on roles that Canada (and other middle powers) might play, see Roland Paris, “Can Middle Powers Save the Liberal World Order?,” Chatham House, June 2019, https://www .chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/publications/research/2019-06-18-MiddlePowers.pdf. 29 Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland gave a speech in Washington, DC, on June 13, 2018, after receiving Foreign Policy’s Diplomat of the Year Award. In it, she lamented the spread of “angry populism” and made Canada’s pitch for a “rejuvenated rules-based international order”: https://www .canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2018/06/address-by-minister-freeland-when-receiving -foreign-policys-diplomat-of-the-year-award.html. 30 The World Bank, 2020, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.TRD.GNFS.ZS?locations=US. 31 One example is the Commonwealth-led effort (opposed by the Reagan administration) to end South African apartheid. For details on Canada’s leadership role, see Daniel Manulak, “A Marathon, Not a Sprint: Canada and South African Apartheid, 1987–1990,” International Journal 75, no. 1 (April 15, 2020), https://doi.org/10.1177/0020702020917179. 32 For elaboration on Canada’s involvement, see Roy Norton, “Canadian Foreign Minister Joe Clark and the Central American Peace Process,” in 150 Canadian Stories of Peace – An Anthology (Walking for Peace Publishing, 2017). 33 See Roy Norton, “Posture and Policymaking in Canada-US Relations: The First Two Mulroney and Chrétien Years,” Canadian Foreign Policy 5, no. 2 (Winter 1998), 15–36. 34 James J. Blanchard, Living History: Book 5 – Ambassador, https://governorblanchard.com/book-5-i -choose-canada/. 35 Christopher Sands, “A River Runs Through It,” Wilson Quarterly, Summer 2021, https:// www.wilsonquarterly.com/quarterly/conflict-resolution/a-river-runs-through-it/. 36 See Jeff Heynen and John Higginbotham, “Advancing Canadian Interests in the United States: A Practical Guide for Canadian Public Officials,” in Canada School of Public Service Action-Research Roundtable on Managing Canada-US Relations (Canada School of Public Service, 2004), 6, https:// publications.gc.ca/Collection/SC103-3-2004E.pdf. 37 Ritchie, Undiplomatic Diaries, 417. 38 For additional context, see Luiza Ch. Savage, “Land of the Freeloaders: The Battle for a New Cross-Border Bridge,” Maclean’s, May 21, 2015, https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/land-of -the-freeloaders-the-battle-for-a-new-cross-border-bridge/. 39 Laura Dawson and Sean Speer, “Managing the Canada-US Relationship from the Honeymoon to the Long-Term,” Wilson Center Canada Institute and Macdonald-Laurier Institute, March 2016, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/managing-the-canada-us-relationship-the-honeymoon -to-the-long-term. 40 For context see John Geddes, “How NAFTA Was Saved: The Bitter Fight and the Final Breakthrough,” Maclean’s, October 1, 2018, https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/how-nafta-was -saved-the-bitter-fight-and-last-minute-recovery/. The rules-of-origin issue was central to the USMCA/CUSMA negotiations and remained important after the deal was signed. See also Eric Martin and Keith Laing, “US Clashes with Mexico, Canada on Car Rules in USMCA Risk,” BNN Bloomberg, July 16, 2021, https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/u-s-clashes-with-mexico-canada -on-car-rules-in-risk-to-usmca-1.1629995. 41 Laura Dawson, “Trudeau Figures Out How to Get Things Done in Washington,” Globe and Mail, June 21, 2019, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-trudeau-figures-out-how -to-get-things-done-in-washington/.

Together and Apart 42 Office of the United States Trade Representative, “Agreement between the United States of America, the United Mexican States, and Canada 7/1/20 Text,” https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements /free-trade-agreements/united-states-mexico-canada-agreement/agreement-between. 43 House Committee on Ways and Means, “Improvements to the USMCA: Democrats Secure Wins for the People in the New North American Free Trade Agreement,” December 10, 2019, https:// waysandmeans.house.gov/sites/democrats.waysandmeans.house.gov/files/documents/USMCA%20 win%20factsheet%20.pdf. 44 Mary E. Lovely and Jeffrey J. Schott, “The USMCA: New, Modestly Improved, but Still Costly,” ­Peterson Institute for International Economics (Washington, DC), December 17, 2019, https://www .piie.com/blogs/trade-and-investment-policy-watch/usmca-new-modestly-improved-still-costly. 45 Compiled from data sourced from the US Census Bureau, Foreign Trade:Trade in Goods with ­Canada, https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c1220.html, and Government of ­ Canada, Trade Data Online – Canada Total Exports, https://www.ic.gc.ca/app/scr/tdst/tdo/crtr .html?grouped=GROUPED&searchType=All&naArea=9999&countryList=TOP&toFromCountry =CDN&reportType=TE&customYears=2020&timePeriod=%7CCustom+Years¤cy= CDN&productType=HS6&runReport=true. Here’s the percentage of Canada’s total goods exports that went to the USA beginning in 1990 (after the Canada-US FTA had taken effect, but before NAFTA), followed by the comparable share of total US goods exports that went to Canada: 1990 (75 per cent/22 per cent); 1995 (79 per cent/22 per cent); 2000 (87 per cent/23 per cent); 2005 (84 per cent/23 per cent); 2010 (75 per cent/19 per cent); 2015 (77 per cent/19 per cent); 2020 (73.5 per cent/18 per cent). 46 Laura Dawson, “Canada’s Global Trade Options – Is There a Plan B?,” in Canada Among Nations – Canada-US Relations: Sovereignty or Shared Interests, ed. D. Carment and C. Sands (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 160. 47 David Parkinson, “Canada Can Sharply Boost Exports If It Breaks Old Habits,” Globe and Mail, August 1, 2021, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-canada-can -sharply-boost-exports-but-it-would-mean-overcoming-old/. 48 See Roberta Jacobson and Tom Tyler, “To Counter China, Look to Canada and Mexico, an Integrated North America Is the Solution to Supply Chain Insecurity,” Foreign Affairs, July 31, 2020, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/americas/2020-07-31/counter-china-look -canada-and-mexico. 49 See Elaine Dezenski and John C. Austin, “Rebuilding America’s Economy and Foreign Policy with Ally Shoring,” Brookings Institution (Washington, DC), June 8, 2021, https://www.brookings.edu/ blog/the-avenue/2021/06/08/rebuilding-americas-economy-and-foreign-policy-with -ally-shoring/. 50 A Global Affairs Canada background document, “Steel and Aluminum” (October 5, 2020), elaborates on Canada’s position in response to the Section 232 tariffs: https://www.international.gc.ca /trade-commerce/controls-controles/steel_alum-acier_alum.aspx?lang=eng. 51 Richard Wike, “The Trump Era Has Seen a Decline in America’s Global Reputation,” Pew Research Center, November 19, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/19 /the-trump-era-has-seen-a-decline-in-americas-global-reputation/. 52 See Foreign Minister Freeland’s September 5, 2019, statement in response to the NAFTA Chapter 19 binational panel decision on softwood lumber at https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs /news/2019/09/statement-by-minister-of-foreign-affairs-on-nafta-panel-decision-on -canadian-softwood-lumber.html.

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Roy Norton and Deanna Horton 53 While there is not unanimity among US dairy producers on this issue, both the Trump and Biden administrations tended to embrace the position advanced by more protectionist domestic interests. See Alexander Panetta, “US Groups Tell Biden to Drop the Dairy Duel with Canada,” CBC News, February 2, 2021, https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/dairy-letter-biden-1.5898060. 54 Chris Cillizza, “The Absolute Chaos of Donald Trump’s G7 Meeting (and What It Means Going Forward),”CNN, June 11, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/11/politics/donald-trump -g7-chaos/index.html. 55 Annie Karni and Katie Rogers, “Trump Abruptly Exits NATO Gathering after Embarrassing Video Emerges,” New York Times, December 5, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/world /europe/trump-video-nato.html. 56 Raisa Patel, “Policy Alignment, Predictability to Mark Canada-US Relationship under Biden, Ambassador Says,” CBC News, January 17, 2021, https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-united-states -relationship-biden-1.5876417. 57 The White House, “Beyond the Border,” February 4, 2011, https://obamawhitehouse.archives .gov/the-press-office/2011/02/04/declaration-president-obama-and-prime-minister-harper -canada-beyond-bord. 58 Anne Gearan and Amanda Coletta, “Trudeau Conveys Relief in Meeting with Biden, But Sticking Points Remain,” Washington Post, February 23, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com /politics/biden-canada-justin-trudeau/2021/02/23/93e2c5ca-75fa-11eb-9537-496158cc5fd9 _story.html. 59 The White House, “Fact Sheet: President Biden’s Leaders Summit on Climate,” April 23, 2021, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/04/23/fact-sheet -president-bidens-leaders-summit-on-climate/. It’s noteworthy, though, that current and prospective Canadian hydroelectric exports to the US that could help mitigate climate change face significant hurdles notwithstanding the priority attached by both leaders to reducing GHG emissions; see Alexander Panetta, “Maine Referendum Deals Blow to Hydro-Quebec Project,” CBC News, November 3, 2021, https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/maine-vote-hydro-quebec-1.6233569. 60 See Lawrence Herman, “Government Procurement and Biden’s Buy American Policies: A Way Forward,” Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Ottawa, February 2021, https://macdonaldlaurier.ca/files /pdf/20210217_Buy_American_policies_Herman_COMMENTARY_FWeb.pdf. 61 Arturo Chang, “Canada Won’t Escape Biden’s ‘Buy American’ Plans: MacNaughton,” BNN Bloomberg, February 24, 2021, https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/canada-won-t-escape-biden-s-buy -american-plans-macnaughton-1.1568136. 62 Adrian Morrow, “Joe Biden’s Tougher Buy American Rules Raise Fears Among Canadian Business,” Globe and Mail, July 28, 2021, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/us-politics /article-joe-bidens-buy-american-rules-raise-fears-among-canadian-business/. 63 Alexander Panetta, “Trudeau Arrives in U.S. with Last-Minute Warning for Democrats about Electric Vehicle Tax Credit,” CBC News, November 17, 2021, https://www.cbc.ca/news/world /trudeau-biden-warning-washington-1.6252455?msclkid=37f12195bcf611ec9710730d58df162d. 64 Roy Norton, “Canada Rolls the Dice and Engages Congress on Subsidies for Zero-Emission Vehicles,” Hill Times, January 4, 2022, https://www.hilltimes.com/story/2022/01/04/canada -rolls-the-dice-and-engages-congress-on-subsidies-for-zero-emission-vehicles/270034/. 65 Prime Minister’s Office, “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Speaks with the President of the United States of America Joe Biden,” January 22, 2021, https://pm.gc.ca/en/news/readouts/2021/01 /22/prime-minister-justin-trudeau-speaks-president-united-states-america-joe.

Together and Apart 66 Editorial Board, “Biden Joins the Lumber Trade Wars,” Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-joins-the-lumber-wars-commerce-department-tariffs -canada-11638226400?msclkid=7531c13cbcf911ec93f6e6148c745dd8. 67 United States Trade Representative, “United States Advances First USMCA Dispute Panel to Enforce Canada’s Dairy Commitments,” May 25, 2021, https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press -office/press-releases/2021/may/united-states-advances-first-usmca-dispute-panel-enforce -canadas-dairy-commitments. 68 White House, “Fact Sheet: The Biden-Harris Action Plan for a Fairer, More Competitive, and More Resilient Meat and Poultry Supply Chain,” January 3, 2022, https://www.whitehouse.gov /briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/01/03/fact-sheet-the-biden-harris-action-plan-for -a-fairer-more-competitive-and-more-resilient-meat-and-poultry-supply-chain/. 69 See Jon Johnson, “Cancellation of the Keystone Permit: What to Do,” C.D. Howe Institute, January 28, 2021, https://www.cdhowe.org/intelligence-memos/jon-johnson-%E2%80%93-cancellation -keystone-permit-what-do. 70 Elise von Scheel, “Why There’s Now a Push to Secure the Future of Enbridge’s Line 5 Pipeline,” CBC News, February 5, 2021, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/push-to-secure-future -of-line-5-pipeline-1.5901575. 71 Government of Canada, Brief of Amicus Curiae, https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/nrcan-rncan /documents/GOC%20Amicus%20-%20FINAL.pdf. 72 “Agreement between the Government of Canada and the Government of the United States of America Concerning Transit Pipelines,” 1977, https://www.treaty-accord.gc.ca/text-texte.aspx?lcid= 1033&id=101884&t=637651662058959544. 73 See Foreign Minister Garneau’s October 4, 2021, statement at https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2021/10/statement-by-minister-garneau-on-line-5-transit-pipeline.html, and attendant analysis by Steven Chase, “Canada Invokes 1977 Treaty with US in Bid to Halt Line 5 Closing,” Globe and Mail, October 4, 2021, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada -invokes-1977-treaty-with-us-in-stalemate-over-line-5-energy/. 74 Edward Alden, “America’s Pandemic Travel Bans No Longer Make Sense: A Thoughtless, Unscientific Policy of Closed Borders – Even to Vaccinated Travelers – Does a Little More Damage Every Day,” Foreign Policy, September 13, 2021, https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/09/13/travel-bans-border -restrictions-biden-covid-pandemic/. See also Wilson Task Force on Public Health and the US -Canadian Border_1.pdf (wilsoncenter.org), October 29, 2021. 75 See White House, “Statement by White House Homeland Security Advisor Dr. Liz Sherwood -Randall,” February 13, 2022, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements -releases/2022/02/13/statement-by-white-house-homeland-security-advisor-dr-liz-sherwood -randall/, and Amanda Coletta, “The Self-Styled ‘Freedom Convoy’ Rumbled Up at an Inopportune Time for US-Canada Trade,” Washington Post, February 27, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost .com/world/2022/02/27/canada-freedom-convoy-trade-united-states/. 76 Gotlieb, The Washington Diaries, 266. 77 One important piece of the proposed renewal is described in “North America’s Arctic Radar Shield Is Due for an Upgrade,” Economist, July 31, 2021, https://www.economist.com/the-americas /2021/07/29/north-americas-arctic-radar-shield-is-due-for-an-upgrade. 78 Michael Dawson, “NORAD: Remaining Relevant,” University of Calgary, School of Public Policy, SPP Briefing Paper 12, no. 399 (November 2019), https://www.policyschool.ca/wp-content /uploads/2019/11/NORAD-Briefing.final_.pdf.

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Roy Norton and Deanna Horton 79 Government of Canada, Department of National Defence, “Joint Statement on NORAD Modernization,” August 14, 2021, https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/news/2021 /08/joint-statement-on-norad-modernization.html. 80 For elaboration on virtues of a common Canada-US outlook on the Arctic, see Lindsay Rodman, “The Pentagon’s Arctic Strategies Reveal the Benefit of a North American Approach,” Canadian Global Affairs Institute, May 2020, https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/cdfai/pages /4429/attachments/original/1590012521/The_Pentagons_Arctic_Strategies_Reveal_the_Benefit _of_a_North_American_Approach.pdf?1590012521. 81 Ashley Burke, “NORAD Commander Warns Canadian Officials about the Threat Posed by Hypersonic Missiles,” CBC News, November 30, 2021, https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/commander -norad-hypersonic-weapons-canada-position-1.6268141?msclkid=4a01b580bdad11ec88b617 ecd6eff465. 82 See Roy Norton, “Advancing Canada’s Interests in the USA: A Practitioner’s Take on How Allan Gotlieb Changed Advocacy Forever,” Canada Institute, Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, Washington, DC, May 27, 2020, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/advancing-canadas -interests-usa-practitioners-take-how-allan-gotlieb-changed-advocacy. 83 This is a theme repeatedly raised in Derek Burney, Getting it Done: A Memoir (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005), 152, 154, 162, 180. 84 See Roy Norton, “Canadian Advocacy in Washington,” Canadian Parliamentary Review 32, no. 3 (Autumn 2009), https://www.canlii.org/en/commentary/doc/2009CanLIIDocs319#!fragment /zoupio-_Toc3Page2/BQCwhgziBcwMYgK4DsDWszIQewE4BUBTADwBdoAvbR ABwEtsBaAfX2zgGYAFMAc0IBMASgA0ybKUIQAiokK4AntADkykREJhcCWfKWr1m 7SADKeUgCElAJQCiAGVsA1AIIA5AMK2RpMACNoUnYhISA. 85 See, for example, Coalition of Northeastern Governors, “About the New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers,” https://www.coneg.org/neg-ecp/, and Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Governors and Premiers, https://www.gsgp.org/. 86 For elaboration on the relevant cross-border committees of legislators, see Council of State Governments, “Midwest-Canada Relations,” https://csgmidwest.org/policies/midwest-canada -relations/; https://www.csgwest.org/about/AboutCSGWest.aspx; and “Canada-US Relations,” https://csg-erc.org/policies/canada-us-relations/. 87 For details visit National Conference of State Legislatures, “ASLCS | Canadian-American Relations Committee,” https://www.ncsl.org/legislators-staff/legislative-staff/clerks-and-secretaries /aslcs-committee-canadian-american-relations.aspx. 88 Additional information on these two organizations can be found at http://www.pnwer.org/ and https://councilgreatlakesregion.org/. 89 For example, the Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University (https:// wp.wwu.edu/bpri/), the Cross-border Institute at the University of Windsor (www.cbinstitute.ca), and the Association for Canadian Studies in the USA (https://www.acsus.org). 90 The CABC is the most active organization at the US national level representing the interests of businesses who, literally, employ hundreds of thousands of workers in both countries: https://cabc.co/. 91 Adam Chapnick, “The ‘Canada Is Back’ Humbug,” Dorchester Review, August 12, 2021, https://www .dorchesterreview.ca/blogs/news/the-canada-is-back-humbug. 92 See Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, “2020 National Opinion Poll: Canadian Views on Asia,” November 25, 2020, https://www.asiapacific.ca/publication/2020-national-opinion-poll -canadian-views-asia; for elaboration on the extent to which the two countries are developing a

Together and Apart common approach toward China, see Darren Touch, “A Shift in Canada-US Relations Shaped by a Global China,” Canada Institute, Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, Washington, DC, July 13, 2021, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/shift-canada-us-relations-shaped-global-china. 93 Robert Fife and Steven Chase, “Canada Caught Off Guard by New Security Pact between US, Australia and Britain,” Globe and Mail, September 17, 2021, https://www.theglobeandmail.com /politics/article-canadian-government-surprised-by-new-indo-pacific-security-pact/?utm _medium=Referrer:+Social+Network+/+Media&utm_campaign=Shared+Web+Article+Links. 94 White House, “Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States,” February 11, 2022, https://www .whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/U.S.-Indo-Pacific-Strategy.pdf?msclkid =a9bd5822bdbc11ec84af6dee7d1309a4. 95 Stephen Nagy, “Where Is Canada? The Missing Indo-Pacific Player,” Macdonald-Laurier Institute, March 11, 2022, https://macdonaldlaurier.ca/where-is-canada-the-missing-indo-pacific-player -stephen-nagy-for-inside-policy/?msclkid=3d7f212cbdbd11eca54d95ad8d7391d5. 96 Government of Canada, “Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy,” November 27, 2022, https://www .international.gc.ca/transparency-transparence/assets/pdfs/indo-pacific-indo-pacifique/indo -pacific-indo-pacifique-en.pdf. 97 Christopher Sands, “Why Canada Shouldn’t Always Count on Special Treatment from the US,” The Conversation, March 12, 2018, https://theconversation.com/why-canada-shouldnt-always-count -on-special-treatment-from-the-u-s-93235. 98 Christopher Sands, “The US Can Sometimes Take Canada’s Support for Granted. With a New Administration in Place, Trudeau Should Push Back and Change the Dynamic,” Institute for Research on Public Policy, January 27, 2021, https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/january -2021/biden-presidency-is-a-chance-for-a-reset-of-canada-u-s-relations/. 99 Richard Wike et al., “America’s Image Abroad Rebounds With Transition From Trump to Biden,” Pew Research Center, June 10, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2021/06/10 /americas-image-abroad-rebounds-with-transition-from-trump-to-biden/.

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Data Sources for Future Research: Perceptions, Impressions, Values, and Culture Barbara Boyle Torrey edited and revised by Joshua Baker in consultation with authors

Considerable data exist in Canada and the United States on the topics in Part One. Some public and private sources of data are briefly mentioned below as illustrations.

PERCEPTIONS AND VALUES • World Values Survey (WVS) (www.worldvaluessurvey.org). World Value Surveys have been conducted in multiple waves: 1981, 1990, 1995, 1999, 2005, 2010, and 2017–22 in many countries. Questions focus on a number of values such as social values, happiness, selfexpression, religion, etc. The data are available electronically and in CD-ROMs as well as in many books and articles. The most recent World Values Survey Wave 7 was conducted between 2017 and 2022, with data collection that officially closed on December 31, 2021. Some surveys were delayed due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and were finally completed in 2022. • Global private survey firms such as Environics (http://www.environics.ca) in Canada and Gallup (www.gallup.com) in the United States do targeted surveys on many different topics, including politics, economy, and preferences. In addition, both countries have a number of other private and academic survey companies that survey nationally representative samples of the population for their opinions, perceptions, and values. Often a subset of survey data and its documentation are available to the public, sometimes for a fee, sometimes for free. • General Social Survey (GSS) Canada (www.statcan.gc.ca). Since 1985 Statistics Canada has conducted this annual national household social survey to monitor changes in Canadian society, focusing on such topics as health, time use, education, family, and aging. The topics are repeated every five years.

Data Sources for Future Research

• General Social Survey (GSS) United States (http://www.norc.org/Research/Projects /Pages/general-social-survey.aspx). For many years the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago has been funded by the National Science Foundation and others to take biannual household surveys to examine social and behavioural trends. Cross-national data are collected by the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) that can be used in comparisons. The newest report released by GSS is the 2021 GSS Cross-Sectional Report (https://gss.norc.org/get-the-data), which is available for download in SAS and Stata formats. • Pew Research Center (https://www.pewresearch.org/). The Pew Research Center is a non-partisan fact and analysis-generating institution concerned with informing the American public about issues, attitudes, and current trends that impact the world. Pew conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, and content analysis, among other data-driven social science research. Pew regularly asks Americans and non-Americans what they think about other countries, and should be useful for analysing what Americans and Canadians think of each other.

EDUCATION • Program for International Student Assessment (PISA; www.oecd.org/pisa). The PISA survey is managed by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to assess the skills and competencies of fifteen-year-old students in reading, math, and science. The survey is taken every three years in seventy countries, including Canada and the United States. Survey years include 2009, 2012, and 2015, with 2018 being the most up-to-date data set available. There are also draft components currently available for 2022 and 2025. PISA also collects data on the characteristics of the students and the schools to help determine which characteristics are associated with educational success. • Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS; http:// timssandpirls.bc.edu/). TIMSS tests students who are in fourth or eighth grade in sixty developing and industrial countries. TIMSS is a curricular-based test of science and math topics that are linked to the US National Assessment of Education Programs (NAEP). The most up-to-date TIMSS data set explores how the mathematics and science performance of fourth- and eighthgrade students in the US compared internationally in 2019. • United Nations Education, Social and Cultural Organization Institute for Statistics (UNESCO; www.uis.unesco.org). UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics collects national-level statistics about education from its member countries. It publishes reports on a wide range of comparable education indicators that can be used to assess educational progress. Their statistics are for primary, secondary, and tertiary education. The cross-national indicators can also be

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used to benchmark the performance of countries against each other. Many of their statistics are available electronically via the database access link or in statistical tables. • Both Statistics Canada (www.statcan.gc.ca) and the US Department of Education (www .ed.gov/rschstat) conduct a number of educational surveys in their respective countries, such as the Canadian Elementary-Secondary Educational Survey (ESES). These surveys, however, must be compared with caution since they are not necessarily comparable to each other.

POPULATION AND DEMOGRAPHY • United Nations Population Division (UNPD; www.unpopulation.org). The UNPD collects, analyses, and publishes demographic data every two years for every country in the world in World Population Prospects. The UNDP also collects data and publishes reports on aging, urbanization, and migration. The data are available electronically and in hardcover and include historical data and projections of all of the major demographic variables. Population projections rely on national data when possible. • Canadian Quinquennial Population Census (www.statcan.gc.ca). The Canadian Census is taken every five years in the second and seventh year of each decade (e.g., in 2016 and 2021). Statistics Canada produces an enormous amount of detailed local area data tables and analyses based on each Census. The most up-to-date census available is Painting a Portrait of Canada:The 2021 Census of Population, which is accessible on the Statistics Canada website. • American Decennial Census (www.census.gov). The American Census is taken every ten years in the first year of the decade. A public-use micro-data file (PUMS) based on 1–5 per cent of the Census records is made available for use by the public. A new annual household survey, the American Community Survey (ACS), supplements the decennial census providing more timely local area data. The latest American Census available is the 2020 Census. • Vital Statistics. Detailed annual local and regional births, death statistics, marriage, and divorce statistics are collected and published in Canada by Statistics Canada (www.statcan .gc.ca); in the United States, the National Center for Health Statistics (www.cdc.gov/nchs) collects and distributes the vital statistics for the individual states. • Immigration Statistics. Immigration statistics are compiled from administrative records collected by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) (https://www.canada .ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship.html) and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS; www.uscis.gov). These statistics are published in annual reports and are electronically available. The most recent IRCC annual reports to Parliament on immigration are 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022. USCIS’s most recent Annual Statistical Reports are available for 2018, 2020, and 2021.

PART TWO Governance and Governing Mechanisms

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FIVE

Elections: Why Such Differences? Michael Boda and Keith Archer

INTRODUCTION Considered among the world’s closest of allies and situated along a continent-wide, undefended border, the United States and Canada share a long history as stable and respected democracies, each with the common goal of conducting democratic elections and governing in a manner that fulfills the will of its people. Nonetheless, over their history, each has pursued this goal using election and political systems that are remarkably diverse. While some differences can be attributed to variations in culture and values – the United States focusing on values of freedom, individuality, and limited government and Canada being more characterized by respect for order and deference – perhaps more striking are the ways in which institutions of government vary between the two countries. While acknowledging the importance of culture and values in shaping political outcomes, this chapter focuses on differences between Canada and the United States through consideration of their institutional configurations. Both countries were challenged recently to conduct elections in the context of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, although with one key difference. In the United States, the response to a COVID-19 election occurred with Donald Trump in the White House, resulting in the very character of democratic elections being attacked and ultimately diminished. In contrast, a COVID-19 election in Canada, while challenging, did not undermine the integrity of elections or the legitimacy of the political system. We reflect within this chapter on the institutional differences between these two countries while assessing the longer-term implications that these differences could have on their status as democracies.

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INSTITUTIONAL DIFFERENCES THAT MATTER: COMPARING THE US AND CANADA Federalism Federalism is a term used to describe the relationship between central or national governments, on the one hand, and sub-national (such as state and provincial) governments on the other. A federal system is one in which there are two levels of government (federal and state in the US; federal and provincial in Canada), and in which each level of government has independence and primacy in its areas of jurisdiction. Thus, one can think of the levels of government in a federal system as co-equals, with unique powers allocated to the two levels of government. At the same time, there are other situations in which two levels of government can co-exist in a relationship that is not defined as federalism. The relationship between state and local governments in the US, and of provincial and local governments in Canada, provide examples of this. In both countries, authority over local governments is vested in the state or provincial governments. Federal arrangements are further complicated by the authority vested in First Nations in Canada and in the Native American Tribal Governments in the United States. The existence of federalism in the US and Canada is important for election-related matters because it raises the question of who has jurisdiction for the conduct of elections. For the answer to this question, as for other matters of jurisdiction in a federal country, one must look to the constitution. In the US, Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1 of the Constitution gives state legislatures the authority to conduct elections for Senators and Members of the House of Representatives. The executive (president) is elected by vote of the Electoral College (further discussed below), with delegates to the Electoral College decided upon by votes administered by the states and conducted in conjunction with elections for Senators and Representatives. Therefore, officials at one level of government, the state level, are responsible for electing members not only of the legislative and executive offices of the state, but also for the other, national, level of government. In Canada, by contrast, the constitution is less straightforward, largely because the Canadian constitution was to be “similar in principle to that of the United Kingdom,”1 and the constitution of the United Kingdom at the time (i.e., in 1867) was largely unwritten. Therefore, the written constitution (that is, the British North America Act of 1867, now called the Constitution Act of 1867) had little to say about the conduct of federal elections and provincial elections. Section 51 of the Constitution Act of 1867 provides the authority of the federal parliament to readjust federal electoral boundaries following each decennial census, an authority exercised by Parliament until the 1960s, when authority was provided to independent electoral boundaries commissions. By not granting specific authority to either the federal parliament or provincial legislatures to determine electoral boundaries for the other jurisdiction, the constitution implied that each was responsible for the conduct of its own elections. In general, election administration was undertaken by the Ministry of Justice at both levels of government, with

Elections: Why Such Differences?

a significant departure occurring in 1920, when the federal government appointed the first independent and non-partisan chief electoral officer to oversee electoral matters.2 Over a very extended period, provinces and territories followed suit by appointing their own independent authority, in the position of chief electoral officer, to oversee provincial and territorial electoral matters, including both the conduct of political events, such as general elections, by-elections, referendums, and plebiscites, as well as overseeing electoral finance as regulators.

PRESIDENTIAL VS. PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM Governments typically have three distinct branches – the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary. The executive branch is responsible for implementing laws, the legislature is responsible for making laws, and the judiciary is responsible for interpreting laws, generally in conjunction with the constitution. It is not uncommon for the judicial branch of government to be appointed, in part to maintain the independence of the judiciary from public opinion. For the executive and legislative branches, however, the way the members are appointed provides an important demarcation in the form of government, and consequently in electoral matters. In a presidential system of government, there tends to be a distinction, and independence, between the members of the executive and legislative branches of government. The United States has a presidential system of government. In this system, individuals cannot simultaneously be members of the executive and legislative branches. Furthermore, the independence of the executive from the legislative branches of government means that the executive branch is not dependent upon the legislative branch for its continued functioning. A president, and his or her administration, can propose legislation that is soundly defeated in the legislature, and the right to govern is not called into account. Not so in a parliamentary form of government. In Canada’s system of parliamentary democracy, the executive branch is inextricably tied to the legislative branch.The head of the executive branch, the prime minister, is invited by the governor general to form a government because his or her party is seen as most likely to maintain the confidence of Parliament. Generally, the prime minister can do so because he or she heads the party with either a majority of seats in the House of Commons, or a plurality of seats, with some level of agreement of another party to support the agenda of the government. The key difference with the presidential form of government is that the life of the executive in a parliamentary system is contingent upon the continued support of a majority in the parliament. The difference between parliament and presidential systems is significant for election administration. Under a presidential system with a separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches, the term of the two branches of government can be stable and predetermined. A defeat in the Congress does not throw the term of the president, or of the Congress, into question. A president can propose legislation, it may be defeated, and the executive branch

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continues. Under this system of government, it is possible to have a predetermined term of office for both branches of government, and to have established election dates. Thus, for example, in the US, the president is elected every four years in an election that takes place on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November. Members of the House of Representatives have terms of two years, with elections also on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November. Members of the US Senate sit for a term of six years, with one-third of the Senate seats being up for election every two years, on the same election schedule. In a parliamentary system, such as Canada, the executive and legislative branches are inextricably linked. By convention, to be appointed to the executive branch (that is, to be the prime minister or premier, or a cabinet minister), one must also have a seat in Parliament. Also, by convention, all ministers except one hold seats in the House of Commons rather than the Senate. The life of the government depends on it receiving ongoing support in Parliament. If the government is defeated on a major piece of legislation or on a money bill, convention requires the prime minister to offer his or her resignation to the governor general, who can either appoint another government, or dissolve Parliament and call a new election. The key is that the government can lose its grip on power at any time, Parliament can be dissolved, and new elections called. A similar scenario exists at the provincial level of government, with the government’s tenure dependent upon ongoing support in the legislature.Therefore, in Canada’s parliamentary system, although it is possible to have “fixed” election dates, and many jurisdictions have introduced a fixed date for elections since British Columbia introduced this innovation in 2003, a government is not held to a fixed election date.3 Therefore, elections in Canada are not synchronous across the federal and provincial levels of government, and often take place outside a regular four-year cycle.

SELECTION OF THE EXECUTIVE The discussion above on parliamentary versus presidential government showed that there is a very different relationship between the executive and legislative branches of government in the two systems. Their differences extend beyond the way in which the executive branch relates to the legislature. In both the US and Canada, elections play only an indirect role in the selection of the executive branch.The US uses a unique body called the Electoral College to select the president and vice-president. The Electoral College is intended as a limitation on popular democracy, and it is one of the reasons that candidates with fewer votes can win presidential elections (another reason is the first-past-the-post electoral system). When voters in a US p­ residential election cast their vote, they are not voting for the president and vice-president directly. Rather, they are voting for delegates (nominated by parties in each state) to the Electoral College, who then cast their votes for president and vice-president. States are awarded one electoral college vote for each member of Congress from their state – that is, one for each member of the House

Elections: Why Such Differences?

of Representatives, and one for each senator. States vary in the number of House of Representative seats (since House seats are based on representation by population), with some states having as few as one member of the House (such as Alaska, Delaware, or North Dakota, among others), and other states having many House seats, such as New York with twenty-six, Florida with twenty-eight,Texas with thirty-eight, and California with fifty-two.4 In addition, each state is assigned two seats in the Senate (since Senate seats are based on regional representation). The total of 435 House of Representative seats combined with 100 Senate seats produces 535 electoral college seats from the states. In addition, although the District of Columbia is not a state, its population would justify three additional seats if it were, and therefore, it also is allocated three seats in the Electoral College, for a total of 538 seats. Almost all states allocate all their electoral college votes to the party that wins the popular vote from the state, with the exceptions of Maine and Nebraska, which have separate districts for the electoral college votes from the state. The successful candidate must win a clear majority of the electoral college votes, or 50 per cent plus one, meaning that 270 electoral college votes are required to win the election. In Canada’s parliamentary system, the executive is also chosen only indirectly by votes in a national election. The written constitution in Canada is silent on how an executive is chosen. Instead, the key phrase in the preamble to the Constitution Act of 1867 is that Canada has a constitution “similar in principle to that of the United Kingdom,”5 which had evolved its parliamentary government over centuries, and which did so largely with an unwritten constitution. In the UK, the prime minister (the head of the executive branch) is chosen by the Crown, and therefore in Canada, the prime minister is chosen by the Crown’s representative, the governor general. Formally, executive powers in Canada are vested in the Crown, but in practice, the Crown only exercises executive power on the advice of the “political executive,” which is to say, the prime minister and his or her cabinet. The principle of “responsible government,” adopted in Canada in 1848 and immediately afterwards, is that the Crown only appoints to the executive people who can maintain the confidence of the parliament. Therefore, by convention, the governor general appoints as prime minister the leader of the party with the largest number of seats in the House of Commons.6 In Canada’s multi-party system, it often occurs that the party with the most seats won those based on less than a majority of votes.7 Furthermore, it is not uncommon for a party to win the largest number of seats by winning the second highest number of votes, as occurred in the 2019 and 2021 elections.Therefore, in both the US and Canada, the selection of the executive is only indirectly related to national elections, and in both systems, it is possible that the party winning the most votes does not win the executive government.

ELECTORAL BOUNDARIES Both Canada and the United States have bicameral legislatures, which means both have two separate houses in their legislature. In the US, the legislative branch is called Congress, and the

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two houses are the House of Representatives and the Senate. In Canada, the legislative branch is called Parliament, and the two houses are the House of Commons and Senate. For a bill to become law, it must pass the legislative branch, which means that it must pass both houses of the legislature.8 In both countries, each house is based on a different principle of representation. The House of Representatives and the House of Commons, sometimes called the lower houses, are based on the principle of representation by population. This principle means that the population of one legislative district (or constituency) should be similar to the population of other districts. In contrast, the upper houses are based on the principle of regional representation, independent of population. In the US, each state is assigned two Senate seats. The state of California, with a population of 39.5 million, has the same number of Senators as does Wyoming, with a population of 0.6 million.9 In Canada, the Senate is based on the principle of equal regional representation, with the “regions” defined as the three Maritime provinces, Quebec, Ontario, and the four western provinces, with each region assigned twenty-four Senate seats. In addition, Newfoundland and Labrador is assigned six Senate seats and the three territories each have one senator. Since the lower houses in both countries are based on the principle of representation by population, both have a system for defining what representation by population means, and for adjusting the size of electoral districts over time, as populations change. In the United States, the redrawing of electoral boundaries is a two-step process, including apportionment (that is, allocating to each state a number of seats in the House of Representatives), followed by redistricting (that is, drawing boundaries for each electoral district within the state). The first step follows from the Apportionment Act of 1941, in which Congress set the number of seats at 435. One could imagine a simple formula in which one takes the total population of the country and divides by 435 to determine the number of seats to which each state is entitled. However, the constitution requires that each state have at least one seat in the House of Representatives. The population of some states is sufficiently small that applying the simple formula above would produce an apportionment of less than 0.5 seats, which would round down to zero seats. Since that outcome is not permissible, the formula is adjusted so that the states with an apportionment of one seat are allocated their seat, the total population is adjusted by removing these states, and the formula rerun, with minor adjustments, to produce a total of 435 seats, and including all 50 states.10 Once the state’s seats have been apportioned, responsibility for boundaries transitions to state legislatures. In most states, the electoral districts are drawn by the state legislatures, notwithstanding the common allegation that the legislatures engage in gerrymandering the districts to their party’s advantage. In several states, the redistricting is conducted by commissions established for this purpose.11 Over time, several court cases (such as Baker v. Carr, 1962; Karcher v. Daggett, 1983) have established that electoral districts must be based on the principle of one person one vote, establishing the principle of nearly mathematical equality in the size of congressional districts within a state.12

Elections: Why Such Differences?

Canada also has a two-stage process for determining representation in the House of Commons. The first stage is to determine the number of seats to which each province and territory is entitled, and the second stage is the drawing of electoral boundaries in each jurisdiction. Canada’s constitution requires that there be a minimum of 295 seats in the House of Commons, but to this number are added additional seats based on several clauses in the constitution. The first of these is the senatorial clause. This clause states that no province shall have fewer members in the House of Commons than it has in the Senate.13 As noted above, the Senate is based on equal regional representation of twenty-four Senate seats for each of the four regions of the Maritime provinces (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island), Quebec, Ontario, and the four western provinces (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia). When Newfoundland was admitted to Confederation in 1949 it was provided with six Senate seats, and subsequently, each of the three territories has one Senate seat. Although the four western provinces divide their Senate seats equally, with each receiving six Senate seats, in the Maritimes, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick each has 10 seats, while PEI has 4.The senatorial clause provides additional representation in the House of Commons to several provinces. In addition, through a provision known as the “grandfather clause,” no province can have fewer Commons seats than it had in 1985, again leading to increased seat allocation in some provinces.14 Using these clauses and adopting an electoral quotient as a divisor, each province is allocated its seats, roughly based on equal representation by population. However, “roughly” is the operative term. Although the four largest provinces of Ontario, Quebec, BC, and Alberta all had average population per constituency between 110,000 and 121,000 following the 2021 Representation Order, the population of the other six provinces ranged from a low of 41,000 to a high of 98,000. Constituency populations in the three territories were similar to PEI.15 The second stage in redistribution is the appointment of ten federal electoral boundaries commissions, one for each province but appointed federally, to draw electoral boundary maps for each province. The federal government first used independent electoral boundaries commissions in 1964, and each subsequent redistribution has been based on the work of commissions. Although federal members of parliament can make a presentation to the commissions, the reports of the commissions do not require approval of the legislature – instead, the districts as presented by the commissions prevail. Each jurisdiction has a commission comprising three members, and the commissions conduct hearings throughout the province to obtain input of the community.16 Commissions in Canada have considerable latitude in drawing districts that do not adhere as closely to the principle of one person one vote as is the case in the US. Instead, the courts in Canada have stated that the right to vote in Section 3 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms provides Canadians with the right to “effective representation.” Relative voter equality is one key element of the concept of effective representation, but other factors, such as historical patterns, geographical characteristics, size of the constituency, and community of interest can also be important factors in providing effective representation, and therefore can also be considered in drawing electoral boundaries.

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THE RIGHT TO VOTE While the right to vote in free and fair elections is considered a cornerstone of democratic government, the history of voting rights in both the United States and Canada is one of a gradual extension of the franchise. Recent legislation in some states, in the wake of highly partisan controversies following the presidential election of 2020, indicate that the battle of access to the ballot for all eligible citizens continues to this day.17 Article 1 of the US Constitution provides that “Electors (for the House of Representatives) in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.” At the time of the passage of the constitution in 1787, states provided the right to vote to white males, twenty-one years of age or older, who owned real property. Over time, several constitutional amendments were passed directed at broadening voting rights to other groups of citizens, although in some instances, particularly related to voters of African descent, the legal extension of voting rights did not always eliminate barriers to voting. The 14th Amendment to the constitution, adopted in 1868, grants full citizen rights, including voting rights, to all men born or naturalized in the United States.Two years later, the 15th Amendment eliminated racial barriers to voting. Notwithstanding this amendment, many states continued to practise discrimination against Black citizens by imposing literacy tests, poll taxes, and other methods to prevent them from voting. Other racial minorities and Native Americans also continued to be denied the vote. In 1920, the 19th Amendment extended the right to vote to all women aged twenty-one and over. In 1964 the Civil Rights Act was passed, ensuring that all men and women twenty-one years and older have the right to vote, regardless of race, religion, or education. The 24th Amendment was passed the same year, banning poll taxes nationwide. The following year, the Voting Rights Act eliminated the use of literacy tests for voting. In 1971, the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to eighteen. In 1984, the federal Voting Accessibility for Elderly and Handicapped Act required voting places to be accessible for elderly voters and those with mobility impairments.18 As the above discussion shows, changing the law concerning voting eligibility is one important element in extending the right to vote to all citizens. However, it also reveals that state officials can make voting more difficult for some citizens by imposing additional burdens on them, such as occurred with poll taxes and literacy tests for Black voters. Several other techniques have been used to make voting more difficult. One technique is to require voters to prove their identity with a piece of government-issued photo identification. For some voters, particularly those who are poorer, who are more transient or homeless, or who do not possess a driver’s licence – the most common form of government-issued photo identification – the absence of such identification is a barrier to their voting.19 Another technique to reduce the value of a person’s vote is to draw electoral district boundaries so that a candidate wins by a very large margin, effectively “wasting” some votes.20 A third technique is to prevent people with past criminal convictions from voting, thereby adding a democratic disenfranchisement penalty to a criminal penalty.21 All of these techniques can have a partisan impact on an election.

Elections: Why Such Differences?

In Canada, extending the right to vote among the citizenry had a similar trajectory as it did in the United States. At the time of Confederation in 1867, access to voting in federal elections was based on the rules in place in a person’s province of residence, although the federal parliament had the right to determine the rules around voting in federal elections. Like the US, initially the right to vote in the provinces was limited to males twenty-one years of age and older, who owned property. There also were ethnic and racial exclusions from voting in Canada, although Canada did not experience slavery of people of African descent as occurred in the US, so there was not an exclusion of Black Canadians. However, Canadians of Asian descent, as well as First Nations Canadians, were disenfranchised well into the twentieth century.Women were given the right to vote in two steps. First, in 1917, women who had relatives serving in the armed forces during the First World War were given the right to vote in the election, and the following year, women were given the right to vote on the same basis as men. All Asian Canadians were given the right to vote in 1948, Inuit people were given the right to vote in 1950, and First Nations people were given the right to vote in 1960, without forfeiting their Indigenous status under historical treaties.22 The age of voting was lowered to eighteen years in 1971. With the adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, and following several court cases, virtually all other restrictions on the right to vote in Canada were removed, providing universality in the right to vote.23 In Canada, it is more difficult for those who may wish to limit the application of universal voting rights to be successful in doing so. For example, since access to the ballot in federal elections is the responsibility of the federal government, one cannot use the rules in provincial jurisdictions, in a manner similar to what occurs in state jurisdictions in the US, to limit voting rights. One potential way to limit who can vote, similar to the US, is by restricting the type of identification that is required to be produced when voting. The federal government passed legislation in 2008 that required voters to produce identification when voting. However, the legislation was written in such a way as to provide a safeguard against administrative disenfranchisement. In fact, there are three ways that a voter can prove their identify to receive a ballot in federal elections – the most common is by showing government-issued photo identification, such as a driver’s licence. However, to ensure that those who do not possess such identification can still vote, one could also produce two pieces of identification, one of which has a person’s name and the other has their name and address. An example of the former could be a library card, and the latter could be a bank statement or utility bill. And for eligible voters who cannot produce even these items, there is a provision to be “vouched for” by a registered voter in the same constituency. Finally, the ability to register to vote on election day, in conjunction with voting, provides an additional safeguard against preventing otherwise eligible voters from voting.24

CHARACTER OF ELECTION AGENCIES Agencies responsible for administering elections in the United States and Canada are organized at different levels of government and are based on different principles of operation. In the

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United States, like the United Kingdom, there is no national election agency that administers elections. In the UK, elections to the country’s parliament are administered by local officials but based on rules formulated specifically for the national election by the national government. In the US, elections to Congress are conducted by state agencies, many of which delegate specific authority to local agencies in counties or cities that report to the state government for the administration of national elections. Differences in the way states administer elections, and in the way local officials within a state administer elections, can be significant. In some states, for example, all votes are cast by mail-in ballots, whereas in other states,25 mail-in ballots are used only if the voter has an excuse (such as a military deployment or illness), and are used in only very few instances. Since localities are responsible for funding elections, some have more resources than others, which can also influence the quality of election administration. Further, ballots used in US national elections can be lengthy and complicated, since so many positions may be up for election, and jurisdictions can use very different ballot designs or different technologies to mark the ballot and to count ballots, and some of these administrative differences can have a significant impact on the result of the election. In the 2000 election, for example, the selection of president of the United States came to down to the counting of votes in a single state – Florida, and to interpretations of whether a vote cast on a ballot in which the hole-puncher did not fully remove the small paper indicating a person’s vote choice (called a “hanging chad” or a “dimpled chad”).Thus, local administrative variations on how elections are conducted for national offices can have a significant impact on election outcomes. In addition to the principle of state and local responsibility for conducting national elections, the US also establishes election agencies as either bipartisan agencies or simply as partisan agencies. For example, the regulatory authority for election finance matters for US national elections is the Federal Electoral Commission (FEC). The commission has no role to play in conducting the vote; rather, its authority is limited to election and political finance. The FEC is structured as a bipartisan organization – it has six members, half of whom are registered Democrats and half registered Republicans. Furthermore, there is no tie-breaking mechanism for the FEC, meaning that if there is no bipartisan support for an initiative, including for an investigation, it simply cannot proceed. Whereas the FEC oversees campaign finance for national elections, the administration of voting is a responsibility of the states,26 and, within the states, generally is under the purview of the secretary of state. However, the secretary of state is a member of the state administration, and as such is either a Republican or a Democrat.27 This does not mean, of course, that a secretary of state will always interpret an election-related controversy in a way that favours his or her party, but it does offer the prospect that such a controversy could be resolved through a partisan lens. In Canada, election administration differs in both respects from the experience in the United States. First, federal elections in Canada, which are conducted on a different schedule than provincial elections, are conducted by a single agency under a single authority. The office of Chief Electoral Officer of Canada was first created in 1920, and the agency that operates under

Elections: Why Such Differences?

his or her authority, called Elections Canada, is responsible for conducting federal elections. Canadian federal elections are therefore conducted by a single agency using the same rules, procedures, forms of ballots, ballot counting procedures, advertising rules, and voter identification requirements in all 338 constituencies in the country. All other aspects of election administration (whether voters participate via in-person or mail-in balloting) are the same and are paid for centrally through federal funding mechanisms. Consistency is the hallmark of elections conducted under a single authority, and certainly is the hallmark of Elections Canada. Over time, each of the provinces and territories adopted similar non-partisan electoral administrative practices as those at the federal level. In addition, there is a different understanding in Canadian election administration about the political nature of the person who heads the election agency, the Chief Electoral Officer. The position is structured as an independent officer of Parliament, and therefore is responsible to and answerable to Parliament, at the federal level, or the legislative assemblies of the provinces and territories, for provincial and territorial matters. As an independent officer of the legislature, the Chief Electoral Officer is expected to be independent from government, and non-partisan in his or her role. Different jurisdictions differ in the way in which they attempt to enforce the non-partisan role of this office, with common features being that the person appointed to the role must have the support of more than one party in the legislature on or in the legislative committee that recommends him or her, and also that they are prohibited from engaging in partisan politics, including being denied the right to vote, while serving in their position.

CONDUCTING ELECTIONS DURING COVID-19: WITH AND WITHOUT THE BURDEN OF TRUMP Conducting an election during a pandemic has presented many election agencies with unprecedented challenges. The election system in many democracies is based, to a considerable extent, on direct person-to-person interaction. Traditionally candidates for office want to “press the flesh” with as many voters as they can. Parties and candidates expend much effort at canvassing the community – sending supporters door-to-door to meet voters, recording the likelihood that the voter supports them, and delivering campaign advertisements. Party leaders often appear at large public events, in which supporters are crowded into arenas, conference centres, and other facilities for campaign speeches and rallies. And election officials staff voting places where large number of voters appear in person and sometimes wait in line-ups, to produce their identification documents, receive a ballot by hand from an election official, mark their ballot, and either submit it directly to a vote tabulator or deliver it to a ballot box for counting. Conducting an election during the COVID-19 pandemic challenged all those procedures. Because the virus that caused the infection was communicated by close person-to-person interaction, minimizing that interaction became a key defence against the spread of the disease

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during an election. For parties and candidates, this meant little or no direct personal interaction with voters. The way in which ballots were delivered to voters changed significantly as well. A key effort in this regard was to limit the extent to which voters were required to line up at voting places and to reduce interaction amongst voters, and between voters and election officials. Two of the common methods for limiting such interaction involved expanding voting options – either providing greater opportunities for, or encouragement of, early or advance voting, or expanding the use of vote by mail, thereby eliminating altogether the need for voters to leave their home to vote, other than by dropping their completed ballot in the mail or in a ballot collection facility. Estimates of early voting and mail-in voting for the 2020 election in the US show a striking change in behaviour due to changes by election agencies to make these voting options more accessible, and changes in the attitudes of voters due to their desire to vote safely during the pandemic. We focus on the latter – voter behaviour changes – through data reported in the Survey on the Performance of the American Elections (SPAE), a study led by Charles Stewart of MIT.28 The report showed a dramatic increase in vote-by-mail in 2020, a modest increase in in-person advance voting, and a sharp drop in election-day voting. For example, vote-by-mail increased from 21 per cent of votes cast in 2016 to 46 per cent of votes in 2020, a more than doubling of mail-in votes. Early in-person voting increased from 19 per cent in 2016 to 26 per cent in 2020. In contrast, in-person voting on election day shrank from 60 per cent of votes cast in 2016 to 28 per cent in 2020. Notwithstanding the changes in the method by which many people voted, Stewart reported a high level of satisfaction with the voting experience, despite the extra precautions that needed to be taken with an election during a pandemic. For example, Stewart claims that “voters reported very few problems with registration when they checked in; almost no one encountered problems with equipment. They agreed that their polling place was well-run.” Although one might expect a high degree of satisfaction with an election run during a pandemic in which voters typically said the election was well-run, this has not been the outcome of the US election – indeed, far from it. Perceptions of the integrity of the election, and consequently on the legitimacy of the winner, are highly skewed based on a person’s partisan identity. As a backdrop, it should be noted that the election was not very close. Biden/Harris received 81.3 million votes (51.3 per cent) compared to 74.2 million (46.8 per cent) for Trump/Pence. Furthermore, Biden/Harris won 306 electoral college votes to only 232 for Trump/Pence. Ironically perhaps, Biden/Harris received the same number of electoral college votes in 2020 as Trump/Pence had won in 2016, in an election that Trump referred to as a landslide. And, when Trump won 306 electoral college votes in 2016, he did so while receiving more than 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. Even though Biden won by a large margin in 2020, attitudes toward the election are sharply divided. According to the SPAE study, whereas 76 per cent of Democrats have confidence that their ballot was counted as cast, slightly fewer than half of Republicans (49 per cent) hold this view. When asked how confident they were that votes across the country were counted as intended, 93 per cent of Democrats agreed, compared to

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only 23 per cent of Republicans.When asked whether they thought that ballots were tampered with after people voted in their city or region, 88 per cent of Democrats thought this happened “almost never” or “infrequently”; this view was held by only 41 per cent of Republicans. Thus, election administration changes put in place to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic were viewed and assessed in highly partisan terms in the United States following the 2020 election. This partisan effect is not entirely surprising.The losing presidential candidate,Trump, engaged in extraordinary and unprecedented efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the election, to pressure election officials to overturn election results, and to rally his supporters to pressure his own running mate and then-vice-president to nullify certified election results. A key difference in the election was the partisan character of votes depending on the method of voting (in contrast to previous elections) – those voting absentee ballot (either early voting or voting by mail) were far more likely to vote for Biden while those voting on election day favoured Trump. For example, in a study of absentee voting by the survey organization Five-Thirty-Eight, Rakich and Mithani report that, in their preliminary study of fifteen states, Biden won the absentee vote in fourteen states and Trump won the election day vote in fourteen states.29 Thus, Rakich and Mithani say it is not surprising that Trump claimed that absentee ballots were used to steal the election from him.Where he is wrong, however, is that repeated investigations of the administration of ballots in multiple states revealed just the opposite – that the election was run without widespread evidence of fraud, and the result was an accurate reflection of the way in which eligible voters cast their ballots. His protestations, therefore, have the unmistakable scent of sour grapes. The efforts on the part of Trump to overturn the election are well-known, and much of it played out in real time in the spotlight of the national media’s coverage of the election and the post-election transition period. Some have been revealed in several books intended to show the final days of the Trump administration “from the inside.”30 Trump’s efforts to undermine the election began well before any votes were cast, often boasting that the only way he could lose the election was if the other side stole it from him. On election night, Rudy Giuliani, a once-­ respected former mayor of New York who as Trump’s personal lawyer became enmeshed in his post-election fallacies, was quoted as saying before Trump’s late-night speech to the country on the election, in reference to votes in Michigan and Pennsylvania (both of which Trump lost), “Just say we won.”31 In fact, Trump followed this strategy of “just saying he won,” as his legal team, with the assistance of others around the country, filed lawsuit after lawsuit trying to disenfranchise eligible voters. These efforts across the country all proved unsuccessful (some have resulted in efforts to sanction the lawyers involved for using an approach that undermined the integrity of their profession), in advance of Safe Harbour Day, which was December 8 in 2020, the day designated whereby the governor of each state signs a “Certificate of Ascertainment,” which identifies the electors (Democrat or Republican) who have been elected from that state, and also certifies the vote count. Six days later, the election results are confirmed with the convening of the Electoral College, whose delegates formally cast their vote for president and vice-president. Biden and Harris’s 306-to-232 vote victory was confirmed that day.

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Despite the confirmation of the results on December 14, Trump and his allies continued to offer interpretations of the election that did not comport with the established facts, and continued in their efforts to change the outcome of the election.32 Among the more shocking cases was Trump’s lengthy phone call with Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state for Georgia, who had overseen the election in that state, including overseeing the hand recount of the election results following the initial count that revealed the margin of victory of Biden over Trump was just under 12,000 votes, or 0.2 per cent of votes cast. After this recount produced essentially the same result as the first count, Raffensperger then oversaw the second recount, requested by the Trump campaign, which again produced essentially the same result. Notwithstanding these results, Trump called Raffensperger on January 2, asking that he “find 11,800 votes,” one more than Biden’s margin of victory.33 Fortunately, Raffensperger did not cower to Trump’s demands.34 Trump’s last stand in his effort to overturn a democratic election occurred on January 6, 2021, the date assigned for a joint session of Congress to tally electoral college votes. The procedure, following the Electoral Count Act of 1887, is largely ceremonial, in which Congress opens the certificate of votes that have been provided by each of the fifty states and the District of Columbia, indicating the votes cast by members of the Electoral College. The sitting vice-president, as president of the Senate, presides over the ceremony. Objections can be made to the votes of the electoral college members of any states if the objection is signed by one senator and one Member of the House of Representatives. An objection leads to a debate on the objection in both houses. Trump held the view that his vice-president, Mike Pence, as presiding officer, could insert himself into the proceedings, effectively derailing them and throwing the process into disarray.To pressure his vice-president, Trump and his supporters organized a rally to be held in Washington, DC, immediately prior to Congress beginning its business. Some of the protesters stormed the Capitol and occupied it for several hours before police and national guard were able to restore order, which enabled the proceeding to continue. By the end of the session early the next morning, all certificates of votes had been opened and the Biden/Harris victory was confirmed. They were sworn in on January 20, and the country avoided the attempted coup by a sitting president.35 Conducting an election during the COVID-19 pandemic without having Trump, or a Trumplike candidate making baseless allegations of voter fraud, is challenging enough. Although a federal election in Canada was held on September 20, 2021, at the time of writing details on the extent to which voters adjusted their behaviour based on adaptations to the pandemic have not yet been published by the federal election agency, Elections Canada. However, several provinces have conducted elections in the period of the pandemic, and we can turn to them to examine the ways in which the pandemic has required adjustments, by parties and candidates, voters, and the election agency. For this purpose, we focus on two provinces that held general elections two days apart, the provinces of British Columbia (October 24, 2020) and Saskatchewan (October 26, 2020), and a third, Newfoundland and Labrador, which held a general election in the period of January to March 2021. The BC election was an unscheduled event, meaning that it was held

Elections: Why Such Differences?

before the scheduled election day in October 2021, because the premier, in a minority government, requested the lieutenant-governor (LG) to dissolve the legislature and call an election, to which the LG complied. The Saskatchewan election, in contrast, was held on the pre-scheduled election date, although speculation about an early election call the previous spring led to the election agency implementing several changes to prepare for an early election. The Newfoundland and Labrador election was an unscheduled event, which was required to take place within a year of a new premier taking office, following the resignation of the former premier. The conduct of the election in Newfoundland and Labrador was sufficiently different from that in BC and Saskatchewan that it will be described separately below.The election agencies in BC and Saskatchewan recognized that conducting an election during a pandemic would impact almost all aspects of the election, and both adopted the stance of attempting to keep as many aspects as possible of the election in place, without jeopardizing the safety of voters, election officials, or the political contestants. A key approach in both jurisdictions, like that used in many states in the US, was to expand voting opportunities so that voters and election workers would not have to experience long line-ups at the polls. In both Saskatchewan and British Columbia, opportunities for greater use of advance voting were highlighted, and opportunities for an expanded vote-by-mail effort were implemented. In the end, the strategy worked. In British Columbia, there was a significant increase in both advance voting and in vote by mail, and a decrease in election-day voting. Relatively equal proportions of voters used the three voting methods. For example, 673,000 votes were cast at an advance poll, representing 35.4 per cent of all votes cast, an increase of 5.2 per cent from the 2017 election. A total of 596,000 voters, or 31.4 per cent, voted by mail, an increase of 30 per cent from 2017. A total of 591,000, or 31.1 per cent, voted in-person on election day, a decrease of 32 per cent from 2017. Similar trends, although somewhat less dramatic percentages, occurred in Saskatchewan. In 2020, 185,000 (41.9 per cent) voters voted in advance, 200,000 (45.2 per cent) voted in-person on election day, and 57,000 (12.9 per cent) voted by mail. The comparable figures for the previous election in 2016 were 318,000 (73.4 per cent) votes in-person on election day, 111,000 (25.6 per cent) votes in advance, and 4,000 votes (1 per cent) by mail. Also of interest is that in neither jurisdiction were concerns raised by political stakeholders about the legitimacy of the ballots. Unlike in the 2020 election in the US where the method of voting ran in parallel to the party being supported, methods of voting in Canada aligned more with the campaign priorities of individual candidates. In Saskatchewan, for example, results in constituencies consistently showed more vote-by-mail ballots going to the winning candidate rather than one party or another.36 Although many questions have arisen about the direction of methods that voters will choose in the future, there has not been the significant deterioration in public attitudes toward professional election administration agencies evidenced in the US.37 In short, the pandemic, and responses to it by election agencies, has not been politicized. The election in Newfoundland and Labrador might be described as a “worst-case scenario” for an election official.38 Writs of election were issued on January 15 for an election scheduled

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for Saturday, February 13, 2021.Voters could request special ballots (for vote by mail) beginning on January 15 and could return the special ballots by mail or directly to the returning office. Advance voting was held one week before general voting, on February 6. Three days later, following a steep increase in reported cases of COVID-19, the Chief Medical Officer announced a two-week “circuit breaker,” which precluded the option of conducting in-person voting on February 13. On February 12, the Chief Electoral Officer announced the cancellation of in-person voting, and instead shifted all voting to special ballots, which could be dropped at special ballot offices or sent by mail. Following several extensions both for requesting and returning special ballots, the final deadline for receipt of the ballots was March 25. Although several applications were filed for controverted elections, none were successful, and the election results have generally been accepted as valid and legitimate.

WHERE TO FROM HERE? Political scientists have long considered the qualities of a society that are necessary for democracy to be established and to succeed. One set of qualities is a set of institutional arrangements that are reinforced by characteristics such as freedom of speech and assembly, freedom of the press, and the right to vote and to be a candidate for elective office, along with the existence of periodic competitive elections.39 Although the United States and Canada differ significantly in the character of their democratic and electoral institutions, the tools in each country have traditionally provided, to a greater or lesser degree, a representative democratic government. In addition to an institutional arrangement, political scientists also recognize the importance of political culture characteristics for the healthy functioning of democracy. This refers to the widespread adherence to a set of values, attitudes, and beliefs that support democratic government. Values such as an adherence to the rule of law, respect for political and government institutions, respect for people whose political views differ from your own, and a willingness and commitment to support the peaceful transition of power are keys to the effective operation of a democracy.40 The 2020 presidential election in the US ushered in a period of unprecedented uncertainty about key aspects of American society and government. US politics is highly divided in part because US society is highly divided. Traditional and social media, rather than bringing people together with a common understanding of opportunities and challenges, have instead fuelled greater division based on competing views of reality. Citizens increasingly access information reinforcing previously held beliefs which leads, in turn, to living in information silos where basic realities of life are portrayed differently. When politicians then stoke and foment these divisions – as Donald Trump did before, during, and after the 2020 presidential election – the divisions are themselves heightened and reinforced. Political institutions, and political actors who occupy those positions on a temporary basis, are intended and expected to moderate and resolve conflict over basic institutional arrangements, not exacerbate it. While recent events have pointed to a failure of US governing institutions to

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moderate conflict, the extent to which many election officials stood up against political pressure from their own political party to reverse election results during the 2020 presidential election must be respected.41 The willingness of Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensperger in Georgia to withstand pressure from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to “find 12,000 votes” is perhaps the most prominent example.42 At the same time, however, attempts to undermine the acceptance of electoral results point to the fact that politics are inherent in the administration of US elections and draw attention to the different approach in Canada where election administrators are appointed as non-partisan actors. The model in Canada points to a role for officials in which they are expected to stand outside politics, an approach that introduces a check and balance against the tactics of political pressure observed in the US where officials are appointed as either Republicans or Democrats. Within a system with non-partisan officials, election administrators are less likely to be accused of supporting one party or another in decisions that are made. Further, in appointing individuals who are supported by more than the governing party, it becomes difficult for a governing party to place “their” person in a role where decisions should be made on the rules alone rather than in the interests of or loyalties to one or another candidate for office. Recent events have pointed to a failure of US governing institutions to moderate conflict. A previous crisis in American political institutions, the Watergate crisis, led to significant institutional reforms intended to limit the so-called “imperial presidency.” The evidence to date, however, suggests that the current Congress, locked in a never-ending partisan stalemate, may be unwilling and/or unable to bring about a package of democratic reforms of similar scope. There is also evidence that Donald Trump is organizing behind the scenes to place favoured candidates into election official roles in key battleground states to place further political pressure on future electoral processes. There are no easy solutions to the institutional and cultural challenges confronting American elections, but realization of how close the US came to an even more troubling outcome on January 6, 2021, may serve to help initiate important discussions. Democracy is a process, not an inevitable outcome. Recent experience serves as a reminder that democracy must be continually expressed and defended. It is significant that there are almost no challenges of “electoral fraud” that were made about the US presidential election that could not also have been made about our elections in other democracies – that technology is used to hide or change results, or that mischievous election officials destroy or ignore some ballots. That many of the claims of fraud in the US election were made without evidence appears not to have diminished their impact, or the degree to which Trump supporters believed in them. What is clear is that the leadership shown by election management bodies in key US states, to uphold the rules of the election in a professional and non-partisan manner, were essential to the success of the election. This lesson should not be lost on supporters of democracy anywhere. For election officials, one’s commitment to the integrity of a fair electoral processes must always exceed one’s commitment to those in position of power. For the 2020 US election, it was that commitment that enabled democracy to prevail.

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STUDY QUESTIONS 1. In the US, national elections are administered by state officials, whereas in Canada, national elections are administered by the federal election agency. What differences arise in election administration because of this difference in who conducts the election? 2. What is the difference between bipartisan and non-partisan election administration? Is it possible to have political independence in conducting elections? What has recent evidence from the US and Canada indicated about the professionalization of election administration in both bipartisan and non-partisan settings? 3. Electoral boundaries are drawn to very different standards in the US and Canada. In the US, congressional districts are drawn to ensure district populations are as close as possible to mathematical equality. In Canada they are drawn to provide for “effective representation,” so district populations often vary significantly. Does this mean that the electoral boundaries redistribution process in Canada is more “politicized” than in the US? Discuss the partisan and non-partisan character of electoral boundary redistributions in the two countries. 4. Why are US ballots often so complicated and lengthy, and what are the differences in terms of who is allowed to vote and who isn’t in each country? 5. Conducting an election during the COVID-19 pandemic led elections in both the US and Canada to rely more heavily on voting procedures that allowed people to vote safely. This included increased use of vote-by-mail, and greater use of advance voting. In the US, this situation led to attempts to undermine the integrity of elections, but not so in Canada. Reflect on the implications of these outcomes. 6. In view of recent developments in election administration in the US and Canada, what do you foresee for the nature of democratic elections in these countries over the next decade or two? 7. If you could make one significant change to the way elections are run in the US, and one change to the way they are run in Canada, what would those changes be? Explain.

Elections: Why Such Differences? NOTES 1 Preamble to The Constitution Acts, 1867 to 1982, https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/PDF/CONST _TRD.pdf. 2 For further reading on the evolution of election administration in Canada, see Elections Canada, A History of the Vote in Canada (Ottawa: Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada, 1997), and Elections Canada, The Electoral System of Canada, 4th ed. (Ottawa: Elections Canada, 2015). 3 For further consideration of the introduction of fixed election dates in Canada, see J. Stephen Ferris and Derek E.H. Olmstead, “Fixed versus Flexible Election Terms: Explaining Innovation in the Timing of Canada’s Election Cycle,” Constitutional Political Economy 28 (2017): 117–41. 4 United States Census Bureau, 2020 Census Apportionment Results, Table 1 (April 26, 2021), https:// www.census.gov/data/tables/2020/dec/2020-apportionment-data.html. 5 The Constitution Acts. 6 Like the US, the Canadian lower house (House of Commons) is based on representation by population, and the upper house (Senate) is based on the representation of regions.There is a wide variation in House of Commons seats by province, with a high of 121 in Ontario and seventy-eight in Quebec, to lows of four in Prince Edward Island and seven in Newfoundland and Labrador.The Senate accords twenty-four seats each to the four regions of “the West” (comprising BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, with six each), Ontario and Quebec, with twenty-four each, and the Maritime provinces of Nova Scotia (ten), New Brunswick (ten), and PEI (four). Newfoundland and Labrador has six Senate seats, and the three territories each have one. 7 In the thirty-one elections since 1921, there have only been three instances in which a party won a majority of the popular vote. Therefore, electing majority governments based on a minority of the popular vote is very common in Canadian federal elections. 8 To become law, a bill must also have executive approval. In the US, this is provided by the president signing the bill after it has passed Congress. In Canada, it is provided by the Crown (i.e., the governor general federally or lieutenant-governor provincially) indicating “royal assent.” 9 United States Census Bureau, “State Population Totals and Components of Changes: 2010–2019,” https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/2010s-state-total.html. 10 EveryCRSReport, “The US House of Representatives Apportionment Formula in Theory and Practice,” August 2, 2013, https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R41357.html. 11 For example, Michigan, Washington, and California, among others, are using commissions for redistricting following the 2020 census. 12 See, for example, National Conference of State Legislatures, “Redistricting and the Supreme Court: The Most Significant Cases,” September 14, 2021, https://www.ncsl.org/research/redistricting /redistricting-and-the-supreme-court-the-most-significant-cases.aspx. 13 See The Constitution Acts, 1867 to 1982, Section 51A, https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/const /page-2.html#docCont. 14 The Constitution Acts, Section 51 (1), Rule 2. 15 Calculations based on data in Elections Canada, House of Commons Seat Allocation by Province 2022– 2032, https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=res&dir=cir/red/allo&document =index&lang=e. 16 Elections Canada, The Electoral System of Canada, 4th ed., 8–9. 17 See, for example, Nick Corasaniti, “Abbott Signs Texas Election Law, Ending a Fierce Voting Rights Battle,” New York Times, September 7, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/07/us/politics /greg-abbott-texas-voting-rights-law.html.

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Michael Boda and Keith Archer 18 Secretary of State, Washington, “History of Voting in America,” https://www.sos.wa.gov/_assets /elections/history-of-voting-in-america-timeline.pdf. 19 See the discussion of voter identification in the MIT Election Data Science Lab website (June 10, 2021). For example, they note that, “Voter ID has been the subject of intense scrutiny from the scholarly community. One topic of great interest has been the disparate impact photo ID laws have had on racial minority groups and turnout. Research associated with litigation in which voter rolls have been matched against driver’s license lists has confirmed this finding.” See https://electionlab. mit.edu/research/voter-identification. 20 For example, the Brennan Center for Justice says, “Voters are supposed to choose candidates. But when lawmakers draw district lines to entrench one party’s political power, some votes count more than others … Gerrymandering, the practice of drawing districts to favour one political party or racial group, skews election results, makes races less competitive, hurts communities of colour, and thwarts the will of the voters. It leads many Americans to feel their voices don’t matter.” See Brennan Center for Justice, Gerrymandering and Fair Representation, https://www.brennancenter.org /issues/gerrymandering-fair-representation. 21 A compelling analysis of the effect of disenfranchising people convicted of felonies is provided by Nazgol Ghandnoosh, The Sentencing Project, July 28, 2021: “Voting Rights in the Era of Mass Incarceration: A Primer.” The argument is that the US has “high levels of disenfranchisement unparalleled among democratic nations. Nationwide, these policies disenfranchised an estimated 5.2 million adults in 2020. Disenfranchisement policies vary widely by state, ranging from no restrictions on voting to a lifetime ban upon conviction.Voting rights restrictions have potentially affected the outcomes of US elections, particularly as disenfranchisement policies disproportionately impact people of color. Nationwide, as of 2020 one in every 16 Black adults could not vote as the result of a felony conviction, and in seven states more than one in seven Black adults was disenfranchised. Felony disenfranchisement laws remain a serious structural barrier to racial justice in this country.” http:// www.sentencingproject.org/publications/felony-disenfranchisement-a-primer/. 22 Elections Canada, “A Brief History of Federal Voting Rights in Canada” (2023), https:// electionsanddemocracy.ca/voting-rights-through-time-0/brief-history-federal-voting-rights-canada. 23 In 2002, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that all prisoners have the right to vote under Section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. See Sauvé v. Canada, https://www.canlii.org /en/ca/scc/doc/2002/2002scc68/2002scc68.html, and Canada Elections Act, Division 5 Incarcerated Electors, https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/e-2.01/page-32.html#h-205779. 24 Notwithstanding these provisions, some have argued that voter identification rules in Canada do have an effect in limiting access to the ballot for some voters, such as First Nations electors and homeless electors. When this issue was brought before the British Columbia Court of Appeal, the court held that requiring that voters produce identification in the manner prescribed was a violation of the Section 3 right to vote in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but nonetheless it was saved by Section 1 of the Charter, in that the limitation was “demonstrably justified.” Henry v. Canada (Attorney General), 2014 BCCA 30. 25 Kate Rabinowitz and Brittany Renee Mayes, “At Least 84% of American Voters Can Cast Ballots by Mail in the Fall,” Washington Post, September 25, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com /graphics/2020/politics/vote-by-mail-states/. 26 A second federal agency, the Electoral Assistance Commission (EAC), has very limited authority in the regulation of national elections. The EAC is like the FEC in its voting structure but, unlike the FEC, has no statutory authority at the state level, except that states are required to provide the EAC with data after the election so it can assess the election. It does have the authority to certify voting equipment, but states have the authority to have their own certifying process.

Elections: Why Such Differences? 27 By tradition and institutional arrangement, US states either elect or appoint their election officials through a party, not non-partisan lens. In most states, secretaries of state are primarily elected but sometimes appointed by the political party in power as party representatives to conduct elections. In fewer instances, partisan boards of election are responsible for election administration, appointed in equal numbers by the governor as representatives of either the Democratic or Republican Party, sometimes with but other times without the input of the political party not in power. 28 Charles Stewart, “A Summary of the 2020 Election: Survey on the Performance of American Elections” (January 22, 2021), https://medium.com/mit-election-lab/a-summary-of-the-2020 -election-survey-on-the-performance-of-american-elections-7a8d3f7bb83. 29 Nathaniel Rakich and Jasmine Mithani, “What Absentee Voting Looked Like in all 50 States,” FiveThirty-Eight, February 9, 2021, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-absentee-voting -looked-like-in-all-50-states/. 30 Prominent examples are Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker, I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J.Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year (New York: Penguin Random House, 2021), and Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, Peril (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2021). 31 Leonnig and Rucker, I Alone Can Fix It, 340. 32 Trump’s efforts involved speaking with more than thirty Republicans, mostly local and state officials, from four battleground states where he had lost the election, per Anita Kumar and Gabby Orr, “Inside Trump’s Pressure Campaign to Overturn the Election,” Politico, December 21, 2020, https:// www.politico.com/news/2020/12/21/trump-pressure-campaign-overturn-election-449486. 33 Raffensperger released a transcript of the phone call on January 3, the day after the call. 34 Across the US, officials responsible for conducting the 2020 election experienced threats and intimidation in an unprecedented manner during the 2020 election. Brennan Center for Justice, Election Officials Under Attack: How to Protect Administrators and Safeguard Democracy (New York: Brennan Center for Justice/Bipartisan Policy Center, 2021). 35 On 1 July, 2021, the US House Select Committee to Investigate the 6 January Attack on the United States Capitol was formed to investigate the events of that day. Hearings are ongoing at time of publication and committee business can be found here: https://january6th.house.gov/. 36 Chief Electoral Officer, A Report on the Twenty-Ninth General Election, October 26, 2020,Volume I: Statement of Votes (Regina: Elections Saskatchewan, 2021). 37 As an example, see Chief Electoral Officer, A Report on the Twenty-Ninth General Election, October 26, 2020,Volume II: Administrative Review (Regina: Elections Saskatchewan, 2021), 41–60. 38 For information on this election, see Elections Newfoundland and Labrador, 2021 Provincial General Election Report, November 10, 2021, https://www.elections.gov.nl.ca/elections/resources/pdf /electionreports/genelections/GErepor1.t2021.pdf. 39 US Constitution and Canadian Constitution Act 1867, passim. 40 Such values are reflected in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (adopted December 16, 1966, entered into force March 23, 1976) 999 UNTS 171 (ICCPR), to which the US and Canada are both signatories. 41 A survey of election officials found that one in five election officials listed “threats to the lives as a job-related concern,” per Brennan Center for Justice, Election Officials Under Attack, 4–5. 42 Amy Gardner and Paulina Firozi, “Here’s the Full Transcript and Audio of the Call between Trump and Raffensperger,” Washington Post, January 5, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics /trump-raffensperger-call-transcript-georgia-vote/2021/01/03/2768e0cc-4ddd-11eb-83e3 -322644d82356_story.html.

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Past Futures: Federalism under yet More Stress1 David M.Thomas

Canada and the United States are two of the world’s oldest federations. Created almost one hundred years apart, they are based upon two quite different governmental systems, one being a presidential separation of powers, checks and balances model, the other being a parliamentary system both federally and in the subunits (the provinces). To say that both systems have been extensively studied would be an understatement! “Canada has a fascination with federalprovincial relationships that most other nations reserve for religion or sex.”2 In the case of the United States a civil war was fought to retain the Union and the federal system that had been created, and this alone still generates an amazing array of work. The focus of this chapter is to examine those key factors that have differentiated our two systems historically, to examine the challenges that each system now faces, and to assess how each federal system has performed. However, before turning to these issues it is probably wise to remind ourselves of the highly unusual situation that has drastically affected what each system has had to do, namely cope with the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic in two very complex governmental systems. Federal systems are inevitably complex. Even those that are small geographically, like Switzerland, have subunits – the cantons – that are truly diverse linguistically, socially, and economically. In those federations that are geographically so much larger – in particular Canada and the United States – differences are spread out across an entire continent, and in the Canadian and American cases are rooted in differing values, in different historical legacies, in different societal needs – and in very different institutions and political processes. Sorting out these federal characteristics and their major drivers has always been a source of serious and extensive analysis, particularly for Canadians. Recently many of these differences have, once again, come to the fore and are front of mind for Canadians as they witness the events their southern neighbour has experienced: the ultra-partisan divisions in Congress and across the entire system;

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the presidency of Donald Trump, and Trump’s questionable actions, including and in particular allegedly inciting the January 6th attack on Congress to shut down the ratification of the electoral college vote, and his continuing claims that the election had been stolen from him and was a fraud; the death rates from the pandemic in the US, which have been triple those in Canada; the enormous differences between the red and the blue states when it came to dealing with the pandemic. This occurs with the memory of the US banking system’s near collapse in 2007–8, still surprisingly fresh in Canadian minds. Canada’s internal woes and issues are not on American radar screens in anything like the same way, as Stephen Brooks’s chapter in this volume so clearly shows. In both federal systems, we have seen a willingness by the central government to spend billions (and in the US case trillions) of dollars fighting the coronavirus pandemic. Are we therefore at a point, in either system, where we have reached what is called in the current literature a “critical juncture” where some key things actually change?3 Such change usually comes after major disruptive events: a depression, a war, a pandemic, a civil war, are all examples of the kinds of situations that have driven institutional and long-term changes in public opinion, in public policies, and in the workings of our federal systems.Will the pandemic, climate change, Indigenous issues, Quebec’s unique status, health and long-term care issues, and the resultant massive expenditures mean that Canadian federalism will change? If so, how?4 In the United States, will the trillions of additional dollars now being spent result in any major policy changes, or in any kind of institutional reform? Or will it result in any other lasting changes in public opinion at a time when we have all become far more aware not only of our own mortality, but of the complexities of modern life and governance? In a study of how federal systems have dealt with these medical and economic crises, David Cameron, a veteran observer of federal scenes, notes that: As countries have grappled with this unfamiliar enemy, governments have assumed greater control over the market place and commercial activity, in an attempt to control the spread of the virus. Governments in many countries put the economy into an induced coma in the early stages of the outbreak to control runaway infection rates. As the economy came to a virtual standstill, governments around the world have had to spend massively to support individuals and companies. Now they are trying delicately to re-open without letting the beast loose in the country again.The power of the national government, especially based on its fiscal capacity, has typically increased, and power within the national government has been concentrated at the centre. In most, but not all nations, a radical shift in priorities has placed public health ahead of everything else on the public agenda, marked out as the foundation of the economy and the sine qua non of a functioning society. Governments have abruptly announced policies and imposed measures entailing intrusive intervention into the lives and activities of citizens and private actors.5

How our two countries and federal systems have fared in their responses to the economic and social consequences of the coronavirus pandemic illustrates both how our institutions, and

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our values, affect citizens’ lives in so many vital ways – and how different we still are. In a major crisis like this, Cameron argues that there are shifts in priorities, in power, in control, and in public-private relationships.6 All of this is made more complex in federal systems due to the power of the subunits, be they provinces or states, and to the fact that so many vital things are run by the subunits, including health care in Canada and the United States. During the pandemic, leadership at various levels became a matter of the utmost importance. In the United States, with Donald Trump in power at the federal level, such leadership was largely absent at best, or misleading at worst. The Trump administration’s one great achievement was the unprecedented development and initial roll-out of the vaccines, but this was then squandered in so many ways by Republican administrations in various states and by President Trump himself. The shifts described above will also force Canada’s political leadership at all levels to ask what kind of federation they want not just in terms of its structure, but in terms of how it is run: what adjective should we and will we apply to this next period of federal-provincial relations? In the past we have seen what has been described at various times as classical, co-operative/ collaborative, competitive, harmonized, or asymmetrical federalism! Is there a chance that once “emergency federalism” is over it will again be a more “cooperative” model, and if so, how is this to be achieved? Who will lead this process? Will there be enough goodwill and interpersonal contact to make and lead real sustained change?7 Given Canada’s political history, it seems safer to assume that the politics of blame, resentment, region, and party will simply reassert themselves. And in the same spirit is there any likelihood that state-federal relations in the United States will improve? They have often been described as coercive, cooperative, or permissive, and it is not clear which will be in the ascendant – probably coercive, via conditional grants.Thomas Hueglin, one of Canada’s leading scholars of federalism, now sees the US system of checks and balance as being “unable to cope with the ideological polarization, with Congressional supremacy largely unchallenged by the Courts, and with an almost complete lack of formal and informal mechanisms for intergovernmental dialogue and compromise.”8 Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there had to be “a moment of collective agency” in order to cope, and this need for collective agency has continued.9 In those countries that have dealt well with the pandemic, societal-governmental trust has been much in evidence – for example in New Zealand and Denmark.10 In a federal system this means strong leadership at the subunit level as well as nationally. In some key ways the pandemic undoubtedly has discredited the creed of individualism; in other ways it has reinforced it, even in Canada – and especially in the United States. 11 First, however, before comparing how each of our systems are faring, it is important to remember how our federations have evolved, for what has emerged over the decades is, quite clearly, in many ways not what was envisioned by the founders. In fact, it will be argued that, paradoxically, each system has become what the other was intended to be: the United States becomes far more centralized and Canada more decentralized. From the outset, when studying the Canadian and American federal systems, certain differences are startlingly obvious. There is the enormous and justifiable pride that Americans take in the creation of the

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foundational document, the Constitution of 1789, including its subsequent Bill of Rights. The American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the work of the “Founding Fathers” at Philadelphia have created a whole academic industry.12 In Canada neither the work of the “Fathers of Canadian Confederation,” nor the signatories themselves, have received attention like this.The United States experienced a revolution, followed by the development of a loose confederation, then by the dramatic events that took place in Philadelphia, with the founders struggling to create a degree of centralization without scaring off the supporters of states’ rights.13 Federalism has been evolving for far longer in the United States, and the first ten amendments to the Constitution comprised a Bill of Rights at the very outset. In addition we cannot ever forget that the United States had to face the original sin of slavery and deal with its ongoing effects on the federal system that had been established in 1789. The question of slavery, fuelled by the debate over states’ rights, became a key factor in the secession of the South in 1860, which culminated in a horrendous civil war that cost well over 700,000 dead. Canada has faced nothing like this. The ferocity of this war and the carnage of battles such as Antietam and Gettysburg, the role of Abraham Lincoln, the price paid by the South, the aftermath of the war and reconstruction: these are factors that make useful comparisons between states and provinces and between our two federal systems very difficult.14 After 1865 the pre-eminence of the US federal government could not be doubted. In the Canadian case, official and clear ties to the mother country, a strongly centralized parliamentary form of government, the management of linguistic and religious differences, and a determination to try to avoid some of what were seen as the mistakes the United States had made that had contributed to the agony of its recent civil war were the key factors that shaped the federal structures that Canada created.The impetus was protection against American expansionism, and ever since 1867 Canadian political analysis has been preoccupied with the subject of Canadian federalism and federal-provincial relations. Writing about federalism became a Canadian cottage industry, and an incredible generation of Canadian scholars, now sadly passing, were able to provide in-depth analysis of what was happening to the system and what pressures it was under, as Canadians argued over our foundational premises and contested concepts.15 The US system historically was about individual and state rights and limits to government, but now in the United States “the discussion of federalism arises largely as a by-product of debate on specific programs and policies. In some ways the reverse may be said about Canada. There the policy debate often seems to be subordinated to rival conceptions of federalism.”16 This may have changed somewhat of late, as in the United States federal-state battles now rage about the rules around voting, abortion, and pandemic measures. Canada’s federal debates have often been driven by questions about the role and place of Quebec within Confederation. This has no American counterpart. During the eighteenth century Canada remained a colony under British imperial control, not arriving at present arrangements until 1867, when Upper Canada, Lower Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia were

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officially “federally united into one Dominion.” This was a generic term used for the major colonial possessions of the British Empire.17 The place of the Province of Quebec, then known as Lower Canada, was an absolutely central element in the debates. An American equivalent would have been admitting and administering a state that contained more than 30 per cent of the entire population, spoke Spanish, and remained Catholic. This was the situation for Canada, and Quebec was in the centre of the country situated on the key waterway of the St. Lawrence River. The powers and place of Quebec in the Dominion are thus questions that have been at the heart of constitutional debate in Canada ever since, alongside the ongoing cases for different treatment that have been put forward by every region, now joined by the demands for justice for the Indigenous population. Like race relations in the United States, the Quebec question has haunted the Canadian body politic for its entire history, and certainly as already noted, the very existence of Canada as a federal state has been a recurring preoccupation of Canadian political scientists, politicians, and the courts. Race in the United States and the politics of territorial integration in Canada are key examples of the centrality – for federalism – of distinctive social structures and a country’s demographic and geographic makeup.18 As Will Ferguson noted in Why I Hate Canadians, “The three great themes of Canadian history are as follows: 1. keeping the Americans out 2. keeping the French in 3. trying to get the Natives to somehow disappear.”19 On this last point Canada was clearly and utterly wrong, and must atone. Hopefully Canada will, and if it does, there is a chance that we will witness an awakening of the Canadian consciousness that could, over the next decades, have major positive results from which we will all benefit. The United States and Canada are, in their own ways, exceptional cases. Their sheer size, the role and place of Quebec, and the US Civil War are three key exceptional features. So are the institutional arrangements created to govern each of them. We must also remind ourselves that comparing Canada and the United States simply as two countries, using national data to do so, can be misleading. Debora L. VanNijnatten and Gerard W. Boychuk made exactly this point in 2006, arguing that we should “focus on the Canadian provinces and relevant American states rather than simply on national-level comparisons.”20 A recent important study discusses Canadian performance indicators compared with a disaggregated United States, split into three subsets: the eleven Northern border states, the South, and the rest. The results are startling in that there is such variation across these three state groupings, with the border states looking far more like Canada. This, it is argued, cannot be due to institutional differences; “it appears necessary to resort to noninstitutional suspects – climate, racial diversity, size of state and provincial populations, and regional political cultures.”21 To this list one has to add that regional differences in the United States are due also to the lack of a national approach to equalizing key services.22 Of course there are still major differences between provinces too, but these are more focused on their political cultures rather than levels of service, even though federal control is less invasive than in many other federations, and doesn’t include education, which is entirely a provincial matter.

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FEDERALISM: THE THEORY AND THE PRACTICE Federalism as a system attempts to blend authority to two very different levels of government, which means that “[a] kind of federal diplomacy largely unknown in unitary systems is part of good federal practice, both administratively and politically. And citizens are members of both a provincial and a national community.”23 Federal systems should therefore allow for and expect policy variations on some important matters, for good or ill, which is clearly evidenced in the three state groupings mentioned above, and is far less obvious in the Canadian system due to constitutionally entrenched equalization provisions. We should also expect that it behooves a federal government, before it sets out extravagant objectives with massive budgets, to foster experimentation and trials at a provincial or state level.This might seem duplicative or wasteful, but it is surely preferable to setting objectives and then throwing ever more money at them, only to find they were not realizable or feasible. Devolved trials are clearly possible within a federal system, provided the subunits are willing to undertake them and fairly assess them: the subunits are usually far closer to the action, and should know better how to address state, provincial, and regional issues. A one-sizefits-all approach can be divisive, wasteful, and overly bureaucratic, and it may be driven by a federal government that wants to aggressively push its own agendas and take credit for what is being done, even if it is in areas that the subunits have responsibility for – such as healthcare in Canada’s case. Provinces, and states, will see a self-righteous, ideologically driven federal government as dangerous. At a time when massive amounts of money are being handed out, one can but hope that genuine federal-provincial and federal-state collaboration is possible, and that effective national agendas can be operationalized effectively. On this the jury is still out: for political reasons this may not be the case in either country. In the United States, “the same pressures that have polarized the parties in Washington are reshaping policy-making in the States.”24 There are deepening divisions and increasingly “hardball politics” at the state level as well, across a broad range of issues.25 These comments were made in 2011, and in the past decade the situation has worsened. In current discussions and debates, many scholars argue that there are really two forms of federalism. One of these is territorial, as exemplified by the United States, with a powerful Senate in which each state is represented equally. The second form of federalism is far more rooted in the recognition of difference; it requires an asymmetrical approach so that the different needs of communities are taken into legal consideration, and there is different treatment of the subunits if this is required by the sociological realities of the polity. Federalism is driven in this model by the need to recognize sociological differences, local sentiments, and “deep diversity.” In Canada’s case this has meant the place of Quebec and a large francophone population and how these can be addressed by federalism, which has meant asymmetrical measures.26 The interests of the centre are pitted against the regions, in particular the West, against the aspirations of various types of Quebec nationalists, and against the demands from First Nations communities that

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they be given increased constitutional recognition. Some see Canada as a binational federation (Quebec and the rest of Canada); some see it as simply territorially very diverse, with each subunit entitled to pretty much the same rights and privileges; others see it as a federation that must evolve – and is evolving – into something more complex, with recognition also of the territorial claims of Indigenous peoples – for example, the creation in 1999 of the territory of Nunavut. Interestingly the pandemic may have both increased demands for a strong central government and increased Quebec’s claims for greater autonomy. Canada’s deep diversity has indeed been driven primarily by the question of Quebec’s place in Confederation, and it has been addressed, albeit imperfectly, by federalism. But federal solutions are exceedingly difficult to find for 600+ Indigenous communities scattered across the country, with nearly 200 distinct communities in British Columbia alone. In the US the deep diversity issue has been race, and here federalism has provided a far less useful set of tools, and in many ways has been an impediment to success on racial issues. Thus in some key respects the “form” of Canadian federalism is still a work in progress, in ways that Americans may find strange. Canada has seen the production of numerous major reports on the future of the union, and has undergone a whole series of wrenching constitutional crises, culminating in the Quebec referendum of 1995 and its aftermath. Following the refusal of Quebec to become a signatory to the Constitution Act of 1982, and the subsequent failure of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords, a second referendum on the issue of Quebec’s sovereignty was held by the Quebec government in 1995. Quebec voters were asked the following question: “Do you agree that Quebec should become sovereign, after having made a formal offer to Canada for a new Economic and Political Partnership?” It was rejected by a vote of 50.6 per cent to 49.4 per cent. Turnout was exceptional at almost 94 per cent. No one who watched the results come in will forget the tension of that night. It was a near-death federal experience. But the aftermath was extraordinarily peaceful: the results were accepted. There have to be very few national communities where a result this close, with such a turnout, would not have caused mayhem. It is a tribute to Quebeckers that this was not the case.27 The effects of very differing Senates on both federal systems, and on states and provinces, are hard to exaggerate. The Senate is the senior legislative body in the US federal system, designed to provide protection to the smaller states, and also “enables them to make out like bandits” on a disproportionate share of everything from highway bills to homeland security.28 (And now COVID-19 relief and infrastructure money.) Canada has the Senate nobody loves: not elected, with Senators appointed by the federal government, not equal in representation from each province, and with limited powers. Reform has been discussed for decades, to little or no avail. In Canada the House of Commons and strong party discipline within it are the keys to power. (See Chapters 7 and 8 of this book.) Nonetheless, while institutions dramatically affect the ways in which the federal systems work, so too does the operation of national political parties.

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KEEPING IT TOGETHER In any federation, the operation of political parties is crucial. Once again, Canada and the United States are very different, even though each has a first-past-the-post electoral system. Canada has seriously contemplated switching to proportional representation; such a move was part of the winning Liberal Party’s platform in 2015. A parliamentary committee then laboured hard to produce a full report and analysis of the choices – but it all came to naught. Winning parties seem to like the system that brought them power! Proportional representation is not even contemplated for the United States. In the United States the two parties have in the past been seen as vehicles for “brokerage” politics, in which coalitions were forged and representatives were able to cross party lines. Coalition building was vital in Canada as well, as national leaders had to forge alliances out of varied social, religious, ethnic, linguistic, and regional groups across a vast land. Class politics was not predominant as in Europe: Canada is a country of regions – imperfectly balanced, unevenly resourced and unevenly committed. It was put together, and then expanded over the subsequent decades, through a series of explicitly political decisions made by working party politicians ... In this sense Canada is, unlike most countries, a party country in which the role and activities of a set of healthy, competitive political parties is central to its continuing existence.29

But in the United States party polarization has increased dramatically.30 This take-no-prisoners approach “means that for the first time in modern history, in both the House and the Senate, the most conservative Democrat is slightly more liberal than the most liberal Republican.”31 This will affect post-pandemic economic issues in all sorts of ways. In Canada, there is obviously room for the re-emergence of strongly polarized parties, as happened under the government of Stephen Harper, but thanks to the pandemic what we see now are all major parties promising to spend their way out of the current situation, promising billions in support for a wide range of programs. There isn’t a deficit-cutting party in sight even as long-term debts reach astonishing new levels, and some provincial finances are in dire straits.32 However, major polarizing issues could easily emerge over the next electoral cycle. Canada has experienced “a series of electoral earthquakes of a magnitude rarely seen in any other democratic system.”33 Canadian electoral results reflect serious regional stresses in terms of representation, as the system rewards geographically concentrated parties, and American readers may not appreciate the enormity of these changes. In 1993 the governing Progressive Conservative Party was reduced from a majority government of 169 to a mere two seats! This kind of sweeping change is almost unthinkable in the United States, given the role of the primaries, the dominance of only two parties, and the need for constant campaign financing. In Canada regional factors and party histories and policies will continue to get in

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the way of any such two-party realignment, and regionalized or provincialized results are still inevitable. The right-wing “red” and left-wing “blue” divisions in the United States are not about the constitutional structure of the federal system itself, although there have always been states’ rights issues in play, and there are very clear differences amongst the states on a broad range of topics. The red/blue divisions are based more upon ideological tensions and differences in value systems: the size and role of government; taxation and the redistribution of wealth; the rights of minority groups, immigrants, and women; crime and punishment; individual rights and freedoms, especially the right to own weapons; the rules surrounding voting; and moral questions concerning issues such as abortion, and in the past gay marriage until it was legalized by the Supreme Court.While these are topics of some importance in Canada, Canada’s national politics is still rooted in a very different set of federal problems and federal electoral dynamics. There is nevertheless a paradox at the heart of all of this: while Canada’s federal and electoral systems have reinforced regionalism and provincialism, in the United States local and state issues can still be more important than they are in Canada. Local personalities and local campaigns, especially for congressional seats, are one such feature of the system, as are wide differences amongst the states. Blue states try to put in gun control, red states try to loosen concealed-carry restrictions. Blue states approved gay marriage well before the Supreme Court legalized it; red states resolutely opposed it. Recent laws in Texas toughen abortion laws to the point where it virtually eliminates abortion altogether. In Canada there is far less interprovincial variation on such issues, greater comparability of services, and in a national election local issues take a back seat to national party loyalties, which revolve around national figures and overarching ­federal-provincial disputes. However, there are still, often, differences between the federal parties and those that are provincial even if they operate under the same party labels, whereas in the United States the state-national party divide may not be as apparent. But amongst the states specific policies are extraordinarily contentious and differ widely. Federalism in the USA may in many ways be seen as an impediment to the resolution of the deep racial issues that affect so many policy areas. In sum, the issues are framed differently in our two federations.

CONSTITUTIONAL ARCHITECTURE What in more practical terms are some of the key constitutional differences between each federal system? Other chapters in this book make many of them so clear: for example Chapter 15 on environmental issues makes clear the enormous differences in our legislative systems and the resulting policies. In Canada, the extensive powers of the Crown, operating through the political executive, have been federalized.The legal position of the Crown in the Canadian Constitution has shaped the operation of the country’s executives, legislatures, courts, and laws. As the late David Smith puts it in his classic study of the Crown in Canada, “the Crown intensified the

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natural divisions of Canada by enhancing the autonomy of unit governments defined by those divisions.”34 All provincial premiers and governments were strengthened by the possession of powers derived from royal prerogatives. In a majority government situation, the premier and the cabinet control the legislature, its committees, the legislative agenda, and spending, and can remain in office for as many terms as the party can win. The parliamentary system gives to provincial premiers powers of which state governors can only dream.35 This parliamentary system is contrasted with the congressional system of checks and balances and with the powers of the governor in terms of the state legislatures. In all states the governor is directly elected, which brings with it an important degree of legitimacy. But the governor’s powers can vary as can the term of office (usually four years with a maximum of two terms), and the state assembly is paramount in terms of legislative control. Some states – for example Texas, Florida, Indiana, and South Carolina – are regarded as having very weak powers for the governor, with controls on appointments and on spending, no line item veto, and the existence of a simple majority override of the governor’s veto. Others, such as Massachusetts and New Jersey, have stronger executives. The governor may have little ability to lead the legislature and can be surrounded by politically appointed rivals and independently elected officials; across the fifty states budgets are set in many different ways.36 There is also a state senate to be dealt with as well as the legislative assembly: all states with the exception of Nebraska are bicameral. Moreover, running for office can be extremely expensive. A popular governor is someone who can be a strong party leader (even though this is not an official job). Governors may play crucial roles in crises and emergencies; in most states, the governor will appoint someone to the federal Senate if an incumbent dies or steps down leaving a vacant seat; this may be a very important choice. In states with the death penalty, governors can issue death-row pardons or stays of execution; thirty-three states give governors the exclusive power to grant pardons and reduce sentences. They also have an important role as lobbyists on the national scene and as members of the National Governors Association headquartered in Washington, DC, and as members of other regional organizations. The powers and roles of governors vary far more than do the powers of the premiers. It would not be possible to produce in Canada a chart showing a range of premiers from very weak to strong based upon the constitutions of the provinces, but it is possible to do this for the governors of the states.37 In Canada, provincial premiers meet annually under the auspices of “The Council of the Federation,” which is just an upgraded version of the older annual premiers’ meeting. The prime minister is not present. It is an opportunity to gang up on Ottawa, but if there appear to be winners and losers on any major issue the group soon splits apart. In addition, provisions for citizen initiatives and/or referendums are fairly widespread especially across the western states, and where they do not exist, there are often demands that they be put in place. There are no comparable demands for direct democracy in Canada at any level. This is a major difference.38 The federal cabinet in the United States is also very different from its Canadian counterpart. It is appointed by the president with the confirmation of the Senate, but it is not a collective body,

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nor is it responsible to Congress. Members are rarely selected from the House or the Senate and must resign their elected offices. Contrast this with Canada, where the selection of federal cabinet ministers from among the members of the House of Commons is a federal balancing act. A prime minister (or provincial premier) must pay particular attention to regional and other representational challenges. Cabinet building is an important aspect of Canadian federalism and has no American counterpart. Good cabinet timber can be hard to come by in Canada given these constraints and the size of a Canadian cabinet. Finally, too, the US Supreme Court has become a very politically polarizing institution and thankfully, to date, the Canadian Supreme Court has not.39 If we now focus more closely on the actual division of powers between the federal governments and the states and provinces, and the differences enshrined in them, it is clear, as numerous studies have pointed out, that the US Constitution is difficult to change, and heavily dependent upon judicial interpretations – interpretations that have greatly strengthened the powers of Congress. Congress was given, under Article 1, Sections 8, 9, and 10, the power to “lay and collect taxes … to … provide for the common good and general welfare of the United States”; to coin money; to regulate commerce with foreign nationals and among the several states; to establish post offices and post roads; and to sign treaties, raise a military force, and declare war. This was written in a simpler age. Anything not listed was to be given to the states under what is called a residual powers approach. But the federal government was also given the right to make all laws which were “necessary and proper” in order to carry out its responsibilities. Federal law was also paramount under Article 6: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land….” And under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3, the US Congress has the power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.” This power has been used extensively. States inherited important responsibilities, especially as governmental roles grew. Health, welfare, education, unemployment insurance, social assistance, social security, justice, policing, transportation, environmental protection, insurance and banking, and other needs were met by state action, although not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution. The role of the federal government expanded inexorably with the addition of important post–Civil War constitutional amendments involving rights, voting, and discrimination (which limited states’ powers and were applied by the federal authorities), combined with the ability of the US Supreme Court to interpret the laws in ways that often reinforced federal authority, and above all with the sweeping authority of Congress to make all laws necessary for the execution of its powers. And, as in ­Canada, the effects first of the Great Depression and then of the Second World War were enormous. The old relationship with the states was changed fundamentally.40 States continue to be sovereign in many respects.They levy a wide array of taxes independently of the federal government, have their own criminal codes, are responsible for a bewildering array of local sub-governments and agencies and an array of local initiatives and referendums, and can still initiate changes that may prove to be nationally important, such as California’s environmental

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regulations and the rules for voting in every state.The defence of states’ rights can resurface at any time and can be formidable, as it was in the civil rights era. Overall the states are still remarkably diverse in terms of their demographics, their politics, their economies, and their cultures. Budget processes in each state are illustrative of this, and it should be noted that all states, with the exception of Vermont, have constitutional or legislative provisions that prevent deficit budgeting, although such limits usually apply only to operating, not capital, budgets.41 Turning now to the distribution of powers and to expenditures in Canada, what is readily apparent is that the original centralist design was a complex mix of Canadian elements grafted onto the country’s British constitutional heritage.The Constitution Act of 1867 does not contain anything like a comprehensive statement of the country’s constitutional system. In Peter Russell’s view, Canadian constitutional developments have been Burkean: changes occurred gradually, incrementally, and through various means. We are not talking about popular sovereignty and “we the people” as the source of authority.42 We are dealing with a pragmatic settlement that married a British parliamentary system to a form of federalism inspired by the appeal of the American model and its applicability to regional and cultural needs, and that was also inspired by the desire to create a strong central government with clearly delineated powers. Residual powers were given to the federal government, as were all means of taxation, defence, the right to make laws for the “peace, order, and good government” of the realm, and the unusual powers to “reserve” and “disallow” provincial legislation. (These powers have now fallen into disuse, and the Supreme Court plays a key role in assessing the constitutionality of legislation.) The provinces exercised their authority in areas that included health, education, property and civil rights, municipal government, local works, the administration of justice (also federal), and natural resources (although once again the federal government has a major role in resource policy creation and retains control over offshore resource development). Certain powers were also shared as “concurrent” responsibilities: agriculture, immigration, and, later, old age pensions. In the event of a clash, federal legislation would be paramount in the first two areas. Thus, on the face of it, Canada has a highly centralized federation and the United States does not. But in practice, the provinces control those areas where spending is inexorably increasing. Provinces and municipalities are responsible, after transfers, for approximately two-thirds of government spending while in the US state spending is approximately 40 per cent of total spending. What provinces and states resent is a federal government engaged in nation building by intruding into areas under provincial or state control, especially if it does so as if it knows best, when in fact it may be out of touch with what is actually happening.

FOLLOW THE MONEY Prior to the 1960s, federal grants in the United States had gone primarily to state governments for state purposes. During the 1960s, new grants were increasingly designed with strings

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attached. They came as grants-in-aid to not only the states but to local governments and other agencies. Federal funding for health, poverty, crime, education, transportation, and all sorts of programs proliferated, as did regulations and controls. These are forms of redistribution based largely upon transfers for individuals; they are not driven by any kind of federal fiscal equalization formula. This is a very important difference from the Canadian case. In addition, Washington has played banker to the states, and federal grants – with explicit strings attached – form a major part of the revenues of the states, as do enormous outlays for defence and military expenditures.43 Power began to shift as the state governors, legislatures, and bureaucracies became more professional and activist. The Republican ascendancy over the last quarter of a century assisted this process, with the party’s emphasis on states’ rights and federal budget cuts. The result is that “the confluence of state assertiveness, public opinion, partisan shifts, and judicial rulings has lifted the states to their greatest prominence since at least the Great Depression.”44 And state tax levels vary enormously. Many states, especially in the South, have extremely regressive tax systems, no earned income credits, no income tax, and have shifted revenue generation to increases in sales taxes, property taxes, and fees for public services; in some cases they are now tax havens. These states will reap far more in federal benefits from programs such as Medicaid, food stamps, and disability benefits than those states that do more to take care of their own citizens.45 In Canada, the postwar federal governments of the 1950s and 1960s saw the heyday of the creation of new national programs backed by federal money. Even though many federal initiatives directly affected provincial jurisdiction, the federal government had “first mover advantage.” These new programs were a way to nation-build. For the provinces, they were a way to provide regionally based economic support with relatively few strings attached. Equalization payments for the poorer provinces were introduced in 1957, and these still exist as a key element of Canada’s federal system and have no American counterpart.46 The principle for equalization is now written into the Constitution Act of 1982 (Section 36), which provides for “reasonably comparable levels of public services at reasonably comparable levels of taxation.” Equalization is based upon a complex tax formula, reviewed every five years. The formula is “understood by only a few academics, experts, and finance officials” and remains incomprehensible to most ­Canadians, as do most federal-provincial fiscal arrangements.47 Equalization is paid by the federal government out of a basket of general federal revenues. It amounted to $21 billion in 2020–1 and has to remain stable at around 0.8 per cent per cent of GDP.48 This scheme is part of Canada’s continuing determination to create a federal state that was different from the ­American model. Equalization has been part of the glue holding the federation together, and over the past thirty to forty years, there has been a substantial narrowing of the gap in provincial per capita expenditures. But it remains controversial, and the formula needs attention, which should probably be tackled via a panel of non-partisan experts, not politicians. If Canada really wanted to consider a different revenue-sharing model it could look to Australia, which has a federal government that retains control over the biggest fiscal levers, such as a 10 per cent

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national GST levied solely by the federal government, with very large transfer payments to the states – which means far more regional equality.49 Other forms of federal assistance – such as pension plans, post-secondary education funding, health and social service transfers, and infrastructure funding – are also vital for the provinces, and some provinces took advantage of the right to opt out of shared-cost programs and were given compensation through the transfer of tax points. (From the 1960s on, Quebec has been consistent in its opposition to federal intrusions, still does not see Ottawa’s social union initiatives as something it will support, and has invariably opted out of such national plans.) In 2021–2 the Canada Health Transfer amounted to $43 billion, and must be spent on health as defined by each province, subject to the broad parameters of the Canada Health Act. The Canada Social Transfer Program amounted to another $15.5 billion, again without specific strings attached to it, and equalization payments were $21 billion. In most federations the federal government collects more than it needs for its direct spending obligations, and in Canada the provinces argue that there is a shortfall of revenue-raising capacity relative to spending responsibility. However, a case can be made that this is a problem created by the provinces themselves and, as noted, by many states in the United States, given how and what they tax.50 The provinces have nearly unfettered access to virtually all sources of taxation, and “Canada’s ten provinces wield greater power and discretion through the working of their fiscal and tax policies than do the sub-national governments of almost any other federal system of government.”51 One would not realize this if one listened to provincial complaints. However, the federal taps have now been turned on due to the pandemic; what is to follow remains unclear. Canadian provincial budgets are significantly larger, relative to the size of the federal budget, than are US state budgets.52 The financial picture changed with COVID-19, but the massive deficits incurred are now dropping. The Canadian federal budget for 2022–3 lays out $462 billion in expenditures, revenues of $409 billion, and a deficit of $53 billion. Comparable US figures show revenues of $4.174 trillion and outlays of $6.011 trillion, with a deficit of $1.837 trillion. These differences in the scale of economic activity, based upon the far larger and more dispersed US population, bring home the fact that Canada, for all its geographic size, really is a very small country with far fewer subunits and fewer political actors. In the United States the whole budgetary debate takes on a very different form. What has happened is that state revenues dropped dramatically with the arrival of COVID-19, and Medicaid payments increased. Some states were harder hit than others. Billions in revenues were lost. This was then offset by the $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES) in March 2020, and the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act Funding for States (ARP) passed in March 2021. These enormously complex bills allocated billions for a whole range of activities. States were forced to figure out what the rules governing each expenditure were, and how the money could be used. For example: how was their share of the $350 billion Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund to be allocated and accounted for? Some

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states were nimble and have found ways to get the monies in and out, and others haven’t. Some states did not want the money for the things it was assigned to achieve! Some found themselves awash in cash from the ARP and from the $10 billion Coronavirus Capital Projects Relief Fund53 plus millions from the opioid settlement.Washington was calling the shots, and the states were handling things each in their own way. Long-term results remain to be seen. Congress then passed the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act – tons more money,54 followed in 2022 by the $500 billion Inflation Reduction Act and the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act for investment in semiconductors and science research. These are astonishing amounts, which should have lasting effects across all levels of government.

CONCLUSION The common challenges now for both federal systems include at least dealing with the ongoing pandemic and its after-effects and trying to reorient the economies and budgets at every level to cope with major changes. Infection rates and COVID-19 deaths were far, far lower in Canada. Certainly the national Centers for Disease Control may have played a bigger role than did Health Canada, but this was to be expected given the nature of the vaccine roll-out. The federal response in Canada was also affected by Health Canada’s updated pandemic planning framework (2018), which left the provinces and territories with clear ownership of their respective responses. This, combined with extensive provincial opposition, effectively precluded federal intervention under the public welfare provisions of the Emergencies Act.55 Partisan strife over vaccines and masks were vastly different: in the US, the reliably blue states have had higher vaccination rates than the reliably red ones. Media coverage of the pandemic in Canada was far more balanced and was not such a source of deliberate disinformation than in the US – but this is not a difference attributable to federalism per se, although it was abetted by the powers of certain governors.56 There are new priorities in the United States and a “new normal” is not in sight as the trillions of dollars in the acts mentioned above roll out. And the topics of engagement between not only the two federal governments, but also between provinces and states, should be expanded. There needs to be a strengthening of the existing collaborative mechanisms to deal with a long list of sub-topics at this level.57 These include flood control; fire suppression; wildlife preservation; animal health; water rights; emergency response co-ordination in the event of earthquakes, fires, floods and pandemics; coordinated cyber-security and border security measures; supply chain preservation; and ensuring that bureaucracy at the border does not worsen. Businesses need stability and predictability at a time of great technological change and increasing political uncertainty. The techniques and institutions of federalism sometimes facilitate these things, but often they do not. Federalism as a system of government is often seen as imperfect, and indeed it is. But so are the others. At least once COVID-19 is over, we will be able, thanks to federalism,

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to analyse how each US state and Canadian province coped with the pandemic and to assess what worked well and what didn’t. The consequences of what was done, or not done, and the costs, will bear close examination. In key ways our institutions and values do drive alternative responses to what needs to be done, across a wide range of issues, with different outcomes. On the Canadian side these outcomes may not be as progressive or as liberal as Canadians are wont to believe. What both countries need are pragmatic, well-coordinated responses both internally and externally. Painful transitions are coming in those regions where key industries may be in structural decline and their economies need reinventing; working out these dynamics in each federal system is going to be stressful for each federation in very different political ways, given our institutions and the ways they work. In each federation such responses require coordination and leadership. In Canada, at the federal level, accountability is far clearer than it is in the US even when one party controls both houses and the presidency. Canadians know who to hold accountable: the prime minister and his/her team. In Canada institutionalized mechanisms were set up in 2017 to harmonize interprovincial trade and to implement agreed-upon reforms to the Canada Pension Plan. These reforms show that constructive changes are possible – and this kind of institutionalized agreement is so needed for any new pan-Canadian approach to a national energy policy. In the United States there are signs that states are working together as they develop interstate compacts.Thus, as with so many other Canadian-American comparisons, readers will be struck by just how different states and provinces are in the roles they play, the ways they are run, and how they play them within the confines of each federal system. The division of powers and executive-legislative relationships in each country, as discussed in other chapters in this volume, affect how disputes arise and how they are dealt with, nationally and internationally, and the internal political cultures and constitutions of states and provinces have major effects on how policies are created, funded, and administered. In the United States (more so than in Canada) it is possible to see that “region” is a significant predictor of welfare, education, and justice-system spending58 – and of infections and death rates during a pandemic. Such regional variations are probably surprising to many Canadians. Canadian provinces can customize things to their own specifications, but are less likely to depart from national norms than are American states – with the exception of Quebec and perhaps Alberta. Given the post-COVID-19 issues Canada will face, it is not clear, however, that the emerging policy agenda can be handled successfully through conventional federal techniques and institutions. Domestic factors and the operations of a federal system will remain important, but international pressures on Canada are likely to grow in ways not seen before, and as always Canada’s biggest concern will be what is happening south of the border. Given what has transpired of late, this is a serious worry. All this leaves one to ask what sort of “federal spirit” will enable each nation, and the subunits within it, to cope with the future in effective ways as each struggles with very difficult

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political, social, environmental, and economic challenges. In what ways will our pasts constrain and shape our futures? We know that they will, and the hope is that this chapter has shown why this will remain so. Lincoln’s words still have great resonance: “If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then judge better what to do and how to do it.”59 After a pandemic and after the expenditure of trillions of dollars dealing with it, in a world with new international tensions and a war in Europe, whither we are tending remains unclear. Acknowledgments: David N. Biette, the director of the Council of State Governments (East), provided detailed comments, and alerted me to what is happening now at state levels. Roger Gibbins commented on a first draft. Conversations with David Cameron, Colleen Collins, Roger Gibbins, Oryssia Lennie, Gary Mar, and Trevor Tombe were invaluable. Errors are of course mine.

STUDY QUESTIONS 1. What are supposed to be the key advantages of federalism, and what are normally seen as its disadvantages? Provide Canadian and US examples of both. 2. If you had to pick five things that distinguish the Canadian federal system from its US counterpart, what would you pick and why? 3. Why is the operation of national political parties such an important component of the two systems, and what are the differences in terms of the ways the parties operate within each system? 4. In what ways has the pandemic affected our two federal systems? Will it lead to more collaboration in each system? Will it lead to more collaboration between the two systems?

NOTES 1 The chapter’s title is inspired in part by historian Ged Martin’s 2004 book, Past Futures:The Impossible Necessity of History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004). This work shows how important it is to expand and recast the questions we ask, how vital it is to grasp that the present has no independent existence, and how we must “locate events in the sweep of history.” 2 Robert G. Evans, “We’ll Take Care of It for You: Health Care in the Canadian Community,” Daedalus (Fall 1998): 172. 3 For a discussion of this topic see Daniel Béland, André Lecours, Mirielle Paquet, and Trevor Tombe, “A Critical Juncture in Fiscal Federalism: Canada’s Response to Covid-19,” Canadian Journal of

Past Futures Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique 53, no. 2 (June 2020). This issue is devoted to discussions of the pandemic and its effects. Note also Kyle Hanniman, “Covid-19, Fiscal Federalism and Provincial Debt: Have We Reached a Critical Juncture?,” CJPS 53, no. 2 (June 2020): 279–85. 4 Note the forthcoming study by Kathy Brock and Geoffrey Hale, Managing Canadian Federalism beyond the Pandemic (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023). 5 David Cameron, “The Impact of Covid-19 on Federal Countries” (unpublished manuscript, August 2021), 2. I wish to thank Dr. Cameron for sharing with me his most recent work on the pandemic and federal systems. 6 Cameron, “The Impact of Covid-19 on Federal Countries.” 7 See Charles Breton, ed., A Resilient Federation? Public Policy Challenges For The New Decade, Inaugural Essay Series, Centre of Excellence on the Canadian Federation (Montreal: Institute for Research on Public Policy, 2021). In this collection, on the subject of a transformed for the better federation, note especially: Jörg Broschek, “Resilient Federalism and Transformative Policy Change: What Are the Prospects for a New ‘National Policy’ in Canada?” Broschek wonders whether Prime Minister Trudeau can be the “reconstructive” leader that’s needed. Jared Wesley’s essay, “Building Bridges: Towards a Reform of Canadian Intergovernmental Relations,” argues that if history is any guide, partisan cleavages will re-emerge due to our balkanized federal party system. Loleen Berdahl’s essay, “The Persistence of Western Alienation,” echoes this theme: “regional concerns are often prioritized over those relating to, for example, class, gender, race, ethnicity or ideology.” 8 Thomas O. Hueglin, “Coping With Diversity: Federalism and the Return of History,” F ­ orum of ­Federations Occasional Paper Series 19 (2017): 3, https://forumfed.org /document/coping -diversity-federalism-return-history/. 9 See Adam Tooze, Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy (New York:Viking-Random House, 2021). 10 In a current ranking of the performance of thirty-five OECD countries during the pandemic (nine of which are federations), based upon two criteria, infections per million and deaths per million, federal systems do well and do badly. Australia – a federation – ranks third, Canada comes in at ninth for infections and eleventh for deaths. New Zealand is number one, and the USA ranks thirty-third for cases and thirtieth for deaths. See David Cameron, “The Relative Performance of Federal and Non -Federal Countries During the Pandemic,” Forum of Federations Occasional Paper Series 50 (March 2021), https://forumfed.org/document/the-relative-performance-of-federal-and-non -federal-countries-during-the-pandemic-number-50/. 11 Note the work carried out by the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University. They have created a “COVID-19 Government Response Tracker” and have a “Canadian Provinces Working Paper” on COVID-19 responses. They conclude that the benefits of federalism have been unevenly leveraged, and that the lack of coordination shows the need for improved future pandemic planning (https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk). 12 For example, dozens of books continue to be published on the big six (Washington, Hamilton, ­Adams, Franklin, Madison, and Jefferson). 13 For a recent study of this period see Joseph J. Ellis, The Cause:The American Revolution and Its Discontents 1773–1783 (New York: Liveright, 2021). 14 Most Canadians are entirely unaware of the events in the South that followed the war – the battles, riots, lynchings, and intimidation that were the consequences of the withdrawal of the last federal troops in 1877. See Nicholas Lemann, Redemption:The Last Battle of the Civil War (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2006).

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David M. Thomas 15 For a comprehensive analysis of these contradictions, and particularly the role and place of Quebec, see Thomas O. Hueglin, Federalism in Canada: Contested Concepts and Uneasy Balances (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021). For a very useful review of what Canadians think about federalism see the April 2019 Survey of Canadians, Canada: Pulling Together or Drifting Apart? (Confederation of Tomorrow/Environics Research). Every province except Ontario does not think it is “treated with the respect it deserves” but there is strong agreement that “A Federal System Is Best Because Canada Is Such a Diverse Country.” (This gets over 70% agreement in most of the provinces and territories.) Views vary significantly within “regions” and between neighbouring provinces. 16 Richard Simeon and Beryl A. Radin, “Federalism,” in The United States and Canada: How Two Democracies Differ and Why It Matters, ed. Paul J. Quirk (Oxford University Press, 2019), 147. 17 The British government opposed the title of the “Kingdom of Canada” that was preferred by Sir John A. Macdonald, as it might, in Sir John’s words, “wound the susceptibilities of the Yankees,” who now had a powerful and experienced army, and who blamed the British government for support for the Confederacy. 18 For a discussion of the effects of these issues on public policy, see Gerard W. Boychuk, “Race, Territorial Integration and Public Policy in the United States and Canada,” in Canada and the United States: Differences That Count, 3rd ed., ed. David M. Thomas and Barbara Boyle Torrey (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008). 19 Will Ferguson, Why I Hate Canadians (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 2007), 148. 20 See Debora VanNijnatten and Gerard W. Boychuk, “Comparative State and Provincial Public Policy,” in Provinces: Canadian Provincial Politics, ed. Christopher Dunn (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2006), 487–505. Also note Michael Atkinsin, Daniel Béland, Gregory Marchildon, Kathleen Mcnutt, Peter W.B. Phillips, and Ken Rasmussen, Governance and Public Policy in Canada: A View from the Provinces (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013). 21 Keith Banting, Jack Nagel, Chelsea Schafer, and Daniel Westlake, “Assessing Performance: National Versus Regional Standards,” in The United States and Canada: How Two Democracies Differ and Why It Matters, 290–323. 22 For a recent discussion of regionalism and the fact that there has not been deeper regional crossborder integration, see Laura Macdonald, “Canada in the North American Region: Implications of the Trump Presidency,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 53 (2020): 505–20. She argues that there has not been an increased institutionalization of regionalism as predicted. 23 Cameron, “The Impact of Covid-19 on Federal Countries,” 15. 24 Ronald Brownstein and Stephanie Czekalinski, “How Washington Ruined Governors,” National Journal, April 11, 2013. 25 See Ronald Brownstein and Scott Bland, “Disunited: Are Our States Moving in Separate Directions?” National Journal, July 22, 2011. 26 For example, apart from the articles in place in 1867, such as Article 133 concerning the use of English and French languages, Article 93 (education), and Article 98 (selection of judges), there are also agreements of a non-constitutional nature, covering such issues as pension plans, immigration, health accords, and even constitutional amendments and representation abroad. 27 In addition to the normal reviews of actual cases, the Canadian Constitution allows federal and provincial governments to “refer” proposed statutes and hypothetical legal questions to the Supreme Court of Canada or to the provincial courts of appeal for an “advisory opinion.” Canada’s Supreme Court has had to deal with reference cases that go to the heart of the nature and operation of Canadian federalism. See Quebec Secession Reference, 1998. Also note that the selection for a Supreme Court

Past Futures position is driven in part by geography: three justices should be from Quebec, three from Ontario, two from the western provinces, and one from the Maritimes. Bilingualism is also a requirement. 28 Sarah A. Binder, quoted in Adam Liptak, “Smaller States Find Outsize Clout Growing in Senate,” New York Times, March 10, 2013. 29 R. Kenneth Carty, “The Shifting Place of Political Parties in Canadian Public Life,” IRPP Choices 12, no. 4 (2006): 9. For a recent detailed discussion of the essential role of political parties in Canada see chap. 7, “Prime Ministers and Political Parties,” in Ian Brodie, At The Centre of Government:The Prime Minister and the Limits on Political Power (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018). 30 Veteran observers Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein lay a good deal of the blame at the feet of Newt Gingrich and the Republican Party. They lament the creation of a “norm in which colleagues become mortal enemies ... he (Gingrich) helped invent the modern permanent campaign, allowing electoral goals to dominate policy ones.” See Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism (New York: Basic Books, 2012), xiv. Note also chap. 8 by Haussman and Turnbull in this volume. 31 Mann and Ornstein, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, 45. 32 See Trevor Tombe, “Provincial Debt Sustainability in Canada: Demographics, Federal Transfers, and Covid-19,” Canadian Tax Journal 68, no. 4 (2020): 1083–122. See also Trevor Tombe, “‘Final and Unalterable’ – But Up For Negotiation: Federal-Provincial Transfers in Canada,” Canadian Tax Journal 66, no. 4 (2018): 871–917. 33 Carty, “The Shifting Place of Political Parties,” 7. This was written in 2006, and the earthquakes have continued. 34 David E. Smith, The Invisible Crown:The First Principle of Canadian Government (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 184. 35 Michael Wernick notes that “the arithmetic of the Canadian federation works against the federal Prime Minister. A handful of premiers is enough to delay or block.” Governing Canada: A Guide to the Tradecraft of Politics (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021), 67. 36 See “Budget Processes in the States,” Council of State Governments, Spring 2021. Note especially Tables 2, 5, and 9, which summarize the details as to who sets the budget and what the rules are in each state: www.csg.org/. 37 For a full discussion of the governors’ powers and roles see the first two chapters of Margaret R. Ferguson, ed., The Executive Branch of State Governments: People, Power, Process and Politics (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2006), reproduced in Introduction to the Study of Governors, https://governors .rutgers.edu/introduction-to-governors/. Ferguson sees the governors as central figures and key ­actors, setting agendas and acting as chief of state, chief of party, chief agenda setter, chief ­intergovernmental liaison person, and chief media focus – amongst other things. 38 For a discussion of this difference, and others, in a state and a province adjacent to each other, see Jonathan W. Lampman and David M. Thomas, “So Near and Yet So Far: Washington and British Columbia in the New Century,” in Canada and the United States: Differences That Count, 4th ed., ed. David M. Thomas and David N. Biette (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 315–39. 39 See Hueglin, Federalism in Canada. Hueglin sees this difference as crucial: “Herein, I would argue, lies the greatest strength of the Canadian federal system” (319). However, the consensus that was a hallmark of Chief Justice McLachlin’s tenure is now eroding, and there appears to be a growing divide. See Sean Fine, “Tipping The Scales,” Globe and Mail, January 15, 2022, A12–14.

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David M. Thomas 40 For example, the GI Bill, the interstate highway system, workplace and environmental regulations, the apparatus to fight the Cold War, the War on Poverty, and the ending of segregation – to mention but a few of the expanded federal roles and initiatives. 41 See “Budget Processes in the States,” Table 9. 42 See Peter Russell, “Constitutional Politics: In a New Era Canada Returns to Old Methods,” in Continuity and Change in Canadian Politics: Essays in Honour of David E. Smith, ed. Hans J. Michelmann and Christine de Clercy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006). 43 Marc Karl Rom, “Policy Races in the American States,” in Racing to the Bottom: Provincial Interdependence in the Canadian Federation, ed. Kathryn Harrison (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005), 230. Note also the summary of fiscal federalism differences and US grants in Simeon and Radin, “Federalism,” in The United States and Canada: How Two Democracies Differ and Why It Matters, 159–63. 44 Rom, “Policy Races,” 231. 45 See Trevor Tombe, “Who ‘Pays’ and Who ‘Receives’ in Confederation?,” Finances of the Nation, November 17, 2020, https://financesofthenation.ca/2020/11/17/who-pays-and-who -receives-in-confederation/. Note in particular Figures 3 and 4 comparing US state contributions. 46 For a recent review of the history of such arrangements see Mary Janigan, The Art of Sharing:The Richer versus the Poorer Provinces Since Confederation (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021). 47 See Paul Boothe and François Vaillancourt, eds., A Fine Canadian Compromise: Perspectives on the Report of the Expert Panel on Equalization and Territorial Funding (Edmonton: Institute for Public Economics/University of Alberta, 2006). 48 See Trevor Tombe, “Who ‘Pays’ and Who ‘Receives’ in Confederation?” Tombe’s analysis includes a comparison with what are, in effect, transfer payments between US states. Note also Trevor Tombe, “A New Tool to Understand Equalisation Payments in Canada,” Finances of the Nation, February 2021. Note also Melville L. McMillan, “Alberta and ‘Equalization’: Separating Fact from Fiction or Sorting Out Some Implications and Options in Canadian Fiscal Federalism” (Information Bulletin Number 155, Western Centre for Economic Research, University of Alberta School of Business, ­January 2012). 49 See Jim Stanford, “Comparing Fiscal Federalism in Canada and Australia,” April 5, 2016, https:// www. progressive-economics.ca/2016/04/comparing-fiscal-federalism-in-canada-and-australia/. 50 Hugh Mackenzie, The Art of the Impossible: Fiscal Federalism and Fiscal Balance in Canada (Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2006), 11. 51 Geoffrey E. Hale, “Balancing Autonomy and Responsibility: The Politics of Provincial Fiscal and Tax Policies,” in Canadian Provincial Politics, 2nd ed., ed. Christopher Dunn (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2006), 373. 52 See François Rocher, “Dividing the Spoils: American and Canadian Federalism,” in Canada and the United States: Differences That Count, 2nd ed., ed. David Thomas (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2000), 263. 53 See this link to the Council of State Government’s resource centre on the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and the latest rounds of funding: https://web.csg.org/recovery/. It is updated daily. At the time of writing some of the website is still being built out. For an excellent discussion of the pandemic’s effects, see “Covid-19: Fiscal Impact to States and Strategies for Recovery” (Report by the Council of State Governments, July 2020), https://web.csg.org/covid19/wp-content/uploads /sites/10/2020/07/fiscal-impact.pdf.

Past Futures 54 This bill commits to $550 billion in new spending, along with monies from other appropriations, to rebuild the hardscape of the US infrastructure. It provides $73 billion to upgrade the country’s electrical grid; $66 billion for high-speed internet access across the country; $47 billion to fight wildfires and protect coastal zones from flooding in the new global climate conditions; $21 billion to clean up contaminated rivers and lakes and other polluted sites; $15 billion to get rid of lead pipes in drinking water; $75 billion to build charging stations for electric vehicles; and $2 billion to bring transportation to rural areas. 55 I am indebted to one of the anonymous external reviewers for pointing this fact out – and for making several other important suggestions. 56 See Matt Matta, Dominic Stecula, and Christina Farhart. “How Right Leaning Media Coverage of Covid-19 Facilitated the Spread of Misinformation in the Early Stages of the Pandemic in the US,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 53, no. 2 (June 2020): 335–42. 57 The Councils of State Governments East, Midwest, and West have provinces as associate members, and Saskatchewan is a full member of CSG Midwest. There are regular visits to the provinces, and MLAs attend CSG meetings. 58 Marilyn Gittell, “Regionalism and Federalism in the American System,” in Regionalism in a Global Society: Persistence and Change in Atlantic Canada and New England, ed. Stephen J. Tomblin and Charles S. Colgan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 71. 59 The opening words of Abraham Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech in 1858; see Martin, Past Futures, 111.

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SEVEN

Prime Ministers and Presidents: Institutional Differences and Political Convergence Thomas M.J. Bateman

INTRODUCTION Canadians think the president of the United States is very powerful and that by comparison the Canadian prime minister is, well, something of a wimp. One story captures this impression. In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson, the burly, foul-mouthed Texan, met Canada’s Prime Minister Lester Pearson, the diminutive former diplomat who spoke with a slight lisp, at Camp David, the presidential retreat, soon after Pearson gave a speech in Philadelphia denouncing the Americans’ escalation of the Vietnam War. After a long tirade, Johnson finally grabbed the prime minister by the collar and lifted him off his feet, yelling into his ear: “You pissed on my rug!”1 The lesson: Canadian prime ministers are weak, and American presidents are powerful. Two mistakes are commonly made here. The first is that people often assess the nature and power of an office in terms of their opinion of the incumbent. For example, partisan Liberals will think a Conservative prime minister has too much power. But they will applaud Justin Trudeau for exercising those same powers. American Democrats went crazy when Donald Trump claimed he has a right as president to do almost whatever he wants, but they have no objection to the broad and repeated uses of executive orders by Democratic incumbents. The second mistake is to judge the office in terms of the relative power of the countries in which they operate. Political institutions must be judged in terms of the constitutional orders which create them. Canadians place the president of the United States at the head of one of the most powerful polities ever to exist. But when each office is examined in light of its respective constitutional system, it appears that the prime minister is the more powerful position. The key to the difference is in the relationship between the political executive and the other branches of government. In domestic policy the president is hemmed in by constitutional and institutional constraints, but has more latitude in foreign policy. By contrast, the Canadian prime minister

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has a more commanding relation to legislative institutions and can determine the contents of public policy to a greater degree. One of the ways in which our constitutions differ from one another is in the ordering of the cardinal, competing principles of efficiency and accountability. Constitutional government is capable of action, at least within the constraints of the federal division of powers, to meet the necessities of the day. Efficiency means that government can act expeditiously. Accountability means that the constitution provides checks on action – either before or after action is taken – so that proper, legitimate, and necessary action is facilitated, and disproportionate, illegitimate action is blocked or minimized. These principles operate differently in each country’s executive office.The Canadian system permits efficient, decisive action because it locates significant political power in the prime minister and his or her office. The American system, dispersing power among the branches of government, makes executive action more difficult to take in the first instance. The US and Canadian Constitutions are very different in their origins and in their foundations, and these differences are reflected in the nature and operation of the political executive in each system.Yet myriad forces conspire to produce a convergence of power and style in each office.The process is often called “presidentialization,” but the name should not suggest that the Canadian executive is necessarily converging on the American model. “Personalization” may capture the trend more accurately. Both executives are converging on a new, embryonic model in which the office holder’s own personality and agenda supersede those of party, caucus, senior public service, and executive colleagues.

ORIGINS OF THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY The Americans, offended by what they considered capricious rule by foreign monarch George III, wanted a republic, headed by an effective but constrained president, not a king. Can a regime have a leader who will not become a tyrant or a demagogue? And will the American people be steady in their disdain for monarchy? The origins of the office of president are described in the Federalist Papers, perhaps the greatest work of American political thought.2 The Federalist Papers are a series of eighty-five newspaper articles written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay principally to persuade New York legislators to ratify the new constitution framed in Philadelphia in 1787. The Constitution, replacing the ineffective Articles of Confederation of 1781, was the product of conscious design, not tradition. That said, the US Constitution bears the marks of reflection on human nature and politics going back to the beginnings of Western political thought in ancient Greece. In the “new science of politics” on which the Papers are based (see Federalist no. 9), Madison and his co-authors attend to institutional design and how it can produce good government out of imperfect, often vicious humanity. “The aim of every political constitution

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is, or ought to be,” wrote Madison in Federalist no. 57, “first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.” Three principles structure the US Constitution. First is the idea of independence. The three branches of the US government enjoy freedom from domination by the other branches. This is America’s departure from parliamentarism. Second is the notion of limited government, the cause for which the Revolution was fought. While office holders enjoy a measure of independence from other office holders, that independence is limited and checked. In perhaps the most famous of the Papers (no. 51), Madison argues that ambition, zeal, excessive passion, the tyrannical impulse – all ever-present threats to limited government – are neutralized by “so contriving the interior structure of the government as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places.” While the institutions of government are separate from one another, they share in the legislative, judicial, and executive functions of government as a means to check each other’s excesses.The concern of the founders was the emergence of a Caesar or a Cromwell (Federalist no. 21). The third principle is the capacity to act – what Madison and his co-authors called “energy.” Government must be able to act, and the departments of government should have powers proportionate to their objects, means proportionate to their ends. Implicit here is a principle of necessity emanating from the new science of politics: we may wish events to be different, human frailties not to exist, threats not to bear, but basing the law of the Constitution on wishes rather than hard necessity will merely discredit the law. “Wise politicians,” Hamilton wrote, “will be cautious about fettering the government with restrictions that cannot be observed” (no. 25).The capacity to act is the wellspring of government: events demand action, and good government acts when necessary.While it is often better that no law be passed than a bad one (no. 73), limited government, the Federalists insisted, cannot mean paralyzed government (no. 31; see also no. 70).

ORIGINS OF THE CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER Unlike their American counterparts, the Canadian “Fathers of Confederation” did not resort to political philosophy as they fashioned new political arrangements in Charlottetown and Quebec in 1864, then in London in 1866–7. They felt little need to do so: nothing new – at least with respect to executive institutions – was being fashioned. They were adapting long-­ established British institutions and conventions to Canadian circumstances. Even responsible government – the principle that the government of the day led by the prime minister must maintain the confidence of the legislative assembly in order to remain in office – was established in British North America twenty years before Confederation.3 The Fathers looked to the American example of federal institutions as a model to be avoided, not emulated. So satisfied

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were the Fathers of Confederation with British institutions that they found no need even to mention the office of prime minister in the text of the British North America Act, which was passed at Westminster in 1867, and serves as part of Canada’s written constitution.4 The office of prime minister was established by convention and to this day lacks written constitutional definition. However “American” Canadian politics and political culture have become, Canada’s fundamental institutions bear the unmistakable imprint of their British constitutional origins. Canadians live in an age of the written constitution. They unthinkingly associate the rules of the Constitution with the rule of law and accept the primacy of courts as interpreters of written constitutional rules.This constitutional legalism betrays the influence of American constitutional culture and institutional innovations such as federalism and a bill of rights.5 Yet some of the most important parts of the Canadian Constitution are not based in law; “constitutional conventions” are constitutional rules but they are not written in a constitutional document and are not enforced by courts. Conventions are settled understandings political actors consider themselves bound to obey. This seems a shaky way to run a constitutional order, and indeed the welcome flexibility of the unwritten constitution can produce chaos and crisis at moments of high political controversy. But, as British scholar Ivor Jennings explains, constitutional conventions depend on public opinion for their solidity and enforcement, as public opinion presses on the political actors who either consider themselves bound by the conventions or free to depart from them in terms that suit new problems and circumstances.6 The role of the prime minister in Canada, like the whole of the Canadian Constitution, has evolved in step with new circumstances and expectations.

APPOINTMENT OF THE PRESIDENT The delegates to the Philadelphia Convention agreed that the president must be a US-born citizen at least thirty-five years old (middle age at that time) and resident in the country for at least fourteen years. They considered two choices for presidential selection. One was popular election by the electorate at large; the other was indirect election by members of Congress. Delegates to the convention disliked both options, worrying that a popularly elected president would be a demagogue, flattering the masses and endangering the rights of minorities, primarily those defined by wealth. Election of the president by the Congress would, on the other hand, tie the president to the legislative branch, forming a cabal at the centre against the interests of the people as a whole. The delegates compromised on a separate institution, the Electoral College, which would convene anew for each presidential election and disband thereafter. Each state would have as many members or “electors” in the college as it has members of Congress, giving small states a slightly greater share of votes for president than their population would warrant. States controlled the method of selection of electors, and these ranged from popular vote to determination by state assemblies.

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As important as party has been to the selection of a president, there is reason to think that aspirants to high office increasingly have ambivalent connections to their parties. They determine the character of their party as much as the party shapes and constrains them. Donald Trump, the extreme case, had little political experience prior to expressing interest in the Republican nomination in 2015 and, indeed, before then mused about a run as a Democrat, having given money to the Democrats and chummed with party luminaries. His run for the GOP nomination was initially the object of derision, not least among many Republicans, but he clawed his way up a crowded field, and with reptilian cunning and breathtaking shamelessness dispatched his more credible opponents and essentially took over the party. The GOP now is at least hotly divided and at most a Trumpian personality cult. For his part, Joe Biden, fending off criticisms that his presidency would be overtaken by the hard left of the Democratic party, earnestly said in a 2020 debate that “I am the Democratic party right now.” Since the 1970s, aspirants to high office undergo a gruelling, protracted, and expensive primary campaign to secure their parties’ nomination.The primary is a state-regulated contest that itself looks much like an electoral exercise, involving voters who vote for the candidate of their choice. Some states, Iowa most famously, hold “caucuses” in which party members gather in voting precincts to vote for delegates to state conventions which then send committed delegates to the national party convention in late summer. Iowa is the most famous caucus because it is always the first stop in primary season; in both 2008 and 2012, Iowa held its caucuses on January 3. New Hampshire is always the first state to hold its (non-caucus) primaries. These states are small but are early bellwethers of candidates’ relative chances, garnering attention out of proportion to their electoral influence just because they are the first contests. Since primaries and caucuses give so much power to voters, they weaken the influence of the party establishment in the selection of the nominee. In this way, they allow the presidential aspirant to create distance between him/herself and party elites. The primaries are completed by early summer and the party conventions are held in late summer. Once the party candidates are officially chosen, the campaigns for president begin in earnest in early autumn of an election year. The presidential election is more than ever a popularity contest, and the Electoral College is increasingly a ceremonial afterthought, subject to criticism as an antidemocratic distortion of the popular vote. Aspirants to presidential office jet across the country hoping to gather enough votes in each state to capture the total of its electoral college votes. Only Maine and Nebraska apportion their college votes according to popular vote, calculated by congressional district rather than state-wide plurality; for the rest, it is winner take all. There is always a gap between the percentage of electoral college votes per candidate and the percentage of popular vote per candidate, though the winner usually wins both. In some cases, most recently in the 2016 election, the presidential victor can win the college vote while losing the popular vote.7 At one time, the political parties could direct moneys away from rogue candidates and dominate the scheduling of key speeches and appearances. But independent expenditures, according

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to a 2010 Supreme Court ruling,8 are almost entirely unregulated, and deep-pocketed interests of all sorts can continue to influence who runs and who wins.The parties are losing their stranglehold on presidential selection.9 Originally, voters were to vote for electors who would then deliberate on their choice for president. Now, voters in each state select the presidential candidate of their choice, and electors are bound, either by convention or state law, to respect that will. In 2020 and 2021, as noted in Chapter 4, Donald Trump advanced the view that state legislatures could independently determine the states’ electoral college votes, but he was unable to disturb the settled norm that voters determine the election, not state politicians. Presidential selection is increasingly about popular leadership, not party representation, and certainly not Electoral College deliberation. Though the College was designed to prevent a demagogue from taking office, Donald Trump’s 2016 election shows that it has not worked as a failsafe.

APPOINTMENT OF THE PRIME MINISTER In Canada, the political party is central to the appointment of the prime minister. Parties structure representation in the House of Commons. The leader of the party with the majority of seats in the House will be asked by the governor general to form a government, and as head of government, that leader will become prime minister. The prime minister will choose from among his or her caucus – the members of the House of Commons (and Senate) affiliated with his or her party – those who will sit in the cabinet and become part of the ministry or government. The leader of the party need not be a member of Parliament (MP) before becoming prime minister. But the settled expectation is that the seatless prime minister will obtain a seat at the earliest opportunity.This usually means that a sitting MP from his or her party will resign his or her “safe” seat, necessitating a by-election in which the leader will run as a candidate and paving the way for him or her to enter the House. Other parties as a matter of courtesy will usually refrain from running a candidate against the seatless prime minister. Among the ironies of Canadian politics is that one of Canada’s most successful prime ministers,William Lyon Mackenzie King, had trouble getting elected to the House of Commons.10 How does an MP become leader of the party? This is largely up to the party. Prior to the 1920s, leaders were MPs who were selected and dismissed by their caucuses in efficient, quiet, and often unexplained exercises in realpolitik. Early in the twentieth century parties began to include a wider circle of party supporters in democratic exercises in large national conventions usually convened for the purpose.The trend toward widening the “selectorate” continues. Now parties opt for membership-wide votes using preferential ballots that can be cast remotely and far in advance of the date of a party meeting at which the winner is announced. The federal Liberal Party flirted in 2013 with an American-style primary scheme by opening the leadership selection not just to members but also to “supporters,” persons with some affinity for the

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party or a leadership candidate but who are reluctant to commit to party membership. In these membership-based processes, anyone who can be an MP11 can run for leader as long as he or she pays a registration fee of several tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars and satisfies other conditions set by parties. The trend is clear in Canada and other advanced democracies: party leaders are increasingly selected by broad party memberships, leaving party elites increasingly on the sidelines.12

PRESIDENTIAL POWER John Locke, the seventeenth-century English intellectual forebear of American constitutional thought, wrote that the end of government being the public good, the executive shall have at his disposal all necessary powers requisite to that end. For Locke, executive prerogative powers extend beyond those expressly granted and indeed may conflict with legal authority on occasion: Many things there are, which the law can by no means provide for; and those must necessarily be left to the discretion of him that has the executive power in his hands, to be ordered by him as the public good and advantage shall require: nay, it is fit that the laws themselves should in some cases give way to the executive power, or rather to this fundamental law of nature and government, viz. That as much as may be, all the members of the society are to be preserved: for since many accidents may happen, wherein a strict and rigid observation of the laws may do harm….13

In times of crisis, Locke suggests, law may be the enemy of society’s self-preservation. This is an ominous doctrine, for it underwrites untrammelled executive authority which the executive can seize for good or ill. Does not the prerogative power endanger the very idea of constitutionalism? The question is profound. “Experience has instructed us,” observed the Federalist, “that no skill in the science of government has yet been able to discriminate and define, with sufficient certainty, its three great provinces the legislative, executive, and judiciary; or even the privileges and powers of the different legislative branches” (no. 37). Constitutional scholar Michael McConnell has helped make presidential power understandable.14 The framers in 1787, he argues, began with a solid sense of Royal Prerogative powers of the British monarchs. The Royal Prerogative is a bundle of executive power inhering in the monarch and exercisable without legal or parliamentary warrant. At their height, the monarchs were absolute. But over time their powers were shared with and appropriated by the legislative and judicial parts of government. But in the late eighteenth century, many royal powers remained. Misused, the Royal Prerogative is the stuff of tyranny. The framers sought to unbundle this prodigious list of powers, assigning some to the president, some to Congress, and deny to any branch some others. Article 2 of the Constitution, the Vesting Clause, begins: “The executive Power

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shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” This “executive Power” includes more than what is explicitly assigned elsewhere in the Constitution. So there is a residuum of executive power vested in the president beyond those traditional prerogative powers denied to any branch of government, given to Congress, or given (in sometimes modified form) to the president elsewhere in Article 2. Powers explicitly enumerated in Article 2 are indefeasible: they cannot be altered or subtracted by Congress or the courts. Residual executive powers inherent in the Vesting Clause are defeasible; Congress can by statute modify or remove them from the president’s quiver. Congress can also by statute delegate to the executive branch certain powers, which it has done frequently in the course of the construction of the welfare state. The president also, according to Section 3 of Article 2, “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed….” This is not a right but a duty – a duty implying power to execute this duty. This is the foundation for a presidential power to remove officials from office, not listed elsewhere in the Constitution. The upshot is that the framers started with an account of the powers of the British king, decided they did not want a king for the United States, and so fashioned the office of president so that an incumbent could not act like a king. But presidents strain at the bit.They love the pomp of being head of state.They make the State of the Union address into a regal occasion approximating the Speech from the Throne. And the people for their part often consider the president’s family to be a royal family, approving dynasties like the Adamses, the Kennedys, and the Bushes. This tradition had its opera buffa, mafia-like culmination in the Trump White House. It is not yet clear if the trend will continue. As for powers expressly granted, Article 2, Section 2, declares that the president is the “commander in chief of the army and navy”; that he may require heads of departments to provide written reports pertaining to their duties; that he might grant reprieves and pardons except in cases of impeachment; that with the advice and consent of the Senate, he may make treaties, appoint (and receive) ambassadors, and appoint Supreme Court justices and other senior government officers. The president may make (temporary) recess appointments without Senate participation, and shall periodically give to Congress information on the State of the Union. The Congress shares the executive power over the military by having the power to declare war and to control the raising of moneys for war efforts; and the president shares a crucial legislative power, namely a veto on legislation submitted by Congress to him for his signature, which the House of Representatives and Senate can override by a two-thirds vote.15 A written constitution is constructed to provide certainty and definition to the powers of government, and definition means limitation. However, words are rarely clear and definite. For example, if appointments are to be made with the advice and consent of the Senate, must dismissals also require Senate participation? (The answer is no, but it is not clear from the text of Article 2.) If Congress provides for an agency whose offices are to be filled, must the president commence appointment of officers to it? (No: presidents have left positions unfilled. And even when there is presidential will to fill positions, the Senate will have its own reasons to obstruct and delay, and sometimes refuse to confirm.)

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Further, if the president is to take care that the laws are to be “faithfully” executed, is the president to be faithful to the constitution, to the will of Congress, or to his own conscience and political program? What motives properly ground the exercise of the veto? Presidents have often declared that their veto follows their judgment as to the law’s constitutionality, while others relied on a case for good government and sound public policy principles. Sometimes it is rank partisanship. Prior to the twentieth century, presidents were concerned mainly with foreign affairs. Since the rise of the administrative welfare state, the president’s attention has been increasingly devoted to domestic policy. As two presidential scholars put it, “the president has gradually become the most important and visible policymaker in Washington, dominating the planning and execution of domestic policies while engaging both the public and the press to win approval of his political objectives.”16 At the same time, the president cannot tell Congress what to think and do; he can only tell Congress what to think about. “Congress is attentive to the president’s agenda,” Han and Heith argue, “as a list of priorities but not as specific calls to action.”17 Presidents select members of their cabinet (the Senate ratifies those nominations) and, potentially, cabinet can be both a source of advice to the president and perhaps a brake on his or her plans. Presidents also appoint White House staff. The many policy councils and offices in the White House check any independence of cabinet members. Independent-minded cabinet secretaries will find themselves quickly chastened by operatives in the White House concerned to keep to a well-defined policy line.18 There are exceptions. Hillary Clinton ran against Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 and could not be ignored when Obama defeated her. Passed over as Obama’s running mate, she was appointed secretary of state and enjoyed a prominence other cabinet secretaries could not equal. In the same way, because health care reform was so central to Obama’s agenda in his first term, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius had a high profile. Most Americans could not name most other members of President Obama’s cabinet. A special case, Donald Trump was noted for ignorance of geography, history, and policy, as well as for a chaotic, theatrical management style. The White House was, in Brit Hume’s words, a “floating crap game” of sycophants, pretenders, and cronies, dotted with some experienced and reputable people who were in it to do some good and also to prevent the president from acting on his worst instincts.19 Several cabinet secretaries and other advisors became notorious for slow-walking presidential orders to prevent their worst effects. Some relied on Trump’s short memory to avoid doing what he impulsively ordered. Others leaned on his children to convince him to forebear from acting on his instincts. The Kellys, Milleys, Tillersons, Mattises, Espers, and others became famous not for implementing Trump’s directives but for flouting or diluting them. Since the middle of the twentieth century, Congress has in the course of creating the modern welfare state created dozens of agencies, boards, and commissions with vast, expensive mandates, delegating to the executive branch the task of operating them. Agencies are delegated the power to develop rules within the broad outlines of legislative principles, and the president can

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influence the character of regulations and laws by issuing executive orders. Executive orders can also be used to circumvent congressional gridlock. For instance President Obama, sympathetic to the plight of illegal immigrants living for decades in the US without official status, sought to normalize their status. Congress would not act. So he issued a memorandum labelled DACA – Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals – which would pause the enforcement of the law authorizing the deportation of illegal immigrants who came to the US as children. In the right hands, even unlimited powers are safely vested. But the American Constitution, as was discussed above, was made for humans, not angels. For every Lincoln there is a Nixon, a distrustful, even paranoid president who deepened American involvement in Vietnam, invaded an adjacent country (Cambodia), and redirected congressional appropriations, all the while asserting “executive privilege” to undertake such actions in secret, without publicity or congressional accountability. Nixon went further, asserting executive privilege against demands for the disclosure of evidence of illegal White House-ordered conduct related to partisan re-election activities. When the courts were at last called upon to decide the issue, Nixon’s defence of his position was that “[i]n the exercise of his discretion to claim executive privilege the president is answerable to the Nation, but not to the courts.”20 Elsewhere he argued that impeachment is the final limit on his authority to act under the doctrine of executive privilege. Indeed, the prospect of impeachment, helped by the court-ordered disclosure21 of damning information of the antics orchestrated by the White House, was what forced Nixon’s humiliating resignation in 1974. Sobered by the extent of Nixon’s abuses, Congress increased oversight of White House activity, limited presidential power to stray from congressional direction on budgetary matters, and created the Office of the Independent Counsel to permit impartial investigation of alleged illegality in the White House. As the Nixon era receded, the spasm of congressional control of the executive itself waned, and by the 1980s the Independent Counsel Law lapsed. Congressional oversight, always lauded in theory, is in fact hard, thankless work for which members of Congress rarely get the political recognition they need to stay in office. Congress continued to expect legislative and budgetary leadership from the president. In times of war and other emergencies, executive authority expands and few are willing to restrain it. Three days following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Congress, with nary a dissent, passed a resolution authorizing the president “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons” (emphasis added). This was an extraordinary grant of authority, and President Bush used almost all that was available to him. He led the United States into Iraq and Afghanistan, but also into a “war on terrorism” knowing no geographical bound. If such a war lacks definition and limit, then presidential power is likewise extended. Congress passed laws increasing police and security powers, and the executive implemented a program of intelligence gathering and military justice departing from normal

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constitutional rules. The president’s constant refrain was that these are not normal times, and terrorism requires extraordinary responses. The courts have gingerly asserted some constitutional standards against executive exigency, but only as the spectacular events of 2001 receded and new threats failed to materialize. In addition to the express powers and the implied or inherent powers of the president, mention must be made of a style of leadership that emerged in the twentieth-century president and perhaps is best embodied by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose management of the response to the Great Depression and conduct of the US war effort made him, according to many observers, the greatest president.22 In the nineteenth century, presidents were smaller figures, rarely giving public speeches, communicating far more commonly to Congress and the public by means of the written word. Even Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, a document of enormous importance and just the thing that one would expect a president to clothe in evocative, soaring rhetoric, was as terse as a laundry list. Presidents made arguments to Congress directly; they did not go over the heads of Congress to the people. In other words, the early presidents were not popular leaders. Their rhetoric was public but not popular. Things are now very different. Woodrow Wilson sought to divine the public will, arguing that it was unformed and needed interpretation and development by a leader. Franklin Roosevelt pioneered the fireside chat, the skillful use of radio to soothe, encourage, and uplift the American people. John F. Kennedy mastered the televisual medium. Ronald Reagan, the former actor and “Great Communicator,” spoke directly to viewers through the television and reassured. Clinton felt our pain. Obama in 2008 was nearly messianic. It is now expected that presidents will project themselves and their office to the American people at large, less often making extended arguments and more often relaying aphorisms with the aid of symbols, props, and citizens recruited to exemplify a policy’s beneficiary group. The president is now a national leader, a politician who speaks over the heads of the politicians and directly to the people. The “rhetorical president” is now the master of public opinion, gauged by the ability to “connect” to the people and shape and move public opinion even while registering it.23 The emergence of the rhetorical president, at odds with the founders’ fear of demagoguery, is nonetheless consistent with the development of electronic mass communications and, as Alexis de Tocqueville foresaw, the democratic urge for a consoler-in-chief.24 Rhetorical, popular leadership is now an expectation of presidential aspirants, who are expected to rise above the partisan fray of awkward compromises and shabby congressional deals. Donald Trump was perhaps the logical, extreme, and grotesque limit case of the rhetorical president. A business and wrestling celebrity and promoter before he entered the White House, Trump combined a shrewd sense of the predilection of his base and media savvy to assert himself into social media, the news, academic commentary, and dinnertime conversation. For him the presidency was all about spectacle. One example among dozens was his desire to pull American troops immediately out of Afghanistan in late 2020. Such a move would surely have led to an immediate Taliban takeover of US bases and equipment, not to mention the legitimate

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government of the embattled country. Trump relented only when his advisors convinced him that the images of a hasty pullout would recall the dismal images of the last helicopters lifting American personnel from the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon at the fall of Vietnam in 1975.25 For Trump, the criterion for good public policy was how the optics would reflect on him and his political prospects. His was the “expressive presidency” par excellence.26 As Andrew Rudalevige has suggested in his study of the “imperial presidency,” “Congress was and is the first branch of government: the constitutional structure gives Congress the whip hand.This means that when the presidency expands, it is because Congress has chosen to stay its hand.”27 Presidents have their reasons for asserting power; Congress has its reasons for letting it happen. Even when Congress seeks to define and limit presidential power by legislative means, presidents might apply the law according to their interpretation, not Congress’s. According to McConnell, “it is the ability of executives (and not just Trump) to mould statutory language to purposes not intended by Congress that is now the most potent engine of presidential power.”28

PRIME MINISTERIAL POWER In some ways, the Canadian prime minister could not be more different than the American president. As indicated above, the prime minister’s powers are defined by convention, not constitutional law. The closest definition of the term “prime minister” is perhaps Section 9 of the Constitution Act of 1867, which declares that “The executive Government and Authority of and over Canada is hereby declared to continue and be vested in the Queen.” Her representative in Canada is the governor general; the prime minister “advises” the governor general and, as a matter of strict constitutional form, acts in his or her name. Particular powers of the office are further defined by laws passed by Parliament. The Canadian prime minister exercises sweeping power, especially when his or her party controls the House of Commons. One of Canada’s most widely used textbooks on government, Dawson’s The Government of Canada, as late as 1979 referred to cabinet as the political centre of gravity, “for the whole weight of government is concentrated at that point.”29 In quaint understandings of the Canadian Constitution, the prime minister is primus inter pares – first among equals in his or her cabinet. While Canadian cabinet ministers are not as subordinate to the prime minister as their American counterparts are to the president, it was obvious to Dawson and others that the prime minister has no equal in cabinet.30 By 1999 scholars recognized that the prime minister now soars above cabinet in importance and power. A concise enumeration of the prime minister’s powers is provided in Donald Savoie’s widely cited Governing from the Centre:The Concentration of Power in Canadian Politics: Canadian prime ministers … particularly when they have a majority government in Parliament, have in their hands all the levers of power. Indeed, all major national public policy

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Thomas M.J. Bateman roads lead one way or another to their doorstep. They are elected leader of their party by party members, they chair Cabinet meetings, establish Cabinet processes and procedures; they appoint and fire ministers and deputy ministers, establish Cabinet committees, and decide on their membership; they exercise virtually all the powers of patronage and act as personnel manager for thousands of government and patronage jobs; they articulate the government’s strategic direction as outlined in the Speech from the Throne; they dictate the pace of change, and are the main salespersons promoting the achievements of their government; they have a hand in establishing the government’s fiscal framework; they represent Canada abroad; they establish the proper mandate of individual ministers and decide all machinery of government issues, and they are the final arbiter in interdepartmental conflicts. The prime minister is the only politician with a national constituency, and unlike members of Parliament and even Cabinet ministers, he does not need to search out publicity or national media attention, since attention is invariably focused on his office and his residence, 24 Sussex. In short, the prime minister is head of government with limited checks on his power inside government or in Parliament….31

“Each of the above levers of power taken separately is a powerful instrument of public policy and public administration in its own right,” Savoie continued, “but when you add them all up and place them in the hands of one individual, they constitute a veritable juggernaut of power.”32 Prime ministerial power extends even beyond Savoie’s prodigious list. Federal election ballots since 1972 include political party affiliation with candidates’ names. In order to prevent abuse, party leaders are required to sign the nomination papers of party candidates to authenticate the candidate’s standing as party candidate in each riding. Unwittingly, in passing the law Parliament handed power to the party leader over the historic power the local party membership enjoyed in selecting its own candidates according to its best lights. Now the leader has a veto on constituency nominations. And this power is used to appoint “star” candidates who wish not to sully their hands in messy constituency nomination fights, add candidates to fill a socio-demographic representation quota, or ensure that candidates toe a particular policy line. Justin Trudeau, for example, demanded that all Liberal candidates in 2015 and 2019 accept the pro-choice position on abortion.33 MPs lack the independence that local election otherwise affords them. For ambitious politicians who want to climb the greasy pole to the heights of political power, a cabinet position is the penultimate goal. To the extent MPs wish merely to serve their constituents and contribute to the Commons policy debate, they are immune to the temptations of a cabinet portfolio in exchange for unswerving loyalty. Alas, in Canadian politics, most MPs do aspire to a position in government, and this transfers power to prime ministers who appoint them.34 Canadian MPs tend to be “amateurs” – in politics for relatively short periods – and this only heightens the prime minister’s influence over them. Savoie might also have mentioned the power of the prime minister to appoint senators and Supreme Court justices. In many jurisdictions the upper house acts as a political counterweight

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to the lower house. Canada opted to keep the Senate unelected, not least to ensure that the lower house remains the confidence chamber.35 In short order the Senate became a patronage chamber, taking on the partisan complexion of that of a prime minister governing long enough to appoint large numbers of its members. In the age of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the power of the Supreme Court needs little demonstration, and the Court has flouted many a policy championed by government. After consultations with the legal profession and a shallow review by a committee of MPs, prime ministerial nominations are confirmed. Since the new process was tried in 2004, no committee of MPs has seriously questioned the prime minister’s choice. The prime minister, like the American president, has outgrown the institutional limits of the office, and now assumes the mantle of popular leader. He or she is part of the brand of the party and is tightly integrated into government communications strategy. In his revealing account of the early Harper Conservative governments, former Conservative Party strategist Tom Flanagan describes a sort of communications revolution effected by the Harper Conservatives: “Harper’s team is now the biggest, best-funded, best-organized political machine in Canada. It has, in effect, created a new model of political campaigning – the ‘permanent campaign.’” Campaigns used to be five-week spasms of intense energy every four or five years. No more. “Harper’s team, in contrast, never rests.”36 Now the distinction between campaigning and governing blurs, and the prime minister is at the centre of a massive, continuing popular communications effort. In a country of highly disciplined parties, the confidence convention – potentially an effective check on government and prime ministerial performance – recedes in importance. And whether Parliament even meets is a decision largely in the hands of the government of the day. During the 2020–1 COVID-19 emergency, Parliament was rendered largely mute and the government carried on without presenting a budget for Parliament’s approval for two years.The prime minister, however, made frequent media appearances throughout the pandemic. Opposition politicians criticize government power and secrecy. They pledge to do better. When in government, they forget their promises. No leader enjoys restrictions on his or her power to decide and to act.This is true regardless of party and period. Prime ministers resist detailed budget processes and oversight by the parliamentary budget officer. They favour omnibus bills and the announcement of new bills and policies in tightly controlled media opportunities rather than in the House of Commons while facing the opposition.

HOW CAN WE CONSTRAIN PRESIDENTS AND PRIME MINISTERS? Constitutional government is about defining political offices and creating limits on the power of office holders. The architects of the American political institutions were acutely aware of human frailties, as discussed above, and hoped to fashion a constitution that would work even with recalcitrant and otherwise unsavoury people at the helm.

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While American presidents may occasionally grasp for power, other conditions sometimes conspire to hand it to them. One observer’s reading is that when the president, on defence questions, has explicit congressional authorization for the exercise of power, the courts will be highly deferential.They will be less deferential when the president acts without such authorization but at the same time in the absence of explicit congressional denial of authority.The courts are much more circumspect when the president relies on inherent powers over the explicit objections of Congress.37 This means that both the courts and Congress can check presidential power – when they want to. On domestic policy, in this age of hardened party identities and more congressional voting along party lines, divided government – a president of one party in the White House and another party in control of one or both Houses of Congress – poses a limit to presidential power, forcing the use of alternatives to get things done.38 Presidents who believe the mere enunciation of grand policy goals will itself muster the consensus for action will be sorely disappointed.39 One administration official said of Barack Obama in 2012 that the president seemed to have “a sense that if he sketches a vision, it will happen – without his really having thought through the mechanism by which it will happen.”40 President Trump bellowed and hollered, and tweeted in all-caps, but was largely ineffective in effecting policy change because of his inability and unwillingness to work with Congress to overcome partisan gridlock. Instead he deepened it. Elections are of course the ultimate check on presidential power. When President Roosevelt kept winning elections, opinion turned to limiting presidential terms. In 1951 a constitutional amendment limiting presidents to two terms was ratified.The losers in electoral contests do not like to admit the people were against them.They increasingly point to illegitimate foreign influence, the untoward influence of money, or outright voter fraud. In the case of the 2016 election, the independent Mueller Inquiry into Russian meddling in the election to help Trump turned up little to vindicate Democrats. When he lost the 2020 election, Donald Trump insisted he had won and that voter fraud was rife. Courts in dozens of cases failed to rule in his favour. The evidence in fact was that state electoral authorities were assiduous in ensuring the voting was fair and lawful. Despite its blinding complexity, the system worked. What checks are there between elections? Election dates are fixed and presidents remain in office, however unpopular or unsuccessful. Perhaps the most significant in scope is impeachment. The Constitution provides for removal at any time on conviction for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Removal proceeds by impeachment by the House of Representatives, a trial in the Senate presided over by the chief justice, and then conviction by the Senate upon a two-thirds vote of members present. No president has been convicted, but Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974 was prompted in no small part by the prospect of impeachment. President Clinton was impeached but easily survived a Senate vote to convict. Donald Trump was impeached twice, once for making military aid to Ukraine conditional on efforts by that country to conduct a criminal investigation of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, and a second

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time for inciting the “insurrection” on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021.Trump was acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate on both occasions, on almost straight party-line votes. Impeachment takes the form of an indictment and trial, but it is clearly a political process, not a legal one. The framers arrived at a middle position between a straight-up confidence measure, in which the president could be impeached for any reason, and a much stricter criminal standard. Impeachment and trial votes make it clear that impeachment has not ever risen above party politics. Indeed, in late 2016, many Democrat activists brayed for Trump’s impeachment before he formally took office! Some commentators believe that impeachment should in effect become a confidence measure, used more regularly as a check on presidential power. According to one observer, “Congress should impeach and remove presidents often: when their policies fail, when they are touched with scandal, or for no reason – just for the spirit of the thing.”41 Recent experience suggests it has moved some distance in this direction already; highly partisan impeachments are likely to become regular features of presidential politics in future. A final check on presidential power stems from the accretion of institutional authority since the Roosevelt period. The very amassing of personnel and infrastructural power in the Executive Office of the President binds the president in a confusing tangle of procedures, divisions of labour, and turf protection that makes action slower and more complicated. This is especially so in the case of entitlement programs which are the effect and cause of massive constituencies of persons and groups resistant to change. So while there is personalization of presidential authority, there is also institutionalization that constrains personal power.42 Examining the development of the modern presidency in the latter half of the twentieth century, Sergio Fabbrini captures the paradox: “The more the presidential apparatus expanded, the more the president extended his personal presidency to control it, in an ever-increasing spiral, but with the outcome that he came to control it less and less.”43 Fabbrini may overstate the case, but the Rooseveltian days in which public policy change can be effected by sheer force of presidential will do seem to be over. President Obama’s difficulties in working with Congress to assert control of his country’s debt burden and the debt ceiling underscore the point. Again, the Trump administration provides an extreme example. President Trump paralyzed parts of the public service by refusing to appoint officials or by appointing lackeys with mandates to subvert agencies. He also had officials change rules to weaken or undermine settled policies and procedures. For instance, by the end of his term President Trump oversaw 1,058 changes, large and small, to the rules governing the US immigration system.44 But by failing to work through Congress to make lasting change, he made it easy for his successor simply to reverse all the changes by the same means; and this President Biden did with all deliberate speed in early 2021. The larger point is that the executive branch fought back. White House orders were refused, resisted, or slow-walked. High-level officials resigned in protest. Other career civil servants testified before congressional committees, against White house orders. Some officials who were

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dismissed gave interviews, wrote books, and generally publicized what they saw as systematic abuse of executive authority Was it legitimate for career officials to resist presidential authority? Much depends on one’s account of the executive branch. One reading of the Constitution is that it creates a unitary executive: all executive power is vested in the president and so his authority runs all the way down into the public service and its work. The other view is that the executive is plural; the president’s power is limited by the authority and tenure of other offices and agencies and officials operating in the executive branch. Candidate and President Trump railed against the “deep state,” that shadowy mass of bureaucrats who vote Democrat, love their perquisites, and hate the reforms Trump was elected to produce. But candidate Trump hollered “Lock Her Up!” of Hillary Clinton. Could President Trump just lock her up? Could he order prosecutors to charge her with offences he dreamt up? President Trump found executive branch resistance infuriating and illegitimate.Yes, some resisters were on the anti-Trump left and some were protecting their jobs; but others genuinely feared for their country under a president who sought to wield power recklessly and dangerously.45 In Canada, prime ministers at the head of majority governments control the legislature. The parliamentary principle of responsible government is that the government of the day must maintain the support of a majority of members of the House of Commons on important matters of the government’s programs in order to remain in office. Party discipline and majority government combine to reduce the House to a caged pit bull terrier: lots of noise, no bite. A government that defines matters of confidence broadly is able to enforce party discipline and thus maintain the House’s confidence. In minority situations, the prime minister must reach out to the other parties and fashion a legislative program that at least some of them will support, or face defeat on a measure. Such a defeat means that an election will be called or the governor general will ask the leader of another party leader in the House to form a government. Some Canadians propose the adoption of some form of proportional representation precisely to produce more minority governments and reduce “imperial” prime ministerial power.46 In the lead-up to the 2015 federal election, Justin Trudeau also promised electoral reform. Then he won. When he was a Reform Party MP, Stephen Harper supported American-style innovations such as fixed election dates. In a parliamentary system, the prime minister has discretion to select the timing of elections unless the House defeats the government on a matter of confidence. The temptation, naturally, is for the prime minister to select a date for election most propitious for the re-election prospects of the government of the day, as Jean Chrétien did in 2000 to take advantage of new Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day’s inexperience. If election dates were fixed by law, this power would be denied the prime minister. But fixed election dates are inconsistent in principle with parliamentary government since the confidence convention means that the government can fall at any time the House sits, precipitating an election. The dissolution of Parliament is a reserve power of the sovereign’s representative that cannot be limited

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by law.47 In any case, in 2006 fixed-election-date legislation was passed (such legislation exists in many provinces, too) and has largely functioned as window-dressing: governments often ignore them. Critics wonder whether the discretion to call an election for political advantage is such a momentous executive power in any case. Are electors blind to the cynical use of such prerogatives?48 Senate reform has also been proposed for the purpose of constraining executive and regionally concentrated legislative power. Currently senators are appointed by the prime minister. Since 2006 the Conservative government has proposed constitutional changes to provide for provincial election of Senate nominees and to limit senatorial terms to one nine-year stint.That gambit was struck down by the Supreme Court. Justin Trudeau succeeded with a more modest plan. While in opposition, he dismissed Liberal senators from caucus, in effect making them independents. As prime minister, he has appointed only “independent” senators in an ostensibly open process. In principle, this returns the Senate to something closer to the intentions of the Fathers of Confederation. The Trudeau-appointed independents are fairly “liberal” in their political views but do act with more independence with respect to bills coming from the House.49 The prime minister’s domination of the cabinet and the House can be overstated.There have been strong cabinet ministers who have stood up to the prime minister or who at least commanded the respect of others that the prime minister had to recognize. One thinks of Finance Minister Paul Martin in Jean Chrétien’s cabinet, who in 1995 threatened to resign if he could not get his way on severe budget cuts.50 Following the prorogation debacle in Ottawa in 2008, Liberal caucus support for Stéphane Dion collapsed, and he was forced to resign immediately. Granted, Dion was not prime minister, but the example indicates that party leaders cannot be tyrants. Occasionally, caucus members will vote against the government on measures.51 And sometimes the prime minister will suffer the ignominy of the departure of highly regarded colleagues, as happened in 2018 when two MPs esteemed in the Indigenous community left the cabinet, caucus, and party of Mr.Trudeau’s government. And in February of 2022, under the term of the 2014 Reform Act the Conservatives introduced into Parliament, CPC leader Erin O’Toole was dismissed as leader by a vote of the majority of Conservative caucus, a first under that law and an assertion of caucus power not seen in generations. In 1982 the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was entrenched in the Canadian Constitution and, like the American Bill of Rights, can effectively check government power. Courts can now refer to citizen rights as well as the federal division of powers to alter or invalidate government policy. The Harper government’s plans for Senate reform, a national securities commission, and for shutting a safe (but illegal) drug injection centre in Vancouver, for example, were firmly rebuffed by the Supreme Court of Canada.52 A major limit on prime ministerial power is posed by provincial premiers, who wield a lot of power in Canada, much more than do their gubernatorial peers to the south. Premiers, according to one scholar, are the “single largest counterweight to the power of the federal government, and indirectly, the prime minister’s exercise of power.”53 Policy fields assigned to the provinces

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in 1867 were once paltry but have grown in practical importance and visibility for Canadians. Doug MacArthur challenges the view that the federal government has led in the development of the Canadian welfare state. The provinces, in his view, led in meeting public demand; the federal government, fearing irrelevance and invisibility, desperately nudged its way into provincial policy fields with money but few enforceable conditions. On big-ticket policy areas of practical importance to Canadians, the provinces are at the forefront.54 On the negotiation and implementation of treaties, the prime minister cannot even proceed unilaterally if they touch areas of provincial jurisdiction. The very nature of the country limits the prime minister – a Canada divided, with little to agree on and full of abeyances: unresolved political and constitutional tensions best left undisturbed.55 The successful prime minister must navigate through long memories, suppressed grudges, and fragile settlements. Deep regional, cultural, and linguistic differences best left undisturbed favour dull, routine government and incremental action, not political heroism. For this reason the dull, evasive, prevaricating William Lyon Mackenzie King might be considered Canada’s greatest chief executive, while the bolder, brasher FDR is probably America’s. A final set of limits is among the most important. American constitutionalism is famously legalistic, with the courts usually asserting themselves as the final and authoritative interpreters of constitutional propriety. Canada by contrast has both written and unwritten elements, unwritten here meaning constitutional conventions enforced in the political process rather than in the courts. But norms are important in American constitutionalism too.56 One of the most important is the executive’s respect for prosecutorial independence.The cardinal executive function is to implement and enforce the laws. This is why law enforcement – policing and prosecutorial activity – is under the aegis of the executive branch, and why the Canadian and American cabinets have an attorney general (who in the Canadian case is also minister of justice). But law enforcement cannot be responsive to partisan or otherwise political considerations. Prosecutors have ample discretion to decide whether and whom to prosecute, but their criteria primarily include a reasonable prospect of conviction, and little more. Politicians routinely accuse their opponents and critics of illegal conduct and naturally would like to see enemies go to jail. In authoritarian regimes, this commonly happens, but not in liberal democracies. The norm or convention of prosecutorial independence operates in both countries. It is a high political and constitutional principle, not a judicially enforceable one (though an ambitious interpretation of some Charter provisions may yield an enforceable right to independent prosecution). The strength of the norm determines a crucial limit on presidents and prime ministers. Alas, recent chief executives have failed to observe this important norm. Prime Minister Trudeau wanted a Quebec-based engineering firm, SNC-Lavalin, cleared of criminal wrongdoing in 2018 by negotiating a “deferred prosecution agreement” with the Crown, requiring the firm to admit to wrongdoing and pay restitution in exchange for escaping criminal prosecution. The attorney general of the day, high-profile Indigenous activist Jody Wilson-Raybould, refused to negotiate such a deal. She left the decision entirely in the hands of prosecutors in her department

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who wished to proceed with prosecution.Trudeau deployed PMO staff to change her mind, and he himself applied pressure. She resisted and ultimately left the government and party. Trudeau’s conduct was criticized by Parliament’s ethics commissioner.57 In the end, Trudeau did not suffer for this breach of the convention; he and his government were re-elected in 2019. For his part, President Trump said to the New York Times in 2017 that “I have an absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department.” He routinely expected Department of Justice officials to pursue cases and persons he considered harmful to him. Most spectacularly, he badgered his attorney general (and acting attorney general in 2021) to launch legal challenges touching his defeat in the 2020 election, so convinced was he that he had won. He expected his attorney general to be a consigliere rather than an officer charged with the impartial enforcement of the law. The norm of prosecutorial independence arguably proved stronger in the US than in Canada. While Trudeau paid little for his breach, Donald Trump faced stiff and broad resistance from other parties, the media, Department of Justice staff, and even from some of his most ardent defenders, such as Jeff Sessions and William Barr. The centre held.

CONVERGENCE AND THE FUTURE OF EXECUTIVE DOMINANCE Presidents and prime ministers are different because the institutional contexts in which they operate are different. The prime minister is linked to the legislature in ways the president is not. The president’s powers are described and arranged differently than those of the prime minister. The prime minister is a more disposable chief executive. The office of prime minister lacks the ceremonial accoutrements of the president, and the prime minister can summarily be dismissed upon losing a confidence vote in the House of Commons. The US president possesses great latitude in foreign policy because of the architecture of the Constitution, but also because executive action is frequently demanded of a leader at the head of a country whose interests are so deeply tied to affairs around the globe. The Canadian prime minister is as unconstrained in foreign as in domestic policy but we fail to notice because Canada is a modest player in international affairs. For all their differences, there is evidence of convergence. Notice how the hardening of party identity, party-based voting in Congress, and the partisan use of impeachment all liken the US system to Canadian parliamentarism. And the prime minister increasingly shares certain characteristics and proclivities with the president. Many scholars call this institutional convergence “presidentialization,” and associate it with increasing executive power and autonomy. Presidentialization occurs when the executive rises above and can control other institutions and actors in the political system, and when he or she can operate independently of other forces.58 To avoid the association of these changes to the office of the American chief executive, this process of convergence can also be called “personalization.”

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Personalization is understandable in terms of the forces favouring its development. Countries are more highly integrated and interdependent than they once were: domestic economies depend greatly on international and global conditions and events. Foreign affairs is a quintessential executive function, and executives are the actors best placed to manage interdependence. Communications and information technology have the effect of compressing time and space, speeding up the news cycle, and reducing the amount of time available to respond. Deliberation, meanwhile, takes time and is an archetypal legislative task. Insofar as the compression of space and time reduces the institutional capacity for deliberation, the executive – rather than the legislative – branch is privileged.59 The executive branch is increasingly stocked with strategic and analytical expertise to equip chief executives with the institutional support for decisions that have to be made quickly and accurately. As the world emerged from the comparatively stable bipolar balance of global power during the Cold War, it has become more unstable, unpredictable, and even chaotic and crisis-prone. These are conditions that favour the exercise of executive power. The development of mass and social media has turned democratic politics into a largely televisual experience, favouring image over argument and personality over doctrine. Tweets are assertions, emotional shots, not arguments. The person of the executive is now uppermost in people’s minds; party, policy, and to some extent ideology fade in significance. Popular leadership is in part a function of the medium we prefer to use for political information. As mass media have favoured the chief executive, so the decline of the mass party has freed the party leader from a well-defined electoral and class constituency with stable, non-negotiable demands the leader must faithfully represent. Parties are now more like catch-all coalitions of disparate groups assembled by parties for electoral victory. Party leaders have much more freedom to move between and among their voting blocs, and among other influential elites for political and financial support.. In addition, given the inexorable trend to membership-based, primary-style party leader selection, the party leader is not as beholden to groups, the caucus, and other notables for his or her conduct. Certainly the Canadian prime minister is becoming more personalized. He or she is not primus inter pares relative to the cabinet. He or she is not tied to the caucus in any robust sense. He or she has a national constituency despite being elected in a single riding. The prime minister personifies the party and the government of the day. The institutional power of the Prime Minister’s Office – once a small cubicle with a few secretaries and now a dynamic policy and strategy shop with 150 employees – is catching up to the Executive Office of the President. Perhaps Canadian-American executive institutional convergence is no surprise. Canadians are inveterate observers and copiers of all things American – from tastes in culture, sports, and entertainment, to institutions such as bills of rights, federalism, political campaign techniques, and fixed election dates. In a poll published in December 2008, almost half of Canadians said that the Canadian prime minister is directly elected by the Canadian people! Despite vast differences in generational experience and ideological bearing, Donald Trump and Justin Trudeau see their roles as largely performative; they favour the photo-op and attend

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to rhetorical style. They emote in public. They talk in transformative terms but deliver on far less. They gravitate to celebrity. Trump once pondered Oprah Winfrey as a running mate60 (but it was Barack Obama she really supported61). For his part,Trudeau goes for the photo spreads in chic magazines and gushing tributes to Canadian pop music stars. Their power is personal and spectacular. They govern more through media than the institutions of government. Presidents and prime ministers now practise the art of inspirational rhetoric, reaching over the institutional quagmire to promise voters what they want to hear.62 Characteristically, they over-promise and under-deliver. They offer hope but instead, by inflating expectations, inevitably disappoint. The future of personalized, popular leadership in North America may indeed be heightened political disappointment and disaffection. What the late Michael Foley noticed in presidentialized British politics – “the emergence of a subversive counterculture of political scepticism”63 – is establishing itself on Canadian shores.The changing shape of executive power is part of the explanation.

STUDY QUESTIONS 1. How might presidential leadership in the United States increasingly resemble political leadership in Canada? And how might the office of prime minister appear more American? 2. Examine the role of history, culture, personality, and institutional structure in the powers of the offices of president and prime minister. Does one factor predominate? 3. The thesis of this chapter is that prime ministerial and presidential power has become increasingly personal in character. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? What arguments could be offered for the view that political leadership loosed from the constraints of party, tradition, and unwritten norms is good and necessary? 4. Do you think presidents and prime ministers should be limited to one term in office?

NOTES 1 Quoted in Lawrence Martin, The Presidents and the Prime Ministers:Washington and Ottawa Face to Face: The Myth of Bilateral Bliss, 1867–1982 (Toronto: Doubleday, 1982), 2. 2 Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers [1787–8], ed. Terence Ball (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

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Thomas M.J. Bateman 3 The Fathers did have to direct their attentions to new and peculiar federal arrangements, but little thought was given to parliamentary government and how parliamentarism would fit with federalism. 4 When Canada assumed final and complete control of its constitution in 1982, the British North America Act was renamed the Constitution Act of 1867 to remove formal traces of Canada’s colonial history. 5 Written, judicially enforceable constitutions are indeed a global post war trend: C. Neal Tate and Torbjörn Vallinder, eds.,The Global Expansion of Judicial Power (New York: New York University Press, 1995). Of course, even the United Kingdom is increasingly coming under the thrall of written constitutionalism as it toys with judicial review under the 1998 Human Rights Act and incremental federalization. 6 Ivor Jennings, The Law and the Constitution, 5th ed. (London: University of London Press, 1959). Jennings’s understanding of convention was quoted with approval by the Supreme Court of Canada in Re: Resolution to amend the Constitution, [1981] 1 SCR 753. 7 In 2000, Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote but his opponent, Republican George W. Bush, won the electoral college vote and the presidency. This can happen because most states grant all their electoral college votes to the plurality popular vote winner. So a candidate can capture the electoral college majority by getting just enough popular votes to win 270 electoral college votes while losing badly in those states whose electoral college votes go to his or her opponent. 8 Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission 558 U.S. 310 (2010). 9 Thomas B. Edsall, “Billionaires Going Rogue,” New York Times, October 28, 2012. 10 Over his twenty-one-year prime ministerial career (1921–48) King represented two provinces and three ridings, and was defeated twice in eleven elections. 11 A citizen of Canada who can vote can also be an MP. But adult citizens who are in prison, who are judges, who are members of a provincial or territorial assembly, or who committed election-related offences in the past several years, are disqualified. In Canada prisoners can vote – see the Supreme Court decision of 2002. This demonstrates a huge difference to the US – if former felons had been able to vote in Florida in 2000, Gore would have become president! 12 William Cross and André Blais, “Who Selects the Party Leader?” Party Politics 18, no. 2 (2012): 127–50. 13 John Locke, Second Treatise of Government [1689–90], ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), para. 159. 14 Michael W. McConnell, The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power under the Constitution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020). 15 The evidence is that Congress and president use the shared legislative power to check each other’s ambition, as the framers of the constitution had understood. Congress often passes bills designed to provoke a presidential veto, then blames the president for blocking the measure. See John B. Gilmour, “Political Theater or Bargaining Failure: Why Presidents Veto,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 41, no. 3 (September 2011): 471–87. 16 Lori Cox Han and Diane J. Heath, Presidents and the Presidency (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 337. 17 Han and Heath, Presidents and the Presidency, 183. 18 See James P. Pfiffner, “Decision-Making in the Obama White House,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 41, no. 2 (June 2011): 244–62. 19 Brit Hume, quoted by Conrad Black in Donald J.Trump: A President Like No Other (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2018), 160.

Prime Ministers and Presidents 20 Quoted in Andrew Rudalevige, The New Imperial Presidency: Renewing Presidential Power after Watergate (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 105. 21 United States. v. Nixon 418 U.S. 683 (1974). 22 A recent, fawning biography is Conrad Black’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom (New York: Public Affairs, 2003). 23 Jeffrey K. Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987). 24 George Will, “Presidents Don’t Have to Feel Your Pain,” National Post, September 20, 2012. 25 Jonathan Swan and Zachary Basu, “Trump’s War with His Generals,” Axios, May 16, 2021, https:// www.axios.com/2021/05/16/off-the-rails-trump-military-withdraw-afghanistan. 26 Susan Hennessy and Benjamin Wittes, The Unmaking of the Presidency: Donald Trump’s War on the World’s Most Powerful Office (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), 33–43. 27 Rudalevige, The New Imperial Presidency, 262. 28 McConnell, The President Who Would Not Be King, 304. 29 R. MacGregor Dawson, The Government of Canada, 5th ed., ed. Norman Ward (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970), 168. 30 Indeed, cabinet ministers are not even the equals of one another. There is a clear hierarchy of portfolios, and some opinions matter more than others. Thus cabinet does not decide by vote; instead the prime minister “declares” the consensus of cabinet after discussion of a question, even when no such consensus is apparent. 31 Donald J. Savoie, Governing from the Centre:The Concentration of Power in Canadian Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 72. For a popular account making the same point, see Jeffrey Simpson, The Friendly Dictatorship, rev. ed. (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2002). 32 Savoie, Governing from the Centre, 72. 33 John Ivison, Trudeau:The Education of a Prime Minister (Toronto: Signal, 2018), 92. 34 David Docherty, Mr. Smith Goes to Ottawa: Life in the House of Commons. (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997), chap. 2. 35 Christopher Moore, 1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1997), 108. 36 Tom Flanagan, Harper’s Team: Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power, 2nd ed. (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen`s University Press, 2009), 316. 37 Amanda DiPaolo, “Presidential Leadership in Times of War,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Political Leadership, ed. Joseph Masciulli et al. (Surrey: Ashgate, 2009), 214. 38 Peter Baker, “Obama Making Plans to Use Executive Power,” New York Times, February 12, 2010. It should be noted that given the reduced degree of party discipline in Congress, even united government is no picnic. Democratic presidents, especially, cannot count on the unstinting support of their congressional co-partisans. 39 John Heileman, “Bill and Hillary Forever,” New York Magazine, October 14, 2012. See also Matthew Laing, “Towards a Pragmatic Presidency? Exploring the Waning of Political Time,” Polity 44, no. 2 (April 2012): 234–59. 40 Jo Becker and Scott Shane, “A Measure of Change: Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will,” New York Times, May 29, 2012. 41 F.H. Buckley, The Once and Future King:The Rise of Court Government in America (New York: Encounter, 2014), 289. 42 James MacGregor Burns, Presidential Government:The Crucible of Leadership (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966), 66.

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Thomas M.J. Bateman 43 Sergio Fabbrini, “The Semi-Sovereign American Prince: The Dilemma of an Independent President in a Presidential Government,” in The Presidentialization of Politics, ed. Thomas Poguntke and Paul Webb (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 322. See also Burns, Presidential Government, 75ff. 44 Sarah Stillman, “The Damage,” New Yorker, February 8, 2021, 32–41. 45 See Stephen Skowronek et al., Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic:The Deep State and the Unitary Executive (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021). 46 Simpson, The Friendly Dictatorship. For a well-researched analysis of minority government in Canada, see Peter H. Russell, Two Cheers for Minority Government:The Evolution of Canadian Parliamentary Democracy (Toronto: EMP, 2008). 47 Canada remains a constitutional monarchy, and the king’s representative in Canada is the governor general. The king appoints the governor general on the advice of the Canadian prime minister. The office is largely ceremonial, though the governor general retains some reserve powers that can be used on rare occasions. 48 John Pepall, Against Reform (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), chap. 2. 49 Jason Robert VandenBeukel et al., “Birds of a Feather? Loyalty and Partisanship in the Reformed Canadian Senate,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 54, no. 4 (December 2021): 830–49. 50 Paul Martin, Come Hell or High Water (Toronto: Emblem, 2009), chap. 10. 51 See Ian Brodie, At the Centre of Government:The Prime Minister and the Limits on Political Power (Montreal and Kingston: McGill Queen’s University Press, 2018). 52 Reference re Securities Act, [2011] 3 S.C.R. 837; Canada (Attorney-General) v. PHS Community Services Society, [2011] 3 S.C.R. 134. 53 Herman Bakvis, “Prime Minister and Cabinet in Canada: An Autocracy in Need of Reform?,” Journal of Canadian Studies 35, no. 4 (Winter 2001): 68. 54 Doug McArthur, “The Social Policy Revolution in Canada: Myth or Reality?” Policy Options (JuneJuly 2012): 73–7. 55 Michael Foley, The Silence of Constitutions: Gaps, ‘Abeyances,’ and Political Temperament in the Maintenance of Government (New York: Routledge, 1989); David M. Thomas,Whistling Past the Graveyard: Constitutional Abeyances, Quebec, and the Future of Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1997). 56 See Hennessy and Wittes, The Unmaking of the Presidency. Also see Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (New York: Crown, 2019). 57 Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, Trudeau II Report, 2019 (August 2019), https://ciec-ccie.parl.gc.ca/en/investigations-enquetes/Pages/TrudeauIIReport -RapportTrudeauII.aspx. 58 Thomas Poguntke and Paul Webb, eds., The Presidentialization of Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 59 William Scheuerman, “Liberal Democracy and the Empire of Speed,” Polity 34, no. 1 (Autumn 2001): 41–67. 60 Conrad Black, Donald J.Trump: A President Like No Other (Washington: Regnery, 2018), 40. 61 Barack Obama, A Promised Land (New York: Crown, 2020), 105. 62 Granted, Canadian prime ministers do not come immediately to mind when one thinks of soaring rhetoric. Diefenbaker was no JFK; Jean Chrétien was accused by comedians of being unable to speak either official language. And Stephen Harper lacked the sonorous, inspirational cadence of an Obama, but his cool way of de-escalating problems was no less an effective rhetorical tack. Harper’s fingerprints were all over political action in Ottawa, and this remains a principal feature of personalization. 63 Michael Foley, “The Presidential Dynamics of Leadership Decline in Contemporary British Politics: The Illustrative Case of Tony Blair,” Contemporary Politics 14, no. 1 (March 2008): 63.

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How Partisan Polarization Affects the Workings of the US Congress and the Canadian Parliament in the Twenty-First Century Melissa Haussman and Lori Turnbull

The legislatures of the United States and Canada started from different roots and function in very different political systems. However, the two legislatures in the 2020s are facing the same dilemma of how to adapt long-held rules and practices to the reality that parties now seem more focused on vote-getting than policy-making and use a “scorched-earth” approach toward each other in elections. In the two legislatures where a majority vote carries the day, we argue that practices over the past few decades in the electoral realm impact the internal workings of the legislatures and vice versa.

THE INTERTWINING OF SECTIONALISM AND THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM IN THE US While writing the Constitution, the framers did not acknowledge the existence of a ­nascent two-party system, with deep feuds present between the Federalists on one hand and the ­Democratic-Republican party officially formed by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in 1792. Alexander Hamilton, who had written the bulk of the Federalist Papers, supported a republic tilted in favour of the national government, with a form of federalism in which the national government was supreme. He achieved this through the supremacy clause in Article 6 of the original seven Articles of the Constitution, holding that the US Constitution and federal law generally are supreme to state constitutions and laws (unless a federal provision is found to violate the Constitution). The powerful counterpart to the federal supremacy clause is found in the tenth amendment of the Bill of Rights, giving reserve powers (including “police powers” to legislate for health, safety, and morals of people) to the states or to the people. Hamilton also

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wanted a strong Executive, almost akin to the monarch. Madison wrote influential Federalist no. 51, laying out the separation of powers across the three branches of government. The primary role of the states, and in particular partisan legislatures throughout most of the US, in drawing state and US House districts is unique. The importance of partisan control of legislatures was underscored by the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, in which the Republican-controlled Congress passed legislation to ensure that automatic redistricting from slower-growing to faster-growing states take place after every decennial census. The census is also mandated in Article 1 of the Constitution, but the specific procedures for House reapportionment were not mentioned. As author David Daley has noted, “we are the only democracy in the world that allows the politicians to draw their own lines and essentially choose their own voters. Even sometimes in states where nonpartisan commissions have been put into place, the politicians have found a way to worm their way into them.”1 With the Supreme Court ruling in June 2019 that partisan redistricting is a political, not justiciable question, the practice will continue. Another early illustration of the fierceness of early partisan competition was shown in the 1812 state and federal elections in Massachusetts. Governor Elbridge Gerry, a former Federalist but by then a Democratic-Republican, signed into law a framework to help his party to win control of the Massachusetts Senate and to retain US House seats. His plan worked, and his Essex constituency was labelled a “Gerrymander” for its purported salamander-like shape by the March 26, 1812, Boston Gazette.2 Other disagreements affecting the party groups pre- and post-dating constitutional ratification included federalism, the role of the national government in the economic system, particularly the national bank and tariffs, and slavery. In their control of Congress from 1788 to 1800, the Federalists also sought to sculpt and pack the federal court system in their favour. Congress has raised the number of Supreme Court justices seven times in its history and lowered the number twice as well, so as to help its own party gain or keep control. The Judiciary Act of 1789, passed at the behest of President Washington, established the federal judicial system, including district courts, framed at the time as having limited trial jurisdiction, and circuit courts with original jurisdiction. Unfortunately the division over slavery, which existed in every state, became fundamental to US government practice and structure. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton agreed that the nation’s capital should be in the Southern states, to balance off the already-superior power of the Northern economic engine.3 The framers included the “three-fifths” clause in Article 1, Section 2. It taxed the Southern states on their slave populations where each slave was counted as “three fifths” of a free person, and used the same metric for adding House members. The clause also “excluded Indians not taxed” from calculation of House delegation numbers. The clause inflated the populations of states with large numbers of slaves in the US House and Electoral College. It is called “inflation” since the numbers were not used to benefit the slaves included in the calculus.

How Partisan Polarization Affects the US Congress and Canadian Parliament

For most of US history, the South has been the highest numerical bloc in the House and Electoral College, first through the three-fifths clause, then through population replacement. Population shifts began with the “Great Migration” of African-Americans out of the South from the First World War through the 1970s. Since 1940, the South has been the h ­ ighest-population 4 region in the US House and Electoral College followed by the Midwest. By 2011, based on strategic wins, Republicans controlled the state legislatures of the majority of the southern and midwestern states.5

POLITICAL PARTIES IN CANADA SINCE CONFEDERATION Sir John A. Macdonald’s Conservatives formed the first government of Canada at Confederation in 1867. This party, which changed its name to the Progressive Conservatives (PCs) in 1942 and then joined with the Canadian Alliance to form the Conservative Party in 2003, has been one of Canada’s two governing parties at the federal level. The other is the Liberal Party, a centre-left party that has been referred to as the “natural governing party of Canada.”6 During the twentieth century, it held power more often than not. Historically, both the Conservative and Liberal parties have been committed to straddling the French/English divide in Canadian politics. The Liberals have been far more successful in doing so, providing Canada’s first Catholic French-speaking prime minister (Sir Wilfrid Laurier), and four more francophone prime ministers (Louis St. Laurent, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Jean Chrétien, and Justin Trudeau). The Progressive Conservatives had two leaders from Quebec: Brian Mulroney, who was prime minister from 1984 till 1993, and Jean Charest, leader from 1993 till 1998. Both parties have thus drawn leaders from Quebec, where French is the official language, as well as from the other provinces. It makes political and electoral sense for an ambitious political party to appeal inside and outside of Quebec simultaneously; Quebec holds roughly a quarter of the seats in the House of Commons (78 of 338), so a strong electoral showing in Quebec can go a long way toward achieving government status. However, the tension between Quebec and the other provinces has proven extremely difficult to manage under a single partisan umbrella at any one time, and continues to be a major challenge. In 1984, Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney formed the largest majority government in Canada’s history with 211 of the 282 seats then available in the House of Commons.7 The party received more than 50 per cent of the national popular vote, a rare occurrence in Canadian politics, and held the majority of seats in each and every province. Mulroney was determined to draw his home province into the constitutional fold after the Quebec government had refused to accept the new constitutional arrangements put in place in 1982, when Canada took over from the United Kingdom the right to amend and alter its Constitution and established the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Mulroney’s negotiations with the ten provincial premiers in 1987 led to the Meech Lake Accord, a package of proposed

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constitutional changes that, if approved, would have satisfied Quebec’s demands and brought the province back into the constitutional family. However, the package was not approved, nor was the Charlottetown Accord in 1992, which included the proposed amendments in the Meech Lake agreement and more.8 Mulroney’s government paid the price at the ballot box. In 1993, the Progressive Conservatives suffered near-fatal decimation in the general election, falling from its extraordinary majority government status to a party with just two members of Parliament (MPs) in the House. Disaster for the government created opportunities for other parties, however, and marked the beginning of a lasting transformation of the Canadian party system. The virtual elimination of the Progressive Conservatives from Parliament in the 1993 election cleared the decks for a transformed party system. Up until this point, the Liberals and the (Progressive) Conservatives were the two major parties in a “two-party plus” system that emerged after the Second World War. The New Democratic Party (NDP) of Canada had been founded in 1961 and, in general, was seen as a party that existed alongside the dominant Liberals and PCs, with no hope of ever forming government itself. The Reform Party came into existence in 1987; the bulk of its supporters were westerners who felt disenchanted with the Mulroney government, which was perceived as too focused on the wants and needs of Quebec and Ontario. The Bloc Québécois, a party committed to Quebec’s separation from Canada, was created in 1991. Initially, the Bloc caucus comprised MPs who had defected from the Liberal and PC caucuses out of frustration with the inability of traditional parties to satisfy Quebec’s demands, specifically its request for constitutional recognition as a distinct society within Canada. Almost thirty years after the collapse of the Progressive Conservatives and the entrance of the Bloc Québécois and the Reform Party, we can continue to describe Canada as a true multiparty system. At the end of 2022, the House of Commons is populated by four official political parties: the Liberals, the Conservatives, the NDP, and the Bloc, each with a considerable base of support but none with enough to form a majority in the House.There are also two Green MPs but, because the threshold for official party status is twelve MPs, Green members are treated as independents and, therefore, do not have the right to either pose questions in Question Period or sit as members of parliamentary committees. A key piece in the evolution of the party system in Canada was the merger of the dominant right-wing parties into one Conservative Party in 2003. Under Stephen Harper’s leadership, the Conservatives formed government in 2006, 2008, and 2011. The “unite the right” movement, a number of years in the making, had always been based on the premise that a divided right will secure Liberal rule forever. The union was motivated at least as much by electoral strategy as it was on a common ideology or value system. Therefore, party leaders have a difficult task in keeping the party together. Harper’s leadership style was often described in pejorative terms as authoritarian or controlling, but this approach helped him to keep the parties’ various factions – including social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, gun owners, Red Tories, and the religious right – under the same tent. Controlling the message was essential. We would be remiss not to

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note that the Conservative victories came at a time when the Liberal Party was experiencing an implosion of its own. The sponsorship scandal that plagued the government in the early 2000s shook voter trust in the party. To make matters worse for the Liberals, voter support continued to plummet under Stéphane Dion’s leadership (2006–9) and then hit rock bottom during the tenure of leader Michael Ignatieff (2009–11). In 2015, after almost ten years of Conservative rule, the government changed hands. The Liberals, who had been in third place at the timing of the election call with only thirty-six seats in Parliament, defeated Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and formed a majority government with 184 seats and just over 39 per cent of the popular vote. The combination of Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s personal popularity and the “anybody but Harper” sentiment that was palpable throughout the campaign delivered the decisive victory. Trudeau campaigned on pledges to grow the middle class, to renew and refresh Canada’s political institutions, and to embark on a meaningful path to reconciliation with Canada’s Indigenous peoples. His “sunny ways” were meant to offer a contrast to Harper’s restraint. Prime Minister Trudeau made history by appointing a gender-equal cabinet and, in the early days of his government, made good on his promise to reform the Senate appointments process to emphasize merit rather than partisanship. However, he broke his promise to change Canada’s electoral system just a year and a half into his first mandate. This reversal, in addition to several ethical scandals including photos of Trudeau wearing blackface while he was teaching at a private school, had the effect of tarnishing the Trudeau brand and in the 2019 election, the Liberal government was reduced to a minority of seats in the House of Commons. The COVID-19 pandemic defined the Liberals’ second term. The government rolled out a number of robust social programs, including the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy, and the Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy in order to protect Canadians and businesses from the economic effects of lockdowns.9 The management of COVID-19 was an intergovernmental effort; while the federal government took the lead on economic relief and vaccine procurement, the provincial governments made their own decisions on business lockdowns, school closures, masking requirements, social distancing, and capacity limits. This made for inconsistent experiences across the country with respect to both infection rates and economic and social activity but, overall, the Liberals and Prime Minister Trudeau himself enjoyed higher rates of popularity and public trust during the emergency period and the rollout of the vaccine.10 The Liberals sought to capitalize on their pandemic popularity by calling an early election in the summer of 2021, with the hope of turning their minority government into a majority. But it was not to be. The Liberals entered the campaign with no compelling ballot issue to justify the early election call. There was a palpable sense that voters were frustrated with the Liberals for opportunistically calling an election when there was no question that the government held the confidence of the House. At times, the campaign took an ugly turn, particularly when angry protesters showed up at Liberal campaign stops and became violent. The dominant issue of the

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campaign ended up being whether vaccines should be mandatory, with the Liberals taking the position that public servants must be fully vaccinated as a condition of paid employment. In the end, the election produced a House of Commons that looks almost identical to the one that existed at dissolution. The Liberals won 160 seats in the House, just three more than they won in 2019 and ten short of what they would need for a majority. The 2021 election was the first since Erin O’Toole became Conservative leader in August of 2020. He took over from Andrew Scheer, who was elected leader in 2017 with 50.95 per cent of the vote on the eighth ballot.11 Erin O’Toole, an MP since 2012, beat out front-runner Peter MacKay, a cabinet minister under Stephen Harper and a Red Tory from Atlantic Canada. O’Toole won on the third ballot largely as a result of his appeal to the social conservative wing of the party. However, his 2021 election campaign was an attempt to bring the party closer to the political centre. The Conservatives ended up winning the popular vote again but lost some support in some key areas of Conservative support, including Alberta. Some party stalwarts were quick to blame him for betraying party values and ultimately losing the election. In February of 2022, he was ousted as leader by a majority vote of the party caucus.Veteran Conservative MP Candice Bergen served in an interim capacity until her caucus colleague Pierre Poilievre was named the party’s leader on September 10, 2022, with a whopping 68.15 per cent support on the first ballot. Poilievre was the clear front-runner for the entire leadership campaign. His decisive victory puts him in a different position than that of his two predecessors, O’Toole and Scheer, each of whom needed several ballots in order to win. His biggest challenger, former Quebec Premier Jean Charest, came a distant second place with only 16.07 per cent of the vote on the first ballot. These candidates presented two very different campaigns, in terms of both substance and style. To be clear, they have some similarities, including a commitment to fiscal responsibility and resource extraction. However, Charest was deliberate in articulating his commitment to law and order for everyone, while Poilievre claims that many of the country’s governing institutions, including the Bank of Canada, do not work. Further, he was supportive of the “Freedom Convoy” that occupied the capital city of Ottawa for weeks in early 2022; many, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, have insisted that these “protest” activities were anything but lawful. Poilievre has been criticized for supporting divisive populist rhetoric that champions freedom over all else. Despite his slam-dunk win on the first ballot of the leadership contest, it is possible that Poilievre will fail to build broad enough appeal to win a general election. He remains a polarizing figure in Canadian politics.12 The New Democratic Party (NDP), under the leadership of Jagmeet Singh since 2017, have failed to increase their numbers much in the House of Commons despite the Liberals’ failure to capture a majority in the last two elections. The 2021 campaign saw popularity growth for the leader that did not materialize at the ballot box; they upped their seat count by only one for a total of twenty-five, and their share of the popular vote came up to 18 per cent from 16 per cent. In March of 2022, it was announced that the Liberals and the NDP would enter into

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an agreement of confidence and supply, which means that the NDP have agreed to support the Liberal minority government on confidence votes until 2025. This agreement is made possible by the fact that there is much policy overlap between the two parties. They have pledged to move forward on dental care, health care, housing affordability, climate policy, Indigenous reconciliation, and other issues. While the NDP intend to use this agreement as evidence of their effect on policy outcomes, it remains to be seen whether voters buy their version of events and give them any credit at the ballot box. There is a risk that the NDP’s support for the Liberals undermines their effectiveness as an opposition party. After all, they cannot criticize the government too much without seeming disingenuous, given their participation in the confidence and supply agreement. The Constitution Act of 1982 demands that federal elections occur at least once every five years. Apart from this requirement, members of Parliament do not have fixed terms, nor are there limits on how many “terms” an individual MP can serve. There are also no limits on how long an individual can serve as prime minister. Normally, it is expected that majority governments will sit for approximately four years before going to the polls. In 2007, Parliament passed a law to fix the dates of federal elections at four-year intervals, unless the governor general dissolves the House of Commons before the four years are up. Ostensibly, the point of the new law was to dissuade prime ministers from calling elections at politically opportunistic times, thereby giving the governing party an unfair advantage. As prime minister, neither Harper or Trudeau showed any particular deference to this law; there have been five elections since this legislation was passed and only two of them were “on schedule.” When the governing party holds a majority of seats in the House of Commons, the prime minister can rest assured that government bills will pass and that the government will not lose confidence. Responsible government, the theory of democracy that informs parliamentary government, demands that governments hold the “confidence” or support of a majority of the members of the House of Commons at all times. Governments that lose confidence must either resign or request the dissolution of the House, which triggers a new election. Major pieces of legislation that are central to a government’s mandate, such as the budget, are treated as matters of confidence. Canadian political parties are very disciplined; all party members are expected to vote in support of the party’s position. This strict party discipline makes majority governments virtually immune against threats of non-confidence; even if the entire opposition votes against a government bill, it is not enough to defeat the bill or the government itself. The lifespan of minority governments is more difficult to predict. Opposition members outnumber government members, which means that a government cannot shield itself completely from a loss of confidence. Sometimes, opposition parties are willing to use their numerical advantage to defeat a government, especially if they expect that a new election would improve their standings in the House. This is not a frequent occurrence, though; only six Canadian governments have ever been defeated on confidence motions. It is more often the case that minority government

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prime ministers seek “early” dissolution voluntarily, in the hope of using a new election to achieve the coveted majority-government status.13 This was what happened in 2021, but the prime minister’s gamble did not pay off. There is no formal process per se for choosing a Canadian prime minister. By convention, the prime minister is the leader of the party with the most seats following a general election. So, the Liberal and Conservative parties have “chosen” Canada’s prime ministers in the sense that these parties are the only ones to ever form the federal government. Historically, both parties have used delegated conventions to choose leaders. At these meetings, a number of candidates would compete for delegates’ support and, with each ballot, the candidate with the lowest number of votes was dropped off.Voting continues until one candidate captured a majority of votes. More recently, parties have adopted rules for leadership selection that allow all party members to cast a vote. This is seen as more democratic and inclusive.

POLARIZATION IN THE US ELECTORATE AND IN SUB-NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS Professor Joanne Freeman of Yale University has likened the situation of 2021, with high polarization, to earlier eras of “extreme divisions,” including the 1790s, 1850s, and 1960s. As she has noted, during these periods, “there is a lack of trust in pretty much anything … information, of each side in the other, in national institutions and an ability to handle things.”14 The “longer” roots of polarization were shown in the “Southern strategy” used by Richard Nixon and especially strategist Keven Phillips in the 1968 and 1972 presidential elections. The goal was to drive apart the inherently unstable New Deal coalition fashioned by Roosevelt in the 1930s, which was based on a greater role for the federal state in alleviating inequality and poverty.15 A main pillar of the anti–New Deal coalition effort was to frame African-Americans as the main “undeserving” recipients of public aid, paid for mostly by whites. Since the majority of the US at the time was white, so was the population receiving public benefits. Starting with “Presidential Republicanism” in turning many erstwhile Democrats into Republicans in electing President Reagan in 1980 and 1984, later trickling down to Congress, the Republican project became complete through the REDMAP (“Redistricting Majority Project”) strategy in which 700 state legislative seats turned Republican in the 2010 election.16 In other electoral systems, the change in sub-national control would not necessarily be as significant for national politics. In the US, however, the Republicans’ solidified control of both southern and other important states rich in House and electoral college votes, including Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, which held enormous importance for the redistricting process after 2020. Democratic Congressman Steve Israel of NY states that “the Republicans have always been better at playing the long game,” and the 1929 Permanent Apportionment Act would be an

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example. In 1990, Ben Ginsberg, then counsel to the Republican National Committee, noted that white Republicans and minority Democrats were underrepresented in the South. He worked with African-American members of Congress, including in the Black Caucus founded in 1971, to advocate for the creation of Black “majority-minority” House districts, typically in cities.17 Many African-American House members from 1982 to 2018 were elected through these measures, numbering fifty-one House districts in eighteen states by 2017.The Republican interest lay in creating more suburban, white districts favouring them.18 Elizabeth Kolbert has described the funding support of the REDMAP project through a Super PAC, whose structure was legitimized through the Supreme Court’s January 21, 2010, Citizens United decision.The genesis of that case was in the Conservative group’s plan to air an anti–Hillary Clinton video in the then-prohibited window of thirty days before a primary election or sixty days before the general election.The limits on corporate and union groups had been established by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002. In throwing out the limits on “independent” expenditures of these groups, ostensibly not coordinated with candidates or campaigns, the Court was holding true to its 1976 Buckley v.Valeo reasoning that “spending money equalled free speech.” Of course, the 1976 decision was about individual candidates, not multi-million-dollar Super PACS. Kolbert states that the Super PAC supporting the REDMAP project, the Republican State Leadership Committee, raised $18 million between January 21, 2010, and the November 2, 2010, election date. It raised nearly $30 million during that election cycle.19

CONGRESSIONAL POLARIZATION The shifting bases of voter identification, manipulated by party consultants and state-drawn electoral maps, have borne fruit in Congress since the 1970s. This is true not only in the historically more adversarial House but has been shown in the Senate too. Political science professors Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal created their “DW Nominate” aggregation of House and Senate members on roll-call votes from 1789 onwards on two dimensions. The measure’s first aspect includes ideology, the liberal-conservative divide over the national government’s role in the economy, including taxes and tariffs.20 The scale of a member’s polarization extends from -1 (the most liberal) to +1 (the most conservative). The second part of the measure includes the regional variations on civil rights and race.21 As Hare and Poole note, as long as regional variations historically crosscut the first dimension inside the parties, polarization was unlikely to happen. Polarization occurs if interparty contestation becomes unidimensional. A singular focus happens when social issues overtake the economic liberal-conservative cleavage as the dominant one inside Congress. Hare and Poole noted that the division over slavery in the 1850s, over civil rights in the 1960s, and later over morality issues overshadowed the pre-existing economic splits in the party system. Poole and Rosenthal noted in 2011 and 2016 that by then, “voting in Congress is now almost purely one-dimensional – political ideology accounts for about 93 per cent

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of all roll call choices” in the 113th Congress (2013–15).22 In 2014, Hare and Poole stated that “Congress is now more polarized than at any time since the end of Reconstruction.”23 They stated that a reinforcing social and economic liberal-conservative dimension had become the major interparty cleavage. Tea Party Republicans at the time favoured “sticking with their own position over compromising, rated themselves more conservative on a five-point ideological scale concerning abortion, gun rights, and-in-particular-displaying greater levels of distrust toward the federal government and concern about the scope of federal power” (2014, p. 428). Sean Theriault’s work has shown that since 1973, the Senate has become 29 per cent more polarized, and House polarization has increased 47 per cent.24 Theriault’s work shows that individual vote shifts to accommodate the parties’ changing direction account for one-third of the increased polarization; replacement of congressional members explains the other twothirds. The majority of replacements in the House has been by conservative Republicans displacing both moderate Republicans and Democrats. Theriault shows that the forty “Gingrich Senators” who formerly were House colleagues of Newt Gingrich (R-GA; member 1978–88, House Minority Whip 1989–94, and Speaker 1994–8) dramatically changed the Senate from 1980 onwards. Theriault and Rohde state that “Gingrich’s former colleagues in the House were almost twice as conservative as their fellow Republicans.”25 The Gingrich Republican Senators were 76 per cent more polarized on presidential nominee confirmation votes under Presidents Clinton and Obama than the other Republican Senators who had not served with Gingrich in the House. The Democratic Party is the larger and more heterogeneous party of the two national parties. Since the 1980s, issue and party caucuses have increased, particularly in the US House. In the House, caucuses have more than doubled from 350 in the 108th Congress of 2003–5 to 854 in the 115th Congress of 2017–19.26 One of the more high-profile House party caucuses is the Progressive Caucus, founded in 1991 by members of the Congressional Black Caucus and others, including Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT). In the recently concluded 117th Congress, it claimed ninety-six House members and Senator Sanders. Another Democratic caucus is the “New Democrat Coalition,” formed by members of the Democratic Leadership Council associated with Bill Clinton. On their website in 2022, they claimed ninety-eight members and thus the title of the “ideological center of the House Democratic caucus.”27 The coalition’s website also states that it was formed to oppose the zero-sum politics of the Gingrich-led House. The New Democrat Coalition also has a socially diverse membership. Typically it is the more guarded one on increasing federal spending and the deficit. Andrew Clarke has noted that, for these two Democratic caucuses in the first session of the 111th Congress (2009–10), the DW Nominate scores indicated that the Progressive Caucus was .20 more liberal than their co-partisans (where liberals scored from -1 to 0), while the New Democrat Coalition was .12 on the scale or “centrist relative to Progressives” but also “considerably closer to the party establishment than the Blue Dogs.”28 After 2010, Blue Dog Southern Democrats were all replaced by Republican House members.

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On the Republican side, Clarke has noted that “most Republican factions are noncentrist.”29 For congressional members, the centre part of the spectrum has long been claimed by the “Main Street Partnership” (MSP). It was formed in 1994 by moderate Representative Amory Houghton of New York, in response to the extreme anti-federal government positions staked out by Gingrich Republicans.30 On its website, it states that “[r]hetoric is easy. Governing is hard.” Its goal was to work in a bipartisan fashion with the Democrats. The MSP was shown by Clarke to be at a score of -.20 compared to average Republican House members (i.e., significantly more liberal). Many of its seventy members as well as many New Democrats participate in the bipartisan Problem Solvers’ Caucus, formed in January 2017, which had fifty-nine members from each party in the 117th Congress; membership requires admission paired by party. In the early part of the twenty-first century, Republican caucuses at the farther right end of the spectrum emerged in the House.The Freedom Caucus was formed in 2015 when a number of House Republicans hijacked a planned retreat of the MSP. During the 115th–117th Congresses, Clarke showed, “the average Freedom Caucus member was .33 points to the right of the average member of the MSP.”31 The Freedom Caucus was preceded by the Tea Party Caucus and the House Liberty Caucus, both formed in 2011. Following the descriptions by Hare and Poole,32 the Freedom Caucus is anti-federal government, anti-immigration, and toward the libertarian end of the economic spectrum on taxes. Unlike the Gingrich-era Republican caucus, the Freedom Caucus does not support leadership discipline, forming a headache for Rep. Kevin McCarthy (CA), minority leader in the US House in the 117th Congress and Speaker in the 118th beginning in January 2023.33 Prominent founding members of the Freedom Caucus included Ron DeSantis (FL), Mick Mulvaney (SC), Mark Meadows (NC), Raul Labrador (ID), and Justin Amash (MI). In the 117th Congress, it claimed forty-four House members.The Freedom Caucus’s monkey-wrench-wielding tactics against sitting and future Speakers were used in 2015 to bully Speaker John Boehner out of office for supporting Planned Parenthood in budget bills and to prevent McCarthy from acceding to the office at that time. Mulvaney and Meadows later became part of the Trump administration.

HOUSE RULES: THE STANDING ORDERS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS The Standing Orders are the permanent rules by which the House of Commons operates. Every legislature in Canada has its own House Rules. They cover matters including committee work, the legislative process, the role of the Speaker,34 private members’ bills, and the parliamentary calendar. MPs have reviewed and changed the rules numerous times over the years. In this section, we discuss some of the significant changes that have occurred in the past few decades. One significant change to the Standing Orders relates to the procedure for choosing a Speaker for the elected assembly. The Constitution Act of 1867 gives the House of Commons

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the authority to elect a Speaker to preside over its meetings. Until relatively recently, it was actually the prime minister who would select the Speaker by moving a motion in the House of Commons. The legislature would merely rubber-stamp the decision. Since 1986, though, Speakers have been elected through secret ballot, which gives members of Parliament the ability to choose between candidates vying for the role of Speaker. The change was inscribed in the Standing Orders in June of 1985 after several reform committees had made recommendations in support of it.35 There are usually several candidates interested in the position, so it takes a number of ballots before a single candidate obtains a majority of votes. The first secret ballot election in 1986 saw the selection of John Fraser after eleven(!) ballots. Not surprisingly, the Standing Orders were amended the following year to require candidates receiving 5 per cent or less of the vote on a ballot to drop off. All MPs, apart from cabinet ministers and party leaders, are automatically considered for the Speaker’s position unless they advise the clerk of the House of Commons by 6:00 pm on the evening before the vote that they do not want to run. Before the first ballot is held, candidates are permitted to make five-minute speeches to their colleagues to explain why they want to be Speaker. Successive ballots are held until one candidate receives a majority of the votes; as the voting goes on, MPs do not know the actual results of each ballot. They know only that candidates drop off when they do not receive enough support. Apart from the announcement of the winner, even the results of the final ballot are kept secret.36 In an era in which political observers lament the increasing power in the office of the prime minister, it is very important to note that the process for choosing a Speaker has been modified in a way that empowers the legislative rather than the executive branch. As explained earlier, members of Parliament are expected to vote with their parties on virtually every Commons vote.The process by which the House chooses a Speaker is one of the only occasions for MPs to vote according to their own individual preferences. The fact that the votes and ballot results are kept secret helps to protect MPs’ autonomy. That said, it is not unusual to see a member of the government assume the Speaker’s chair, as did Conservative MP Andrew Scheer in 2011, Liberal MP Geoff Regan in 2015, and Liberal MP Anthony Rota in 2019. Presumably, the government caucus used its strength in numbers to make this happen, but the government cannot and does not always act to ensure the election of one of its own. In 2006, Liberal MP Peter Milliken was re-elected as the Speaker of the House, despite the fact that the Conservatives then formed the government. The Conservatives were in a minority position at the time, so they did not have the numbers to elect a Conservative even if they voted as a bloc. Also, Milliken was a highly effective Speaker and an expert in parliamentary government and procedure; he had the ability to appeal to members of different parties. Another important addition to the Standing Orders came in 2004 when the House introduced the Conflict of Interest Code for members of the House of Commons. For the first time, Canadian MPs were subject to formal, written ethics rules respecting their behaviour as elected

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officials. The code includes rules prohibiting conflicts of interest and requires MPs to disclose information relating to their private interests. The ethics commissioner has the power to investigate complaints relating to alleged violations of the code.37 Proposed changes to Standing Orders must confront the highly partisan environment that dominates the House of Commons each day. Parties vote as blocs virtually all of the time, even on matters that seem routine and procedural, so changes proposed from the opposition benches are likely to be defeated, unless the government holds the minority of seats and the opposition parties work together. The partisan environment referred to above is a commonly cited problem in Canada’s House of Commons. On the one hand, partisanship and adversarialism are only natural in Westminster parliamentary systems, which are built on the assumption that there is a government on one side and an opposition on the other. The opposition’s job is to oppose the government, to hold the prime minister and cabinet to account, to identify errors and problems, and to offer an alternative to government in the event that one is needed. In this context, partisan conflict is unavoidable and perhaps even necessary. But conflict and warfare are two different things. It seems that parties unfortunately compete not to debate policies and ideas but instead to disable and destroy their opponents. For example, the Harper government’s controversial decision in 2011 to remove public subsidies for political parties indicated the desire to silence opponents by weakening their fiscal capacity to contest elections. In 2021, just before Parliament broke for summer, Prime Minister Trudeau described the House as a place of “obstructionism and toxicity,” which only added to speculation that an election was right around the corner.38 The attack ad phenomenon is a manifestation of the unapologetic partisanship that characterizes politics in Canada today. Attack ads have long been part of political campaigns in Canada and have been employed by all political parties in their attempts to turn voters against other parties. Attack ads rely on negative tones, images, and messages; they poison the political environment and offer little or nothing in the way of real information. Perhaps the most infamous attack ad in Canada’s history came from the Progressive Conservatives in 1993. Sometimes referred to as the “face ad,” the clip was focused on Liberal leader Jean Chrétien and his facial deformity that resulted from his experience with Bell’s palsy. The ad featured close-up pictures of Chrétien’s face and the voice-over questioned whether Chrétien was fit to be prime minister. Public disgust registered across the country; the PCs pulled the ad quickly. Though many political actors and observers have lamented the frequency and toxicity of attack ads, they persist. It is as though the objective of partisan gain justifies any and all means. It is difficult to know for certain whether things have gotten worse over the years or stayed roughly the same. Some say that Canadian politics has always been as partisan as it is now, while others argue that the tone taken recently is unprecedented, as are the omnibus budget bills that are now presented. It is tempting to harken back to a golden age of Canadian politics when debate was substantive and parties were committed to the public interest above all else, but it is not clear that this period ever existed.

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CANADA’S UPPER HOUSE The Senate in Canada comprises 105 members: Ontario and Quebec hold twenty-four seats each; Nova Scotia and New Brunswick hold ten seats each; Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Newfoundland, and Saskatchewan have six apiece; Prince Edward Island has four; and each territory has one senator. While the composition of the House of Commons is based on the principle of representation by population, the Senate’s composition is based on regional representation. The Senate’s main role is to scrutinize bills that come from the House before they become law. Bills can originate in the Senate, but most start in the House. Bills must pass in identical form in the House and the Senate before they become law. Senators in Canada are not elected; they are chosen by the prime minister and appointed formally by the governor general. Appointments last until age seventy-five. As mentioned earlier, the process for appointing senators changed in 2016, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau introduced the Independent Advisory Board for Senate appointments. Under this process, when Senate vacancies occur, the Advisory Board receives applications from individuals who are interested in being appointed to the Senate. To qualify, one must be at least thirty years old, be a citizen of Canada, and own at least $4,000 worth of property in the province of ­appointment. In addition to these constitutional eligibility requirements, applications are judged against the following criteria: non-partisanship, knowledge of the legislative process and the role of the Senate, personal qualities relating to ethics and integrity, and qualities related to the role of the Senate such as leadership or professional experience.39 The Advisory Board makes ­recommendations for Senate appointments to the prime minister; these are not binding, of course, and are not made public. The new approach to appointments has brought an end, for now at least, to the tradition of prime ministers appointing partisans to the Senate as a reward for their loyalty over the years. The fact that Senate appointments have been based on patronage, rather than merit or popular support, has always undermined the legitimacy of the institution in the eyes of the public. That senators are now appointed as independents rather than partisans has resulted in real changes to how the Senate operates. For example, though political parties are no longer present in the Senate as they were before, there are parliamentary groups including the Independent Senators Group, the Canadian Senators Group, and the Progressive Senators Group (Conservative senators continue to caucus with their House of Commons colleagues). These groups are necessary from an administrative perspective; without them, it would be practically impossible for senators to organize themselves, make administrative decisions, run committees, and, in general, fulfill the purposes of the institution. Groups with at least nine members are recognized as official caucuses and, on that basis, are entitled to representation on committees and financial support for research and staffing. In recent years, senators have been more frequent objects or “targets” of professional lobbying than they ever were before. This is not surprising given that, as independent legislators

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rather than members of partisan teams, senators might be more open to lobbyists’ persuasion. There has also been a significant increase in the frequency of Senate amendments to legislation from the House, which introduces an element of unpredictability to legislative timelines and, depending on the nature of the amendment, could lead to a meaningful change in the content of a proposed bill. Though the Senate is more active than it was before, however, it has still shown deference to the will of the elected House and has not been any more inclined to defeat legislation than it was before. The Advisory Board is not a constitutional entity and could be removed by a future prime minister. However, the longer the Board lasts, the more politically difficult it would be for a future prime minister to abandon the practice in favour of a return to patronage appointments. Time will tell whether the Senate will become even more empowered and less deferential to the elected House.

HOW POLARIZATION HAS MODIFIED THE WORKINGS OF THE US HOUSE AND SENATE The change in the regional bases of the parties have been felt inside Congress in terms of the way it does business since the 1980s. Many have described the increase in “party voting” within Congress and the decline of bipartisan efforts. Deering and Smith note that the era of “committee government” was especially pronounced in the House, with its 435 members fixed in 1929 and less but still present in the 100-member, more egalitarian Senate until the mid-1960s.40 The 117th Congress in 2021 had twenty standing committees and the Senate had seventeen. Deering and Smith have noted the existence of two types of congressional procedures, the “negative” and “positive,” to halt or facilitate legislation. Unfortunately, the negative has prevailed since the 1970s, with frequently only 5 per cent of introduced bills making it into law.41 In the House, the Speaker has the unique role of being both the main legislative tactician for the majority party and the House, but is also a key party fundraiser for the biennial elections. Regarding legislative procedure, he or she works with a close ally, the chair of the Rules Committee. Increasingly often since the 1970s and ’80s, due to both workload and foot-dragging by the minority party, the Rules Committee negotiates “special rules” with the committee of origination, regarding limited or no amendments on the floor.The use of restrictive rules to prohibit amendments has increased in order to “hold together compromises and protect members from political heat.”42 By the first 111th House session of 2009–10, 99 per cent of legislation had a rule attached to it restricting amendments in some fashion.43 Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi of California, first elected in 1987, became the first woman House minority whip in 2001 and minority leader in 2002. She was the first woman Speaker in the House’s history and thus the only one to be re-elected. Norman Ornstein referred to her Speakership in 2009–11 as “one of the most productive legislative sessions in history,” due

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to her getting the Affordable Care Act (ACA) through the House (https://pelosi.house.gov). Showing the effects of polarization in Congress, there were seven votes on the Affordable Care Act in 2009–10. One Republican, Joseph Cao of Louisiana, supported the first draft of the legislation but on the final bill’s vote in March 2010 no Republican House members or Senators supported it.44 In the Senate, the reconciliation procedure requiring only fifty votes was used. While the Democrats previously held a filibuster-proof majority of sixty in the Senate, they had not done so since the resignation of Senator Ted Kennedy (MA) in 2009. Tea-party activism in Massachusetts got Scott Brown nominated by the Republicans, and he won the special election in January 2010. Numerous Democrats in the House withheld support on the ACA over deficit concerns.45 Pelosi’s skills at crafting and holding majorities to pass legislation were used for the ACA and later President Biden’s signature domestic legislation, including the infrastructure law of 2021, and the Build Back Better and Inflation Reduction Acts of 2022. Pelosi’s significant tactical skills in coalition-building have been described by various elected and administration officials as an “iron fist in a velvet glove” and “smart power.” When the ACA was passed during the 111th Congress, Democrats had a majority of 255 seats to 179 Republican-held seats.This diminished to a 222–213 majority after President Biden’s election in 2020. As with President Obama before him, President Biden had to wrestle with both Democratic and Republican opposition to raising the deficit and cumulative debt. The ability to raise the debt ceiling has been a joint congressional-Treasury Department exercise since 1917.46 As noted by the Economist, the fact that Congress frames the debt ceiling based on its “power of the purse” gives it a unique role in economic policy.47 Raising the debt limit (i.e., borrowing by the Treasury) is crucial to convincing global investors that Treasury debt is risk-free. On September 21, 2021, Speaker Pelosi got all the House Democrats (220) to pass a shortterm spending bill to keep the government funded through December 2021 and put off raising the debt ceiling limit through the end of 2022. The Senate signed off the same day.48 In a strategic move, the Democratic leadership packaged the debt ceiling and budget negotiations in a failed attempt to pressure Republicans to support raising the debt ceiling. As the Republican Congress voted to put off the debt ceiling vote until 2021 in 2019, so did the Democratic Congress in September and October 2021. As noted by the Economist, Congresses under Republican presidents have raised the debt ceiling much more often (forty-nine times) than under Democratic ones (twenty-nine times) since 1960.49 The current debt ceiling of almost $31.4 trillion will be reached in early 2023.50 The ­combination of staying under the debt ceiling and passing annual appropriations bills are central to the budgetary process. If either of these does not happen in a timely fashion, the US government faces a shutdown of key agencies. Both parties have played on the connection between issues important to their bases and the power to shut the government down, present since the Budget Impoundment and Control Act of 1974. The government has been shut down twenty-one times between 1974 and 2018, including for the longest time in history in 2018–19 over disagreements between congressional Democrats and President Trump about border wall

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funding.51 In both 2021 and 2022, government shutdowns were averted, first by the short-term spending bill of September 2021 and then by the $1.7 trillion Omnibus Budget Act of December 23, 2022. The Omnibus Budget Act included many unrelated measures, including changes to the Electoral Count Act of 1887.These changes included the wording that the vice-president has only a “ministerial” role in counting electoral votes, ended the loophole allowing state legislatures to declare a “failed” election, and required expedited judicial review.52 Extensively documented by scholar Barbara Sinclair, omnibus legislation has been increasingly required since the 1970s and especially since the super-polarization under Speaker Newt Gingrich (1994–8). As Drew DeSilver has noted, Congress since the 1970s has only been able to pass its required appropriations legislation in a timely manner on four occasions since the budget process was given a stricter framework in the 1974 legislation.53 As DeSilver also noted, during each fiscal year between 2011 and 2018 nearly all of the required twelve appropriations bills “were combined into such after-deadline package deals.” Intransigence on budget votes by both Democrats and Republicans under the 1974 act’s timetable has not worked well for financial accountability and the ongoing function of “non-essential” department functions liable to shutdowns. Of the nine House Republicans voting for the December 2022 Omnibus Budget Bill, none were from the Freedom Caucus and Kevin McCarthy continued his Speakership campaign with a “hell no” response.54 Other important pieces of President Biden’s domestic legislation included the $1 billion Bipartisan Infrastructure Act passed in 2021 and the Build Back Better Act, passed with no Republican support by the House in November 19, 2021, containing the “wish list” of the Progressive Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus, among others. The infrastructure legislation was hailed as a long-overdue investment in the US’s physical infrastructure. The thirteen House and Senate Republicans who supported it were targeted by former president Trump.55 It is an interesting commentary when a bill supported by thirteen minority party members (including the Senate minority leader) gains the title “bipartisan.”The Build Back Better Act included many progressive social policy measures, including continuation of federal Medicaid funding under the “emergency” COVID-19 provisions, universal preschool, lower prescription drug costs, three months of paid family leave, and an increase in the child tax credit.56 Speaker Pelosi had gotten members of the House Progressive Caucus to support the infrastructure legislation in return for a promise that the Senate would vote on its desired Build Back Better provisions. However, Senator Joe Manchin indicated in December 2021 that he would not vote to increase the deficit and debt and thus support the expansive social legislation. Its paler substitute, the Inflation Reduction Act, including tax credits for green measures, a minimum corporate tax of 15 per cent on billion-dollar companies, and the ability of Medicare only to negotiate lower pharmaceutical prices, passed the House and Senate on party-line votes with Kamala Harris required to use one of her numerous tie-breaking votes.57 One important Senate rule concerns the filibuster, a measure used to deny “unanimous consent” to proceed with a vote on the particular measure. From 1837, when the first Whig filibuster took place against President Jackson’s ending of the National Bank Charter, through 1975,

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a sixty-six-vote supermajority was required to end the practice of unlimited “talking” of a measure to death. In 1975 the benchmark was lowered to sixty votes. The filibuster, or threat thereof, is another example of Deering and Smith’s “negative power,” in which a forty-one-member minority can prevent the chamber from moving ahead. In recent years, “silent” filibusters (i.e., filibuster threats) are found when the required forty-one votes cannot be found to shut off debate on a measure or support a procedural move. Filibuster threats were historically used against federal judicial confirmations, and Senatorial “holds” were often used against cabinet nominations or legislation. In 2013, Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid enraged Senate Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, by invoking the “nuclear option” to bring the required majority to vote for federal judicial (but not Supreme Court) nominations down to fifty-one votes. In 2017, McConnell returned the favour by including Supreme Court justices in the procedure to approve Trump nominee Neil Gorsuch. In April 2022, the nomination of the first Black woman on the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, had to be forced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee by a discharge petition since the committee was deadlocked along party lines.58

ZERO-SUM POLITICS: AN ATTACK ON PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY? Canada’s multi-party system makes it highly likely that minority parliaments will be the norm for the foreseeable future. In theory, this circumstance should empower the opposition parties and the legislative branch more broadly. The government does not have the numbers to pass bills on its own and must rely on some opposition support in order to move its agenda forward and hold the confidence of the House. Some expect minority parliament conditions to be more cooperative and collaborative, given the need for at least one opposition party to vote with the government. However, the reality is that minority parliaments tend to be even more toxic and hyper-partisan than majorities. Opposition parties are on edge, worried about when the next election will be called and whether they can afford a campaign from a financial perspective. The government is focused on public opinion poll data, with an intent to go to election when their popularity is high enough to win a majority. The parties do not tend to cooperate; they jostle and bribe. A win for “them” is a loss for “us,” so there is no such thing as mutual benefit or shared credit. This is the norm, at least. One notable exception was the passage of Bill C-4 to ban conversion therapy in 2021; the bill was expedited through the House of Commons and passed unanimously.59 But even this instance was more complicated that it might have seemed on the surface.The Conservative caucus had been deeply fractured on the subject and sixty-two of the 119 caucus members voted against a previous iteration of the bill. What looked like consensus and unity on Bill C-4 might have been more the result of pressure from the leader to pass the bill, even though, in public, it was proclaimed to be a free vote.

How Partisan Polarization Affects the US Congress and Canadian Parliament

Part of the problem is in the way that Canadian politicians interpret the confidence convention. We tend to treat everything as a confidence vote. A defeat of government legislation equates to the defeat of the government itself, which opposition parties will want to avoid if they don’t want an election. This undermines government accountability, particularly when governments also shut down debate on proposed legislation in order to get it through more quickly. During the COVID-19 period, Parliament met in a hybrid fashion but its role was subdued. It was difficult for the opposition to get traction because the public was not paying as much attention as would normally be the case. There is reason to be concerned that Parliament will continue to lose relevance over time, as citizens have grown accustomed to how active and decisive governments can be without going to Parliament for approval.

CONCLUSION The Founding Fathers of Canada and the United States left little guidance as to how legislatures should evolve. Neither country’s founders could envision today’s legislative rules. ­Congress can change its administrative rules across every legislative session if it chooses and often does if a large party majority takes control. The regional balance of the two parties has been swapped since the 1980s with the Republicans becoming the party of white s­ outherners and suburbanites (particularly men), although attracting some conservative Hispanic ­American support in 2020. In the “checked and balanced” framework of the US, Congress and the Senate have particular roles not shared by their Canadian counterparts, including debt ceiling, annual appropriations, and federal nominations. These elements make the processes more inherently politicized and difficult to resolve. The rise of inter- and intra-party polarization has made gaining the required majority support (and often super majority in the Senate) nearly impossible to achieve. In the US two-party system working across three evenly checked and balanced branches, polarization has been found inside the congressional party caucuses and across the two party caucuses. Some have argued that changes since the 1970s, including the 1974 Budget Act and changes adopted in the House to lessen the power of committee chairs, have led to unsavory consequences. These include the lack of agreement on appropriations bills, an uploading of power to both party leaderships, and the creation of anti-leadership sentiment among party caucuses. The observations of Poole and Rosenthal, and Hare and Poole, about the increasingly intransigent nature of Congress when cross-party contestation becomes fused in one general dimension, including traditional economic differences on federal power but also other issues such as race and morality-focused issues, have been borne out regarding party votes on

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important legislation across the recent decades. As Theriault showed, traditional adversarial House behaviour has now made its way to the Senate. While it was common wisdom prior to the November 2022 midterms that the Democrats would forfeit at least the t­wenty-six seats typically lost by the presidential party, this proved not to be the case. They lost seven seats, going down to a 213-seat minority while picking up one seat in the Senate. In the DW-Nominate framework, this is also somewhat unsurprising since many younger voters, especially women, turned out on the abortion issue as occasioned by the Dobbs decision of June 2022 overturning Roe v. Wade. While 32 per cent of voters, often Republicans, named the economy and inflation as their top issues, the next largest group, mostly Democrats, named abortion (27 per cent). Many also blamed former president Trump’s meddling in Republican primaries and ensuring mediocre candidates for the lack of Republican opportunities in November 2022. In the 118th Congress, a “first” is found in the Black Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), a member of the Progressive Caucus. Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, former assistant Speaker and another Progressive Caucus member, will become the minority whip and Rep. Pete Aguilar of California, a New Democrat Coalition member, will become the first ­Hispanic American in the number three slot, the chair of the Democratic Caucus. During the first week of January 2023, when the vote for Speaker was taking place, observers could be forgiven for harkening back to the dysfunction of January 6, 2021. While a seemingly more mainstream form of stopping congressional business was taking place in 2023, it underlined the continued effects of legislative polarization. Many members of the Freedom Caucus refused to support Kevin McCarthy for Speaker, arguing that he had worked “too closely” with the Democratic leadership in his previous posts. It took a twenty-first-century record-breaking fifteen votes to get him named Speaker by 218 members of his own party’s caucus on January 7, 2023. In the decade of 1849–59, leading up to the Civil War, even more ballots were required on three occasions, with a high of 133 in the 34th Congress of 1855.60 Canada has expressly avoided the American model. Over time, though, various changes have given each legislature attributes of the other’s political system. The House of Commons has become more “executive-focused,” and party polarization has increased in the United States, evident at the level of voters and legislatures. In a report published in the 1950s, the American Political Science Association supported the notion of an American version of responsible government. Political scientist Austin Ranney, in a notable dissent to the report, accurately foreshadowed the problems evident today, where a system of separation of powers between the executive and the legislative branches cannot work in a responsible party system. Perhaps the system in Canada, becoming more presidential, may prove more effective – but become less democratic. Both systems cry out for reform, and numerous committee reports and authorities advocate changes. Most of these have little hope of seeing the light of day.

How Partisan Polarization Affects the US Congress and Canadian Parliament

STUDY QUESTIONS 1. What are two unchanging aspects of the relationship of parties and legislatures since the founding of each in both countries? 2. Name two important changes in the above and what the impacts have been. 3. Why is the power given to US state legislatures to redraw US House districts after every decennial census based on Article 1, Section 4 of the US Constitution and the 1929 Permanent Reapportionment Act important? 4. Why are the differences in budget procedures between the legislatures and executive in the two countries important?

NOTES 1 “‘Gerrymandering on Steroids’: How Republicans Stacked the Nation’s Statehouses,” WBUR, July 19, 2016, https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2016/07/19/gerrymandering-republicans-redmap. 2 Elizabeth Kolbert, “Drawing the Line,” New Yorker, June 27, 2016, https://www.newyorker.com /magazine/2016/06/27/ratfcked-the-influence-of-redistricting. 3 National Constitution Center, “The Day the Constitution Was Ratified,” June 21, 2021, https://­ constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-day-the-constitution-was-ratified. 4 US Department of Commerce, Census Bureau, “Congressional Apportionment: 2010 Census Briefs,” November 2011, 5, https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/apportionment-data-text.html. 5 Adam Nagourney and Monica Davey, “GOP Expands a Base from South to Midwest,” New York Times, November 3, 2010, https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/us/politics/04region.html. 6 Lawrence Martin, “The Conservative Dilemma: The Liberals Are Still the Natural Governing Party,” Globe and Mail, July 28, 2021, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-conservative -dilemma-the-liberals-are-still-the-natural-governing/. 7 The Canadian House of Commons increases in size as the population grows. 8 For more information on the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords, see Jennifer Smith, “The Unsolvable Constitutional Crisis,” in New Trends in Canadian Federalism, ed. François Rocher and Miriam Smith (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1995), 67–90. 9 Government of Canada, “Economic and Fiscal Snapshot 2020,” August 24, 2020, https://www .canada.ca/content/dam/fin/publications/efs-peb/homepage/EFS2020-eng.pdf. 10 Marieke Walsh, “Poll Shows Rising Approval of Federal Government’s Covid-19 Vaccine Rollout,” Globe and Mail, June 7, 2021, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-poll-shows-rising -approval-of-federal-governments-vaccine-rollout/.

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Melissa Haussman and Lori Turnbull 11 Stephanie Levitz, “Internal Audit of Scheer’s Spending Reveals Party Money Spent on Schools, Clothes, Minivan,” Global News, April 2, 2020, https://globalnews.ca/news/6769964/andrew -scheer-internal-audit-conservatives/. 12 John Ibbitson, “The Polarizing Pierre Poilievre: Would He Work to Unite Canada as a Leader, or Continue the Growing Divide?,” Globe and Mail, September 9, 2022, https://www .theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-the-polarizing-pierre-poilievre-can-he-inspire-as-a-leader -or-merely/. 13 Peter Aucoin, Mark Jarvis, and Lori Turnbull, Democratizing the Constitution; Reforming Responsible Government (Toronto: Emond Montgomery Press, 2011). 14 Joanne Freeman, quoted in Maggie Astor, “The West Is Burning. Covid Is Surging. U.S. Politics Are Stagnant,” New York Times, July 22, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/22/us/politics /climate-crisis-covid.html. 15 E.J. Dionne, Why Americans Hate Politics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991). 16 Sean Illing, “Author Explains Why Democrats Will Struggle to Win the House until 2030,” Vox, June 3, 2017, https://www.vox.com/conversations/2016/10/5/13097066/gerrymandering-redistricting -republican-party-david-daley-karl-rove-barack-obama. 17 Michael Li and Laura Royden, “Does the Anti-Gerrymandering Campaign Threaten Minority Voting Rights?,” Brennan Center for Justice, October 10, 2017, https://www.brennancenter.org /our-work/analysis-opinion/does-anti-gerrymandering-campaign-threaten-minority-voting-rights. 18 Kolbert, “Drawing the Line.” 19 Kolbert, “Drawing the Line.” 20 Christopher Hare and Keith T. Poole, “The Polarization of Contemporary American Politics,” Polity 46, no. 3 (July 2014): 411–29. 21 Hare and Poole, “The Polarization of Contemporary American Politics,” 414. 22 Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, “Party Polarization: 1879–2010,” Voteview.com (2011): 17; Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, “The Polarization of the Congressional Parties,”Voteview.com (updated January 30, 2016), https://legacy.voteview.com/political_polarization_2015.htm. 23 Drew DeSilver, “The Polarized Congress of Today Has Its Roots in the 1970s,” Pew Research Center, June 12, 2014, https://www.bunkhistory.org/resources/the-polarized -congress-of-today-has-its-roots-in-the-1970s. 24 Sean Theriault, “Party Polarization in the US Congress: Member Replacement and Adaptation,” Party Politics 12, no. 4 (2006): 483. Similar findings were reported by Poole and Rosenthal, “The Polarization of the Congressional Parties,” and Hare and Poole, “The Polarization of Contemporary American Politics.” 25 Sean Theriault and D. Rohde, “The Gingrich Senators and Party Polarization in the US Senate,” Journal of Politics 73, no. 4 (2011): 1018–19. 26 Sarah Eckman, CRS Report R40683, January 23, 2019, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product /pdf/R/R40683/27. 27 https://newdemocratcoalition.house.gov/. 28 Andrew J. Clarke, “Party Sub-Brands and American Party Factions,” American Journal of Political Science 64, no. 3 (July 2020): 452–70. 29 Clarke, “Party Sub-Brands,” 459. 30 https://www.republicanmainstreet.org/. 31 Clarke, “Party Sub-Brands,” 459. 32 Hare and Poole, “The Polarization of Contemporary American Politics.”

How Partisan Polarization Affects the US Congress and Canadian Parliament 33 Olivia Beavers, “Inside the House Freedom Caucus’ Identity Crisis,” Politico, April 29, 2022, https:// www.politico.com/news/2022/04/29/house-republican-freedom-caucus-challenges-00023071. 34 The Speaker is charged with presiding over the affairs of the legislature, including the daily agenda, debates, and votes. In Canada, the Speaker, though an elected member and normally a member of a party caucus, is expected to perform his or her role with neutrality, impartiality, and objectivity, and is expected not to show favouritism toward any particular political party. However, in the United States, Speakers are usually selected from the majority party and act to advance the interests of that party. In other words, the Speaker is more of a political actor in the United States than is his or her equivalent in Canada. For a longer discussion of the role of the Speaker, please see “Role of the Speaker” at http://www.parl.gc.ca/About/House/Speaker /role-e.html. 35 Audrey O’Brien, “Election of a Speaker by Secret Ballot: A Milestone for the House of Commons,” Canadian Parliamentary Review 29, no. 3 (2006): 27. 36 Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, It’s Even Worse than It Was (New York: Basic Books, 2016), 28. 37 Parliament of Canada, “Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons,” accessed March 21, 2013, http://www.parl.gc.ca/About/House/StandingOrders/appa1-e.htm. 38 Stephanie Taylor, “Parliament Is a Place of Obstructionism and Toxicity, Trudeau Says, Adding to Speculation of Fall Election,” National Post, June 22, 2021, https://nationalpost.com/news/politics /toxicity-and-obstructionism-trudeau-tells-canadians-parliament-is-dysfunctional. 39 Government of Canada, “Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments,” August 12, 2021, https://www.canada.ca/en/campaign/independent-advisory-board-for-senate-appointments.html. 40 Christopher Deering and Steven Smith, Committees in Congress, 3rd ed. (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1997), 7–10, 30. 41 “Statistics and Historical Comparison,” https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics. 42 Deering and Smith, Committees in Congress, 149. 43 Deering and Smith, Committees in Congress, 151. 44 https://ballotpedia.org/Obamacare_overview. 45 Jennifer Haberkorn, “Just 4 Anti-ACA House Dems Left,” Politico, August 22, 2014, https://www .politico.com/story/2014/08/2014-elections-anti-obamacare-democrats-110237. 46 Steven T. Dennis, “What’s the Debt Ceiling, and Will the US Raise It Again?,” Washington Post, ­December 5, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/whats-the-debt-ceiling-and-will -the-us-raise-it-again/2022/12/02/f6bd2d76-7282-11ed-867c-8ec695e4afcd_story.html. 47 “Why America’s Debt Ceiling Matters,” Economist, July 25, 2021, https://www.economist.com /united-states/2021/07/25/why-americas-debt-ceiling-matters. 48 Emily Cochrane, “Republicans Block Government Funding, Refusing to Lift Debt Limit, September 21, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/27/us/politics/republicans-block -government-funding-bill-debt-limit.html. 49 “Why America’s Debt Ceiling Matters.” 50 Dennis, “What’s the Debt Ceiling?” 51 Dylan Matthews, “All 20 Previous Government Shutdowns, Explained,” Vox, January 25, 2019, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/1/19/16905584/government-shutdown -history-clinton-obama-explained. 52 Alex Tausanovitch, “Electoral Count Act Reform Is Now Within Reach,” Center for American Progress, September 27, 2022, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/electoral-count-act-reform -is-now-within-reach/; Barbara Sprunt, “Congress Passes a Major Spending Deal to Keep the

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Melissa Haussman and Lori Turnbull Government Funded,” NPR, December 23, 2022, https://www.npr.org/2022/12/22/1144981639 /senate-spending-bill-omnibus-vote. 53 Barbara Sinclair, Unorthodox Lawmaking: New Legislative Processes in the US Congress (Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2016); Drew DeSilver, “Congress Has Long Struggled to Pass Spending Bills on Time,” Pew Research Center, January 16, 2018, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/16 /congress-has-long-struggled-to-pass-spending-bills-on-time/. 54 Szu Yu Chen and Nick Mourtoupalas, “Here’s Which House Members Voted for or against the $1.7 Trillion Spending Bill,” Washington Post, December 23, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com /politics/interactive/2022/heres-which-house-members-voted-or-against-17-trillion-spending-bill/. 55 Jacob Pramuk, “Biden Signs $1 Trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill into Law, Unlocking Funds for Transportation, Broadband, Utilities,” CNBC, November 15, 2021, https://www.cnbc.com/2021 /11/15/biden-signing-1-trillion-bipartisan-infrastructure-bill-into-law.html; Alex Rogers and Manu Raju, “Republicans Who Voted for Biden’s Infrastructure Bill Come under Fire from Trump,” CNN, November 9, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/09/politics/trump-reaction-republicans -voting-infrastrcutre/index.html. 56 Erum Salam, “What’s Actually in Biden’s Build Back Better Bill? And How Would It Affect You?,” Guardian, October 18, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/18/what-is -build-back-better-crash-course. 57 Kelly Anne Smith, “The Inflation Reduction Act Is Now Law: What It Means For You,” Forbes, August 23, 2022, https://www.forbes.com/advisor/personal-finance/inflation-reduction-act/. 58 Libby Cathey, “Senate Forces Jackson Nomination Out of Committee with Bipartisan Vote,” ABC News, April 4, 2022, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/republicans-romney-murkowski-announce -support-jackson-supreme-court/story?id=83863821. 59 Stephanie Taylor, “House Passes Bill Banning Conversion Therapy after Tory MP Fast-Tracks Vote,” National Post, December 1, 2021, https://globalnews.ca/news/8417651/conversion-therapy-ban -bill-house-of-commons/. 60 Caroline Linton, “House Speaker Finally Elected on 15th Ballot: The Most Since Before Civil War,” CBS, January 7, 2023, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kevin-mccarthy-house-speaker-multiple -ballots-history/.

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NINE

Courts and the Law Chios Carmody

INTRODUCTION The role of the courts is to administer justice. This is understood to be the role of courts in Canada and the United States today. At the same time, courts in both countries administer justice according to law, the body of which is sourced primarily in the English common law. While the legal system of both countries accommodates other legal traditions – notably those of the civil law and Indigenous law – it is the common law which prevails as a matter of federal law in both and will be the focus of this contribution. The common law is distinguished chiefly by the way it is reasoned by analogy and operates as a process of persuasion. Its ability to do justice is derived from its skill in persuading those to whom it is addressed. The common law in both Canada and the US is very close, if not the same, and does not explain the divergence in attitudes to the political system observed recently in each country.1 The real source of current discontent – particularly in the US – appears to lie elsewhere. In this contribution I will suggest that dissatisfaction with courts and the law is an outgrowth of waning confidence in government and, by extension, the political system. To the extent that courts and the law are assimilated with politics they depart from the common law’s tradition of objectivity. Consequently, the law’s ability to persuade and do justice is diminished. There are myriad issues that this mix of politics, courts, and the law engages. As part of a volume dedicated to differences that matter between Canada and the US, I examine two such differences: first, the distinct nature of the Canadian and American common law, and second, the concept of judicial independence.

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In response to the central question – do differences matter? – my short answer is: it depends. In the case of the common law the relative unity of the Canadian common law versus the fragmentation of the American common law is probably insignificant, but jealous attention to jurisdiction can give courts and the law a more overtly political aspect. Simply put, by allowing some claims and inhibiting others, jurisdiction can make the law appear highly political. In the case of judicial independence, debate about the independence of judges in Canada is chiefly noted by its absence. Canada’s existing system of judicial appointments has done a reasonable job of insulating its judiciary from partisan politics. The unfolding situation in the US elicits greater concern.There, a tradition of judicial independence is matched by a tradition of judicial accountability. Politics permeates US judicial appointments and, increasingly it seems, judicial ­decision-making, particularly at the appellate level.This aligns the law more closely with politics and is cause for reflection. To understand these issues this contribution examines the nature of the common law, its reception in North America, the impact of the concept of jurisdiction on its subsequent evolution, and the ongoing need for judicial independence so that courts and the common law in both countries remain persuasive and just.

THE NATURE OF THE COMMON LAW The English common law originated in the Norman Conquest of England.The law was said to be “common” in recognition of its plenary application.2 The English common law had a number of distinctive features. First, it was originally determined by juries composed of twelve local individuals who decided both the facts and the law. Judges simply supervised the proceedings. Second, the common law was not written in the form of a code but instead depended on case law. Its main advantage was its ability to reflect the life of the community. Third, common law proceedings took place in the form of adversarial contests in open court. Adversarialism placed a premium on argumentation and advocacy. Fourth, the emphasis in common law adjudication was on “right reason” or, in other words, the reasoning of courts as opposed to that stemming from purely personal opinion. In this process of reasoning courts did not command each other. As a result, commentators often stress the way the common law operated as a process of persuasion.3 Over centuries the original common law became complex to the point that juries were often unable to administer it without special instructions – or charges – from judges. For this reason judges began deciding cases on their own and eventually eclipsed juries as the prime source of common law decision-making.4 Central to the judiciary’s importance was its ability to remain apart from raw politics. It has been said, for instance, that “[l]egislation is often the product of compromise or conflict between various political factions, each faction pushing its own agenda.” By contrast, the

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judicial arena should not “provide simply another forum for the same kind of contests.” Instead, common law judges should “maintain the appearance and reality of impartiality.”5 Perhaps the greatest distinction between the common law and other legal systems today is that the law continues to be uncodified, meaning that it is not reduced to a single authoritative statement. Instead, the law develops from principles, with specifics being elaborated upon in individual cases. This individualization allows the common law to attain great precision. It also permits a degree of flexibility and open-endedness so that the law can continue to evolve as the facts and sense of justice change. The idea of judicial precedent – i.e., the practice of deciding cases based on the results of similar cases in the past – continues to be important but common law judges are free to depart from it where prior authority is unpersuasive.6

RECEPTION OF THE ENGLISH COMMON LAW IN NORTH AMERICA In time the great mass of the English common law made it necessary to develop a method of transplanting it to Britain’s overseas territories. This transplantation was accomplished by means of the doctrine of reception. Reception in the case of settled colonies called for wholesale transfer of English law, whereas in the case of conquered colonies some accommodation was made with the pre-existing legal system.7 In North America the reception of English common law occurred chiefly by means of statute. First, consider reception in the case of Canada. In Ontario the Property and Civil Rights Act provides: “Rule of decision. 1. In all matters of controversy relative to property and civil rights, resort shall be had to the laws of England as they stood on the 15th day of October, 1792.…”8 So far as statutes were concerned, the date of reception was important inasmuch as English statutes continued to apply in the colony if in force on that date.Thereafter, repeal of a statute in England had no effect in Canada. In the case of the common law, however, the date of reception was unimportant since the common law was considered to be a unified body of law and the existence of an ultimate court of appeal, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, preserved its uniformity throughout the British Empire.9 Patrick Glenn has noted how reception in Canada “was an informal and non-instrumental process.”10 Canada was a country which came into being in the aftermath of the US Civil War and, mindful of that experience, Canada’s constitutional formulation of “peace, order, and good government” contrasted sharply with the US formula of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The implicit emphasis in the new country was on continuity and stability. As a result Canadians were mostly content to replicate English common law precedent and otherwise hewed closely to it during the nineteenth century. Little or no distinction was observed between Canadian common law from province to province and no separate Canadian

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common law tradition emerged.11 The common law remained unified and closely aligned with the common law found in other British dominions and colonies. For the same reason, Canadian judges “kept open their contacts with the rest of the world, developed local law, and maintained a low profile.”12 An additional motivation for openness in the developing Canadian legal system was the continuing application of the civil law in Quebec. Over time the civil law there had evolved to be distinct from traditional French customary law and included elements of common law.13 The completion of the Civil Code of Quebec in 1866 was an important achievement despite the fact that Canada’s federal law remained common law in nature. This inclusion underlined an ethic of toleration and pluralism that was to be the basis of an official Canadian policy of bijuralism.14 In the US, by comparison, the doctrine of reception took a different course. Reception in the US was also regulated mainly by statute, but the specific components of English law that were received varied considerably from state to state. The American method of reception gave rise to significant state-by-state differences in the common law and eventually to a separate federal common law.15 Some states even prohibited the citation of post-1776 English decisions, thereby introducing a formal separation in English and American versions of the common law.16 The emergence of state-specific common law in the US was driven largely by political factors. The thirteen colonies that seceded from Britain in 1776 regarded themselves as independent and co-equal. This gave rise to a solicitous and exclusivist attitude to jurisdiction. On the one hand, US courts were quick to assert their authority to declare what the law was within their domain. On the other, courts were incentivized to fashion a new common law to deal with specific problems that might have no ready solution in English common law.17 A further factor distinguishing US versions of the common law was the influence of civilian (i.e., civil-law-oriented) thinking. Educated Americans in the early United States often looked to developments in their sister republic, France, including in the law.18 Leading ­nineteenth-century commentators of US law like James Kent and Joseph Story were influenced by the civilian legal tradition, which sought to reduce the law to codes.19 Codification was thought to be more organized and rational since codes systematized the law by providing blackletter definitions of key terms, aspired to be comprehensive, and promoted harmonious interpretation. At the federal level civilian influence culminated in the promulgation of several specific codes such as the US Criminal Code, the US Bankruptcy Code (originally 1800), the US Internal Revenue Code (originally 1874), and at the state level, the Uniform Commercial Code (1952). In addition, in 1926 the US federal government began issuing the US Code, a systematic compilation by subject matter of the general and permanent laws of the United States. The outcome of these developments in Canada and the US was two very different national approaches to the common law.

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In Canada a “unified” common law is identified at the level of general rules or principles, with cites from a number of provinces and Commonwealth jurisdictions.There is less tendency to identify specific jurisdictions as following particular rules. In addition, reliance continues on a diversity of sources both from within Canada and beyond. The result, generally speaking, is a unified and “open” view of the common law.20 In the US a very different reception has taken place. First, as will be discussed, close attention to jurisdiction means that federal and state courts are limited with respect to the disputes that come before them. In particular, since the all-powerful US federal courts are restricted to hearing federal matters or those involving diversity (i.e., multistate) jurisdiction, there is little or no guidance in state law from above concerning many developments. State courts are free to decide as they do, apart from the need to adhere to the US Constitution and federal law. The result is a degree of pluralism and particularism in the US common law from one state to another. Second, the growth of in-state citation patterns reveals a degree of legal inbreeding.21 This accentuates the tendency to identify particular US jurisdictions with distinct rules, thereby promoting fragmentation, although this trend is leavened somewhat by judicial references to authoritative compilations such as the Restatement, model laws, and codes.22 Third, codification reinforces the tendency for the law to be self-referential since what matters is the code as opposed to outside sources. The ultimate result is a somewhat more patchy and “closed” view of the common law.23 Nevertheless, it is difficult to say exactly whether this difference in “open” versus “closed” versions of the common law matters much. The American common law remains vibrant and alive and on many – if not most – points of law continues to be close to its “open” Canadian counterpart. An alternative explanation might be that the “closure” referred to in US common law is more apparent than real, and that like many common law systems, the US common law is more “open” than supposed through its frequent reference to common sources.24 Differences in the common law between both countries may be more attributable to the concept of jurisdiction, a subject to which I next turn.

THE CONCEPT OF JURISDICTION In law “jurisdiction” refers to the extent of “a court’s power to decide a case or issue a decree.”25 In Canada plenary jurisdiction is allocated to superior courts in each province, which are maintained by Canada’s federal government. These courts deal with more serious matters and hear appeals from lower courts. Provinces also maintain lower-level provincial courts dealing with lesser matters. In addition, the Federal Court of Canada has jurisdiction over subjects specifically assigned to it by statute and which are of a federal nature. Finally, the Supreme Court of Canada is the ultimate court of appeal.26

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In line with adherence to English precedent, Canadian courts adopted the traditional English conception of jurisdiction as potentially limitless.27 The broad authority of Canadian courts in matters of jurisdiction is facilitated by the fact that adjudicative jurisdiction is not expressly mentioned in the Canadian Constitution. Instead, Section 129 of the Constitution Act of 1867 simply states that “all Courts of Civil … Jurisdiction … existing therein at the Union, shall continue … as if the Union had not been made.” Importantly, commentators have suggested that the phrase “shall continue” implies that the courts in Canada precede the Constitution and possess inherent authority to regulate their own jurisdiction.28 Beyond this, the Constitution does not mention the judiciary, and the exact parameters of adjudicative jurisdiction have had to be worked out through case law.29 The practical effect of this lack of definition is that courts in Canada are external to, and largely independent of, the political structure. One commentator has observed that “to Canadians, civil dispute resolution is not a form of governance” but rather “a pre-requisite to governance.”30 As such, “Canadian jurists instinctively pursue a broadly based analysis [in matters of jurisdiction] that is more concerned with convenient forum than with jurisdiction on its own. The underlying question tends to be not whether any given court can assume jurisdiction at all (and thereby engage in state intervention in private affairs), but whether it is appropriate for a particular court to be the one whose jurisdiction is invoked in light of the availability of other fora.”31 In the US, by comparison, the federal court system is expressly provided for in the US Constitution. Federal courts can only make decisions on the basis of jurisdiction authorized by the Constitution, federal statutes, or that is brought up through “diversity” (i.e., multistate) jurisdiction. This ties the court system much more closely to the political structure. The express basis of jurisdiction in US federal law means that the typical US court is scrupulously attentive to jurisdictional questions. At the margins, there is the possibility that such fastidious attention can exclude certain claims and be regarded as politically motivated. A good example of this phenomenon is supplied in recent decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada in Nevsun Resources Ltd. v. Araya32 in 2020 and the US Supreme Court in Nestlé USA v. Doe33 in 2021. In Nevsun the dispute involved allegations of human rights abuses at a Canadian-owned mine in Eritrea. Workers at the mine commenced legal proceedings in British Columbia and sought damages for breaches of customary international law prohibitions against forced labour, slavery, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and crimes against humanity. Customary international law is understood to be made up of consistent state practice backed by a belief that the practice is obligatory as a matter of law. At the outset Nevsun brought a motion to strike the pleadings, taking the position that the claims based on international law should be struck because they had no reasonable prospect of success.The preliminary nature of the motion was important since it allowed the question to be contested without a complete factual foundation. The plaintiffs only had to meet a lower “plain and obvious” threshold in order to succeed and proceed with action.

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A bare majority (5–4) of the Supreme Court of Canada held that “customary international law is automatically adopted into domestic law without any need for legislative action. The fact that customary international law is part of our common law means that it must be treated with the same respect as any other law.”34 The majority went on to add that “[a] compelling argument can therefore be made that since customary international law is part of Canadian common law, a breach by a Canadian company can theoretically be directly remedied. Since the workers’ claims are based on norms that already form part of our common law, it is not ‘plain and obvious’ that our domestic common law cannot recognize a direct remedy for their breach.”35 The facts in Nestlé USA were similar, but the plaintiffs faced a very different adoption of custom in US law.There, the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) gives federal courts jurisdiction over any civil action brought by foreign nationals for torts in violation of international law.36 It is something of an open question how far this statutory jurisdiction extends. When the ATCA was originally legislated in 1789 the body of international law was limited and dealt primarily with regulating diplomatic relations between states and outlawing certain notorious crimes such as piracy and later slavery. Today customary international law is understood to include a much wider array of human rights protections. The ATCA was largely forgotten until the 1980s when US federal courts began to address claims involving alleged breaches of international human rights.37 In 2004 the US Supreme Court’s decision in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain permitted certain claims under the law so long as they involve violations of international norms “with … definite content and acceptance among civilized nations.”38 Later in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum the US Supreme Court identified a general presumption against extraterritorial application of American law. In that case, minimal contact with the US in the form of a corporate identity was held not to be enough to overcome the presumption.39 In Nestlé USA v. Doe underage workers on cocoa plantations in the Ivory Coast sued two US conglomerates which they asserted had “aided and abetted” in practices of child slavery. A majority of the Court held that general activity such as corporate decision-making is insufficient to establish application of the ATCA. Instead, suits under the ATCA should only be allowed in instances that would have been understood as proper bases of jurisdiction at the time the law was first legislated (i.e., 1789) such as violations of safe conduct, diplomatic protection, or piracy. The majority also noted that because jurisdiction under the ATCA is ultimately regulated by legislation, “courts must refrain from creating a cause of action whenever there is even a single sound reason to defer to Congress.”40 The majority added that over two centuries Congress had established only one such cause of action, this being for victims of torture.41 Because torture is not exactly analogous with child slavery, in Nestlé USA the Court was not prepared to recognize the cause of action or allow the claim. The different outcomes in Nevsun versus Nestlé USA are striking. Key distinctions in them highlight how Canadian courts are prepared to adopt a more liberal, freeform approach to jurisdiction than their US counterparts based on the original English idea that the sovereign

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possesses unlimited jurisdiction. A majority of the Nevsun Court was apparently untroubled by the fact that customary international law is vague and imprecise as a source of law, that corporate liability for human rights violations under customary international law has not been conclusively established, and that it is for the legislature – not the courts – to change the doctrine of adoption so as to convert prohibitive rules of international law into free-standing torts. On all of these points the US Supreme Court in Nestlé USA hesitated. The results in Nevsun and Nestlé USA demonstrate how a constrained attitude to jurisdiction works to limit the law’s application and, depending on perspective taken, can be regarded as leaving open the possibility of residual injustice. In this way the courts can be criticized as inherently political.

JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE The differences in Nevsun and Nestlé USA are noteworthy but need to be appreciated in broad context. Jurisdiction over universal crimes like inhuman treatment or slavery is exceptional and is not something that touches upon the concerns of everyday litigants. Most individuals will continue to reposit trust in the legal systems they encounter to render justice. This attitude appears to prevail among Canadians and Americans alike.42 However, where divergent reactions have been noted in Canada and the US in recent decades is with respect to judicial independence.43 An idea underpinning the common law in both countries is that judicial decision-making should be free from direct political influence.The divergence in reactions requires consideration of the way in which judges are appointed and hold office. In Canada the Office of the Federal Commissioner for Judicial Affairs acts on behalf of the Ministry of Justice in matters of judicial appointments. The commissioner initially screens applications and nominations for vacancies in the superior courts on the basis of statutory criteria.44 A list of the eligible candidates is then conveyed for further screening to judicial advisory committees in each province and territory.The committees include representatives from a wide range of organizations and walks of life. The committee ultimately decides which candidates to recommend to the federal minister of justice, who then makes his or her final recommendations to cabinet. Importantly, the minister is not required to base the final recommendation on the committee’s recommendation, and indeed, in the recent past the federal government has asserted that judicial appointments continue to be a matter of executive discretion.45 However, once appointed, federal judges serve for as long as they choose or are able to before reaching the mandatory retirement age of seventy-five. There are no guarantees that the Canadian system is immune from political interference or appoints the most qualified people to hold judicial office. Still, the process has worked reasonably well and probably depends on the broader context – on the length of term of office, security of tenure, remuneration of judges, disqualification, and institutional guarantees of judicial

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independence, all of which contribute to the way the judicial function is perceived in society.46 A reflection of this is the fact that the politics of judicial appointments in Canada appear not to count for very much when it comes to actual judicial decision-making.47 In addition, there are a number of subtle factors which, taken together, may generate very significant differences in judicial decision-making once judges are in office in Canada from that which might be expected in the US. One is the presence of a “reasonable limits” clause in Section 1 of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms which, unlike the absolute protection of rights enunciated in the US Bill of Rights, has caused Canadian courts in constitutional cases to focus on not whether a right exists but what justifiable limits on that right might be. The locus of attention, then, is less about rights and more about the obligations attendant upon an exercise of rights, an innately limitative approach. Another factor is the reality that Canadian courts have been more deferential to legislatures in striking down legislation by issuing temporary suspensive declarations that leave room for legislatures to act.48 When legislatures choose not to, the outcome can be portrayed as the result of a principled “conversation” among branches of government rather than an instance of heavyhanded intervention by an omnipotent judiciary.49 Third, Canada’s Supreme Court has been respectful of precedent. Canadian courts can only depart from precedent on the basis of “evolving legislative and social facts” that add up to profound “social change,” not merely “an alternate perspective on existing evidence,”50 a conclusion that bars the re-interpretative strategies popularly employed in the US to overturn settled decisions like Roe v.Wade. The net result of these factors is a more settled jurisprudence that avoids extremes, one which continues to garner fairly broad public support for the court system in Canada. One summary has observed, “The few results that are available are mixed, but generally indicate an absence of strongly negative views [about the judiciary in Canada]. They do not support the perception advanced in opinion-based discussions that there is significant and increasing public dissatisfaction with the judiciary. Results tend to suggest that the public thinks judges are generally fair, but rather out of touch with the everyday lives of those who come before them.”51 Where criticism has been expressed most vocally is with respect to the lack of diversity in Canadian judicial appointments.52 That said, Canada has made efforts to reinforce the judiciary internationally, particularly through the Commonwealth.53 In the US, the federal court system is expressly provided for in the US Constitution.54 The federal court system has three main levels: district courts (the trial court), circuit courts, and the US Supreme Court. Federal court judges are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The names of potential nominees are often recommended by senators or sometimes by congressional representatives who are of the sitting president’s political party. Unlike in Canada, however, there is no standard set of selection criteria. Instead, the Constitution only states that federal judges are appointed for life.55

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The political aspect of the process is unmistakable. It has been observed, for instance, that “in recent decades an informal qualification requirement for judicial candidates has been that their selection be acceptable to the President’s political base and to interest groups whose support is important to the President.”56 In addition, it was noted in 2004 that “well over half of all [US] federal judges were politically active before their appointments.”57 A further indication of the US judiciary’s political character is the fact that a majority of US state courts chose some, most, or all of their judges using some form of contestable popular election.58 A large minority of states also hold elections for judges who serve on their courts of last resort.59 The intrusion of politics in US judicial appointments and decision-making is particularly visible in recent decades in appointments to, and the composition of, the US Supreme Court. There, the Court has divided into clear ideologic blocs that coincide with party lines. This has been described as a product of “partisan sorting” and growing ideologic consciousness among selectors of judges and judges themselves.60 Especially important is the fact that “conservative elites have consciously sought to overcome what they see as a liberal bias in the legal system, including the courts. That effort is reflected in the rise of the Federalist Society and the related establishment of a conservative legal network.”61 Partisanship has become most problematic in cases decided along party affiliations when candidates for political office promise to appoint judges who will vote in a certain way on specific “wedge” issues, and when judges become proxies for the politicians who appoint them.62 Judicial independence and the law’s ability to persuade are then compromised. There is no immediate solution to the existing situation in the US, although one option might be to insulate judicial appointments from the purview of political approval in some degree. US political history is not without resources to address the matter. One possibility could be a federal “Missouri Plan,” whereby a nonpartisan judicial commission reviews applications, interviews candidates, and selects a judicial slate that politicians are then obliged to choose from.63 This would be similar to the current Canadian approach, with the important difference that selection from the slate would be mandatory whereas in Canada it remains discretionary.

CONCLUSION The common law is often described as a process of persuasion. In this chapter I have suggested that the key to the common law in North America remaining persuasive is its ability to be reasoned objectively and apart from politics. Reception of the English common law was different in Canada and the US, and this difference has led to bodies of law today that are similar but also distinct. In Canada the English common law was received and largely continued whereas in the US the political experiment led to rupture and reconstitution of the common law along republican lines. What resulted in Canada is a common law that remains relatively unified and open to external sources whereas in

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the US the common law was influenced by civilian thinking and is somewhat more fragmented and closed. The essential difference might be summed up as the product of different historical paths: one evolutionary, the other revolutionary. Still, it is difficult to make much of this distinction. On many points the common law in Canada and the US remains similar, if not essentially the same. Instead, where the differences appear to be most visible is in the courts. In Canada courts are understood to predate the Constitution and therefore considered to be distanced from day-to-day politics. Judges exercise their powers in the name of the sovereign, whose jurisdiction is potentially limitless. Questions of jurisdiction are therefore settled flexibly as a matter of the availability of fora to take jurisdiction rather than the power to do so. By comparison, in the US the revolutionary reconstitution of the polity meant that power could be allocated and, where necessary, asserted. This meant that the federal courts, in particular, were given a limited jurisdiction whose allocation could be regarded as political. Courts also assumed the task of judicial review with the ability to strike down legislation – a power that they have not been hesitant about using – that readily identifies them with politics. In recent decades this political role of the US judiciary has been accentuated by courts’ interpretation of constitutional rights, especially the freedom of speech, as absolute, and by originalist thinking, which regards constitutional interpretation as an exercise in discerning the intent of the authors, the original meaning of the text, or some combination of these.64 Absolutism and originalism are doctrines which have found little favour in Canadian judicial thinking which, in the main, continues to regard constitutional interpretation as subject to a “living tree” doctrine.65 The upshot of these differences is that whereas in Canada judicial appointments remain relatively obscure and for the most part uncontroversial, in the US they have come to be regarded as visible political prizes. By this means the law comes close to being assimilated with politics, and for those on the losing sides of cases, can be regarded as unpersuasive and unjust.66

STUDY QUESTIONS 1. What are four characteristics of the common law? How does the common law differ from civil law? 2. What are three differences between the common law in Canada and the common law in the United States? 3. What is the concept of judicial independence? Why is it important? 4. How are judges selected in Canada? In the United States? What is one problem with selection of judges in the United States? What is a solution?

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Chios Carmody NOTES 1 See Andrew Parkin, “Political Polarization in Canada and the US,” Environics Institute, March 17, 2020. The situations in Canada and the US are markedly different. The US is highly polarized. In Canada, in contrast, left-right polarization is much less pronounced and has generally declined, rather than increased, over the past decade. 2 This was as opposed to the more specialized jurisdiction of feudal and ecclesiastic courts in AngloSaxon Britain prior to that time. See Gerald J. Postema, “Philosophy of the Common Law,” in The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law, ed. Jules L. Coleman, Kenneth Einar Himma, and Scott J. Shapiro (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 588 at 590. 3 “Absent a hierarchy of courts [in the original common law], common law judges were engaged in a common, shared exercise. They did not command one another, presently or in the future. Their decisions could thus not bind … Cases had whatever authority they had because they were part of a body of common experience. They could not be rules to be followed and were hence examples of the type of reasoning which had thus far prevailed. As such they did not preclude further argument and reasoning, but invited it.” H. Patrick Glenn, “The Common Law in Canada,” Canadian Bar ­Review 74, no. 2 (1995): 261 at 263. 4 Frederick G. Kempin, Historical Introduction to Anglo-American Law, 3rd ed. (St. Paul, MN: West Group, 1990), 68–73. 5 Beverley McLachlin, “The Role of Judges in Modern Society,” address delivered at 4th Worldwide Common Law Judiciary Conference, May 5, 2001. 6 “[T]he rule on which [a common law court] rested its decision, are not regarded as final. It is always open to judges in future to test any precedent court’s formulation of the rule of its decision.” Postema, “Philosophy of the Common Law,” 597. 7 See Peter Hogg, Constitutional Law of Canada, 5th ed. (Toronto: Thomson Reuters Canada, 2021), chap. 2. Exceptions to accommodation were made where pre-existing law was unconstitutional or considered “barbaric.” In addition, Indigenous customary law was recognized as surviving in both Canada and the US. See Connolly v.Woolrich, [1867] Q.J. No. 1 (marriage between a man employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company and an Indigenous woman conducted in accordance with Indigenous traditions; marriage was held valid for inheritance purposes); Williams v. Lee, 358 US 217 (1959) (state courts do not have jurisdiction over a civil suit brought against a Native American by a settler where the cause of action arises on a reservation, thereby confirming that Native Americans on reservations have the power to make their own laws and be ruled by them). 8 R.S.O. 1990, c. P.29, s. 1. 9 See Hogg, Constitutional Law of Canada, 2–4. The jurisdiction of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to hear appeals from Canada was abolished in 1949 by means of an amendment to the ­Supreme Court Act. 10 Glenn, “The Common Law in Canada,” 267. 11 Glenn (“The Common Law in Canada,” 274) observes, “In common law matters, the decisions of the [Supreme Court of Canada] represent the common law everywhere withing Canada because it is accepted as the same common law … There is no particular common law of each province.” 12 Glenn, “The Common Law in Canada,” 268. 13 Sylvio Normand, “An Introduction to Quebec Civil Law,” in Elements of Quebec Civil Law: A Comparison With the Common Law of Canada, ed. Aline Grenon and Louise Bélanger-Hardy (Toronto: Thomson Carswell, 2008), 25. Normand also notes that following the Quebec Act of 1774 the law

Courts and the Law applicable in Quebec “acquired a mixed complexion: although the law was derived from French tradition it was subject to the influence of English law. Its mixed nature resulted in particular from the introduction of English rules of evidence in commercial matters and from the practice of trial by jury in some civil proceedings … the most significant change was the introduction of English rules of procedure by the judiciary. This step firmly placed civil trials within the framework of the English legal tradition” (30). 14 Bijuralism reflects a commitment to common law and civil law in the federal context, more particularly when it comes to legislative drafting and interpretation. In recent decades this commitment has been found wanting in certain respects and has been reinforced in the federal Policy on Legislative Bijuralism (1995), the Cabinet Directive on Law-Making (1999), and the three federal Harmonization Acts (2001, 2004, and 2011) that harmonize federal law with ­Quebec civil law. 15 Formally speaking, federal common law is not available in diversity (i.e., multistate) cases. In Erie Railroad v.Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64 (1938), the US Supreme Court held that federal courts exercising diversity jurisdiction must use the same substantive laws as the courts of the states in which they are located. Despite Erie, several areas of federal common law power exist in two basic categories: (1) areas where Congress has given the courts power to develop substantive law such as admiralty law, antitrust, bankruptcy law, interstate commerce, and civil rights, and (2) areas where a federal rule of decision is necessary to protect uniquely federal interests. See Martha Field, “Sources of Law: The Scope of Federal Common Law,” Harvard Law Review 99 (1986): 883. 16 Glenn, “The Common Law in Canada,” n23. 17 Glenn, “The Common Law in Canada,” n23. 18 Glenn, “The Common Law in Canada,” 278 (referring to nineteenth-century American case law which “drank deeply from the civil law fountain”). See generally David McCullough, The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011). 19 Glenn, “The Common Law in Canada,” n23. 20 Glenn, “The Common Law in Canada,” 283–6. 21 Glenn, “The Common Law in Canada,” 288 (noting that in the US out-of-state citation patterns by courts have become progressively more self-referential over time: “out-of-state citations represented 57 per cent of all citations in the period 1870–1900; 43 per cent in the period 1905–1935; and only 33 per cent in the period 1940–1970”). 22 The Restatements of the Law are a set of treatises on legal subjects compiled since 1923 by the American Law Institute (ALI) that seek to inform judges and lawyers about general principles of common law. Their aim is to distill the existing common law from many US jurisdictions into a series of principles or rules and occasionally to indicate where, in considered opinion, the law should develop toward. The Restatements are not binding, but persuasive. The US Uniform Law Commission (ULC) took on the task of drafting a comprehensive code to provide guidelines for all commercial transactions in 1940 and completed its work on the Uniform Commercial Code in 1951. The Code was adopted as a matter of state law in every state over the next twenty years. 23 Glenn, “The Common Law in Canada,” 291 (referring to the “vivisection of the common law practiced internally in the United States”). 24 David Seipp, “Our Law, Their Law, History, and the Citation of Foreign Law,” Boston University Law Review 86, no. 5 (2006): 1417 (examining the history of citations to foreign law and cases by the US Supreme Court).

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Chios Carmody 25 S.v. “Jurisdiction,” Brian Garner, ed., Black’s Law Dictionary, 7th ed. (St. Paul, MN: West Group, 1999), 855. 26 In practice, however, the Supreme Court of Canada renders only a few dozen decisions each year. A recent statistical summary indicates that from 2010 to 2020 the Supreme Court of Canada received an average of 535 leave applications annually and accepted about 10 per cent of these. See Supreme Court of Canada Statistical Summary 2010 to 2020 available at https://www.scc-csc.ca /case-dossier/stat/sum-som-2020-eng.aspx. 27 Russell (John) & Co. Ltd. v. Cayzer, Irvine & Co. Ltd, [1916] 2 A.C. 298 per Lord Haldane: “The root principle of the English law about jurisdiction is that the judges stand in place of the Sovereign in whose name they administer justice.” Halsbury’s Laws of England: Courts and Tribunals, 5th ed., vol. 24 (2010): para. 623: “If no restriction or limit is imposed the jurisdiction is said to be unlimited.” 28 Glenn, “The Common Law in Canada,” 272 (“the common law and its judges precede legislative authority and retain ultimate authority over its division in the confederation or federation”). 29 In Canadian law the assumption of jurisdiction must conform to the Constitution. In addition, there are two further thresholds for the assumption of jurisdiction, one positive, the other negative. The positive threshold requires that there be a “real and substantial connection” between the cause of action and the Canadian jurisdiction. The negative threshold requires that the jurisdiction in question not be forum non conveniens (i.e., a common law doctrine whereby a court acknowledges that another forum or court is more appropriate). This second threshold functions as a test of the appropriateness of one jurisdiction over other possible alternative jurisdictions. See Morguard Investments Ltd. v. De Savoye [1990], 3 S.C.R. 1077. 30 Janet Walker, “Canada’s Position on a Multilateral Judgments Convention,” in Trilateral Perspectives on International Legal Issues: Conflict and Coherence, ed. Chi Carmody et al. (Baltimore: American Society of International Law, 2003), 127 at 133 [emphasis in original]. 31 Walker, “Canada’s Position,” 133. 32 2020 SCC 5. 33 593 U.S. __; 141 S. Ct. 1931 (2021). 34 2020 SCC 5 at para. 95. 35 2020 SCC 5 at para. 127. 36 28 U.S.C. s. 1350. 37 David Christensen, “Corporate Liability for Overseas Human Rights Abuses: The Alien Tort Statute after Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain,” Washington and Lee Law Review 62 (2005): 1219 at 1225 (noting that “[f]or nearly 200 years after its passage in 1789, the [ATCA] essentially lay dormant as only two suits successfully obtained jurisdiction … one in 1795 and the other in 1961”). 38 542 U.S. 692 at 732 (2004). 39 569 U.S. 108 (2013). 40 593 U.S. __; 141 S. Ct. 1931 at 1937 (2021). 41 593 U.S. __; 141 S. Ct. 1931 at 1937. 42 See World Justice Project, Global Insights on Access to Justice 29 (2019): 108 (country entries for Canada and US reporting similar experiences and outcomes for litigants in terms of fairness of process [68 per cent v. 68 per cent], length of time to resolve problem [10.6 months v. 8 months], and financial difficulty experienced in solving the problem [11 per cent v. 13 per cent]). 43 Richard Cahn, “Restoring Trust in the Judiciary: A Critical, High-Priority Project for the Biden Administration,” Touro Law Review 36, no. 4 (2021): 1115 (noting that “By 2015, the public’s perception of the judiciary, particularly the [US] Supreme Court, had become sharply negative”). See Louise

Courts and the Law Arbour, “Speech: Building an Independent Judiciary: Process and Perceptions,” International Crisis Group, September 2, 2013 (“[in Canada] appointments have been made on a non-political basis – at least in the sense of political partisanship – and despite periodic calls for an improved process, there is no suggestion that this process has produced an unacceptable body of judges … [this is to be contrasted with] the American system for appointing the nine members of the US Supreme Court. On paper it is much more rigorous, requiring a public, intense scrutiny of candidates by Congress through the confirmation process. In practice, though, it has led to the perception of a selection process that is highly politicised, and which has seen the appointment of judges with actual, or at least ideological, political affiliations”). 44 These are Judges Act 1985, Section 3, and Supreme Court Act 1985, Section 5. 45 In the Nadon case of October 2013 the Supreme Court of Canada challenged the government’s insistence on appointing Marc Nadon, a judge who was deemed “ineligible” to sit on the Supreme Court. However, when the Canadian government finally appointed another judge to the position, it ignored the existing processes (including a public hearing and a selection committee). At the time the minister of justice stated when challenged: “these appointments have always been a matter for the executive and continue to be.” Sean Fine, “Unvetted Quebec Judge Clément Gascon Takes ­Supreme Court Seat,” Globe and Mail, October 5, 2014. 46 Arbour, “Speech.” 47 Adam Goldenberg notes that “[e]ven the most ideologic of recent Canadian administrations did not succeed in recasting the shape of the bench. For instance, when the Supreme Court of C ­ anada unanimously struck down the criminal prohibition on physician-assisted suicide in 2015 in Carter v. Canada (Attorney General), seven of the nine justices who voted against the government had been appointed by Conservative prime ministers, six of them by Harper himself. Even in closer cases, like 2015’s R. v. Nur – in which the Court, over the Conservative government’s objections, set constitutional limits on mandatory minimum sentences – as many of Harper’s appointees rejected his government’s arguments as accepted them.” Adam Goldenberg, “Why Canada’s Supreme Court Appointments Are Nothing like America’s Circus,” Maclean’s, July 16, 2018. See also Benjamin Alarie and Andrew Green, “Policy Preference Change and Appointments to the Supreme Court of Canada,” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 47, no. 1 (2009): 1 (suggesting that the policy preferences of judges are not strongly associated with the political party of the appointing prime minister and that their policy preferences shift over time in seemingly unpredictable ways). 48 A court can strike down legislation or a legislative provision but suspend the effect of that declaration until the legislature has had an opportunity to fill the void. This approach is often appropriate where the striking down of a provision poses a potential danger to the public or otherwise threatens the rule of law. It can also be appropriate in cases of under-inclusive legislation (i.e., the law does not cover all constitutionally entitled beneficiaries) as opposed to overbreadth (i.e., the law covers all constitutionally entitled beneficiaries as well as others who are not entitled). See Schachter v. Canada, [1992] 2 S.C.R. 679 at 715. 49 Christine Bateup, “Expanding the Conversation: American and Canadian Experiences of Constitutional Dialogue in Comparative Perspective,” Temple International and Comparative Law Journal 21 (Spring 2007): 1. 50 See R. v. Comeau, 2018 SCC 15 at para. 34 where the Court stated that “[f]or a binding precedent from a higher court to be cast aside on the basis of new evidence, the new evidence must ‘fundamentally shif[t]’ how jurists understand the legal question at issue. It is not enough to find that an

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Chios Carmody alternate perspective on existing evidence might change how jurists would answer the same legal question.” 51 Mary Stratton and Diana Lowe, “Public Confidence and the Civil Justice System: What Do We Know about the Issues?,” prepared for the Justice Policy Advisor Subcommittee on Public Confidence, Canadian Forum on Civil Justice (unpublished manuscript, 2006), 5. 52 Sean Fine, “Federal Judiciary Nears Gender Parity, Data Show,” Globe and Mail, November 11, 2019. 53 At the level of the Commonwealth, the adoption of judicial service commissions has been recommended under the Latimer House Guidelines since 1998. The Guidelines were annexed to the Commonwealth Principles on the Accountability of and the Relationship between the Three Branches of Government (also known as the Latimer House Principles) adopted at the 2003 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. Paragraph II.1 of the Guidelines states that “[w]here no independent system already exists, appointments should be made by a judicial services commission (established by the Constitution or by statute) or by an appropriate officer of state acting on the recommendation of such a commission.” In 2015, 81 per cent of Commonwealth jurisdictions had a judicial selection committee or similar body with some responsibility for the selection of superior court judges. See The Appointment, Tenure and Removal of Judges under Commonwealth Principles: A Compendium and Analysis of Best Practice (London: British Institute of International and Comparative Law, 2015). 54 Section 1, Article 3 refers to the judicial power of the US in the federal courts system, mandates a supreme court, allows inferior federal courts, requires good behaviour tenure for federal judges, and prohibits decreasing the salaries of federal judges. 55 Denis Rutkus has observed that “[t]here are almost no formal restrictions on the potential pool of candidates the President may consider for nomination to circuit or district court judgeships. Neither the Constitution nor any federal statute specifies professional, age, or citizenship requirements for one to be a circuit or district court judge.” Denis Rutkus, The Appointment Process for U.S. Circuit and District Court Nominations: An Overview (Congressional Research Service Report R43762, June 17, 2016). Rutkus also observes, however, that “[i]t is a well-established practice, however, that candidates for nomination to circuit and district court judgeships are rigorously evaluated for their degree of professional qualification at successive points in the selection process. Expectations that circuit and district court nominees meet a high standard of professional qualification have particularly been fostered by the long-standing role of a committee of the American Bar Association … in evaluating and rating a President’s judicial candidates” (8). 56 Rutkus, The Appointment Process. 57 Robert Carp et al., Judicial Process in America, 6th ed. (Washington, DC: Sage, 2004), 122–3. 58 Larry Berkson et al., “Judicial Selection in the United States: A Special Report,” Judicature 64, no. 4 (October 1980): 176. 59 Berkson and others observe that the option of judicial elections emerged in the nineteenth century when “judges were almost invariably selected by political machines and controlled by them. Judges were often perceived as corrupt and incompetent. The notion of a judiciary uncontrolled by special interests had simply not been realized. It was in this context that the concept of nonpartisan elections began to emerge.” Berkson et al., “Judicial Selection in the United States,” 176. 60 See Neal Devins and Lawrence Baum, “How Party Polarization Turned the Supreme Court into a Partisan Court,” Supreme Court Law Review 2016 (2017): 301. 61 Devins and Baum, “How Party Polarization Turned,” 305. 62 Goldenberg, “Why Canada’s Supreme Court Appointments Are Nothing like America’s Circus.”

Courts and the Law 63 The Missouri Plan is a method for selecting judges. It originated in Missouri in 1940 and has been adopted by many US states. Under the plan, a non-partisan commission reviews candidates for a judicial vacancy and sends to the governor a list of candidates considered best qualified. The governor then has sixty days to select a candidate from the list. If the governor does not make a selection within sixty days, the commission makes the selection. See Stephen Ware, “The Missouri Plan in National Perspective,” Missouri Law Review 74, no. 3 (2009): 751. 64 William Baude, “Essay: Is Originalism Our Law?,” Columbia Law Review 115 (2015): 2349. 65 The living tree doctrine is a doctrine of Canadian constitutional law which maintains that a constitution is organic and should be read in a broad and progressive manner in order to adapt it to changing times. For discussion see Vicki Jackson, “Constitutions as ‘Living Trees’: Comparative Constitutional Law and Intepretative Metaphors,” Fordham Law Review 75 (2006–7): 921. 66 For instance, the Texas Heartbeat Act, State Bill 8, which went into effect in September 2021, has elicited controversy as an attempt to roll back constitutional protections originally identified by the US Supreme Court in Roe v.Wade. The law allows any person to sue an individual who performs or induces an abortion, or aids and abets one, once cardiac activity in an embryo can be detected. In “Why Canada’s Supreme Court Appointments Are Nothing like America’s Circus,” Adam Goldenberg observes, “No mainstream political movement in Canada has ever made it a priority to overturn a particular Supreme Court judgment by altering the ideological composition of the judiciary. In the United States, both Republicans and Democrats have been publicly committed to that objective, at different times and with respect to different decisions, for nearly 200 years – and both remain so today. This is why, for Americans, the close nexus between partisan politics and the judicial branch has become routine.”

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Data Sources for Future Research: Governance and Governing Mechanisms Barbara Boyle Torrey edited and revised by Joshua Baker in consultation with authors

Considerable data exist in Canada and the United States on the topics in Part Two. Some public and private sources of data are briefly mentioned below as illustrations.

POLITICS AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS • World Values Survey (WVS; www.worldvaluessurvey.org). World Value Surveys have been conducted in multiple waves: 1981, 1990, 1995, 1999, 2005, 2010, and 2017–22 in many countries. Questions focus on a number of values such as social values, happiness, selfexpression, religion, etc. The data are available electronically and in CD-ROMs as well as in many books and articles. The most recent World Values Survey Wave 7 was conducted between 2017 and 2022, with data collection that officially closed on December 31, 2021. Some surveys were delayed due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and were finally completed in 2022. Comparative data sources on politics and institutions are scattered in both public and private organizations. A few of the centers that collect data on politics and elections are listed below. • Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (http://www. oecd.org /governance/). The OECD has a Directorate for Public Governance and Territorial Development that has data and studies on a number of topics, including regionalism, fiscal

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equity, regulatory policy, and general government accounts for both Canada and the United States. Elections Canada (www.elections.ca). This voter information service provides detailed information on past elections by electoral districts, provinces, and MPs. It also tracks the redistribution of federal electoral districts. US Office of Federal Register, US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA; www. archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college). This site provides detailed historical election results similar to the Elections Canada site above. Canadian Election Study (CES)-Surveys (http://www.ces-eec.org/). This study is financed by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Elections Canada and the Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP) are partners with the Universities of Montreal, New Brunswick, McGill, and Toronto. Post-election surveys were done in 2015, 2019, and 2021. CES is a rich source of data on Canadians, their behaviours, and attitudes, and it surveys preferences on critical political issues. Such issues include trade with the United States, social spending, political actors, such as parties, party leaders, the government, and a variety of social concerns. The American National Election Studies (ANES; www.umich.edu/nes). ANES is a collaboration between Stanford University and the University of Michigan and is funded by the US National Science Foundation. It has downloadable files from 1948 to the present. Recent publications include the 2020 Exploratory Testing Survey, which covered topics such as voting behaviour, candidate traits, and many topical issues, including #MeToo, immigration, and impeachment. Additionally, the 2022 Pilot Study is currently available to download online. They provide many pre-packaged tables and graphs in their Guide to Public Opinion and Electoral Behavior. Some data are restricted because of confidentiality, and applications must be made to use them.

Additional sources for further research:

Think Tanks • • • • • •

Bipartisan Policy Institute (https://bipartisanpolicy.org/policy-area/governance/) CATO Institute (https://www.cato.org/) Fraser Institute (https://www.fraserinstitute.org/) Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP; https://irpp.org/). Samara Centre for Democracy (https://www.samaracanada.com/research) The Council of State Government (CSG; https://www.csg.org/)

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Journals • Canadian Parliamentary Review (http://www.revparlcan.ca/) • Canadian Study of Parliament Group | Groupe canadien d’étude des parlements (https:// cspg-gcep.ca/) • Presidential Studies Quarterly – Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/17415705)

PART THREE Economic Systems, Taxation, Safety Nets, and Democracy

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The Complex World of Budgetary Policy: Made Even More Complex by COVID-19 Munir A. Sheikh

1. INTRODUCTION All modern economies take for granted that there is a role for governments in improving the well-being of their citizens. There is no better example of such a role than governments of all stripes taking steps to deal with COVID-19, and its impacts, since the World Health Organization’s declaration of the pandemic in March 2020. There are differences, however, across countries on three aspects of government intervention: first, how large a role is appropriate for governments; second, what balance should the government achieve in choosing among potentially competing objectives such as economic growth, public health, other social objectives, and environmental outcomes; and third, which instrument of public policy should be used in achieving the targeted objectives. Again, the COVID-19 shock provides an excellent example of differences across countries on each of these counts. The third of these potential differences across countries – instruments of policy – is particularly relevant. They include financial instruments such as taxation and spending and non-­ financial instruments such as legislation and regulation. While in some cases these instruments may not be substitutes, in other cases they are. For example, one may be able to achieve an environmental objective through regulating an industry or through the imposition of a carbon tax. In the context of the COVID-19 shock, a country with a largely private health care system would first need to increase public spending considerably more than a country that has a publicly funded health care system, to have a comparable level of intervention dealing with the pandemic. Therefore, comparing one, or a subset, of instruments of policy across countries does not allow us, in general, to draw strong conclusions regarding the efficacy of that instrument in

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achieving public policy goals. If we just compared the level of public spending across countries, we may reach erroneous conclusions. The objective of this chapter is therefore modest: to provide information comparing Canada with the United States (US) in budgetary policy, without concluding in general regarding their effectiveness, unless some of the policies allow us to do that.

2. DEFINING BUDGETARY POLICY This chapter uses the term “budgetary policy.” Since this terminology is not often used, I need to explain what it means and why it is being focused upon. Budgetary policy is broader than “fiscal policy,” a term often used and easily recognizable. Fiscal policy is the use of a government’s spending and tax authority to stabilize the economy during episodes of the business cycle. These episodes may include both economic downturns and upswings. However, tax and spending instruments may be set at levels to achieve longer-term objectives as well, independent of a desire for short-term economic stabilization. These longerterm trends, going beyond stabilization objectives, are also important aspects of budgetary policy. The variable that is taken to have the most important impact in stabilizing the economy is the budget deficit, the gap between the level of spending and tax revenues. Canada-US budget deficit comparisons during periods of business cycles are discussed in Section 4 of this chapter. The level of spending and its distribution across various functions of government, the level of taxation and its distribution across various tax instruments, and the level and the build-up of public debt over time have long-term consequences for a country. These are discussed in Section 5. Section 6 discusses retirement benefits. As may be clear by now, the set of budgetary policy instruments for fiscal stabilization and longer-term impacts is the same, and the complex question of their transition from a short-term focus to achieving longer-term policy objectives is discussed in Section 7. Section 8 on COVID-19 deals with both issues of fiscal stabilization and longer-term budgetary objectives. As the section will make clear, the transition from the short-term to the long-term in the COVID-19 context becomes even more challenging and deserves particular attention. Another topic that deserves attention in this context is the interaction of fiscal-­ budgetary and monetary policies that could be avoided in the pre-COVID-19 period because of the independence of monetary policy actions, an objective that became a challenge in the COVID-19 situation. Section 9 provides some concluding remarks. However, before we turn to any of these issues, we deal with challenges related to the comparability of cross-country data in Section 3.

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3. ISSUES IN THE COMPARABILITY OF CROSS-COUNTRY DATA Conclusions comparing two countries, such as Canada and the US, can only be drawn if the data we use for this purpose are comparable. However, a range of data produced by the two countries, using their methodologies and definitions, are not always appropriate for comparison. Fortunately, some international organizations try to make important data more comparable, though not always the same, to the extent that some valid conclusions can be drawn from them. David Perry1 has provided a very useful analysis of these data comparison issues between Canada and the US. This section draws heavily on his work. The first challenge arises from the fact that Canada and the US each have multiple levels of government that include central, regional, and local levels as well as the social security system. The division of powers in the two countries across these levels of government is different. Hence comparing a public policy at a particular level of government across the two countries would leave an erroneous perception of the size of government activity in the two countries. For example, unemployment insurance is a central government responsibility in Canada and a state responsibility in the US. On the other hand, health protection is mostly a central government function in the US while it is largely provincial in Canada. The second challenge has to do with the fact that government policy response is related to whether there is a need for a government to respond and, if yes, how great that need is. For example, given its superpower position, defence is a priority for the US. One cannot compare defence spending in the two countries to determine whether a country is doing a good job at achieving its objectives. Further, the fact that US defence spending is expected to be so much larger than Canada’s needs to be considered in any analysis of the appropriate size of government. The third challenge is related to whether a particular function is performed in-house within the government, or is outsourced to an outside public agency. If performed in-house, the money received by a government department for this purpose would be recorded as its revenue and its delivery of that function as an expenditure. If outsourced, only the amount of the net subsidy to this agency may be recorded as spending. Given the substantial extent to which these activities are structured differently in the two countries, the revenue and expenditure numbers are, therefore, not strictly comparable. The fourth challenge is the role played by the government to deliver services in relation to the reliance in the other country on the private sector.The best example of that is the provision of health care, which is mostly public in Canada and largely private in the US. A further complication in this regard is the distinction between “public funding” versus “public provisioning” of health care. According to the OECD data, Canadian public funding at 70 per cent of total health care spending exceeds that of the US by about 20 percentage points.2

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Fifth, the provision of retirement benefits in the two countries can have a sizeable impact on the relative roles of different levels of government. For example, the provision of benefits by the Canada and Quebec Pension Plans is much smaller than that provided by the US social security system relating to retirement. Looking at the size of just this narrow focus, one could erroneously conclude that the US government puts more emphasis on public pensions because Canada funds a large part of such benefits from general revenues.There is thus a need for a fuller government-wide analysis of retirement benefits.3 The sixth challenge relates to a different view on spending by the current generation compared to passing the burden on to future generations through financing with debt. No analysis of budgetary policy would be complete without a focus on public debt. Given these difficulties, this chapter attempts to do the following. It uses data produced by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) at the general government level, where possible, and sometimes uses country sources when such data are not available. Data are provided as proportions, either of gross domestic products or aggregate variables, to avoid challenges related to different currencies and different country sizes.

4. FISCAL POLICY COMPARISONS Fiscal stabilization may occur through automatic stabilizers: this happens, for example, when a weakness in economic activity reduces tax revenue or increases expenditures such as on employment benefits, thereby limiting the decline in economic activity. Or governments may use discretionary action to try to offset developments in the market level of economic activity. An example is a government using an increased level of spending on building infrastructure. A useful concept in this regard is the structural budget balance, which strips out the impact of automatic stabilizers from the budget balance. Stabilization can, and should, occur on both sides of a business cycle.When the private sector exhibits economic weakness, taxes may go down, spending may rise, and public sector borrowing may therefore increase. On the reverse, when the private market begins to close the gap between potential and actual output, the application of these tools should be reversed. The failure to use fiscal policy symmetrically in the two directions will lead to longer-term consequences. The most common situation is where fiscal stabilization occurs in periods of economic weakness but is not reversed during better economic times. This phenomenon may be captured by examining the stock of public debt: this is normally done by examining it in relation to some notion of income or output, most commonly the gross domestic product (GDP). Longer-term issues related to budgetary policy are the subject of discussion in the next section. So how do Canada and the US compare on fiscal stabilization? Figure 10.1 compares the performance of the Canadian and US economies at the aggregate level by looking at changes in constant dollar GDP during the last pre-COVID-19 recession

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Figure 10.1.  Canada–US growth performance 2008–15 (percentage point change in GDP) Source: International Monetary Fund, 2021, World Economic Outlook Database, June. URL: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2021/April/weo-report?c=156,111, &s=NGDP_R,NGDP_RPCH,NGAP_NPGDP,GGR_NGDP,GGX,GGX_NGDP,GGXCNL,GGXCNL _NGDP,GGSB,GGSB_NPGDP,GGXWDN_NGDP,GGXWDG_NGDP,&sy=2001&ey=2026&ssm =0&scsm=1&scc=0&ssd=1&ssc=0&sic=0&sort=country&ds=.&br=1

that started in 2008. Chart 1 shows the US entered an economic downturn in 2008, earlier than Canada, where it started in 2009. Recovery began in 2010 in both countries. It is useful to look at the output gap. The data plotted in figure 10.2 are changes in the gap from the 2008 base. Recovery was significantly weaker in the US in the earlier years but caught up to Canada’s by 2015. In response to these developments, both countries undertook fiscal action as shown in figures 10.3 and 10.4. Figure 10.3 shows that US revenue reduction was much larger than that of Canada in the period following the downturn but reversed course in 2012 to be close to Canada’s outcome by 2015. Figure 10.4 shows US expenditure increase was also much larger than Canada’s following the onset of economic weakness but was reversed at a stronger pace than Canada’s as economic recovery took hold. Next, three key stabilization indicators, the budget deficit (figure 10.5), the structural budget deficit (figure 10.6), and the primary budget deficit (figure 10.7), are examined.As mentioned above, the structural deficit refers to the deficit adjusted for the impact of automatic stabilizers.The primary budget deficit adjusts the deficit by removing from it the impact of interest payments on the public debt since it is an endogenous outcome of other policies and not in direct control of the government.The two alternative measures give a better picture of the discretionary nature of fiscal policy. Figure 10.5 provides information on the budget deficit. Since it is the change from one year to the next that affects demand in the economy, data for 2007 have been added as a reference point given that the period of economic weakness started in 2008 (figure 10.1).

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Figure 10.2.  Closing of the output gap 2009–15 (percentage point change) Source: International Monetary Fund, 2021, World Economic Outlook Database, June. URL: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2021/April/weo-report?c =156,111,&s=NGDP_R,NGDP_RPCH,NGAP_NPGDP,GGR_NGDP,GGX,GGX_NGDP,GGXCNL, GGXCNL_NGDP,GGSB,GGSB_NPGDP,GGXWDN_NGDP,GGXWDG_NGDP,&sy=2001&ey=2026&ssm =0&scsm=1&scc=0&ssd=1&ssc=0&sic=0&sort=country&ds=.&br=1

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Figure 10.3.  Canada–US general government revenues 2008–15 (percentage point change in shares of GDP) Source: International Monetary Fund, 2021, World Economic Outlook Database, June. URL: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2021/April/weo-report?c=156, 111,&s=NGDP_R,NGDP_RPCH,NGAP_NPGDP,GGR_NGDP,GGX,GGX_NGDP,GGXCNL, GGXCNL_NGDP,GGSB,GGSB_NPGDP,GGXWDN_NGDP,GGXWDG_NGDP,&sy=2001&ey =2026&ssm=0&scsm=1&scc=0&ssd=1&ssc=0&sic=0&sort=country&ds=.&br=1

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Figure 10.4.  Canada–US general government expenditure 2008–15 (percentage point change in shares of GDP) Source: International Monetary Fund, 2021, World Economic Outlook Database, June. URL: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2021/April/weo-report?c=156, 111,&s=NGDP_R,NGDP_RPCH,NGAP_NPGDP,GGR_NGDP,GGX,GGX_NGDP,GGXCNL,GGXCNL _NGDP,GGSB,GGSB_NPGDP,GGXWDN_NGDP,GGXWDG_NGDP,&sy=2001&ey=2026&ssm =0&scsm=1&scc=0&ssd=1&ssc=0&sic=0&sort=country&ds=.&br=1

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Figure 10.5.  Canada–US comparison of budget deficits 2007–15 (percentage of GDP) Source: International Monetary Fund, 2021, World Economic Outlook Database, June. URL: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2021/April/weo-report?c=156,111, &s=NGDP_R,NGDP_RPCH,NGAP_NPGDP,GGR_NGDP,GGX,GGX_NGDP,GGXCNL,GGXCNL_NGDP, GGSB,GGSB_NPGDP,GGXWDN_NGDP,GGXWDG_NGDP,&sy=2001&ey=2026&ssm=0&scsm =1&scc=0&ssd=1&ssc=0&sic=0&sort=country&ds=.&br=1

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The US pursued a much more vigorous stabilization policy over the 2008–9 period of the recession, presumably to counter a larger output gap resulting from the economic downturn than Canada’s (figure 10.2). In 2009, its deficit to GDP ratio topped 13 per cent before trending down to 11 per cent in 2010. The changes in US budget deficits in relation to 2007 are much larger than Canada’s over this period. It is also useful to keep in perspective that the US had a budget deficit even in 2007, before the onset of the economic slowdown, and its deficit in 2015 exceeded that of Canada’s by 3.5 percentage points of GDP. Figure 10.6 examines the structural budget balance. Removing the impact of automatic stabilizers does not change the story that the actual budget balances show. The main difference between the two sets of information is the change in scale. For example, the structural deficit for the United States is about 8 per cent of GDP rather than above 11 per cent for 2010 and continues even into 2015. Finally, figure 10.7 provides information on primary balances. It can again be seen that, except for a level shift, the story told above regarding the size of fiscal actions in the two countries in the face of an economic slowdown remains the same. In conclusion, the following observations can be made. In the 2008–9 economic downturn, before the onset of the recent COVID-19-driven downturn, the US cyclical slowdown was stronger than Canada’s. In response, the US followed a much more vigorous counter-cyclical fiscal policy. This greater effort at stabilization has included the impact of both automatic stabilizers as well as stronger discretionary fiscal actions. If that were the whole story, there would be nothing unusual as the larger size of the budget deficit in the US could be consistent with its more severe economic downturn compared to Canada’s. However, even before the beginning of the 2008–9 downturn, the US was running a budget deficit while Canada had a budget surplus. In 2010 when economic growth was reasonably strong in the US, it had a budget deficit of 11 per cent of GDP. The high level of deficits continued to at least 2015 even when the change in the output gap had been fully eliminated. Ongoing budget deficits, such as those persistently run by the US over this period, have longterm economic consequences, which takes us to our next topic: longer-term budgetary policy.

5. BUDGETARY POLICY: THE LONGER TERM One of the principal instruments of public policy to affect outcomes for the well-being of citizens is government spending. While there may be disagreement about the right level of spending within the communities of both economists and elected politicians, there is no disagreement that government expenditure can affect outcomes, either positively or negatively. Expenditure needs to be financed.The principal source is taxation.There are non-tax sources of revenue as well, such as fees for services provided. The level of government revenue and the way revenues are raised can have substantial economic, social, and environmental effects. For

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Figure 10.6.  Canada–US comparison of the structural budget balance 2007–15 (percentage of GDP) Source: International Monetary Fund, 2021, World Economic Outlook Database, June. URL: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2021/April/weo-report?c =156,111,&s=NGDP_R,NGDP_RPCH,NGAP_NPGDP,GGR_NGDP,GGX,GGX_NGDP,GGXCNL, GGXCNL_NGDP,GGSB,GGSB_NPGDP,GGXWDN_NGDP,GGXWDG_NGDP,&sy=2001&ey =2026&ssm=0&scsm=1&scc=0&ssd=1&ssc=0&sic=0&sort=country&ds=.&br=1

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Figure 10.7.  Canada–US comparison of primary budget balances 2007–15 (percentage of GDP) Source: International Monetary Fund, 2021, World Economic Outlook Database, June. URL: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2021/April/weo-report?c=156, 111,&s=NGDP_R,NGDP_RPCH,NGAP_NPGDP,GGR_NGDP,GGX,GGX_NGDP,GGXCNL, GGXCNL_NGDP,GGSB,GGSB_NPGDP,GGXWDN_NGDP,GGXWDG_NGDP,&sy=2001&ey =2026&ssm=0&scsm=1&scc=0&ssd=1&ssc=0&sic=0&sort=country&ds=.&br=1

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example, more taxes on the rich and fewer on the poor will undoubtedly have impacts on social and perhaps economic outcomes as well. An added complexity is that tax and non-tax revenue may not always be the only sources of financing: borrowing is another option.4 Debt financing complicates matters because one can spend to achieve current objectives without seeming to need citizens to pay for these; hence in any study of longer-term budgetary policy, one must look at the level of debt in addition to spending and taxation. There is one situation when transferring the burden of debt to future generations is quite appropriate, and hence deficit financing could be the right policy tool: this is the case when government spending produces a stream of benefits for future generations for which they should pay. The most readily available example is spending on productivity-enhancing infrastructures such as roads, bridges, and hospitals. It is these topics of expenditure, taxes, and debt over the long term to which we now turn.

5.1 Government Expenditure The discussion above suggests a need to begin an analysis of longer-term budgetary policy with expenditures for two reasons: first, more than the other two budgetary policy instruments of taxes and debt, government expenditures more directly reflect the extent to which a government affects the share of economic production that is controlled by the government through budgetary means; and, second, the distribution of expenditures across various functional categories sheds the most important light on a country’s priorities. Figure 10.8 provides a comparison of total expenditure, as a percentage of GDP, at the general government level for Canada, the US, and the OECD. Notice the considerable gap between Canada and the US at the start of the period: Canadian government expenditures, at 41 per cent of GDP, were 6 percentage points higher than the US in 2001. By 2009, all three jurisdictions had converged. However, the earlier rankings re-emerged by 2020. Figure 10.9 provides a functional distribution of spending. This distribution is based on the OECD’s Classification of Functions of Government (COFOG).5 US data are from the OECD. Unfortunately, the OECD does not now produce Canadian data and, therefore, Statistics Canada’s data are used for comparison. The Canada-US differences in the structure of government are quite noticeable.The greatest difference is the much larger US spending on defence, which is offset by larger spending by Canada in the areas of general and social services. A surprise is that the US public spending on health is larger than Canada’s even though the US has a dominant private health care sector compared to Canada’s, which has a mostly public system with universal coverage.This is possible because the overall US spending on health care, public and private combined, at 16.8 per cent of GDP was much larger than Canada’s at 10.8 per cent of GDP in 2019 (the last year that data are available from the OECD).6 Figure 10.10 tracks changes in the functional distribution of government spending from 2008 to 2019.

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Figure 10.9.  Canada–US comparison of functional distribution of spending 2019 (percentage of GDP) Source: OECD, Government at a Glance, (Table 2.26) 2021. https://www.oecd.org/gov /government-at-a-glance-22214399.htm. Statistics Canada, 2021, Canadian Classification of Functions of Government, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1 /en/tv.action?pid=1010000501&pickMembers%5B0%5D=1.1&cubeTimeFrame.startYear =2008&cubeTimeFrame.endYear=2019&referencePeriods=20080101%2C20190101.

The increase in health spending in the US stands out, an area where it spends more than Canada to start with.The Canada-US gap narrowed in defence, education, and social spending. The division of responsibilities across central and lower-level governments is an important issue in the study of budgetary policy, including the shorter-term fiscal policy. From a longer-term budgetary policy perspective, figure 10.11 provides this comparison for 2001, 2010, and 2019. Three important observations can be made. First, the size of the US central government, from the perspective of the extent to which it controls overall government spending, was more than

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Figure 10.10.  Canada–US comparison of changes in the functional distribution of spending 2008–19 (percentage of GDP) Source: OECD, Government at a Glance (Table 2.26), 2021, https://www.oecd.org/gov /government-at-a-glance-22214399.htm,. Statistics Canada, 2021, Canadian Classification of Functions of Government, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid =1010000501&pickMembers%5B0%5D=1.1&cubeTimeFrame.startYear=2008&cubeTimeFrame .endYear=2019&referencePeriods=20080101%2C20190101.

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Figure 10.11.  Canada–US comparison of division of responsibilities across central and other levels of government (central government spending as percentage of total government spending) Source: OECD, 2021, Annual National Accounts Database, https://stats.oecd.org/Index .aspx?DataSetCode=QNA

56 per cent in 2001, almost 40 per cent larger than Canada’s. Second, despite being much larger, the US central government’s share expanded considerably over the 2001–19 period, by 4 percentage points.This was almost the same magnitude of change as Canada’s but in the opposite direction, as Canada’s share declined 3.6 percentage points. As a result, the US share became more than 60 per cent higher than Canada’s in 2019. Third, the increase in the central government role in the US came about through a corresponding decline in the role of state governments. In Canada, the lower level of government expanded at the expense of the central government.7

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Figure 10.12.  Change in Canadian provincial budget balances from 2010–11 to 2020–1 Source: RBC Economics, 2021, Canadian Federal and Provincial Fiscal Tables, URL: http://www .rbc.com/economics/economic-reports/pdf/canadian-fiscal/prov_fiscal.pdf

This difference in the division of responsibilities between the two countries, combined with differences between the state governments in the US and provincial governments in Canada related to their ability to raise tax revenue and run budget deficits, has important implications for the conduct of fiscal policy at the sub-national level in the two countries. In Canada, not only is the share of provincial governments (combined) larger than that of the central government (figure 10.11), but provinces also have access to almost all the same revenue sources as the central government and have the legal freedom to run budget deficits as large as they want. In contrast, in the US, most state governments are legally constrained from running deficits.8 Because of these differences, a comparison of Canadian provincial governments’ fiscal policies with that of the US states is neither feasible nor informative. What is of interest, however, is the performance of Canadian fiscal policy experience by province.This is done in figure 10.12, which shows changes in provincial budget balances from 2010–11 to 2020–1.The chart shows clearly that the brunt of fiscal policy action was borne by the federal government with smaller actions, and was quite variable across jurisdictions at the provincial level. It should also be kept in mind that provincial outcomes can change quite dramatically over time because of both changes in federal transfers to provinces, particularly during a fluid period such as the pandemic, and changes in volatile commodity prices that can affect provinces such as Alberta and Newfoundland/Labrador over short periods. We can make the following observations: First, most provinces used fiscal policy to counter the impact of COVID-19 with Newfoundland and Labrador and Alberta running the largest deficits in that order. Second, none of the provinces could run deficits as large as the federal government, as one would expect, given its ability to borrow at low interest rates. It is of interest to note as well that the Canadian central government transfers large sums of money to provincial governments as part of Canadian fiscal federalism.

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Figure 10.13.  Canada–US–OECD comparison of government revenue 2001–20 (percentage of GDP) Source: OECD, 2021, Economic Outlook, Annex Tables. URL: https://www.oecd.org/economy /outlook/economic-outlook-annex-tables.htm

5.2 Government Revenue 5.2.1

total revenue

Figure 10.13 provides a comparison of the overall revenue-to-GDP ratio for Canada, the US, and the overall OECD. We find stability in these ratios for Canada and the OECD and a decrease in the US. The gap between the Canadian and US burdens over this period rose from 5 percentage points in 2000 to more than 8 percentage points in 2019. Figure 10.14 provides a distribution of total tax revenue by various sources. Some differences can be noted between the two countries. First, Canada has a value-added tax and the US does not. Even Canada’s value-added tax is much lower than the OECD’s average tax rate. The US relies much more heavily on consumption taxes (at the state level) other than the value-added tax, compared to both Canada and the OECD average. However, in aggregate, the US relies less on consumption taxes than either Canada (a gap of 6 percentage points) or the OECD (a gap of 15 percentage points). Second, the US relies much more heavily on personal income tax than Canada (about 75 per cent higher) or the OECD. Third, the US relies much less on income tax on corporations and much more on taxes on property. The US has much larger social security taxes9 than Canada’s.10 Fourth, Canada and the OECD use payroll taxes (“other category” in figure 10.14 includes these) for purposes other than social security. The US does not.

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personal income tax

Table 10.1 provides a comparison of the personal income tax structures in the two countries. The following is worth noting.

The Complex World of Budgetary Policy 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

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Figure 10.14.  Canada–US–OECD sources of taxation 2018 (per cent of total taxes) PIT = Personal income tax CIT = Corporate income tax Prop = Taxes on property SS = Social security contributions (include payroll taxes that directly fund social benefits such as pensions and unemployment insurance). VA = Value-added taxes Other Cons = Other consumption taxes Other = Includes payroll taxes that are independent of the financing of social benefits. Source: OECD, 2021, Tax Revenue Trends, 1965–2019. URL: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org /sites/8625f8e5-en/1/3/1/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/8625f8e5-en&_csp _=10eecbf76519867b3d14d98d90e8aff0&itemIGO=oecd&itemContentType=book

The US central government has more tax rates than Canada, seven compared to six, and the highest rate in the US is higher than Canada’s at 37 per cent compared to 33 per cent. Despite this fact, the top statutory rate in Canada at 53.5 per cent is higher than that in the US because of the larger role Canadian provinces play in taxation compared to US states.11 Another important feature of the two structures is that, while US tax rates are more and higher, the progressive tax structure moves up quite quickly in Canada compared to the US. As an example, the Canadian top rate comes into play at an income at a multiple of 3.8 of the average wage, compared to the much larger US multiple of 8.8.

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corporate income tax

Figure 10.15 provides information on three variables of interest: the tax rate on large corporations; the tax rate on small businesses; and the taxation of dividend income. The following conclusions can be drawn. First, central government tax rates on large corporations are significantly lower in Canada than in the US. Second, however, including sub-national governments eliminates this Canadian advantage almost completely. Third, small business tax rates remain substantially lower in Canada than in the US at the total government level. Third, total government tax rates on dividends, including taxes at both the

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Source: OECD, 2021, Top Statutory Personal Income Tax Rates, URL: https://stats.oecd.org /index.aspx?DataSetCode=TABLE_I7. Government of Canada, 2021, Canadian Income Tax Rates for Individuals. URL: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individuals /frequently-asked-questions-individuals/canadian-income-tax-rates-individuals-current -previous-years.html#federal. Nerdwallet, 2021, 2020–2021 Tax Brackets and Federal Income Tax Rates. URL: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/federal-income-tax-brackets

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Figure 10.15.  Canada–US comparison of corporate tax rates 2021 CG=Central government TG=Total government Large and small refer to large and small businesses. Source: OECD, 2021, Revenue Statistics. URL: https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode =TABLE_I7

corporate and personal levels, are lower in the US than in Canada at the total government level. It is useful here to mention that corporate tax systems in both countries are highly complex and determining their impacts on investment and the level of economic activity is no simple matter. For example, for the US system of taxation, all US businesses, regardless of the country where they operate, must file tax statements with the Internal Revenue Service. With the US system of foreign tax credits, a US business operating in another country is bound by the US tax code, calculates its US tax liability on foreign income, is given a credit for foreign taxes, and must pay a difference in tax owed, if any, to the US authorities.

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Figure 10.16.  Canada–US–OECD comparison of budget balances 2001–20 (percentage of GDP) Source: OECD, 2021, Economic Outlook, Annex Tables. URL: https://www.oecd.org/economy /outlook/economic-outlook-annex-tables.htm

This has significant implications for Canada, as US foreign subsidiaries operating in Canada are bound by the US tax system, not by the Canadian system. As a result, any lower Canadian corporate tax simply means correspondingly higher taxes to be paid by these businesses to the US treasury. In effect, for these businesses, a reduction in Canadian taxes means the Canadian government writes a cheque to the US government. Given the large size of US foreign investment in Canada, these potential transfers can be quite large.12 Furthermore, lower Canadian tax rates likely cannot have the same positive impact on investment for US businesses operating in Canada as they would for Canadian businesses.

5.3 Deficit Financing Figure 10.16 compares Canadian and US budget balances over the 2001–20 period.The figure does not show it but, in the early 1990s, Canada was running the largest deficit of the three jurisdictions analysed here, followed by the OECD, with the US posting the smallest.This changed dramatically following the watershed 1995 Canadian budget that eliminated the string of deficits that had lasted more than three decades. During the two decades from 2001 to 2020, Canada followed classic stabilization policies, running surpluses before the 2008–9 recession, deficits during the recession, and balanced budgets since 2014.The US never ran a surplus over this period, and its deficit has always been much larger. In 2020, the Canada-US gap was 6.5 percentage points of GDP. Figure 10.17 shows this information that the OECD labels “underlying primary balances.” Figure 10.17 shows that the conclusion drawn earlier, that Canada followed classical stabilization policies with balanced budgets as a norm, does not change. The US followed counter-­ cyclical policy to a lesser extent, with budget deficits as a norm.

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The story told above shows up in figure 10.18 as well. The figure shows gross debt for the three jurisdictions from 2001 to 2020. From being at the bottom of the pack, with the highest debt-to-GDP ratio, Canada reversed its policies of deficit financing, which led to a substantial improvement in Canada’s debt-to-GDP ratios until the 2008–9 financial crisis. In that same period the US began to run larger deficits and showed a substantial deterioration in debt-toGDP ratios. Since then, all OECD countries have run large deficits and the gross debt-to-GDP ratios have exploded, more so in the US than in other OECD countries, particularly Canada.

6. RETIREMENT BENEFITS The retirement income systems in the two countries are different, which requires an explanation. In the US, there is one dedicated social security tax that funds all retirement benefits. In Canada, retirement benefits unrelated to labour income are funded from general revenue and hence do not show up as separate taxes. That explains the lower Canadian social security tax related to retirement income in figure 10.14 above. The US has a “pay as you go (PAYGO)” social security system where current benefits are financed by current taxes. In contrast, in Canada, funding for the replacement of labour income in retirement has dedicated payroll taxes, which are called Canada and Quebec Pension Plan (CPP/QPP) “contributions.” CPP/QPP contributions are not “pay as you go” as in the US, but rather a mix of PAYGO and “the fully funded system” where contributions/taxes are put into a retirement fund that finances benefits over time. The recent expansion of the CPP/QPP is based on the principle of full funding, with a complete phasing-in over the 2019–25 period. In contrast to funding, how do social security benefits in the two countries compare? This question is best answered by looking at gross replacement rates for incomes at different levels: while they are about the same at 100 per cent of the average wage in both countries, they are higher in Canada at the low-income levels (50 per cent of the average wage) and significantly lower at the higher income levels (150 per cent of the mean).13 Beyond the public provision of retirement benefits, both countries provide substantial tax incentives to encourage private savings for retirement through programs such as the Individual Retirement Account in the US and the Registered Retirement Savings Plan in Canada.

7. TRANSITIONING FROM SHORT-TERM FISCAL STABILIZATION TO LONGER-TERM BUDGETARY POLICY Budgetary policy is complex for several reasons. First, the tools of short-term fiscal policy – taxes, revenue, and spending – are the same as those for longer-term budgetary policy. The challenge is that these tools may need to move in opposite directions, depending on whether

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Figure 10.17.  Canada–US–OECD comparison of structural balances 2001–20 (percentage of GDP) Source: OECD, 2021, Economic Outlook, Annex Tables. URL: https://www.oecd.org/economy /outlook/economic-outlook-annex-tables.htm

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the focus is short-term stabilization or longer-term performance. For example, if the economy is weak, one may want to increase government spending, cut taxes, and let the budget deficit rise. On the other hand, if the stock of debt is already high, following this course of action may not only be unacceptable to financial markets but could damage long-term economic prospects and create intergenerational equity issues by transferring the burden of financing expenditure to future generations. Conceptually, there is a solution to this challenge: follow counter-cyclical fiscal policy and set debt levels such that the desirable level of intergenerational equity is achieved. In reality, there are a number of challenges.

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The first is political. Lower taxes and higher spending can be popular, and no government wants to take steps that will hurt it politically unless it must. However, the stage at which it will be penalized for running deficits takes a long time to come, and by that time the country may be in a crisis. Hence short-term stabilization may not stay short-term and can continue long after the need for stabilization has disappeared. Second, there is always a challenge in determining the point in time when the focus of budgetary policy levers should be reversed. Economic forecasts are notoriously bad and, linked with the political challenge argument above, can be dismissed somewhat easily as not reflecting reality. Third, there could be a bigger challenge in that the economy may get into a downturn that happens to last long with no end in sight. This poses a serious trade-off issue: one may have to choose between either achieving the stabilization objective (if financial markets permit) or setting budgetary policy instruments for longer-term objectives and thereby dealing with the deficit and debt problem. The risk, of course, is that such a policy action may make the current bad economic situation worse. These challenges are naturally exacerbated if budgetary policy has been used irresponsibly in the past; in that situation, when economic weakness arises and persists, the existing large stock of debt would make needed fiscal action less likely and, if such an action is taken regardless, very costly. It is instructive to review the evidence presented above for Canada and the US in this perspective. Canada began the period in the early 1990s in a much worse shape than the US, having suffered from a lack of political courage to deal with the ongoing increases in the stock of debt going back more than two decades. However, the newly elected government in 1993 committed to deal with the problem, and the deficit was eliminated by 1997–8. Canadian governments since then have behaved responsibly, until recently, because of the likelihood that the Canadian population would punish any political party that runs a continuous string of budget deficits. On the other hand, there has been no fiscal crisis in the US of the magnitude Canada faced before it acted. The political situation, however, has not allowed the US to deal with long-­ running budget deficits and growing debt-to-GDP ratios. And then we experience the COVID-19 shock with its huge implications for fiscal policy. We turn our attention to this topic now.

8. COVID-19 AND FISCAL AND BUDGETARY POLICY The world heard of COVID-19 toward the end of 2019, but it was only in the early part of March 2020 that most took it seriously following the declaration of a pandemic by the World Health Organization. We draw four key observations from the COVID-19 experience. First, the world has not seen a bigger economic shock since the Spanish flu, more than a hundred

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years ago. It is fair to say that it would be hard to find an individual anywhere in the world whose life has not been impacted. Second, the resulting economic crisis has not been an “equal opportunity” event, but rather one that affected economic sectors, different types of workers, and different groups of people quite differently. Third, this type of shock has never been seen before in a way that allows policy-makers to have the tools available to fully deal with it. Out of necessity, all countries tried to deal with it using available tools, common sense, and their beliefs. Fourth, economic policy tools have been used in the context of the specific challenges related to the large size of the downturn – keeping in mind that they were mostly self-inflicted out of necessity because of the need for lock downs – and the differential impacts described above across economic sectors, workers, and people. Fiscal policy was not, and could not be, used in the traditional sense of returning the economy to full employment when unemployment was the outcome of a deliberate policy of economic lockdowns. Finally, the longer-term consequences of the policies used are still largely unknown. Figure 10.19 provides a perspective on the size of the economic downturn, comparing the 2008–9 and 2020 recessions in Canada and the US.The recent downturn in both countries was the worst since the Great Depression, and was somewhat steeper and the upturn stronger in Canada compared to the US. Figure 10.20 provides comparable information for the unemployment rates in the two countries. In both countries (as indeed in the entire world), the service, retail, travel, and hospitality sectors, and the workers in these sectors – including mostly women and marginalized workers such as visible minorities, Black and Indigenous people, and those with disabilities – were hit harder than others. These overall impacts mask very different outcomes across economic sectors and worker types. In the US the worst affected sectors were leisure, hospitality, and tourism. The worst affected workers belonged to these sectors and included women, Blacks, Hispanics, and ­American Indians.14 According to Statistics Canada, the largest negative economic impacts have been in airlines, accommodation, and food services and on women, youth, new immigrants, visible minorities, and lower-wage workers.15 There are fundamental differences between the current “pandemic” recession and a traditional economic recession. There are also differences between the pandemic-recovery period and a traditional recovery period. In the traditional recession scenario, the source of the shock is either a reduction in aggregate demand (e.g., the Great Depression, the 2008–9 recession) or a constraint on aggregate supply (e.g., the oil price shock of 1973). In the pandemic recession, the source of the shock was two-fold: dealing with the pandemic, which required social distancing that made the operation of certain businesses impractical (negative externality); and coping with the negative impact of government-imposed lockdowns and shutdowns. In the traditional recovery scenario, full employment begins to return to normal as aggregate demand or aggregate supply challenges are dealt with. In the pandemic recovery scenario, there emerge several uncertainties related to the next possible wave of the virus returning and the structural transformation that resulted from the pandemic (e.g., working from home; digitization; sectoral

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Figure 10.19.  Canada–US comparison of quarterly GDP growth rates: 2008–9 vs. 2019–20 (percentage) Source: OECD, 2021, Quarterly National Accounts. URL: https://stats.oecd.org/Index .aspx?DataSetCode=QNA#

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Figure 10.20.  Canada–US comparison of changes in the unemployment rate (percentage points) Source: International Monetary Fund, 2021, World Economic Outlook Database, June. URL: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2021/October/weo-report?c=156, 111,&s=LUR,&sy=2019&ey=2026&ssm=0&scsm=1&scc=0&ssd=1&ssc=0&sic=0&sort =country&ds=.&br=1 2022 is IMF forecast.

shifts that could be permanent or long-lasting; and ongoing demand for health care including dealing with the forced shift in resources from regular health care needs, such as many types of surgeries, to pandemic-related cases). In the traditional scenario, both fiscal and monetary policies may be used, but in the current pandemic scenario, the two got linked, given the massive nature of the shock, through monetary policy tools such as quantitative easing.16 In the traditional scenario, fiscal policy attempts to deal with a regular downturn by trying to return the economy to full employment. But in the pandemic recession, moving the economy away

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from – not toward – full employment is the goal of public health policy, which fiscal policy cannot and should not try to offset. Hence, just providing a general fiscal stimulus through fiscal policy could not be an option. Instead, the focus of fiscal policy shifted to providing support to selective businesses and workers hit hard by the pandemic; in a sense, fiscal policy provided what could be considered payments under a social insurance scheme. Given the size of the shock, the size of the payments needed to be large. Given that the shock was expected to be temporary, the payments needed to be temporary. Given that the impacts of the nature of the shock would lead to secondary impacts in reducing aggregate demand in functioning sectors, the “social insurance” payments were expected to enhance demand in these sectors to encourage them to reach capacity consistent with public health requirements. In 2021, Christina Romer17 provided a list of areas where public spending in the US was focused to deal with the pandemic effects: unemployment benefits, health care spending, direct support to households in need, paycheque protection, selective tax reductions, and support for state governments. The Government of Canada’s economic and fiscal snapshot provided details of its areas of fiscal action which were subsequently updated in the fall economic and fiscal statement and Budget 2021.18 The most important areas of action included funding for personal protective equipment (PPE), support to households (through enhanced unemployment benefits, wage subsidies, and supports for vulnerable workers, seniors, and students), and support to businesses (through rent support and help for hard-hit sectors and small- and medium-sized businesses). Figure 10.21 shows the fiscal response in the two countries. The US fiscal policy actions were much larger than Canada’s (as they were in the 2008–9 recession) and began earlier, while the Canada-US gap seems to have grown larger over time. Given the many uncertainties related to the COVID-19 shock, and despite the speed with which policy-makers in both countries needed to act, one can conclude that fiscal policy was quite successful in the pandemic phase of the shock, as witnessed by the containment of the decline of GDP and the increase in unemployment, and the effective support to people and businesses.19 COVID-19 has provided governments in both countries with challenges and opportunities in many policy areas, including the longer-term aspects of budgetary policy and general structural reform that may or may not have budgetary policy consequences. In Canada, there have been discussions, and some policy decisions, regarding daycare, reform of unemployment insurance, fiscal20 federalism,21 health care (including mental health and health transfer to provinces), guaranteed basic income, and longer-term inflation targeting. In the US, these challenging policy areas have included, among other things, a rethink about the role of government resulting from the increasing strength of the progressives in Congress and a sympathetic president, fiscal federalism, and infrastructure spending. However, the jury is still out on these issues, which also include the future of the size of budget deficits and debt, continued impacts on vulnerable workers and how to reform the social safety net, asset price inflation caused by

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Figure 10.21.  Canada–US comparison of fiscal response: 2008–11 vs. 2019–21 (percentage of GDP) Source: International Monetary Fund, 2021, World Economic Outlook Database, June. URL: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2021/April/weo-report?c=156,111, &s=NGDP_R,NGDP_RPCH,NGAP_NPGDP,GGR_NGDP,GGX,GGX_NGDP,GGXCNL,GGXCNL_NGDP, GGSB,GGSB_NPGDP,GGXWDN_NGDP,GGXWDG_NGDP,&sy=2001&ey=2026&ssm=0&scsm =1&scc=0&ssd=1&ssc=0&sic=0&sort=country&ds=.&br=1. 2021 is IMF forecast.

historic low interest rates, and the scope of change in fiscal federalism. On this last aspect, the chapter by David M.Thomas in this volume22 summarizes the challenge as follows: “Are we at a point, in either system, where we have reached what is called in the current literature, a ‘critical juncture’ where some key things actually change? ... In the United States, will the trillions of additional dollars now being spent result in any major policy changes, or in any kind of institutional reform?”

9. CONCLUDING REMARKS Comparing budgetary policy across countries is complex for several reasons. At one level, across countries, there are differences in data, structures of government, relative roles of the public and private sectors, and differences in the challenges they face. At another level, budgetary policy has two distinct components with widely different objectives: one is short-term stabilization, the other setting instruments of budgetary policy to achieve longer-term goals in shaping security, the economy, social outcomes, or environmental objectives. The complexity here is that the instruments of budgetary policy – taxes, public expenditure, and borrowing/lending – are the same to achieve the two sets of objectives. That would not be an issue if the two sets of objectives always moved in the same direction. They do not. For example, current economic conditions

The Complex World of Budgetary Policy

may require running budget deficits while longer-term objectives may demand retrenchment. This challenge is made more difficult by the inherent difficulty of forecasting an economy. Add to this uncertainty the political incentives where fiscal retrenchment may make the voters of the day unhappy.This will produce a tendency to generally spend without the difficult task of raising taxes. This tendency is magnified if fiscal stabilization is undertaken in a weak economy and the policy reversal that must happen after a while to keep long-term objectives in mind is postponed.This leads to a build-up of public debt over time that means a convenient shifting of the cost of funding public programs to future generations. The challenge of fiscal sustainability is all the more serious at present in the context of the ongoing impact of the pandemic, heightened uncertainty about future economic outcomes, and the increased opportunity the pandemic seems to have provided governments to be more ideologically driven in the formulation of public policies. Despite these complexities, some useful conclusions can be drawn from a Canada-US comparison. This section describes only a handful of observations that are the most important. First, both countries have followed traditional counter-cyclical fiscal policy during the current COVID-19 and the 2008–9 economic cycles, although the size of fiscal action was much larger in the US and the starting point for the US action was ongoing deficits. S­ econd, after a long period where the relative size of government in Canada was significantly larger than that in the US, governments in the two countries converged during the 2008–9 recession, but the traditional gap, though smaller, has opened again (as measured by the size of government spending). Third, the US spends considerably more on defence than does Canada, which balances off larger Canadian social spending. Fourth, the US tax burden is less than Canada’s but uses considerably more deficit financing to fund significant parts of its spending. As a result, its debt-to-GDP burden is significantly higher than Canada’s. Future generations in the US must necessarily pay for it more than future Canadian generations would. Fifth, the US taxes personal incomes more and corporate income and consumption less than Canada. Both Canada and the US took bold fiscal actions to deal with the huge COVID-19 shock, and both expect to continue to run large deficits into the foreseeable future, though US deficits are much larger than Canada’s. However, the jury is still out on longer-term budgetary policy consequences, including the future of budget deficits and debt, structural change and policies being contemplated to deal with it, continued impacts on vulnerable workers and how to reform the social safety net, asset price inflation caused by historic low interest rates, and the uncertainty regarding consumer price inflation resulting from expansionary fiscal and monetary policies.

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STUDY QUESTIONS 1. Data show the US running very large budget deficits and building up debt over a very long period. Economic theory suggests that, without a corresponding increase in income-enhancing investments, such a debt build-up should negatively affect the economy. However, there does not seem to be such a negative consequence, in contrast to the 1973–97 period in Canada when such debt build-up became a problem. What explains this difference in outcomes? 2. The tools available for short-term fiscal policy stabilization and longer-term budgetary policy, which deal with spending allocation and financing options, are the same. That poses a challenge for policy formulation to change focus from the short term to the longer term because of the difficulty of projecting when economic conditions have changed, combined with the political bias toward loose fiscal policy. How can such a challenge be effectively dealt with? 3. The pandemic has created a situation where achieving full employment cannot be an objective, given policy-imposed lockdowns. What should optimal fiscal and budgetary policies be in such circumstances? Governments in both countries are using this experience to substantially alter economic and social outcomes over the longer term. Is that appropriate? 4. Canada and the US rely on different financing mixes for their spending: for example, the US relies more on personal income tax and borrowing, while Canada relies more on the value-added tax. Should there be any changes in such mixes? 5. Canada and the US have different set-ups for fiscal federalism, with Canadian provinces free to use almost every revenue source and control large areas of spending in contrast to US states that have more limited revenue and spending powers, while many are barred from running budget deficits. How do such differences affect the two countries’ economic performance?

The Complex World of Budgetary Policy NOTES 1 See David Perry, “What Price Canadian: Taxation and Debt Compared,” in Canada and the United States: Differences That Count, 3rd ed., ed. David M. Thomas and Barbara Boyle Torrey (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008). 2 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Health at a Glance, 2021, https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/health-at-a-glance-2021_ae3016b9 -en#page199. 3 The reader is warned of the difference in terminology used in the United States and by the OECD related to the phrase “social security.” In the US, social security refers to the provision of pensions. The OECD uses social security to refer to all public programs that confer tax-funded social benefits, such as unemployment insurance. Since this chapter uses OECD data for comparison, the OECD terminology is maintained. 4 The option of printing money to fund public expenditures was not considered a credible source of financing for the two economies being analysed over this period, although in some countries that could indeed be the principal or a major source of funding expenditures. During this period, central banks in Canada and the US did indeed print money but, given their arms-length relationship with governments, the focus of their monetary policies was the achievement of a desired rate of inflation, rather than the financing of budget deficits. Things became a lot more complicated because of the COVID-19 shock, a topic that is discussed later in this chapter. 5 OECD, Government at a Glance, 2019, https://www.oecd.org/gov/government-at-aglance-22214399.htm. In reproducing this information, general public services, environment protection, and public order and safety have been combined into the category labelled in Chart 7 as “General” and social protection and recreation, culture and religion, and housing and community activities have been combined into the group labelled “Social.” “Economic” in Chart 9 is OECD’s category “economic affairs.” Other categories in Chart 9 are as labelled by the OECD. 6 OECD, Health Data for 2021, https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=HEALTH_STAT. 7 OECD data are not available for a breakdown among levels of government for recent years. This observation is based on data for the earlier period from OECD sources (see Munir A. Sheikh, “Getting Things Straight: The Complex World of Budgetary Policy,” in Canada and the United States: Differences That Count, 4th ed., David M. Thomas and David N. Biette [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014]) and the author’s calculations using more recent data from a country’s own data sources, which are not directly comparable and hence not reported here. 8 The Investopedia Team (2021), “Can State and Local Governments in the US Run Fiscal Deficits?,” observes: “most state governments are required by law or their constitution to balance their budgets … The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that Vermont is the only state that lacks some form of a balanced budget requirement … While the federal government can raise money by selling treasury securities, this option is not available to state and local governments. Debt requires approval of the legislature or even the voting public” (https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers /012015/can-state-and-local-governments-us-run-fiscal-deficits.asp). 9 This observation can leave the inaccurate impression that either US social security is better funded or Canadian retirement incomes are much lower than those in the US. Neither is the case, as part of social security in Canada is funded by general revenue, which can explain the higher tax burdens in Canada in non–social security categories. For a fuller discussion, see Munir A. Sheikh, “Getting Things Straight:The Complex World of Budgetary Policy,” in Canada and the United States: Differences That Count, 4th ed., ed. David M.Thomas and David N. Biette (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014).

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Munir A. Sheikh 10 The OECD includes payroll taxes that confer an entitlement to a social benefit as part of social security. According to the OECD, “This heading covers taxes paid by employers, employees or the self -employed either as a proportion of payroll or as a fixed amount per person, and which do not confer entitlement to social benefits” (Tax Revenue Trends, 1965–2019; 2021, https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/ sites/8625f8e5-en/1/3/1/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/8625f8e5-en&_csp_=10eecbf76519867b3d14d98d90e8aff0&itemIGO=oecd&itemContentType=book). For both Canada and the US this means that contributions related to employment insurance and pensions are part of social security and not part of payroll taxes. Canadian regional governments do impose some payroll taxes that are not linked directly to the provision of any benefits by government, but they are relatively small. 11 There are substantial differences across the two countries and within each country regarding taxation at the provincial/state/municipal levels of government. For example, within the US, several states have no income tax, and they rely heavily on property taxation. Canadian provinces are much bigger players in the field of taxation, with all using income taxation as a major source, but even here there are considerable differences. For example, many provinces have considerable sizes of value-added taxes while Alberta has none. 12 See Munir A. Sheikh, “A Canada-US Gap Means a Canada-US Tax Transfer,” Globe and Mail, April 20, 2011. 13 See OECD, Pensions at a Glance, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1787/b6d3dcfc-en. 14 Aaron Klein and Ember Smith, “Explaining the Economic Impact of Covid-19: Core Industries and the Hispanic Workforce,” Brookings Institution, February 5, 2021, https://www.brookings.edu/research/explaining-the-economic-impact-of-covid-19-core-industries-and-the-hispanic -workforce/; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Risk for Covid-19 Infection, Hospitalization, and Death By Race/Ethnicity,” 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus /2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-race-ethnicity.html. 15 Statistics Canada, “The Social and Economic Impacts of Covid-19: A One-Year Update,” 2021, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-631-x/11-631-x2021001-eng.htm. 16 See Bank of Canada, “Keeping Markets Working Properly,” 2021, https://www.bankofcanada. ca/2020/08/our-covid-19-response-large-scale-asset-purchases/. 17 See Christina Romer, “The Fiscal Policy Response to the Pandemic,” Brookings Institution, 2021, https://www.brookings.edu/bpea-articles/the-fiscal-policy-response-to-the-pandemic/. 18 See Government of Canada, Economic and Fiscal Snapshot 2020, https://www.canada.ca/content /dam/fin/publications/efs-peb/homepage/EFS2020-eng.pdf; Government of Canada, Fall Economic Statement 2020, https://www.budget.gc.ca/fes-eea/2020/report-rapport/toc-tdm-en.html; and Government of Canada, Budget 2021, https://www.budget.gc.ca/2021/report-rapport/toc-tdm-en.html. 19 Álvaro Leandro, “The Effectiveness of Fiscal Policy in Times of Covid,” CaixaBank Research, October 9, 2020, https://www.caixabankresearch.com/en/economics-markets/public-sector /effectiveness-fiscal-policy-times-covid. 20 See D. Beland, A. Lecours, M. Paquet, and T. Tombe, “A Critical Juncture in Fiscal Federalism: ­Canada’s Response to Covid-19,” Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique 53, no. 2 (2020), https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/canadian-journal-of-political -science-revue-canadienne-de-science-politique/article/critical-juncture-in-fiscal-federalism -canadas-response-to-covid19/E4F8184DACB186C41C1E8839A7A89BB6. 21 See T. Tombe, “Who ‘Pays’ and Who ‘Receives’ in Confederation?,” Finances of the Nation, November 17, 2020, https://financesofthenation.ca/2020/11/17/who-pays-and-who-receives -in-confederation/. 22 David M. Thomas, “Past Futures: Federalism Under Yet More Stress,” chap. 6, this volume.

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ELEVEN

Health Care in Canada and the United States Antonia Maioni and Pierre Martin

Between Canada and the United States, health care definitely is a difference that counts, for several reasons. First, for most governments in both countries, it is the largest budget item, outstripping practically everything else. Second, health care is perhaps the most singular public policy difference between the two countries in terms of governance, financing, and organization. Third, this policy area illustrates deep differences in how the two countries perceive the role of the state in society and the relationship between governments and citizens. Fourth, although Canadians are sometimes told that the ­US-­Canada comparison is misleading and should be avoided,1 few Canadians can escape the comparison, bombarded as they are with stories about the horrors and triumphs of the American system. Indeed, given the countries’ geographic, cultural, and economic proximity, there is much to learn from it. While Canada and the United States look similar in some aspects of their social policies, their health care systems exhibit remarkable differences, which stem from some of the institutional features laid out elsewhere in this book. After describing the differences in the financing and organization of health care in Canada and the United States, this chapter traces the development of health care and health insurance in both countries, including how they coped with the common challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic.

WHAT’S SIMILAR? WHAT’S DIFFERENT? In a broader international context, health care discrepancies between the North American neighbours become all the more evident. Canada’s model is similar to that of most other industrialized nations, but the United States’ model clearly stands out. Until the mid-twentieth century, the Canadian and American medical systems developed in similar ways. For example, voluntary hospitals and charity care based on

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philanthropic, community, and religious networks evolved in both countries in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.2 Similar standards of physician training and licencing emerged on both sides of the border. Canadian and American medical associations were established out of similar desires to strengthen the profession’s control over the regulation of its practices. Private insurance networks grew in similar ways in the two countries. Many features of the two systems still remain broadly comparable. Even their nomenclature is sometimes confused, as Canadians routinely misuse the term “Medicare” (the US federally administered program for the elderly and the disabled) in reference to their own system.3

MONEY AND MEDICINE Spending levels were similar in the two countries until the 1960s. In 1960, Canada spent about 6 per cent of its GDP on health and the US about 5 per cent. By 1975, after the implementation of hospital and medical insurance in Canada, expenditures reached 7 per cent of GDP (of which about three-quarters was public), while US expenditures climbed to 8 per cent of GDP, of which 42 per cent was channelled through Medicare and Medicaid.4 Since then, spending patterns between the two countries – and between the United States and practically every other industrialized country – have diverged considerably. Today, both as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) and in absolute terms, Canada spends more on health care than the average of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. In 2019, Canada’s total spending on health care was 10.8 per cent of GDP (US$5,370 per capita). These figures are dwarfed by its neighbour’s spending, however, as the United States spent 16.8 per cent of its GDP on health care, for a whopping total of $3.6 trillion, which, at US$10,948, is more than double Canada’s spending per capita, and way off the charts compared to other OECD countries. In Canada, 70 per cent of total spending flows through the public sector, and the balance – not an insignificant amount – is spent out of pocket or through supplemental insurance. Most European countries tend to have larger public-to-private spending ratios, mainly because more big-ticket items – such as outpatient drugs – are covered publicly. In the United States, public spending accounts for more than 45 per cent of total expenses, which is a reminder that in the land of private health care, government-financed programs still represent a large chunk of the system’s cost. The funding of public programs also differs in important respects. In Canada, public spending falls under provincial general revenues, with supplements provided by federal

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lan d ee ce Ne Ita w Ze ly ala nd Sp ai n Fin lan d Au str ali a Po rtu ga l De Un nm ite ark dK ing do Ne m the rla nd s Au str ia No rw ay Be lgi um Ca na da Sw ed en Ja pa n Fra nc Sw e itz erl an d Ge rm a Un ny ite dS tat es

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Figure 11.1.  Health care spending as percentage of GDP in selected OECD countries 2019

transfers to the provinces (per capita block grants plus equalization payments to lowerincome provinces). In the United States, public spending includes a variety of streams, including general revenues and grants (for Medicaid), a dedicated contributory tax (for Medicare), various subsidies to employers and individuals to help pay for private insurance, and targeted taxes to cover new public expenditures resulting from the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA). Overall, universal public insurance has allowed more effective cost control in Canada. As economist Robert Evans observed decades ago, Canada’s public monopoly “eliminates the problems of uncompensated care, individual burdens of catastrophic illness, and uninsured populations,”5 problems that the United States still confronts today. In Canada, provincial governments control the flow of public money into their health care system, which facilitates cost containment, notably through institutionalized negotiations with hospitals and doctors. In the United States, the more complex multi-payer system has led to greater cost increases.

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Figure 11.2.  Health care spending per capita in US dollars in selected OECD countries 2019 (values PPP)

As the following section shows, these organizational differences have much to do with divergences in spending levels. The high administrative costs of private insurance are also an important factor, as some studies estimate these costs to be as high as 22 per cent of total health spending in the United States.6 Also, anecdotal stories or urban legends notwithstanding, higher costs do not necessarily translate into better quality of care or massive southward flights of patients and physicians.

HOW ACCESS IS ORGANIZED The difference that counts, perhaps above all, between the two countries is access to care. In Canada, access to health care services is automatic and depends on one’s status as a legal resident of a province or territory. In the United States, access is contingent on one’s ability to purchase insurance or on specific criteria of eligibility for government programs based on age, disability, or income.

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Canada: Sub-national Systems, Single Payers In Canada, sub-national governments are the primary funders and regulators of health care. Still, provinces rely on federal transfers to help pay for this expensive budget item, which now accounts for upwards of 40 per cent of provincial program spending. These cash transfers are subject to a federal statute, the Canada Health Act, which stipulates that provincial health plans must be publicly administered, universal, comprehensive, portable across provinces, and must provide equal access to care based on need, as discussed below. For the vast majority of Canadians, this means that health insurance coverage is automatic, provided and administered by their provincial or territorial government. Members of the armed forces, federal penitentiary inmates, and refugees (or people claiming that status) fall under the responsibility of the federal government. Indigenous peoples, who are the “responsibility” of the federal government, often have their health care needs fall through the cracks depending on their status, residence, and the kinds of federal and provincial arrangements that cover their access to services. Each province and territory has its own legislation, but the various plans share the same basic parameters. They all include a broad array of medically necessary services, all inpatient care, and all care delivered by licenced physicians in publicly administered settings. This means that practically every conceivable medical condition is covered, with some specific exceptions. Outpatient diagnostic testing may or may not be covered, depending on the provincial program. Most provinces do not cover dental care or optometry services for adults, nor many forms of physiotherapy. Some provinces subsidize long-term care or home care programs. Outpatient drugs are exempted or covered only for certain income groups or chronic conditions in most provinces, except in Quebec, which instated its own pharmacare program in 1997.The fine line between medical and psycho-social conditions – autism, mental health, etc. – is often blurred in identifying and accessing public services. Many Canadians have supplemental private insurance, often as a benefit of employment, to cover gaps in coverage. Senior citizens also may purchase additional coverage for such things as physiotherapy, dental care, preferred hospital accommodation, podiatry, and vision care. The other essential feature of access to care in Canada is that no money changes hands between patient and provider within the public system. This means that co-payments and user fees are not levied in hospitals. Indeed, while hospitals are mostly “voluntary” institutions (i.e., not owned by government), they are financed through budgets set by provincial authorities. Consequently, administrative billing overhead is much lower than it is in the United States, but hospitals are under constant stress to live within these budgets. This may lead to wait times for certain services, or the rationalization of key resources. At the same time, hospitals have to ensure that access to care is both timely and fair, based on need rather than the ability to pay.

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Doctors, too, must contend with this compromise between “private practice and public payment.”7 Most Canadian physicians are not salaried and they retain professional and financial autonomy through fee-for-service reimbursement, based on a fee schedule negotiated with provincial authorities. Doctors may not extra-bill their patients; they must either work within the public system or opt out entirely, which few choose to do. Physicians enjoy high incomes relative to most Canadians, they have more autonomy vis-à-vis insurers and payers than US doctors, and they are less likely to face the costs of malpractice.The flipside is that Canadian doctors face more stringent limits on what the market will bear for their services. In the United States, specialists in some areas may earn almost twice as much as their Canadian counterparts. The gap is not quite as wide for primary care physicians, but it is significant nonetheless.8 Differences in income levels are partly offset by the lower costs of medical education in Canada, where physicians tend to enter their profession with substantially lower student-debt loads than their American counterparts. Canadian patients usually access the public health care system through a primary care physician, who may refer them to a hospital or to a specialist. In some urban areas, there are shortages of primary care doctors. In rural or more remote communities, specialists often are less readily available. Many Canadians experience long waits for specialist consultations and for some elective surgeries. Surveys show that perceptions of wait times among patients and physicians are somewhat higher in Canada than in other industrialized countries, but the difference may not justify the alarmist tone of some critics.9 Despite the urban myths that still resonate, there is no longer a “brain drain” of Canadian doctors to the United States. In fact, the movement of physicians toward higher-paying areas within Canada and the high barriers to entry into the profession for foreign-trained medical graduates are more acute human-resource challenges in the country’s health sector. Another enduring myth is the full-fledged flight of Canadian patients across the border because of quality concerns or wait times, a phenomenon that remains anecdotal and limited to a wealthy few.

United States: Complex Systems, Multiple Payers In contrast to Canada, access to health care in the United States is not guaranteed by virtue of legal residency. Access to care depends on one’s insurance coverage, which varies widely amongst individuals, and is determined by state of residence, employment status, financial capacity, age, disability, or military service. A minority of Americans, until recently mostly the self-employed, carry individual private insurance. Most Americans (and their dependents) are covered through employment-based health insurance, in which they share in paying the costs of premiums with their employer. This can include various forms of managed care arrangements, such as Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) and Preferred Provider Organizations, which allow subscribers a variety of coverage plans, payment options, and choice of providers. These plans almost always include substantial co-payments or deductibles.

Health Care in Canada and the United States

This voluntary arrangement has been a feature of the American landscape since the mid-­ twentieth century. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA), commonly known as Obamacare, altered this pattern by mandating individuals to carry insurance coverage and forcing large employers to offer plans to their employees. It also subjected health insurers to stricter regulations, curbing some of their exclusionary practices (notably those based on pre-existing conditions), placing limits on co-payments, and requiring a variety of plans that include affordable options. The gradual implementation of the ACA modified the pattern of coverage in the US but did not drastically change the balance of public and private coverage, nor did it bring the percentage of uninsured to zero. In 2009, 17 per cent of the population was uncovered, 64 per cent was privately covered (56 per cent through employment-based programs and 9 per cent through individually purchased insurance, with some overlap), while 31 per cent were covered through public or military programs. In 2019, the uninsured still accounted for 8 per cent, the privately insured totalled 68 per cent (56 per cent employment based, 10 per cent individual, and 3 per cent Tricare), and 34 per cent were covered by government plans.10 Despite the predominance of private insurance, government involvement in health care financing is substantial, by virtue of extensive programs for federal, state, and municipal workers, the federal government’s responsibility for active military and veterans, and through the federal Medicare program and the federal-state Medicaid arrangements, both instated in 1965. Onethird of the United States population is eligible in some form for government-funded health insurance, and nearly half of total health spending comes from public funds. More than 40 million elderly (aged sixty-five and over) and disabled Americans are covered by Medicare, which involves a contributory plan (Part A) for hospital insurance and a supplemental premium (Part B) for medical insurance. The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 added optional prescription drug coverage to Medicare benefits, through subsidies for private drug plans. A federally administered program, Medicare is based on eligibility through social security, which requires at least ten years of contributions or an official recognition of disability. It generally allows enrollees some latitude in their choice of physicians and hospitals, but delimits precise coverage of hospital or nursing home stays, and imposes deductibles and co-payments for most services. In contrast, Medicaid is a joint federal-state program that covers about 50 million low-income Americans. It is the largest federal transfer program of its kind, providing amounts adjusted to state population and income through matching grants. As in Canada, hospital, medical, and longterm care services are considered medically necessary services. The difference is that Medicaid is means-tested. Most of the program’s beneficiaries are children and single parents, but the indigent elderly and disabled are also eligible and account for most of the spending. Since 1997, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) provides additional federal funds to states for children in families ineligible for Medicaid. CHIP covered 9.6 million American children in 2018. The ACA expanded Medicaid and CHIP coverage, in part by allowing all Americans with

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incomes up to 133 per cent of the federal poverty line to qualify; subsequent court challenges have allowed states to sign on to this expansion or opt out.11 Amid this extensive “patchwork”12 of employer-based and government-funded health insurance in the United States, concerns about access and affordability have been constant refrains for decades. Of particular concern was the alarming number of uninsured Americans, which peaked above 45 million before the ACA. The fact that hospitals were required to provide emergency care to the uninsured represented a major financial burden for them. The ACA’s mandate for individual coverage (and its expansion of Medicaid coverage) significantly reduced the proportion of uninsured, but the law lacks effective means to enforce this mandate. Thus, the goal of universal coverage remains elusive. One thing that the ACA has not eliminated is the complexity of payment and coverage options. In the United States, most health care providers are still confronted with a myriad of payers; hospitals and doctors have to reckon with a multiplicity of insurers and reimbursement rates, and have to expend considerable resources on billing and collection of payment. Although the ACA introduced new cost-control measures that managed to slow the rate of increase in spending in some areas of the system, other areas remain burdened by heavy costs, including those linked to protection against malpractice suits.

WHAT EXPLAINS THESE DIFFERENCES? AN HISTORICAL JOURNEY Why did Canada and the United States end up with such different health care systems? Several explanations for this puzzle have been proposed. Some so-called cultural explanations rest on broad visions of founding myths and social organization.13 Others emphasize different societal cleavages in the two countries, notably on race,14 or differences in the values that underpin the relationship between state and society.15 A more complete picture, however, must account for specific political and institutional features, namely the structure of partisan politics, the division of powers, and the distinct policy-making environments that have conditioned the development of health policy.16

United States: The Long and Winding Road to Health Reform The historical record shows how these differences mattered, sometimes in surprising ways. Indeed, the quest for national health insurance emerged earlier in the United States than in Canada, as part of the debates around the Social Security Act in the 1930s and Harry Truman’s Fair Deal of the 1940s. In those early attempts, bitter partisan divisions (which pitted liberal Democrats and the labour movement against conservative Democrats and Republicans in Congress) and the resistance of professional lobbies (notably the American Medical Association) made it difficult to reach a consensus. Also, the “red scare” of the Cold War fuelled opposition to expansive government involvement in social policy. As a consequence, leading reformers in government

Health Care in Canada and the United States

and key interest groups (such as labour unions) chose to pursue more limited public programs. Tough political battles in the early 1960s set the stage for the historic passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. The reform was major but stopped short of universal coverage, even with overwhelming Democratic majorities in Congress. In contrast to the Canadian experience in the same period, American reformers retreated from their quest for a universal health plan to settle for what was politically achievable. Medicare created a substantial new administrative role for the federal government but followed the precedent of the existing social security program, while Medicaid conformed to the political exigencies of means-tested, criteria-based assistance. Since then, successive federal and state governments have been faced with the problems that emerged from this compromise: how to address the gaps in access to care, and how to contain spiralling costs. Some efforts at reform involved specific goals, such as the Nixon administration’s expansion of HMOs in the 1970s and the Medicare cost-control measures signed by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Other proposals sought to emulate the “Canadian-style” ­single-payer system, to no avail. Over time, as health care became an increasingly top-of-mind issue for ­middle-class Americans and their employers, the pressure for fundamental change grew. The most spectacular failure of health insurance reform was the Health Security Act of 1993, which sought near-universal coverage through employer mandates, plus a complex array of regulations that raised the hackles of the powerful health insurance industry. The demise of this centrepiece of Bill Clinton’s domestic agenda virtually shut down health reform for a decade. Health care nonetheless remained a political concern. First, structural changes in the US economy made access to care through employment more precarious. Second, the vagaries of different plans and the individual responsibility of adhering to such plans meant that many people remained underinsured or uninsured. Third, the soaring cost of health care services and insurance premiums meant that Americans experienced severe pocketbook pressures, employers were finding it difficult to offer coverage, and governments were facing severe fiscal pressures in paying for public programs. The deep partisan divide over health reform resurfaced during the 2008 electoral cycle and became a lightning rod for contrasting visions of the role of government. By the time President Obama brought his proposal to Capitol Hill, the knives were already drawn for a serious fight over health reform. The final bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA for short, or “Obamacare”), was a phased-in compromise that left intact the existing contours of the dual private and public health care structures, but added considerable government regulation through a mix of individual mandates, employer mandates, and insurance reform. With the focus on widening access to care, the ACA requires every individual to have insurance coverage, and compels larger employers to offer insurance to their employees as well. To enhance competition, the law instated “insurance exchanges,” where consumers can choose and purchase health insurance coverage. Notably, the idea of adding a “public option” to this menu of choice, which was seen by the left in the Democratic Party in Congress as the best guarantee of price control on insurance markets, had to be abandoned to secure the votes of more moderate Democrats. The ACA also brought new federal regulations limiting insurers’

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ability to deny or restrict coverage, as well as co-payments and additional charges. The ACA also reformed existing Medicare and Medicaid programs. It strengthened Medicare cost containment measures, expanded its drug-coverage benefits, and broadened access to primary care and preventive services for Medicare recipients. Importantly, the ACA overhauled Medicaid transfers to the states, which expanded coverage to needy single adults for the first time in the program’s history.17 Critics on the left were quick to point out that “Obamacare” would leave a patchwork of coverage with plenty of gaps, deny the federal government any political muscle in providing a public option, and inadequately address the challenges of cost control.18 On the right, the individual mandate was seen as an affront to freedom of choice, and forced Medicaid expansion as an encroachment on states’ rights. This sharp ideological divide was evident in the dozens of judicial challenges that followed and in a landmark 2012 Supreme Court decision. In a 5–4 ruling, along largely ideological lines, the Court allowed the individual mandate to hold by virtue of the Congress’s ability to tax, but curtailed the federal government’s effort to compel states to accept Medicaid expansion.19 When Medicaid expansion came into effect on January 1, 2014, only about half of the states were on board. As of late 2022, thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia had accepted Medicaid expansion, while eleven Republican-led states in the South and Midwest were holding out, even if most of the costs of this expansion are borne by the federal government. Also, about half of the states did not set up their own insurance exchanges, deferring to the federal government’s centralized system.

Canada: Provincial Innovation, National Diffusion While ideological divisions and resistance from professional interests were features of the Canadian experience in health reform, these played out in a different institutional context of federalism and party politics. As the historical record shows, the federal government in the United States did stake out an active role in health reform at different points in time, eventually setting up a substantive administrative arrangement under Medicare. In Canada, the federal government’s role in the administration of health plans has not been quite as direct, even though the political stakes around health care are considerable. Although the Canadian Constitution of 1867 is silent on health care or health insurance, it does mention the federal government’s responsibility for quarantine (which has evolved into a role in public health), as well as in the administration of services for certain classes of people (notably, Indigenous peoples). As in the US, the central government’s power to tax and spend gives it influence over areas that are formally under provincial jurisdiction. The Constitution also mentions provincial responsibility for charitable institutions, including hospitals. From these vague origins, two main traits of the Canadian system emerged: the provinces are responsible for overseeing how health care services are administered and paid for, while the federal

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government, through its spending power, provides financial incentives that have allowed it, de facto, to define the broad parameters of the provincial systems. In the early phases of health reforms in Canada, federalism favoured change as it allowed provinces to experiment and emulate each other. In the US, there was some limited experimentation in states, but the strongest push for change came from Washington. In Canada, the federal government assumed a limited role in health and social programs until the 1940s, when discussions of a social security state as part of postwar reconstruction were stymied by fiscal concerns and by the opposition of conservative provincial governments – notably Ontario and Quebec. It was, in fact, Canada’s most rural and financially strapped province – Saskatchewan – that would “go it alone”20 in implementing North America’s first public health insurance program. In 1944, Saskatchewan made history by electing a left-wing government under the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (in 1961, the CCF merged into the New Democratic Party, or NDP). The CCF’s design for health reform was explicitly social-democratic in that it was to be universal in application and comprehensive in benefits. Predictably, opponents labelled it a “socialist plot.”The program started with hospital insurance in 1946, but it was not until 1962 that Saskatchewan took the next step of implementing medical insurance. A bitter strike by doctors ensued, demonstrating the divisiveness of the issue in the province and across the country. By then, successive federal governments had been compelled to join the debate. In 1957, the Liberal government passed the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act, which allowed for cost-sharing of hospital services with the provinces; by 1961, every province had a hospital insurance plan in place. In 1960, the Conservative government appointed a Royal Commission on Health Care, led by former Saskatchewan justice Emmett Hall.When its report came out in 1964, the Liberals were back in power and had to respond to its recommendations. These included a cost-sharing program known as the Medical Care Insurance Act, along the lines of the Saskatchewan example. In spite of resistance from physicians and fiscal conservatives, the law was adopted in 1966, with a Liberal minority government under pressure from the NDP. By 1972, every province was on board. Many Liberals saw health reform as part of a wider nation-building effort to demonstrate to Canadians the reach of the federal government through the welfare state.21 Since the federal government’s involvement was based on its fiscal ability to transfer money to the provinces, money became the defining feature in the politics of health care in Canada. By 1977, the federal government had retreated from the onerous burden of matching grants, and replaced cost sharing with block transfers, an innovation that was transforming fiscal federalism in the United States during the same period. Provinces were now responsible for cost control in health care, since these block transfers were tied to GDP growth and, as the federal fiscal situation worsened in the 1980s, subject to cuts. To ensure that provinces did not turn to revenue streams that might jeopardize access to health services, and to provide financial disincentives to do so, the Liberal government passed the Canada Health Act in 1984. A brief document (fourteen pages – quite a contrast with the 1,000+ pages of Clinton’s 1993 proposal or Obama’s ACA), it sets out the conditions that

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provinces must meet or face financial penalty (these conditions are public administration, universal eligibility, comprehensive services, portability across provinces, and equal access to care). The legislation was explicitly aimed at provinces that allowed physicians to “extra-bill” patients or impose user fees and co-payments on hospital stays, and several had to rewrite their legislation to comply. Quebec had already banned extra-billing, leading to a strike by specialist physicians in 1970; Ontario confronted similar strike action in 1987. Although there was considerable protest by some provincial governments, the Canada Health Act was passed unanimously, supported by all three federal parties, including the Progressive Conservatives under Brian Mulroney (again, quite a contrast with recent bitter partisan fights over health reforms in the US). Federal-provincial tensions heightened in 1995 with the amalgamation of the Canadian Health and Social Transfer. Provincial governments insisted they could not continue to provide adequate health care services with the dramatic reductions, averaging 25 per cent, in federal transfers. And, indeed, the 1990s saw the closure of scores of hospitals across Canada, reductions in medical school enrolments, and increases in wait-times for non-urgent care. It also saw the emerging cracks in social consensus about the Canadian model and in public confidence about the health care system. As Canada’s financial situation eased, and as health funding continued to be a salient electoral issue, federal transfers increased. One of the drivers of this reinvestment was the Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada, chaired by Roy Romanow, the former NDP premier of – yes, again – Saskatchewan. The report affirmed that the values underpinning public health insurance were still relevant, but needed to be protected and enhanced. It recommended major reinvestment in health care, a new focus on primary and home care for an aging population, and increased scope for federal programs, including pharmacare. A new period of health care spending began in Canada in 2004 with the federal-provincial accord known as the Ten Year Plan to Strengthen Health Care. For the first time, the federal government would guarantee multi-year funding through federal transfers that would include automatic yearly increases. It was designed to boost the provinces’ fiscal capacity and at the same time ensure timely, quality services for all Canadians. The plan was not without its critics, but it survived the transition from a Liberal to Conservative government in 2006. Since then, health care remains a key battlefield of federal politics.The Liberal Party bills itself as the defender of an active federal role in health care, with promises to bolster health care transfers, and views toward expanding its financial incentives to pharmacare and home care. For their part, the Conservatives tend to favour the status quo in terms of levels and scope of spending, as they seek to curry favours with provincial governments that remain jealous of their autonomy. In practice, little changed after the return of the Liberals in power in 2015, except for some additional transfers, which tended to come with significant conditions for provinces.

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SYSTEM EFFICIENCY, HEALTH OUTCOMES, AND PUBLIC ATTITUDES History tells us quite a bit about how two neighbours ended up with such different health care systems. But what is the impact of that on Americans and Canadians themselves, in terms of efficiency, health outcomes, and attitudes toward their system? There have been many spitting matches in the popular media about the quality of care in the two countries. Canadians’ fascination with US politics and culture extends to an exposure to the excesses and inadequacies of their neighbours’ health care system, while in the United States debates over national health insurance have often pointed a spotlight northward. Indeed, Canada often was the poster child for American critiques of health care reform during debates over both the Clinton health reform and Obamacare. The perennial question is whether more spending on health care (as in the United States) buys better health, or whether wider access to care (as in Canada) ensures overall wellness. In a 2021 study comparing the efficiency of health systems in eleven advanced industrial countries based on five criteria (access to care, care process, administrative efficiency, equity, and health outcomes), major differences were found between the two North American countries. Indeed, the US system rated last overall and last on every indicator except care process, where it came second. For the US, the main lesson is that in spite of its emphasis on high-quality care, issues of equity and efficiency drag its global performance down, when compared to more predominantly public systems. The bad news for Canada is that its overall rank was only second to last, although its score was considerably closer to the first nine than it was to that of its neighbour to the south. The gap with higher performing countries stems mainly from issues of equity and access, which suggests that the American example may not be the best source of inspiration for models of reform.22 Even though Canadians’ good health is not attributable only to reliable access to affordable care, it can be argued that massively higher levels of spending do not translate into better health outcomes for Americans.23 Universal coverage also means there is less correlation between socio-economic status and access to care in Canada, although systemic inequalities in access to care, and health outcomes, persist for specific groups, most notably Indigenous peoples. Also, uneven resource endowments between metropolitan centres and rural regions generate some inequality of access to care that may become political challenges for some provincial governments. On basic indicators of health status – such as infant mortality and life expectancy – Canada does better overall than the United States. Some of this may have to do with the different types of ethnic and racial diversity in Canadian and American populations, or with different lifestyle habits. For example, although smoking rates have declined in both countries, they are still higher in the United States. Obesity is also more prevalent in the United States and, more recently, fatalities linked with opioid addiction have been higher south of the border.

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Aging is another common challenge, although its impact depends on the demographic profile of the population, the conditions that lead to healthy or unhealthy aging, and the system’s ability to meet needs (such as home care and long-term care).24 In the United States, the specific focus is on the impact of the baby boom generation on the federal government’s ability to sustain massive demands on Medicare, Medicaid, and social security. Public opinion data show some differences in the structure of attitudes toward health and health care between the two countries. For more than two decades, Americans have displayed persistent concerns about their health care system, as well as mounting worries about the overall increase in health costs and their individual ability to afford needed care.25 Americans also tend to be more dissatisfied than Canadians with the care they receive. In contrast, Canadians tend to be more positive about their health care system.26 In Canada also, the boundaries of political debate over what is possible in health reform have widened. Physician groups are increasingly contentious, and court cases are brought to test the limits of the public system. Federal and provincial politicians still debate the scope of federal involvement and the proper balance of public and private health care.There are also debates between options to broaden the public system, including pharmacare, and strengthening existing services, as resources are often stretched to their limits. To add to the complexity of these debates, the lasting impacts of the 2020 pandemic will bring new issues of public health preparedness to the forefront. Two other noteworthy developments occurred in the new century’s first decade. In 2003, the outbreak of the SARS virus – a form of avian flu – in Toronto virtually shut down Canada’s largest city and exposed significant gaps in the country’s public health system. A new federal Public Health Agency was put into place to ensure appropriate federal-provincial coordination and health system readiness for this and other public health challenges. In 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Quebec’s ban on private health insurance in the Chaoulli v. Quebec case in its divided decision about wait times and access to care.27 The courts have a long tradition of judicial activism in social policy in the United States, but this role is more recent in Canada.The Chaoulli case did not fundamentally change Quebec’s public health insurance. Even though it did open the possibility of allowing private insurers to cover some services, the Quebec government has since constrained this to specific areas such as non-urgent knee, hip, and cataract surgeries.

A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEMS: THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC No survey of the differences that count in health care between Canada and the United States would be complete without an account of the tragic pandemic that hit the world in 2020 and whose impact will continue to be felt for a long time. This ultimate test of the two health care systems highlighted many of the differences and similarities detailed in this chapter, both in terms of their respective strengths and weaknesses and in terms of their common challenges. The crisis also highlights the distinct place that public-health infrastructure and policies are

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likely to occupy increasingly in designing and reforming health care systems in a globalized environment. The first reported cases of novel coronavirus infection came in the United States on January 20, 2020, and seven days later in Canada. The first deaths occurred in the two countries in early February, and both countries were soon overwhelmed with new cases from various points of entry and out-of-control community transmissions. After more than two years, in the summer of 2022, the cumulative total of officially reported cases in the US had reached about 89 million and the total number of deaths topped 1 million (1,021,276). In Canada, these totals had reached, respectively, about 4 million confirmed cases and 42,219 deaths. In per capita terms, the US total was among the worst in the world, with 3,100 deaths per million inhabitants (­fifteenth of 154 reported countries in July 2022), while Canada was in the middle of the pack with 1,111 deaths per million (sixty-first of 154).28 Although methods for compiling deaths and cases differ across countries, these differences are stunning. It is difficult to assess the respective weights of the key differences between the two countries that explain this sizable variation in outcome. Inevitably, explanations for the severity of the death toll in the United States must account for crucial errors made by then-president Donald Trump, who delayed the broad application of mitigation measures and failed to adequately inform the public of the lethality and transmissibility of the virus early on, although this information was available to him. Although leadership accounts for some of the differences in the ways governments in both countries organized policy responses and mobilized their publics, however, it is far from sufficient. Among the factors explaining the sizable gap in outcomes between the two neighbours, some of the differences discussed in this chapter in the organization of health care systems and their political and socio-economic environments mattered a great deal. Also, the pandemic served as a test that revealed strengths and weaknesses in the two countries’ approach to health care, with valuable lessons for the future. First, socio-economic and ethno-racial inequalities were reflected in the pandemic’s impact in the two countries. In both countries, the virus made disproportionate numbers of victims among the poor, members of minority groups, and Indigenous peoples. The same is true for wide disparities in the quality of long-term care for the elderly, which were responsible for a large number of deaths in the United States in the early stages of the pandemic, just as they were in Canada, particularly in the province of Quebec. As the pandemic wore on, however, wider inequalities in access to health care tended to make proportionally more victims south of the border. Second, this chapter showed that one of the key obstacles to the development of public health care in the United States has been its greater levels of ideological or partisan polarization, particularly in regards to regulation or active government intervention. This difference mattered during the pandemic. In the US, political polarization permeated the process of instating measures to mitigate the spread of the virus, from early calls to limit non-essential social

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interactions, to mask mandates, to all matters related to vaccination. Government officials were caught off-guard in part because the Trump administration had ditched contingency plans and organizational structures to coordinate reactions to a pandemic, for no other apparent reason than that they were established by the previous administration. In initial efforts to distribute key equipment to hospitals, the federal government encouraged competition between states at the expense of a more rational coordinated approach. By contrast, federal-provincial coordination in Canada was largely devoid of partisan tensions. In the US, the virus initially hit urban states and regions that were predominantly Democratic, but in later stages of the crisis, resistance to any form of government action to control the virus became endemic in predominantly Republican areas, a resistance that was actively encouraged by conservative opinion leaders and politicians. Similar observations may be made about Canada, where pockets of resistance to government actions could be found among right-leaning groups, but on a more modest scale and with little support from opinion leaders. Third, the development of vaccination efforts highlighted differences that count between the two countries. It is worth mentioning that one of the great strengths of the American health care and pharmaceutical sector is its capacity to foster innovation. To its credit, the Trump administration provided the right set of incentives to allow for an amazingly fast process of development, testing, and approval of COVID-19 vaccines. Canada was a peripheral actor in the development of vaccines, and it was initially disadvantaged by its relative lack of power to negotiate access to massive amounts of vaccine doses.The next challenge was vaccine distribution. On the whole, the campaign was more successful in Canada, but not by an enormous margin. As of December 2022, 83 per cent of all Canadians had received at least one dose, 80 per cent had received their primary series of vaccines, and 50 per cent had received three doses or more (88 per cent of Canadians twelve years and older had received their primary series). Also by December 2022, 81 per cent of all Americans had received at least one dose, 69 per cent had received their primary series, but only 14 per cent of the total population above five years old had received an updated bivalent booster vaccine (77 per cent of Americans twelve and older had received their primary series).29 On the supply side, both countries managed remarkably well in mobilizing public and private entities in the health care sector to assure universal, timely, efficient, and free access to vaccines. On the demand side, however, socio-economic inequalities and political polarization became major impediments to universal immunization. In the two countries, vaccine hesitancy, reluctance, or outright resistance became obstacles to rapidly achieving widespread immunity, but these problems were more prevalent in the United States. Among the factors that account for this difference in the US is an enduring attitude of mistrust toward public health authorities among minority groups. The more frustrating obstacle to universal vaccination, however, has been the extreme politicization of the process on the ideological right, which has created pockets of outright resistance to vaccination and made vaccine mandates a politically explosive issue, in

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contrast with more consensual past experiences with vaccine mandates. In Canada, resistance on the political right also hampered vaccination, but it was merely an echo of the much stronger American movement. The notable exception in this picture was the “trucker convoy” protests over vaccine mandates that paralyzed Ottawa and blocked major points of entry along the border in January and February of 2022. These protests heightened political tensions over public-health decisions in the later stages of the crisis in Canada. In the United States especially, whether the showdowns over COVID-19 vaccine mandates will have a long-term impact on mandated vaccinations for a host of other diseases remains an open question. Finally, it will take some time to fully assess whether the health systems of the two countries were ready and able to cope with demands of this magnitude on top of their existing challenges. In the two countries, resources were stretched far beyond capacity during the first two years of the pandemic, as hospitals managed to operate under permanent crisis conditions and delay innumerable interventions for non-critical care. Financially, it is already clear that the US system of private insurance was able to survive because of massive injections of federal funds into the system. What is less clear is whether the vulnerability of private medicine to major system-wide shocks will lead to a reconsideration of universal public health insurance in the US.

CONCLUSION Health care provides one of the best illuminations of how differences in political context can have such important impacts on policy outcomes in Canada and the United States. The divergences between the two in the North American context are remarkable, all the more so because some of the obvious similarities that also exist in the origins and development of health services over time. While there is no denying the gulf between the two countries in the organization and financing of their respective health care systems – where in comparative terms Canada looks much closer to other industrialized countries than to its closest neighbour – this chapter also shows that these divergent outcomes were the result of key political decisions that were conditioned by different institutional structures and political contexts. Through the lens of comparative analysis, we have shown that Canada and the United States have much in common in the development of medical practice, the ethos of the medical profession, and initial conditions that led to divisive political battles at the origin of two ultimately different models of public health insurance. In Canada, universal health insurance started as a part of the social-democratic agenda of a sub-national government that, over time and with considerable buy-in across party lines and interest groups, became part of an established set of principles at the heart of public financing and equal access. In the United States, intra-party jostling within the Democratic ranks and intensifying divisions within Congress left the federal

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government with a very different kind of reform trajectory, where successive compromises have led to a multi-tiered, multi-payer system grappling with the consequences of uneven access and runaway costs. Today, both countries face immediate challenges and future uncertainties. The relative consensus that exists in Canada on the key principles and features of the health care system stands in clear contrast with the polarization that persists in the United States about how – and to some extent about whether – to achieve universal access to quality health care. The unprecedented experience of response to COVID-19 came after a decade of change in both countries. In Canada, successive Conservative governments toyed with the notion of turning back the clock on health reform in the name of fiscal responsibility and provincial autonomy, but the idea never achieved broad public support. The enduring problem of cost containment, made more acute by the dual challenges of ongoing demographic changes and the current and future threats of global pandemics, will remain a central point of contention in Canadian federal and provincial politics. A deeper concern is whether health care is still the “third rail” in North American politics.30 Certainly, the scope of debate about health reform has changed considerably in Canada over the past two decades, with more emphasis on systemic change, timely access to care, alternative payment mechanisms, and the proper scope of private insurance and delivery. It remains to be seen whether this relaunches a political battle about the direction of future reform, as policy-makers try to grapple with heightened demands from stakeholders.These heightened demands include, on the one hand, pressure to broaden the scope of publicly funded services and providers who want more of the fiscal pie, and on the other, consumers who may start voting with their feet beyond the public system. In the United States, policy-making in health care is facing an even tougher uphill battle. The multiple efforts to derail the reforms of the 2010 ACA mostly failed, but they demonstrated the incredible difficulties involved in taking the next steps toward the goal of universal health insurance coverage. The decade-long fights over the ACA also highlighted the fragility of the modest advances already made in that direction. In such an intense and polarized environment, where partisanship could not even be cast aside to confront a historic pandemic that killed approximately one in every 325 Americans, and where opponents cannot even agree on the basic facts that stare them in the face on the challenges of health reform, the future of health care remains woefully uncertain. Beyond the policy challenges of providing health care coverage to all Americans, the more important and overarching challenge for one of the oldest constitutional democracies in the world is to determine whether the state has a role at all in improving the lives of all its citizens and, more urgently, whether it will remain a constitutional democracy in the first place.

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STUDY QUESTIONS 1. Political scientists often identify ideas, interests, and institutions as three fundamental elements to consider in explaining patterns of policy development. Given that the Canadian and American systems of health care delivery and financing were quite similar in the early part of the twentieth century and developed very differently from the 1930s onward, which of these factors seems most important in explaining these differences and why? 2. Based on the experiences of Canada and the United States, what are some of the general advantages and disadvantages of a system based on universal public health insurance in terms of overall costs, access to care, and quality of care? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the two systems from the perspectives of specific categories of individuals or groups? 3. In what ways did federalism represent an obstacle or a facilitating institutional factor in the development of public health insurance in the United States and Canada? 4. From the point of view of specific categories of health care providers (e.g., general practitioners, specialists, nurses, hospital administrators), what are the advantages and disadvantages of practising in Canada or the United States? 5. Recent polls conducted in Canada and the United States reveal varying levels of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with certain aspects of each country’s respective health care system. Find recent polling data on the subject for either or both countries and identify some of the principal problems facing their health care systems from the point of view of the public. 6. The COVID-19 pandemic was a massive challenge for both countries in terms of their public-health systems’ capacity to prevent and contain the spread of this highly infectious disease and in terms of shouldering the additional demands on health care systems to treat the sick. This chapter identifies strengths and weaknesses of these systems in the two countries, but it only scratches the surface. Based on this brief outline and more up-to-date sources, what are some of the lessons that can be drawn from this experience in the two countries?

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Antonia Maioni and Pierre Martin NOTES 1 Jeffrey Simpson, Chronic Condition:Why Canada’s Health Care System Needs to be Dragged into the ­Twenty-First Century (Toronto: Penguin, 2012). 2 Terry Boychuck, The Making and Meaning of Hospital Policy in the United States and Canada (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999). 3 Antonia Maioni, “Health Care,” in Canadian Federalism, 3rd ed., ed. Herman Bakvis and Grace Skogstad (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2012), 165–82. 4 All the data in this section are from the Canadian Institutes for Health Information (www.cihi.ca), unless otherwise noted. 5 Robert G. Evans et al., “Controlling Health Expenditures: The Canadian Reality,” New England Journal of Medicine 320, no. 9 (1989): 571–7. 6 Steffie Woolhandler, Terry Campbell, and David U. Himmelstein, “Costs of Health Care Administration in the United States and Canada,” New England Journal of Medicine 349 (2003): 768–75. 7 C. David Naylor, Private Practice, Public Payment: Canadian Medicine and the Politics of Health Insurance, 1911–1966 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1986). 8 Miriam J. Laugesen and Sherry A. Glied, “Higher Fees Paid to US Physicians Drive Higher Spending for Physician Services Compared to Other Countries,” Health Affairs 30, no. 9 (September 2011): 1647–56. 9 Karen Davis, Cathy Schoen, and Kristof Stremikis, “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: How the Performance of the US Health Care System Compares Internationally” (Washington, DC: Commonwealth Fund, June 2010). 10 Carmen DeNavas-Walt, Bernadette D. Proctor, and Jessica C. Smith, “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2009” (US Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P60-238, US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2010), 71; Katherine Keisler-Starkey and Lisa N. Bunch, “Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2019” (US Census Bureau Current Population Reports, P60-271, US Government Publishing Office, Washington, DC, 2020), 4. Percentages may not add to 100 due to rounding error and some overlap in coverage, as individuals may be simultaneously covered by more than one plan. Tricare is a health care program covering active and retired service members, and their families, worldwide. 11 As of April 2022, twelve states, all governed by Republicans, had chosen to opt out of Medicaid expansion: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. See Kaiser Family Foundation, Status of State Medicaid Expansion Decisions: Interactive Map, accessed April 25, 2022, www.kff.org/medicaid/­issue-brief/status-of-state -medicaid-expansion-decisions-interactive-map/. 12 Theodore Marmor and Jonathan Oberlander, “The Patchwork: Health Reform, American Style,” Social Science & Medicine 72 (2011): 125–8. 13 Seymour Martin Lipset, Continental Divide:Values and Institutions of the United States and Canada (New York: Routledge, 1990). 14 Gerard Boychuk, National Health Insurance in the United States and Canada: Race,Territory, and the Roots of Difference (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2009). 15 Theodore R. Marmor, Kieke Okma, and Stephen R. Latham, “National Values, Institutions and Health Policies: What Do They Imply for Medicare Reform?” (Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada Discussion Paper No. 5, July 2002). 16 Antonia Maioni, Parting at the Crossroads:The Emergence of Health Insurance in the United States and Canada (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); Carolyn Tuohy, Accidental Logics:The Dynamics

Health Care in Canada and the United States of Change in the Health Care Arena in the United States, Britain, and Canada (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 17 Thomas Bodenheimer and Kevin Grumbach, Understanding Health Policy, 6th ed. (New York: Lange, 2012). 18 Theodore R. Marmor and Jonathan Oberlander, “From HMOs to ACOs: The Quest for the Holy Grail in US Health Policy,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 27, no. 9 (September 2012): 1215–18. 19 Timothy S. Jost, “The Affordable Care Act Largely Survives the Supreme Court’s Scrutiny – But Barely,” Health Affairs 31, no. 8 (August 2012): 1659–62. 20 Malcolm G. Taylor, Health Insurance and Canadian Public Policy:The Seven Decisions that Created the Canadian Health Insurance System and Their Outcomes, 2nd ed. (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987). 21 Keith G. Banting, “Canada: Nation-Building in a Federal Welfare State,” in Federalism and the Welfare State: New World and European Experiences, ed. Herbert Obinger, Stephan Leibfried, and Frank G. Castles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 89–137. 22 Eric C. Schneider, Arnav Shah, Michelle M. Doty, Roosa Tikkanen, Katharine Fields, and Reginald D. Williams II, “Mirror, Mirror 2021 – Reflecting Poorly: Health Care in the US Compared to Other High-Income Countries,” Commonwealth Fund, August 2021, www.commonwealthfund. org/publications/fund-reports/2021/aug/mirror-mirror-2021-reflecting-poorly. 23 Gordon H. Guyatt et al., “A Systematic Review of Studies Comparing Health Outcomes in Canada and the United States,” Open Medicine 1, no. 1 (2007). 24 Steven Morgan and Colleen Cunningham, “Population Aging and the Determinants of Health Care Expenditures: The Case of Hospital, Medical, and Pharmaceutical Care in British Columbia, 1996 to 2006,” Healthcare Policy 7, no. 1 (2011): 68–79. 25 Karen Donelan et al., “The Cost of Health System Change: Public Discontent in Five Nations,” Health Affairs 18, no. 3 (May–June 1999): 206–16. 26 Stuart Soroka, Antonia Maioni, and Pierre Martin, “What Moves Public Opinion on Health Care? Individual Experiences, System Performance and Media Framing,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 38, no. 5 (March 2013); Richard Nadeau, Éric Bélanger, François Pétry, Stuart Soroka, and Antonia Maioni, Health Care Policy and Opinion in the United States and Canada (New York: Routledge, 2014). 27 Christopher P. Manfredi and Antonia Maioni, “Judicializing Health Policy: Unexpected Lessons and an Inconvenient Truth,” in Contested Constitutionalism: Reflections on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, ed. James B. Kelly and Christopher P. Manfredi (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009), 129–44. 28 Source: Statista, based on data from the World Bank and Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, “Coronavirus (COVID-19) Deaths Worldwide Per One Million Population as of July 13, 2022, by Country,” accessed December 9, 2022, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709 /coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/. 29 Government of Canada, “Covid-19 Vaccination in Canada,” accessed December 14, 2022, https:// health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/vaccination-coverage/#a5; United States, Centers for Disease Control, “Covid-19 Vaccinations in the United States,” accessed December 14, 2022, https://covid .cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-total-admin-rate-total. 30 Duncan Sinclair, Mark Rochon, and Peggy Leatt, “Riding the Third Rail: The Story of Ontario’s Health Services Restructuring Commission, 1996–2000” (Montreal: Institute for Research in Public Public, 2005); Simpson, Chronic Condition.

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T W E LV E

Choose Your Parents Wisely: Economic Inequality and Mobility in Canada and the United States John Harles

“So when the question is raised whether some attempt to establish greater equality may not be desirable ... (t)hey rear, and snort, and paw the air, and affirm with one accord that the suggestion is at once wicked and impracticable.” R.H. Tawney, Equality1

If there was ever a doubt that economic inequality kills, COVID-19 should have laid it to rest. High-income countries have weathered a different kind of pandemic, one in which vaccines are plentiful and mortality rates low when compared to states with far fewer resources. But even within rich democracies, variations in morbidity are typically tied to a person’s position on the socio-economic ladder.2 Pathologies of low-income status increase one’s vulnerability: high population density, polluted air and water, food insecurity, pre-existing health conditions like diabetes and hypertension, lack of access to adequate medical care, essential employment requiring sustained engagement with the public, or no employment at all. Since many of these conditions apply disproportionately to people of colour, COVID-19 has assumed a racial cast, doubling down on another kind of inequality.3 And in a perverse irony, the pandemic seems to have accelerated pre-existing economic disparities.4 While the haves leverage easy credit and a robust stock market to pad their net worth, the have-nots face a more anxious economic future. To borrow a phrase from Oxfam, the global anti-poverty organization, COVID-19 is turning out to be an “inequality virus.”5 The late political philosopher and legal theorist Ronald Dworkin once called equality the “endangered species of ideals,” noting how difficult it was to fix its meaning.6 Yet there is

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something compelling about equality – or its absence, as the tragic course of the pandemic allows. That’s because the idea of economic equality isn’t simply a matter of abstract intellectual interest; rather it touches concretely on the kind of life one wishes to lead, the material conditions of an individual’s flourishing and fulfilment. What’s required is necessarily political, since governments must constantly make choices about how to engage the economy – through taxation, financial regulation, monetary policy, trade and investment strategies, or social policies correcting for perceived distributional unfairness. But equality has added importance in democratic societies like Canada and the United States, which in principle aspire to the equal influence of citizens in the political decision-making process. Inasmuch as that civic norm reflects a deeper belief in the common humanity of all – that each person is of equal value and should be treated with equal dignity, respect, and consideration – the demands of democracy and economic equality are never far apart.

DISTRIBUTION Economic inequality is a global phenomenon. Since the late 1970s, disparities in the distribution of income and wealth have grown in all regions of the world, though not at the same rate.7 On balance, European countries are now a little more egalitarian than elsewhere, including most other advanced industrial states in North America and the Pacific. Figure 12.1 charts two standard measures of inequality over the last decade and a half for the G7, the world’s seven biggest democratic economies. At least three things are apparent: (1) the United States has a commanding lead in the inequality sweepstakes, though the United Kingdom has moved into a solid second place; (2) across the G7 the general direction of distributional change has been toward greater inequality, especially when it comes to increasing the average income of the top 20 per cent (quintile) of earners compared to the bottom 20 per cent; and (3) Canada is the only G7 country to clearly resist this trend, since according to both measures of inequality it has become a more equal place over time. Indeed, among the thirty-eight members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a grouping of the world’s rich democracies, Canada sits at or below average on most indices of income inequality, with the United States consistently at the distant unequal end of the table.8 Canada’s exceptionalism isn’t quite so obvious when one considers individuals at the heights of the income ladder. With respect to the share of pre-tax income controlled by the richest 10 per cent (decile) of earners, in 2019 the richest Americans pocketed almost 48 per cent and Canadians slightly more than 43 per cent of the whole. The margin between the most affluent 1 per cent (centile) in each country is almost the same – a 19 and 15 per cent share, respectively. Things haven’t always been this way. Across the last century, the distribution of income in North America has followed a “U-shaped” pattern (figure 12.2). In the 1920s, Canadian and American earnings disparities were as skewed as they are at present. But from the late 1930s until the early

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Figure 12.1.  Gini coefficient and 80/20 split for G7 countries 2004–5 and 2019 (or most recent) Data are for disposable household income – income after transfer and taxes. The Gini coefficient is expressed on a scale from zero to one, where zero indicates perfect equality, in that each household has the same amount of income, and one indicates perfect inequality, in that all income would go to a single household. The 80/20 split is the ratio of the average income of the richest 20 per cent of households in a country to that of the poorest 20 per cent. Author’s calculations based on OECD data, OECD (2021), “Income Distribution,” OECD Social and Welfare Statistics (database), https://doi.org/10.1787/data-00654-en (accessed on August 8, 2021).

1950s income gaps began to compress, after which they held fairly constant through the early 1970s. Since then, in a phenomenon the American economist Paul Krugman calls the “Great Divergence,” income inequality in North America has steadily grown until it rivals that of the late Gilded Age. The source of that inequality, however, is different. In the 1920s, the richest individuals received much of their income from wealth – returns on capital investments in property, stocks and bonds, savings, and so on – which is still an important and increasingly lucrative part of the revenue of the well-to-do. But now individuals at the highest rungs of the ladder are being paid a much greater portion of their earnings in wages and salaries, leaving less generously compensated members of the middle- and lower-income tiers far behind. Dig into the aggregate data a little deeper and one gets a better sense of just how disproportionate things have become. The higher up the income scale one goes, the greater the extent of inequality. So, over the last four decades, leading earners in each country have increased the fraction of pre-tax income they command (table 12.1). Since 1980, income share has jumped for the highest tenth of Canadian earners by 11.5 per cent and for the top 1 per cent by 58.5   per  cent. Their American counterparts have done even better – 26.5 per cent for the

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Figure 12.2.  Top 1% pre-tax national income share in the US and Canada 1920–2019 Source: World Inequality Database, https://wid.world/.

highest tenth and a hefty 73.6 per cent for the top 1 per cent. Not only do the rich continue to get richer, but proportionately those of more modest means are losing ground.Thus, the bottom four-fifths of earners in Canada and the United States have lost income share – by considerably more in the US case, including a 41 per cent reduction among the poorest fifth of Americans. And while the uneven distribution of income has slowed in Canada since the turn of the millennium, it has done quite the opposite in the United States. It’s not only the allocation of income share that is at issue. During the Great Divergence, the real average earnings of the richest decile of Canadians have grown by almost 58 per cent, that of the richest centile by 125 per cent (table 12.2). Gains accruing to their American peers are even more breathtaking – 129 per cent for the top US decile and 216 per cent for the top centile. To be sure, across the last forty years, individuals who have remained on the lowest tiers of the income ladder still experienced real average income growth, but comparatively their returns are meagre. Compounding a hefty initial advantage, leading earners have rocketed away from the rest, so that in Canada the most affluent 1 per cent have enjoyed a rate of growth almost five times that of the poorest 20 per cent, while in the United States the average earnings

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John Harles Table 12.1.  Pre-tax national income share, Canada and United States 1980–2019 Canada Income Share (%)

% Growth

% Distribution

1980

2000

2019

2000–2019

1980–2019

Lowest Quintile 2nd 3rd 4th Highest Quintile Top 10% Top 1%

1.7 6.5 13.1 22.1 56.5 38.8 9.9

1.6 6.2 12.4 20.8 59.0 42.7 15.6

1.5 5.9 12.1 20.8 59.7 43.3 15.7

–6.2 –4.8 –2.4 0.0 1.1 1.4 0.6

–11.7 –9.0 –7.6 –5.8 5.6 11.5 58.5

United States Income Share (%)

% Growth

% Distribution

1980

2000

2019

2000–2019

1980–2019

Lowest Quintile 2nd 3rd 4th Highest Quintile Top 10% Top 1%

1.7 6.6 13.5 23.2 55.1 37.6 11.4

1.3 5.9 11.8 20.1 60.9 45.3 18.5

1.0 5.5 11.0 19.3 63.2 47.6 19.8

–23.0 –6.8 –6.7 –3.9 3.7 5.0 7.0

–41.1 –16.6 –18.5 –16.8 14.7 26.5 73.6

Note: Figures in constant 2020 Canadian and US dollars. Source: World Inequality Database, https://wid.world/.

of the top 1 per cent have ballooned at twenty-four times the rate of the bottom 20 per cent. One shouldn’t forget what this means to the sums involved: a boost of C$1,030 for the average earner in the lowest Canadian quintile, but C$572,419 for someone in the top centile; an average gain of US$311 for the bottom American quintile, though over US$1 million for the richest 1 per cent. Earnings are only part of the inequality picture; the distribution of wealth is just as revealing. Among rich democracies, wealth is even less equally allocated than income – on average about two times less equal. Once again, Canada places near the middle of the distributional range, with the United States at its most unequal tail.9 Unfortunately, of the North American neighbours reliable long-term data on net worth – a person’s total assets minus their debts – are available only for the United States. It’s a familiar story: since the 1920s, the distribution of American wealth at the top end has the same U-shaped appearance as it does for income, though at a much higher magnitude. Wealth share for the richest decile and centile of Americans decreased from the 1930s to the early 1980s, after which it began to accelerate to the point where it now

Choose Your Parents Wisely Table 12.2.  Pre-tax national income share, Canada and United States 1980–2019 Canada Avg Income (C$)

% Growth

% Distribution

1980

2000

2019

2000–2019

1980–2019

Lowest Quintile 2nd 3rd 4th Highest Quintile Top 10% Top 1%

3,997 14,971 30,312 51,175 130,589 179,161 457,581

4,852 18,194 36,773 61,505 174,526 252,506 925,223

5,027 19,094 39,461 68,054 194,777 282,665 1.03 m

3.6 4.7 7.3 10.6 11.6 11.9 11.3

3.6 4.7 7.3 10.6 11.6 11.9 11.3

United States Avg Income (US$)

% Growth

% Distribution

1980

2000

2019

2000–2019

1980–2019

Lowest Quintile 2nd 3rd 4th Highest Quintile Top 10% Top 1%

3,422 13,505 27,687 47,463 112,853 154,263 467,797

4,119 18,711 37,806 64,084 194,578 289,105 1.18 m

3,733 20,569 40,913 72,083 235,990 353,329 1.48 m

-9.3 9.9 8.2 12.4 21.2 22.0 25.4

9.0 52.3 47.7 51.8 109.1 129.0 216.3

Note: Figures in constant 2020 Canadian and US dollars for average individual pre-tax national income (GDP minus consumption of fixed capital [capital depreciation] plus net foreign income). Source: World Inequality Database, https://wid.world/.

stands: a 71 per cent share for the richest ten per cent and 35 per cent for the richest one per cent (figure 12.3). For these cohorts, share growth over the last forty years has been impressive – 10 per cent for the wealthiest decile and 35 per cent for the wealthiest centile.Yet there is a cost. The least wealthy 90 per cent of Americans have travelled the opposite path, losing roughly 18 per cent of their wealth share during the same time. That’s not to say they’ve received no asset gains at all, rather that proportionately they are falling behind. But people in the lowest tiers are barely managing. The bottom half of American households have hardly any wealth – just a 1.5 per cent share or US$11,800 on average – and the bottom 30 per cent have none, owing more than they own.10 Presently, Canada is a bit more egalitarian. According to global wealth data compiled by the investment bank Credit Suisse, in 2020 the richest tenth of Canadians controlled a little more than half of the country’s privately held assets, with the top one per cent taking a 24 per cent portion. On the other hand, the bottom half had barely a five per cent share and the bottom fifth virtually no wealth at all.11 Nevertheless, the contrast between Canada and the United States is significant, especially because over the last twenty years wealth inequality among top

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Figure 12.3.  United States, net personal wealth inequality 1962–2019 Source: World Inequality Database, https://wid.world/.

Canadian earners has declined or decelerated while among Americans it has done the reverse. One explanation turns on the distinction between financial wealth and wealth in real estate. In the United States, the stock market has grown more briskly than in Canada, swelling the accounts of the wealthiest ten per cent of American households who own over 80 per cent of the equity. But housing prices have risen faster in Canada than the United States, lifting the wealth share of middle-income Canadians whose principal asset is their homes. In the United States, the 2007 recession, from which Canadians were largely sheltered, magnified the distinction. Middle-class Americans were especially vulnerable to a financial crisis that slashed the value of their homes by a third, pushed a quarter underwater (whereby the value of a property is worth less than the debt on the mortgage), and put 8 million into foreclosure.12 Between 2007 and 2010 the median net worth of US households declined by almost half. Americans of modest means still haven’t recovered. Since we are all middle class now, or most often tell pollsters we are, what can be said of Canadians and Americans at the heart of the inequality scale? As a proxy for middle class, consider the central 40 per cent of the distribution, those individuals and families located between the

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thirtieth and seventieth centiles. With respect to total income share (income after government transfers but before taxes), over the last forty years there hasn’t been much difference between Canada and the United States.13 The more significant variation comes with wealth. In 2020, the middle 40 per cent commanded 7.1 per cent of total assets in the United States but 16.4 per cent in Canada.14 Canada’s egalitarian edge carries over into a further expression of middle-class status: the material well-being of individuals at the very midpoint of the economic distribution. According to the US Census Bureau, in 2019 median household total income in the United States was US$62,843. For the same year, Statistics Canada pegs the Canadian household median at C$99,100 – equivalent to US$82,253 when adjusted for purchasing power parities.15 Canada’s lead is even greater for wealth. Credit Suisse calculates that in 2020 the median American wealth amounted to US$79,274. For Canadians it was more than half again as much at US$125,688, making Canada’s middle class the richest in the world. Given the global momentum toward deeper economic inequality, Canadians can’t be complacent. But with respect to the North American distributional ladder, while it’s very good to be rich in the United States, if one is just moderately well-off or less, it may be better to be in Canada.16

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? Economists disagree as to the weighting of the factors responsible for growing disparities in income and wealth. Globalization – the integration of the world economy through enhanced trade and investment as well as the mobility of labour and capital – is part of the answer. As post-industrial states seek to maintain competitive advantage by cutting taxes and reducing public assistance, for many workers lower wages and job insecurity are the result. Conversely, the opening of global capital markets, combined with the relaxation of domestic controls on credit and generous lending practices, have sparked an extraordinary dynamism in the financial sector, including enormous increases in compensation for individuals able to harness the new economic realities. Then there are changes in technology. A shift from manufacturing to a service-centred economy, one driven by advances in computer information systems, puts a premium on people with the desired knowledge-based skills. Consequently, higher education has become one of the most significant factors leading to income inequality over the course of a working life: the average income advantage for individuals with a bachelor’s degree versus a high school diploma is 66 per cent in the United States and 45 per cent in Canada, even more if the person in question is particularly tech-savvy.17 Gender has an impact, too. On balance, increasing the number of women in the workforce, especially those in full-time paid work, tends to enhance economic growth and reduce household income inequality. Yet there are nuances. Single-female-headed households, currently a little more than 13 per cent of Canadian and 18 per cent of American families, are correlated with reduced earnings, high unemployment, and an increased likelihood of poverty. Alternatively, the rise of assortative marriage, whereby

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partners are likely to be of the same educational and occupational status, multiplies the earnings advantages for those at the top of the income scale. These common structural pressures aside, the trajectories of income and wealth distribution across advanced industrial countries are not the same. Governments have room to manoeuvre, since their policy choices can diminish or aggravate economic inequality. When income gaps in North America began to narrow in the 1930s and 1940s, the Second World War and the American and Canadian governments’ responses to it played a part. Labour scarcity during the war, combined with wage and price controls and labour relations regulations, had the effect of driving up the earnings of ordinary workers. After the war, wages continued to increase as demand for employment in manufacturing remained high. But that growth in the earnings of middle- and lower-income families was augmented by minimum wage laws, political recognition of the right to collective bargaining, and the establishment of the central props of the welfare state – unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation, old age pensions, means-tested social assistance for families in need, and publicly funded health care. And though economists disagree as to the effect tax regimes have on reducing income disparities, for much of the period personal income taxes were astonishingly progressive – in 1950 the top marginal rate was 84 per cent in Canada and 91 per cent in the United States. Much has changed. Since 1980 the real value of the minimum wage has declined in the United States, though not in Canada.18 The labour movement is no longer so robust, its power weakened by changes in global economic fundamentals as well as legal limitations on the bargaining power of unions, especially the public sector unions that now comprise the greater part of the movement.19 And at least since the mid-1990s the levelling effect of fiscal policy has been reduced, as governments have limited means-tested spending and overhauled their tax codes.20 Social assistance has taken a hit, recast by landmark welfare reform legislation passed by Ottawa and Washington in the mid-1990s. Public services now have just as important a role in diminishing income inequality as do cash transfers, yet in light of the increasing strain governments are under to pay for the largest part of those services – health and education – one wonders whether their future role is at risk.

ECONOMIC MOBILITY If citizens could be convinced that, regardless of background, they had an equal chance to ascend the economic ladder, that hard work and perseverance would be met with success, then large inequalities in income and wealth might be less unsettling. One can imagine, for instance, that even in a highly unequal society individuals might be willing to wager on their own energies and skills, at the risk of a worse life materially if they proved less talented or ambitious than they had thought. In such a case, inequality might act as an incentive to greater aspirations, productivity, and achievement. Mobility is the concept social scientists use to signify the capacity

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to move between different tiers of socio-economic well-being, and for many observers it is mobility, not inequality per se, that is the most important measure of a political community’s economic health.21 Capturing mobility is no easy thing, but a popular metric is how adult children fare on the income scale when compared to their parents. In conditions of consistent economic growth, over the long term one would expect that contemporary earners would be richer than their forebears. And in fact, due to steady increases in per capita gross domestic product (GDP), the average Canadian income now goes 90 per cent further and the average American income a little more than twice as far as it would have a generation ago.22 The benefits of growth aren’t perfectly dispersed, though studies focusing on young adults suggest that around two-thirds of Canadians and Americans can expect to earn more in real terms than their parents did at a similar age.23 Yet there is reason for caution, especially south of the border. According to the Harvard economist Raj Chetty income mobility is far weaker in the United States than it used to be: whereas more than 90 per cent of American children born in 1940 earned more in early adulthood than their parents, only half of those born in 1984 have done likewise.24 Part of the explanation is the importance of family background in determining one’s place in the hierarchy of economic success. The OECD calculates that more than 40 per cent of an American’s income position relative to others in the same generation is a legacy from his or her parents. The assistance Canadian parents give their children is worth around three-quarters as much, making Canada one of the most mobile countries among the rich democracies and the United States one of the least.25 Within various income tiers, the results are equally telling. In a recent analysis, the Canadian economists Marie Connolly, Miles Corak, and Catherine Haeck relate that Canadians born to parents in the lowest 20 per cent of income distribution are more likely to leave for higher quintiles as working adults than are Americans and have a greater, if still narrow, possibility of ascending into the top 20 per cent. On the other hand, downward mobility is also more likely among Canadians, including the chance of being born to a family in the top income quintile but tumbling all the way to the bottom as an adult.26 The penalty for finding oneself on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder can’t be exaggerated. Given present rates of income mobility, the OECD calculates it will take five generations for an American in the poorest tenth of the distribution to approach the average per capita earnings threshold in the United States. At four generations to do the same, Canadians in similar circumstances can hardly count their blessings.27 All of which is to say that regarding relative income status, Canadians are less tethered to their parents than are Americans, for good and for ill.

VALUE DIFFERENCES THAT COUNT? With respect to income and wealth distribution, the United States is one of the most unequal of all rich democratic countries; Canada is in the middle of the pack, in a markedly more equal

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place than its southern neighbour. Conversely, Canada is one of the most mobile of all advanced industrial countries and significantly more so than the United States. Indeed, these two variables – mobility and equality – are statistically correlated, expressed via a “Great Gatsby Curve” which plots the depressive effect of material inequities on the capacity to achieve.28 What explains the different economic orientations between two countries which otherwise have so much in common? A fully formed answer should have interdependent historical, institutional, and macroeconomic components. Neither can the momentum of past policy choices – path dependency – be overlooked. But political values seem an important part of the mix. “Inequality is neither economic nor technical,” writes the French economist, Thomas Piketty, whose best-selling book, Capital in the 21st Century (2014), helped centre the attention of scholars and opinion-makers on issues of economic equality. “[I]t is ideological and political … shaped by each society’s conception of social justice and economic fairness and by the relative political and ideological power of contending groups and discourses.”29 If so, what constellation of values can one expect to find in a country attuned to the claims of economic equality? It should be more social and less individualistic; more open to the ameliorative role of the state and less persuaded about the inherent fairness of markets; more agreeable to the case for enhancing the well-being of each member of society, especially the least fortunate, and less inclined to think equality of opportunity suffices. On all these counts, Canadians appear more disposed than Americans to support limiting large disparities in income and wealth. Economic distribution is a collective concern. If Canadians are less accepting of inequality than Americans, perhaps it’s because Canada is a more socially minded place. After all, Canada’s counter-revolutionary commitment to “peace, order, and good government” requires more communal effort than America’s revolutionary creed of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Consider, too, the respective national creation myths. Canada was brought into existence through the nurture of three founding peoples – British, French, and Indigenous, though recognition of the latter’s importance was long in coming. But the United States was manufactured by the voluntary consent of independent agents seeking to maximize their self-interest. On the American view, government exists to serve individuals, to assist them in the attainment of personally determined goals, and to preserve their God-given rights – including the right to acquire significantly different amounts of property. Canada’s constitutional acknowledgement of the prerogatives of linguistic and religious minorities as well as Native peoples, particularly if they are concentrated geographically, and its more recent pledge to maintain the cultural cohesion of ethnic and racial out-groups and promote their equal participation in Canadian society, suggests an alternative perspective, one more amenable to the well-being of the group. Freedom is nuanced in the United States in such a way as to diminish an overriding concern with economic inequality. In the American conception, freedom connotes autonomy from government and society rather than empowerment through collective effort. If Canadians have tended to view the government’s role in the market pragmatically, frequently a matter of expanding citizens’ choices rather than limiting them, Americans have insisted

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that the benefits of political freedom extend to economic interaction so that the sphere of government authority over the market is minimized, or at least defended as an enhancement to the freedom of citizen-consumers. Capitalist principles – the voluntary exchange of goods and services, private ownership, unlimited appropriation, and the profit motive – have deep roots in American soil. Indeed, in Federalist no. 10 James Madison allows that the first object of government is the protection of faculties through which men are led to possess different amounts of property. Provided that minimum guarantees of equality of opportunity are assured and the reliability of market transactions are upheld by law, American justice is largely a matter of how one fares in impersonal economic competition, even if the outcome is grossly uneven. “I don’t believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich,” Abraham Lincoln once confided, “[but] … we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everyone else.”30 Clearly, Americans don’t dismiss equality in all its forms; according to the Declaration of Independence, the equality of all men is a self-evident truth. But there would seem to be an inescapable tension between the American belief in social equality – an equality confined to white men of property for much of US history – and an unfettered market economy which, by sanctioning considerable economic disparities, undermines that equality. Yet in the United States, status achieved in open economic competition doesn’t appear to produce much social deference or envy. Even among Americans of modest means, wealth is generally regarded as a mark of individual distinction, a correlate of personal industriousness and virtue.31 This widespread belief that the affluent merit their good fortune has probably been a force for social cohesion across American history. The British political scientist Harold Laski once remarked of the American working class that they didn’t want to replace the upper classes, they wanted to join them.32 It may be why in a recent Gallup poll 70 per cent of respondents said the American Dream of increasing affluence was attainable for them.33 And when Pew Research asked Americans to name the two most important qualities making for economic success, 90 per cent identified hard work and ambition – each within one’s ability to control.34 The not-so-happy consequence: in the United States low levels of economic mobility are rarely viewed as systemic malfunctions, but rather attributed to insufficient personal resolve. On the face of it, Canadians aren’t much different. In multiple surveys they rank hard work and ambition just as highly as keys to economic success, though they are less inclined to attribute low-income status to an absence of effort. But ironically, the two publics disagree about the prosperity of future generations. In a 2018 Associated Press survey, 60 per cent of Americans said that they believed their children would do better financially than they had, a view that held regardless of the respondent’s income level, while only 12 per cent thought they might do worse.35 When Environics asked a comparable question of Canadians in 2020, 48 per cent indicated they thought the next generation would have it worse and only 15 per cent that they would have it better – a pessimism that is consistent over several iterations of the poll.36 One wonders if Canadians are more willing to endorse a reallocation of economic resources because

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they imagine society to be less mobile than it actually is, while for Americans an enduring myth of mobility is a powerful disincentive to tackle issues of redistribution. For citizens on either side of the border, economic inequality is an important issue.37 But state intervention on behalf of disadvantaged citizens is far less appealing to Americans than Canadians. When AmericasBarometer asked individuals across the western hemisphere in 2016 to indicate the degree to which they endorsed the idea that government “should implement strong policies to reduce income inequality between the rich and the poor,” the average Canadian was firmly in the interventionist camp, whereas the average American was indifferent – and less enthusiastic about the prospect than respondents from any other country.38 Again, when the US General Social Survey (2018) asked Americans if government should do more to reduce income differences between the rich and the poor, fewer than half indicated their support for some kind of public action, with almost one-third objecting.39 Results were markedly different when Environics put an analogous question to Canadians in 2020: 73 per cent replied it was important for government to reduce the wealth gap with only 21 per cent saying it was not, numbers that have remained stable over time.40 For a significant majority of Canadians, economic inequality seems an affront to core national and democratic convictions, a matter of principle. Americans are more likely to find such disparities inevitable, a natural effect of the market and best handled by growing the economy and expanding opportunity.

POLICY DIFFERENCES THAT COUNT? A country’s egalitarian credentials can be expressed in its legislative commitments, especially those addressing economic disadvantage and promoting material well-being. Here, too, Canada holds a lead over the United States. The Canadian system of publicly financed universal health care insurance, including widespread political recognition of a citizen’s right to health care, is the most dramatic cross-border difference, but it’s not the only one. Take the respective federal provisions for parental leave: a maximum twelve weeks of unpaid leave for an American parent of a newborn or adopted child, versus a potential sixty-nine weeks of at least partly paid leave covering both Canadian parents. And while the sums aren’t overly generous, on balance family-friendly policies receive greater budgetary emphasis in Canada. According to OECD data, government spending for child allowances and credits, childcare, and income support during family leave is equivalent to 1.6 per cent of the Canadian GDP versus just 0.6 per cent of the American, a gap that’s increased over the last twenty years, though both countries are below the mean for rich democratic countries.41 Programs of social assistance for the poorest Canadians and Americans are just as telling. Notwithstanding concerted efforts to cut spending, which in both countries began a generation ago, the Canadian welfare state remains more accommodating and better funded than the American one. For the Canadian national government, welfare reform has always seemed a

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question of fiscal and constitutional probity, of downloading federal resources to the provinces who are legally responsible for administering social assistance. But in the United States, reform has been cast more explicitly as a values issue, of getting welfare recipients to stand on their own two feet as quickly as possible with minimum intervention or coddling. The cumbersome title of the watershed American reform legislation, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (1996), drives home that message; as the block grant portion of the bill, ­Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), indicates, any help to households in want is to be decidedly brief.42 Compared to Canada, US welfare provisions are much stricter regarding eligibility for cash assistance, with more exacting work expectations and shorter time limits for the receipt of benefits. And whereas the federal transfer for social assistance to the provinces and territories in Canada has a legislated growth rate of at least 3 per cent per year, its counterpart in the United States is fixed at $16.5 billion, meaning that over the last twenty-five years it has lost more than a third of its value to inflation.43 Given American states’ own budgetary constraints and their flexibility to limit welfare as they see fit, they have been unable or unwilling to make up the difference. The result: payments to needy families are far less balanced across American states than Canadian provinces.44 It’s not that Americans are hopelessly cold-hearted. A quarter of Americans versus a fifth of Canadians donate to charity, with wide regional variations in both places, and Americans devote a higher percentage of their income to it, though not all of this goes to individuals in want.45 More broadly, private social protection is weighted heavily in the United States, largely because most of American health care is not publicly funded. Thus, non-governmental actors, employers in particular, account for almost two-fifths of American social spending as opposed to a little more than one-fifth in Canada.46 Likewise, the United States is a leader among advanced industrial countries in using its tax system, via deductions and credits, to achieve social objectives, with such instruments nearly twice as powerful as similar measures in Canada.47 But this tactic comes at a cost. In addressing the material needs of its citizens, relative to Canada the US state is more often used to induce good behaviour than to compel it, and social assistance that depends on the voluntary cooperation of the private sector is less likely to be as secure over the long term. In the United States, private approaches to public goods are especially evident in the field of education, a springboard of economic mobility for even the youngest children.48 Whereas Canada spends almost one per cent of its GDP on early childhood education, about average for rich democratic countries, the United States devotes less than half a per cent, placing it next to last in the OECD.49 Consequently, around half the cost of educating early learners in Canada is paid for privately, while in the United States more than three-fifths of it is. For children in better-off American families who can afford to pay, an initial academic advantage can be multiplied as students move through a system with a large private and market-driven component. In both countries, parochial and private nonsectarian schools are an option, though in Canada they are more strictly accountable to provincial governments – from whom they often receive

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funding – than are their US counterparts to state governments, who don’t have the leverage that public subsidies for private education might bring. Moreover, with one exception, no Canadian province has joined the burgeoning American movement for privately managed charter schools in the public system. And nowhere in Canada are such schools allowed to be run by for-profit businesses, as they are in the United States, including by private equity firms and hedge fund operators who see them as lucrative investment opportunities. Unlike Canada, where the collection and disbursement of revenue for education is a ­province-wide matter, in the United States public primary and secondary education is financed mainly through local property taxes, which magnifies inequities in academic resources and quality. It also makes an American family’s place of residence even more crucial to a child’s chances of upward mobility.50 That includes access to the capstone of the US system, the American university, by far the most expensive of all similar institutions among the advanced industrial democracies. In the United States much more than Canada, the wage premium for having an undergraduate or postgraduate degree is highly correlated with the socio-economic status of one’s parents.51 That premium swells in the case of America’s elite institutions, the private Ivy League colleges and their mostly private peers. Socio-economic sorting mechanisms applied by admissions offices are part of the reason. Less than 5 per cent of students attending such institutions come from the bottom fifth of households in the income distribution, but 14 per cent come from the richest one per cent and more than half from the top ten per cent.52 Small wonder that the economic status of the most affluent Americans is so closely tied to the resources of the households into which they were born.

WHY IT MATTERS In the current debate over inequality and mobility, for practical and philosophical reasons, a lot is at stake. First, there is the matter of economic efficiency.53 A strong case can be made that high levels of inequality lead to lower growth and stagnating incomes across a population. More equitable economic distribution means higher total demand, hence greater productivity. In conditions of significant inequality, middle- and working-class people are unable to support the consumer spending that drives economic growth. Instead, since high earners save far more of their wages and salaries than individuals in other income tiers, overall consumption is reduced.54 Unemployment is the result when aggregate demand is less than the economy is capable of supplying, which depresses wages and leads to even greater inequality. Mobility tends to decrease as well, with economically damaging consequences of its own. Lack of opportunity misallocates resources and wastes potential economic capacity, making for a discouraged, sullen, and less productive workforce – and increasingly a politically polarized one. Second, more equal societies are healthier, happier, and safer. In The Spirit Level and its companion volume, The Inner Level, two physicians, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett,

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painstakingly marshal the epidemiological evidence in support of their contention that in the richest states, “reducing inequality is the best way of improving the quality of the social environment, and so the real quality of life, for all of us.”55 On a range of health and social issues, including mental illness, life expectancy, obesity, infant mortality, crime, and violence, the authors demonstrate that greater equality leads to better outcomes not only for the least advantaged citizens but also for the most advantaged. The principal drivers of illness, in Wilkinson and Pickett’s view, are the severe status anxieties produced in highly unequal societies. As people in lower income tiers struggle to imitate the consumption patterns of those in the highest, psychological stress triggering physical harm is the result. It’s a theme echoed by the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, who chronicle the diminished life expectancy of white, middle-age, working-class men in the United States over the last several decades. Increasingly such men are the victims of “deaths of despair” precipitated by suicide, alcoholism, and drug abuse, a tragic response, in Case and Deaton’s reading, to the harsh inequities of American capitalism.56 Third, when a public’s economic well-being is fractured, it’s easy to imagine we have little in common with less (or more) fortunate others.Yet social solidarity – a citizen’s sense of belonging to a joint political enterprise and the relationships of mutual trust and sacrifice that follow – is necessary for the health of any system of government. Worrisome, then, that ways of life for members of the working and upper classes are becoming so different. For some analysts, basic cultural shifts are responsible, for others the loss of well-paying manufacturing jobs. But the result is that children from better-off families are living in a separate world from those in more modest households.57 Superior parental financial support buys enhanced community involvement for children, which in turn expands the latter’s educational and economic opportunities as young adults. Without reliable access to similar resources, poorer kids can hardly compete. And economic inequality falls harder on some members of the polity than others – African Americans and Hispanics in the United States, Indigenous people and certain visible minorities in Canada. If class divisions are deep and abiding, and they overlap with ethnic and racial ones, the sense of collective purpose necessary for the health of the polity becomes even more fragile. And as the increasing number of gated communities suggests, public space itself begins to shrink, the well-to-do paying to segregate in exclusive neighbourhoods with their own common areas and places of recreation, patrolled by private security services. Fourth, democracy suffers when large inequalities of income and wealth are translated into corresponding inequalities of political power. Money counts in democratic politics – in the ability to campaign for office, to articulate an effective political message via the media, to lobby persuasively and successfully – and the bigger the economic inequalities there are in a country, the more it counts. It’s no coincidence the United States administers the most expensive national elections in the democratic world, topping out at a record $14.4 billion in 2020; by comparison, the 2019 Canadian federal election cost a little over C$500 million, or C$18 for each Canadian vote cast versus US$91 for each American one.58 Though small American donors – individuals giving $200 or less – upped their slice of the funds raised by national candidates

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and parties, deeper-pocketed Americans gave nearly twice as much. The largesse of the richest among them was nothing less than obscene: $218 million from the late Las Vegas hotelier Sheldon Adelson, and $152 million from the financial and media mogul Michael Bloomberg. Questions can be raised as to whether big donors always get what they pay for – a comfortable seat at the decision-making table at least – but more than elections are at stake. In the United States, billions of dollars are spent annually by political pressure groups. The amount of money each has at its disposal is by no means the same. Corporate interests – finance, health, and business concerns in the lead – dispense exponentially more cash in order to influence legislation than do organizations representing the views of labour, consumers, or the environment.59 Superior wealth doesn’t always win the day, just more often than not.60 And this with the blessing of the US Supreme Court, which has ruled that private political spending merits generous protection on free speech grounds, never mind the impact on civic equality. Finally, looming over all these considerations is a question of justice, the principle whereby the benefits and liabilities of life in political community should be allocated. Justice itself is an egalitarian concept, a matter, as the ancients taught, of treating equals equally. The difficulty is to specify the precise nature of the equality at issue – equality for whom and with respect to what? A full-bodied response is beyond the scope of this chapter, but three aspects of an answer are crucial. First, any claim to equal treatment must recognize our intrinsic value as individuals with conceptions of a good life, equally worthy of nurture and care.61 In determinations of who should be dealt with justly, accidents of birth cannot be grounds for exclusion, including those personal characteristics largely outside one’s control, such as race, ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual orientation, or who one’s parents happen to be. Second, as much as is feasible, people’s essential material needs should be equally met. The full slate of what is required will be refined through civic dialogue and the policy-making process, but food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education, work, and recreation seem indispensable; each enhances a person’s capacity for a self-directed and satisfying future.62 Third, inasmuch as the market is indifferent to wide disparities of income and wealth and the basic goods they afford, it is up to the democratic state to tame it, to turn its unrivalled productivity into economic security for all. In the final analysis, North American publics have a choice. As this chapter has argued, independent of global economic forces, civic values can shape public policy in the direction of greater or lesser equality. In both Canada and the United States, the distribution of wealth and income remains less equal than in many advanced industrial states, but given Canada’s greater egalitarian sensibilities, such inequalities are more egregious in the United States. There is nothing inevitable about this arrangement, including the national orientations contributing to it. Political values are durable, but they are not static. There are good reasons why Americans might be persuaded to move in a more egalitarian direction – or Canadians to stay the course. Yet there are no guarantees. A perverse genius of democracy is that it permits people to act in ways that often appear opposed to their self-interest. So it may be that our fellow citizens will not find the enhanced opportunities promised by a more equitable distribution of economic

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resources sufficiently compelling, nor the prospect of a more productive, healthy, cohesive, democratic, and just society. In that case, there is an alternative: Americans and Canadians must learn to choose their parents wisely.

STUDY QUESTIONS 1. What connection, if any, is there between economic inequality and political inequality? 2. Is economic inequality on the level that liberal-democratic states are now experiencing inevitable? 3. How important is a state’s political culture to the way it addresses large disparities of income and wealth among its citizens? 4. How significant is the family in which one is raised to one’s economic standing as an adult? 5. To what degree do individuals merit their level of economic well-being? 6. Justice is sometimes said to consist of “treating equals equally.” With respect to material/economic welfare, what might treating equals equally require?

NOTES 1 R.H. Tawney, Equality (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1931; rev. ed., 1964), 44. 2 See, for instance, Aaron Wherry, “One Country, Two Pandemics: What Covid-19 Reveals about Inequality in Canada,” CBC News, June 13, 2020, https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics /pandemic-covid-coronavirus-cerb-unemployment-1.5610404; Richard V. Reeves and Jonathan Rothwell, “Class and Covid, How the Less Affluent Face Double Risks,” Brookings Institution, March 27, 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/03/27/class-and -covid-how-the-less-affluent-face-double-risks/. 3 Lindsay M. Monte and Daniel J. Perez-Lopez, “Covid-19 Pandemic Hit Black Households Harder Than White Households, Even When Pre-Pandemic Socio-Economic Disparities Are Taken into Account,” United States Census Bureau, July 21, 2021, https://www.census.gov/library /stories/2021/07/how-pandemic-affected-black-and-white-households.html; Statistics Canada, “Covid-19 in Canada: A One-Year Update and Social and Economic Impacts,” March 2021, https:// www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/pub/11-631-x/11-631-x2021001-eng.pdf?st=OBcmqVLH. 4 Joseph E. Stiglitz, “Covid Has Made Global Inequality Much Worse,” Scientific American, March 1, 2022, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-has-made-global-inequality -much-worse/; Christian Weller, “Wealth Inequality on the Rise During the Pandemic,” Forbes,

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John Harles December 22, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/christianweller/2021/12/22/wealth-rises-at-all -income-levels-but-faster-at-the-top/?sh=5e3e78836524. 5 Esmé Berkhout et al., The Inequality Virus (Report for Oxfam, January 2021), https://oxfam.app .box.com/s/m7lab231vgyee3hti2qigu8qvc6o9wd1/file/764213341297. 6 Ronald Dworkin, “Sovereign Virtue Revisited,” Ethics 113 (2002): 106–43. 7 Facundo Alvaredo et al., World Inequality Report 2018, World Inequality Lab, December 14, 2018, https://wir2018.wid.world/. 8 OECD (2021), “Income Inequality (Indicator),” doi: 10.1787/459aa7f1-en. At least with respect to the Gini coefficient, most of the growth in Canadian inequality took place during the 1990s and early 2000s, levelling off since then. 9 OECD, Inequalities in Household Wealth and Financial Insecurity of Households, Centre on Well-being, Inclusion Sustainability and Equal Opportunity, July 2021, https://www.oecd.org/wise/Inequalities -in-Household-Wealth-and-Financial-Insecurity-of-Households-Policy-Brief-July-2021.pdf. 10 For perspective, in 2019 the average real income of the wealthiest 1 per cent of Americans was US$13.7 million; between 1980 and 2019, someone in that top cohort saw their wealth balloon by 347 per cent. 11 Anthony Shorrocks, James Davies, and Rodrigo Lluberas, Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2021 (Zurich: Credit Suisse AG Research Institute, 2021), 136. 12 Edward N. Wolff, The Asset Price Meltdown and the Wealth of the Middle Class (Working Paper No. 18559, National Bureau of Economic Research, November 2012). 13 Since 1980, the household income share of the middle 40 per cent of Canadians has gently declined to 43.7 per cent, that of Americans to 41.2 per cent in the United States. World Inequality Database, accessed August 13, 2021, https://wid.world. 14 Shorrocks et al., Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2021, 136. 15 Statistics Canada, Table 11-10-0190-01, “Market Income, Government Transfers, Total Income, Income Tax and After-tax Income by Economic Family Type,” https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1 /tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1110019001. Purchasing power parities (PPP) indicate the rate at which the currency of one country has to be converted into that of another to buy the same basket of goods and services in each. 16 In a report for the Centre for the Study of Living Standards, Simon Lapointe finds that controlling for PPP, Canadians at the fifty-sixth percentile and below are significantly better off than their American counterparts. Lapointe, “Household Incomes in Canada and the United States: Who is Better Off?” (CSLS Research Report 2019-01, July 2019), http://www.csls.ca/reports/csls2019-01.pdf. 17 OECD, Education at a Glance 2020: OECD Indicators (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2020), 89, https://doi .org/10.1787/69096873-enOECD.pdf. 18 The average Canadian minimum wage (in Canada the provinces are constitutionally responsible to set the minimum wage) peaked in 1976, decreased through 1992, but at C$12.23 (2019) recovered more than 115 per cent of the real value it had at its height; in the United States the federal minimum wage crested in 1968, fell through 2006, then experienced a recovery, albeit to just 70 per cent of its real maximum value at US$7.25 (2021). It should be said that sub-central governments may set their own minimum wage provided that it is higher than the federal floor; twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia do so. 19 From a maximum density of 35 per cent in the mid-1950s, American unions now represent only 10.8 per cent of all workers; at its height in 1982, Canadian union density was 38.6 per cent of the workforce, but has fallen to 27.2 per cent at present. Employees covered by collective bargaining

Choose Your Parents Wisely agreements have shrunk as well – to 31.3 per cent of the workforce in Canada but only 11.7 per cent in the United States. See OECD, accessed August 15, 2021, https://stats.oecd.org/Index .aspx?DataSetCode=TUD; Statistics Canada, Table 14-10-0132-01, “­Union Status by Industry,” ­accessed August 15, 2021, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1410013201; ­Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Union Members 2020,” January 22, 2021, https://www.bls.gov/news .release/pdf/union2.pdf. 20 According to recent data from the OECD, taxes and transfers reduced inequality by 33 per cent in Canada and 24 per cent in the United States twenty-five years ago; presently they do so by 29 and 22 per cent, respectively. 21 At the same time, one must note the increasing skepticism of many scholars toward the potential for upward mobility in an unedited market economy, including the ethos of individual merit that accompanies it. See, for instance, Michael Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit:What’s Become of the Common Good? (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020); and Daniel Markovitz, The Meritocracy Trap: How America’s Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite (New York: Penguin Press, 2019). 22 Calculated according to purchasing power parities. World Bank, “GDP Per Capita, PPP, Canada, the United States,” https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=CA-US. 23 Julia B. Isaacs, Isabel V. Sawhill, and Ron Haskins, Getting Ahead or Losing Ground: Economic Mobility in America, Brookings Institution, Economic Mobility Project, 2012;Yuri Ostrovsky, “Doing as Well as One’s Parents?: Tracking Recent Changes in Absolute Income Mobility in Canada,” Economic Insights, Statistics Canada, May 27, 2017, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-626-x/11-626 -x2017073-eng.htm. 24 Raj Chetty et al., “The Fading American Dream: Trends in Absolute Income Mobility Since 1940,” Science 356, no. 6336 (April 2017): 398–406. By comparison, Ostrovsky finds absolute mobility in Canada to be more stable over time, granted the two studies aren’t directly comparable. 25 OECD, A Broken Social Elevator? How to Promote Social Mobility (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2018), 195, https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264301085-en. 26 Marie Connolly, Miles Corak, and Catherine Haeck, “Intergenerational Mobility Between and Within Canada and the United States,” Journal of Labor Economics 37, no. S2 (July 2019). 27 OECD, A Broken Social Elevator, Table 1.5. 28 OECD, A Broken Social Elevator, 196. 29 Thomas Piketty, Capital and Ideology (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2020), 7. 30 Cited in Charles R. Morris, “Economic Injustice for Most: From the New Deal to the Raw Deal,” Commonweal 131, no. 14 (August 13, 2004): 12–17. 31 Analysts at Gallup observe that repeated polling on the question indicates that Americans believe having a class of rich people is good for the country. In a 2018 survey, 58 per cent of Americans said so, though the response varied significantly between Republicans (81 per cent) and Democrats (43 per cent). On the other hand, Americans consistently support raising taxes on the rich, though it barely registers as a policy priority. Frank Newport, “Partisan Divide on Benefit of Having Rich People Expands,” Gallup, June 8, 2018, https://news.gallup.com/poll/235439/partisan-divide -benefit-having-rich-people-expands.aspx. 32 See S.M. Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996), 72–3; also S.M. Lipset and Reinhard Bendix, Social Mobility in Industrial Society (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963), 77.

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John Harles 33 Mohamed Younis, “Most Americans See American Dream As Achievable,“ Gallup, July 17, 2019, https://news.gallup.com/poll/260741/americans-american-dream-achievable.aspx?g_source =link_newsv9&g_campaign=item_262439&g_medium=copy. 34 Pew Charitable Trusts, “Economic Mobility and the American Dream – Where Do We Stand in the Wake of the Great Recession?,” https://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles /pcs_assets/2011/pew_emp_poll_summary2011.pdf. For example, in a 2019 Gallup poll 70 per cent of Americans agreed that if they “work(ed) hard and played by the rules,” they’d be able to achieve the American dream in their lifetimes – a result that is relatively consistent across the previous ten years.Younis, “Most Americans See American Dream as Achievable.” 35 Sarah Skidmore Sell, “Poll: Half of Young Americans See Better Financial Future,” AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, October 2, 2018, https://apnews.com/article/entertainment -north-america-us-news-business-ap-top-news-d3c7965dfe3d48f9a01f97bce732dbd3. 36 Environics Institute for Survey Research, “A Better Canada:Values and Priorities after Covid-19,” September 2020, 13, https://www.environicsinstitute.org/docs/default-source/default-document -library/a-better-canada---draft-revised-20-sept.pdf?sfvrsn=6f393bd5_0. 37 In related surveys done for Pew (US) and Abacus Data (Canada), the gap between the rich and the poor was identified by 46 per cent of Canadians and 54 per cent of Americans as a “very big problem” in their respective countries. Bruce Anderson and David Coletto, “For Most Canadians, the World Is in Trouble,” Abacus Data, November 1, 2018, https://abacusdata.ca /problemsfacingcanada_poll/. 38 The pattern is consistent across the fourteen years the survey has been administered. The AmericasBarometer, Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP), Question (ros4), “Government Should Reduce Income Inequality,” http://www.LapopSurveys.org. AmericasBarometer is sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development. 39 Data accessed from the GSS Data Explorer website at https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org.Variable eqwlth, question: “Should Government Reduce Income Differences?” 40 Environics, A Better Canada, 17. 41 OECD, “Social Expenditure Database,” 2021, https://www.oecd.org/social/expenditure.htm. 42 The federal maximum for receipt of TANF benefits is five years – less if states so determine. 43 Parliamentary Budget Office, “Federal Support Through Major Transfers to Provincial and Territorial Governments,” September 3, 2020, https://www.pbo-dpb.gc.ca/web/default/files/Documents /Reports/RP-2021-020-S/RP-2021-020-S_en.pdf. 44 See the discussion in John Harles, Seeking Equality:The Political Economy of the Common Good in the United States and Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), chap. 4. 45 In the aggregate, Americans direct 1.5 per cent of their income to charitable causes; Canadians, 0.5 per cent. Jake Fuss and Milagros Palacios, “Generosity in Canada and the United States: The 2019 Generosity Index,” Fraser Research Bulletin, December 2019, https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/ default/files/generosity-index-2019.pdf. 46 OECD, “Social Expenditure Database,” 2021. 47 For 2020, the OECD estimates that in the United States the use of tax breaks with social purposes is equivalent to 2.8 per cent of GDP, the highest of all OECD countries. 48 Gosta Epsing-Andersen, “Unequal Opportunities and the Mechanisms of Social Inheritance,” in Generational Income Mobility in North America and Europe, ed. Miles Corak (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 289–314; Christelle Dumas and Arnaud Lefranc, “Early Schooling and Later Outcomes,” in From Parents to Children:The Intergenerational Transmission of Advantage, ed. John Ermisch, Markus Jantti, and Timothy Smeeding (New York: Russell Sage, 2012), 164–89.

Choose Your Parents Wisely 49 As of this writing, in both countries ambitious proposals to significantly increase spending for childcare and early childhood education are making their way through the legislative process. 50 Raj Chetty, John Friedman, Nathaniel Hendren, Maggie R. Jones, and Sonya R. Porter, “The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility” (NBER Working Paper no. 25147, October 2018); Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, and Emmanuel Saez, “Where Is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 129, no. 4 (November 2014): 1553–623. 51 OECD, Economic Policy Reforms, Going for Growth (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2021), 183–200; Nicole Fortin, David A. Green, Thomas Lemieux, Kevin Milligan, and W. Craig Riddell, “Canadian Inequality: Recent Developments and Policy Options,” Canadian Public Policy/Analyse de Politiques 38, no. 2 (2012); US Treasury Department, “The Economic Case for Higher Education,” January 2012, http:// www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/documents/the%20economics%20of%20higher %20education_report%20clean.pdf. 52 Raj Chetty, John N. Friedman, Emmanuel Saez, Nicholas Turner, and Danny Yagan, “Mobility Report Cards: The Role of Colleges in Intergenerational Mobility” (National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 23618, July 2017). Also see Charles T. Clotfelter, Unequal Colleges in the Age of Disparity (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017). 53 See, for example, Heather Boushey, How Inequality Constricts Our Economy and What We Can Do About It (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019). 54 Joseph Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future (New York: W.W. Norton, 2012), chap. 4. 55 Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level:Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009), 29; Wilkinson and Pickett, The Inner Level: How Equal Societies Reduce Stress, Restore Sanity, and Improve Everyone’s Well-Being (New York: Penguin Press, 2019). 56 Anne Case and Angus Deaton, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020) 57 For instance, see Robert Putnam, Our Kids:The American Dream in Crisis (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015). 58 Data from Elections Canada, https://www.elections.ca. 59 In 2020, big business spent almost $3 billion on lobbying in the United States; labour-related groups spent a little more than $49 million. Data from Open Secrets, https://www.opensecrets.org. 60 For instance, see Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, “Testing Theories on American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” Perspectives on Politics 12, no. 3 (September 2014): 564–81. 61 Cf. the argument in Jeremy Waldron, One Another’s Equals:The Basis of Human Equality (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017). 62 This is at the core of what sometimes is called a “capabilities perspective on justice.” See Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009); Martha C. Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities:The Human Development Approach (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011).

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Data Sources for Future Research: Economic Systems, Taxation, Safety Nets, and Democracy Barbara Boyle Torrey edited and revised by Joshua Baker in consultation with authors

Considerable data exist in Canada and the United States on the topics in Part Three. Some public and private sources of data are briefly mentioned below as illustrations.

HEALTH • World Health Organization Library Database (WHOLD; http://www.who.int/ research). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the WHO Library and archives are closed to external researchers until further notice. • US National Health Interview Survey (NHIS; http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhis). This is a multi-purpose, cross-sectional health survey conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics annually since 1957. It covers the health status and issues for families, including both children and adults. Public-use microdata files are released on an annual basis. The most recent NHIS covers 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022. • Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS; http://www.statcan.gc.ca). The CCHS initiative began in 2000, with its main goal being the provision of population-level information on health determinants, health status, and health utilization across the provinces and territories. The CCHS is composed of two types of surveys: an annual component on the general health of Canadians as described in detail on the Statistics Canada website and focused surveys on specific health topics that occur on an occasional basis. The most recent CCHS survey is available for 2021 and can be accessed through the Statistics Canada website.

Data Sources for Future Research

INCOME, WELFARE, AND POVERTY • Luxembourg Income Study (LIS; https://www.lisdatacenter.org/). LIS harmonizes and documents national household survey data collected by national statistical agencies. Income surveys have been collected since 1968 and now include thirty-nine countries, including Canada and the United States. These surveys have been harmonized so that accurate income and poverty comparisons can be made between countries. Data from Canada came from the Survey of Consumer Finances for selected years between 1971 and 1997. After 1997 the Canadian data have come from the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics. In March 2020, data from Canada were added for the years 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017. The most up-to-date data that was made available for the United States from the Current Population Survey-Annual Social and Economic Supplements (CPS-ASEC) covers 2014 through 2018. The data are free, but in order to preserve household confidentiality, specific data requests must be submitted to the LIS staff. National wealth household survey data are also collected for twelve developed countries. • Canadian Income Survey (CIS; https://www.statcan.gc.ca). The CIS is a cross-sectional survey developed to provide a portrait of Canadians’ incomes, their income sources, and their individual and household characteristics. The data provided by the CUS are combined with the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and tax data. The CIS also gathers information on labour market activity, school attendance, disabilities, unmet healthcare needs, support payments, childcare expenses, personal income, food security, and the cost of housing. The most recent CIS publications cover the years 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. • US Current Population Survey (CPS; http://www.bls.gov/cps/). The CPS is a monthly cross-sectional household survey conducted by the Bureau of the Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It has been the primary source of labour force information and the official source of monthly unemployment estimates for more than fifty years. The March CPS supplement (now called the Annual Social and Economic Supplement) is the primary source of detailed information on income and work experience and the official poverty estimates in the United States. It also collects detailed information on government benefits and income supplements. Recent data sets cover the years 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022. • US Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID; https://psidonline.isr.umich.edu/). This national longitudinal study began in 1968 and focused on income and poverty dynamics. It oversampled roughly 2,000 low-income families and is currently tracking 8,000 families and their descendants biennially. The survey is managed by the Survey Research Center of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Data sets are available for years between 1968 and 2020.

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SELECTED POPULATIONS OF PARTICULAR INTEREST Children and Youth A number of surveys in each country focus on children and youth. • Portrait of Youth in Canada: Data Report, 2021–2022 (https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en /catalogue/42280001). Between February 2021 and July 2022, Statistics Canada released the Portrait of Youth in Canada. The report consists of six chapters that cover various important aspects of youth life in Canada. Such topics include youth mental and physical health, labour market participation, education, social participation, the environment, and demographic issues. Additionally, a chapter of the report is dedicated to Indigenous youth in recognition of the distinct challenges Indigenous communities face in Canada. • The US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY; http://www.bls.gov/nls, http://www .norc.org). This biennial survey tracks two core groups of youths with the primary focus on their entry into the labour force and their labour force and government program experience over time. The NLS program at the Bureau of Labor Statistics is currently planning for a new youth cohort – the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 2026 (NLSY26).

The Aged This is a group that is getting increasing attention as the populations of both Canada and the United States age. • US Health and Retirement Survey (HRS; http://hrsonline.isr.umich.edu/). This is a nationally representative, biannual, longitudinal survey of more than 26,000 Americans fifty years old and older. It began in 1992 and followed the health, economic, and social dynamics of the older population. A public-use data set can be downloaded after registering. Recent biannual data sets are available for 2016, 2018, and 2020. Recent off-years studies and publications produced by HRS are available for 2015, 2017, and 2019. The HRS is funded by the National Institute of Aging at the National Institutes of Health and managed by the University of Michigan. • Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA; http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca). This is a national longitudinal study of aging to be primarily funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Institute of Aging and developed by a team of researchers from Dalhousie University, McMaster University, and McGill University. It includes 50,000 Canadians ages forty-five to eighty-five who will be followed for twenty years. Data collected include biomedical, psychological, social, and economic. The study design and baseline were conducted in 2008, with the first official follow-up in the CLSA study being conducted in

Data Sources for Future Research

2015. Additionally, the CLSA COVID-19 Questionnaire Study was launched in April 2022 to understand the impacts of COVID-19 among older Canadians.

Taxation • Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD; http://www. oecd.org/tax /tax-policy/tax-database.htm). The OECD has a tax database that provides comparative information on personal and corporate income tax and consumption tax systems and rates. Information on social security contributions from employees and employers is also included. This database is updated annually and includes Canada and the United States. • Department of Finance Canada (http://www.fin.gc.ca/). This site and its tax web database provide detailed data on Canada’s tax system, including tax revenues, expenditures, and rates. • The US Office of Management and Budget (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget). This site provides historical data on tax revenues, tax expenditures, tax rates by type of tax, and estimates of tax revenues for the current budget.

Crime and Punishment Crime statistics in Canada and the United States are similar but not comparable. The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) in each country defines crimes somewhat differently, and they use different techniques to record and count crimes. In addition, in both countries, crime rate estimates based on UCRs differ from estimates based on victimization surveys. This is because some victims may not report a crime to the police but would report the crime on a confidential survey. Therefore, caution must be used in all cross-country comparisons of crimes reported either by police or by victims. • US Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR; http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr). The Federal Bureau of Investigation collects crime statistics from law enforcement in the United States. The data are based on an FBI handbook of classification of crimes with uniform definitions. • US Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS; http://www.bjs.gov/). The Bureau of Justice Statistics is independent of the FBI and provides a broader range of statistics than the FBI. It provides not only the FBI’s uniform crime reporting statistics but also juvenile justice statistics, statistics on the justice system, law enforcement, prosecution, corrections, and expenditures. BJS also manages the US National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS; http://www.bjs.gov /index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=245). This annual survey is nationally representative and is used to estimate the likelihood of victimization. • Canadian Department of Justice (http://www.canada.justice.gc.ca) researches and analyses such topics as adult and youth courts, youth crime, and crime trend analysis. The

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Department of Justice also has a Policy Centre for Victim Issues (http://www.canada .­justice.gc.ca/en/ps/voc/pub). • Canadian Uniform Crime Reporting. UCR data are collected by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics (CCJS) at Statistics Canada (http://www.statcan. gc.ca). UCR collects data on all criminal incident reports by Canadian police services. They are analysed and distributed through the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics. • Canadian General Social Survey (http://www.statcan.cg.ca/cgi-bin). Once every five years, the General Social Survey collects self-reported victimization data. • Statistics Canada – Statistique Canada – Crime and Justice Statistics (https://www.statcan .gc.ca). Statistics Canada – Statistique Canada provides statistical analysis regarding crime and justice services in Canada. Publications under the topic of interest “Juristat” provide researchers and students with in-depth analysis and detailed statistics on topics such as crime, victimization, homicide, civil, family, and criminal courts, and correctional services. Such reports include Homicide in Canada, 2021, by Jean-Denis David and Brianna Jaffray.

Crime in the United States • Crime in the United States (http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s). ­Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) are created semi-annually by the FBI. These contain the numbers of various crimes (violent crime, arson, burglary, larceny, theft, etc.) in cities with populations of over 100,000, as well as percentage changes in crime numbers by population, region, and in consecutive years. UCR reports are available from 1995 through 2019. Currently, UCR data sets are released quarterly on the Crime Data Explorer (CDE; https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov). CDE aims to provide transparency, create easier access, and expand awareness of criminal and noncriminal law enforcement data sharing. Data sets include “Trend of Violent Crime from 2011 to 2021” and are easily accessible for students and researchers. • United States Crime Rates 1960–2019 (http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime .htm). Using data from the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) of the FBI, this report shows the total population of the United States, as well as the total number of crimes committed in the following categories: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny theft, and vehicle theft. • Murder Rates Nationally and By State (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates -nationally-and-state). Compiled from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, this website charts the murder rates per 100,000 people nationally, by region, and by state, from 1996 on, as well as the number of death-penalty executions by region since 1970. This source provides data from 1970 until 2017.

Data Sources for Future Research

Crime in Canada • Crime Severity Index (CSI; https://www.macleans.ca/canadas-most-dangerous -places-2020/). Published by Maclean’s magazine in 2019 and drawn from Statistics Canada data for 2018, this interactive report gives the crime rates for the country’s 100 largest cities with populations over 10,000 for the year 2020. • Canada Crime Rate & Statistics 1990–2023 (https://www.macrotrends.net/countries /CAN/canada/crime-rate-statistics). This interactive report shows crime rates across C ­ anada, as well as the trends over time between 1990 and 2023. The report also covers the murder/ homicide rate across Canada. According to the data, Canada’s crime rate increased by 7.2 per cent from 2019 to 2020. In 2019, crime rates in Canada also increased by 3.6 per cent from 2018. The data is compiled by Macrotrends, which specializes in financial data and trends that are relevant to global investors. Macrotrends compiled its data from the World Bank. • Police-Reported Crime Statistics in Canada, 2021 (https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1 /pub/85-002-x/2022001/article/00013-eng.htm). This resource, the results of the 2021 UCR Survey, published by Statistics Canada, charts the trends in police incidents from 1962 to 2021, including a variety of violent and non-violent crimes. The most recent ­reports available online document crime in Canada between 2017 and 2020. • Police-Reported Crime Statistics in Canada, 2020 (https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1 /pub/85-002-x/2021001/article/00013-eng.htm). This report, published by Statistics Canada, captures the impacts of COVID-19 on crime rates across Canada. The report highlights an increase in hate-related crimes, which disproportionately impacted Canadians of Asian descent. For example, the report states that there were 718 more police-reported hate crimes compared with 2019, a 37 per cent increase. Reported hate crimes against people of colour and Indigenous peoples also rose in 2020. • Selected Police-Reported Crime and Calls for Service during the COVID-19 Pandemic (https:// open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/e91f13cb-cc76-4aa6-8389-ddc7c265d834). This special survey collected timely monthly aggregate information on the types of police-reported activity, including criminal incidents and other calls for service. This report is specifically tailored to cover crime statistics during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data sets are easily downloadable and available in English and French.

Criminal Justice Indicators • Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies (CSLLEA), 2018 – Statistical Tables (https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/census-state-and-local-law-enforcement -agencies-2018-statistical-tables). Published in October 2022, this American report c­ overs data on law enforcement agencies that employ at least one full-time equivalent sworn

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•

•

•

•

police officer with general arrest powers and are operated by state and local governments. The report was published by Elizabeth Davis of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Police Personnel and Expenditures in Canada, 2021 (https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1 /pub/11-627-m/11-627-m2022013-eng.htm). This infographic was published by Statistics Canada and covers police personnel and expenditures in Canada for 2021. The infographic notes that Statistics Canada made a correction to police personnel data for the 2019 and 2021 reference years. The changes affect some of the figures. The infographic was released in March 2022 and corrected in April 2022. World Prison Population List,Thirteenth Edition (https://www.prisonstudies.org/sites/default /files/resources/downloads/world_prison_population_list_13th_edition.pdf). The thirteenth edition of the World Prison Population List provides details of the number of prisoners held globally in 223 different prison systems in independent countries and territories. The latest information made available to produce this report was released in October 2021. The Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR) at Birkbeck, University of ­London, maintains the World Prison Brief that publishes the World Prison List. Visualizing the Racial Disparities in Mass Incarceration (https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog /2020/07/27/disparities/). This interactive report was published during the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted across the United States in 2020. The report was published in July 2020 by the Prison Policy Institute and was compiled with key data into a series of charts and slide shows focused on policing, juvenile justice, jails and pretrial detention, ­prisons and sentencing, and re-entry. Overrepresentation of Indigenous People in the Canadian Criminal Justice System: Causes and Responses (https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/jr/oip-cjs/oip-cjs-en.pdf). Published in 2019, this report examines the extent of the overrepresentation of Indigenous Canadians in the criminal justice system. The report identifies key gaps in efforts to address the overrepresentation and underlying causes and suggests potential ways for Canadian policy-makers to mitigate the problem.

Comparison of Homicide Rates in the United States and Canada • Rate of Homicide in Canada and the United States from 2000 to 2021 – Statista (https://www .statista.com/statistics/526539/canada-us-homicide-rate/). This data set shows the rate of homicide in Canada and the United States from 2000 to 2021. The data set was published by the Statista Research Department in November 2022. To access the full data set, register for free with Statista.

PART FOUR Policy Differences, Policy Challenges, and Policy Change

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THIRTEEN

Protests, Diversity, and Differences That Matter … for Some Kathy Brock and Andrea Migone

INTRODUCTION Recent elections in the United States and Canada have drawn much attention to the p­ olitical challenges of both nations and especially to what parties and leaders were prepared (and able) to do about critical issues of fairness and equity that were ushered in by waves of civil protest. While political leaders have invested significant time in discussing and promising to tackle ­diversity issues, responses in the two countries have been lacklustre and the issues still smoulder as indicated by the occasional flare-ups. The following example that played out in the two recent Canadian federal elections captures the inherent complexity of diversity issues, the embedded nature of systemic discrimination, and the challenges of recognizing and redressing inequities in political, social, and economic life. In both 2019 and 2021, the Liberal Party under the leadership of Justin Trudeau was elected despite deeply concerning racial, gender, and identity issues emerging and clashing throughout the campaigns. At the outset of the 2019 campaign, the Trudeau government was generally viewed as seriously wounded by the recent resignation of Jody Wilson-Raybould (Puglass), a member of the Kwak’wala First Nation, from cabinet and by her subsequent expulsion from the party caucus with the prime minister’s visible assent when she revealed that the prime minister and his staff had unduly pressured her to pursue a deferred prosecution agreement for a major corporation in Canada in her prior cabinet position of minister of justice and attorney general of Canada.1 Losing such a high-profile Indigenous and female cabinet minister drew attention to the challenges faced by Indigenous women in politics,2 highlighting the complexity of party discipline and principled politics,3 and lowered Liberal party support.4 Subsequent resignations of the high-profile and esteemed Jane Philpott from cabinet to protest the treatment of Wilson-Raybould and the accomplished woman of colour Celina Caesar-Chavannes from the Liberal caucus to protest the treatment of women of colour by the Liberal leadership raised

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further questions about the prime minister’s commitment to feminism and the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) community.5 This public doubt about Trudeau’s commitment to diversity was compounded by the emergence of pictures of him in blackface when he was in his late twenties6 and by his mocking response to an Indigenous woman who was protesting the lack of government response to the mercury-contaminated water in her community during one of his campaign speeches in 2019.7 While these incidents might have damned a Conservative leader to even lower support, Justin Trudeau was able to gain a minority government in 2019. As perturbing as the 2019 election was for many progressives, the 2021 election was even more deeply disturbing. Wilson-Raybould’s book, Indian in the Cabinet, containing her account of the 2019 scandal,8 was released early in the campaign but seemed to have little effect on it despite a brief flurry of media attention. Another picture surfaced late in the campaign of the prime minister in blackface that was even more offensive than the 2019 ones but only caused a brief stir on social media and then in two of the major newspapers.9 However, arguably the lowest point in the campaign came in a leaders’ debate when Annamie Paul, the Black leader of the Green Party and only woman party leader, confronted the prime minister over his treatment of women in his party. He scathingly retorted that he would not take “lessons in caucus management” from her, alluding to the dissension in her party and ignoring the challenges a woman of colour faces in assuming a leadership position. While post-debate analysis and polls recorded that Paul and NDP leader and Sikh, Jagmeet Singh, scored highest among swing voters,10 Paul was defeated in her riding and Singh’s NDP lost seats in the House of Commons. Despite the controversies, a plurality of Canadians had once again chosen Justin Trudeau and the Liberals to lead a minority government. Would either presidential candidate campaigning in the US in 2020 have withstood such controversies? Certainly, former president Donald Trump garnered, and has retained, some ­support within the Republican Party despite scandals arising over his treatment of women and people of colour. However, unlike Trudeau, he did not campaign on his commitment to feminism, to a gender-equal cabinet, or to achieving significant advances for the BIPOC community. Could even Trump have survived if pictures of him in blackface had surfaced? Would he have garnered the critical votes from the African American community that propelled him to the presidency?11 Surely, President Joe Biden would not have survived if there had been a similar series of troubling events involving him in the 2020 US election. Like Trudeau, he was viewed as progressive on diversity issues, and the contrast likely would have been too jarring for the Democrats had he faced similar scandals. Indeed, in contrast to the Trudeau record, Joe Biden’s choice as vice-president was Kamala Harris, a highly accomplished woman of colour who is credited with putting his support over the top to take the election. While issues of race predominated in the 2020 US election, by contrast Indigenous issues did not garner either the positive or negative attention that they did in the Canadian elections. These events have raised some important questions that we explore in this chapter. Canada and the United States are experiencing a growing array of social protests, political dissent and

Protests, Diversity, and Differences That Matter Table 13.1.  Distribution of US and Canadian population by race 2016

Canada USA

White

Black/ African Descent

Indigenous

Asian

Pacific Islanders

Two or more races

26.78 (77.7%) 248.41 (76.9%)

1.2 (3.5%) 42.97 (13.3%)

2.13 (6.2%) 4.05 (1.3%)

6.1 (17.7%) 18.28 (5.7%)

0.03 (0.1%) 0.77 (0.2%)

0.23 (0.7%) 8.46 (2.6%)

Source: US Census Bureau – various tables; Statistics Canada – various tables

discomfort, and challenges to traditional authority structures with many rooted in diversity issues associated with gender, race, and identity. Are the two countries experiencing them differently as the above discussion suggests? What are the state responses to challenges rooted in diversity and different ways of viewing legitimate authority? Are there any significant and sustaining differences or similarities? We answer these questions in this chapter but begin by examining the roots of protests, civil disobedience, and unrest in the two nations. While the chapter focuses on diversity as a key variable triggering protest, it does not delve in depth into the nature of discrimination based on diversity (gender, race, ethnicity, identity, economic and social status, etc.) in the two countries. Canada and the US are different in many ways: the racial makeup of their population (see table 13.1) is just one facet that we can only hint at here very broadly. Nor do we discuss the politically charged issue of Quebec and its role in the federation,12 or the resurgence of alienation in the western provinces,13 both expressing discontent over ­federal-provincial arrangements, or the re-emergence of white supremacist and populist movements in both countries. Instead, we highlight some recent illustrative patterns of dissent in the two countries to conclude that there are significant differences that matter in social protests and in the treatment of racial and identity communities but also that there are disappointing similarities in the treatment of women. In contrast, the salience of issues involving Indigenous peoples and the BIPOC community varies significantly in the two countries, reflecting the different histories and legacies of past events. In short, these differences between Canada and the US matter … but only make a difference in a significant way for some of the population. We begin by rooting this tradition of difference in key theories on the role of civil disobedience in the United States and Canada.

FACING THE CHALLENGES: REBELLIONS, MOB RULE, CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, AND PROTESTS Civic protests have always been a feature, albeit often controversial, of Canadian and American societies, even as precursors to foundational historical moments such as the Canadian rebellions

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of 1837–8 and the American Revolution. Writing in 1787, Thomas Jefferson held that “a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical … It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”14 He argued that rebellions, and now more often called protests, reminded legislators of the need to attend to public affairs and prevented government from degeneracy as the Americans had witnessed under British rule.15 In effect, rebellions would ensure the perpetuation of a healthy American governing system. However, by the 1830s, this view was challenged by none other than ­Abraham Lincoln. Reacting to the horrors of lynchings and public race-based violence, Lincoln could not accept a more beneficent view of citizen rebellions, and maintained that “mobs” that broke or disregarded the laws could not be sanctioned if American governing institutions were to be continued. He noted that the success of US institutions and the “capability of a people to govern themselves” were proved in the perpetuation of the US government from the founding to then, arguing that this was largely a product of citizens respecting and obeying the laws. While he allowed for the possibility of bad laws existing, he maintained that the remedy lay in legislative change, not willful and deliberate disregard of the laws because individual actions and mob protests and uprisings could be fuelled by envy, jealousy, avarice, and unsavoury motives rather than idealism or principles of good government.16 The two architects of the US system captured the dichotomous views of civil protests. Were rebellions and protests healthy reminders of first principles and the need for change, or were they mob actions that fostered hate and violence through disregard of foundational laws? The difference between these two positions was bridged by Henry David Thoreau, who established a baseline for civil protests that has continued to the present. He viewed government as a necessary evil that should be limited in power and bad laws as unnecessary and undeserving of obedience. To achieve better governance, he argued, “men” of conscience should engage in principled public protest and withhold assent to corrupt or unjust laws, even at the cost of imprisonment or forfeiture of property.17 Government bodies have no conscience unless replete with conscientious people, in his view.18 This view justified civil action against unjust laws and was debated well into the twentieth century. In the 1960s, Martin Luther King similarly argued that direct action in the face of injustice was necessary provided it was nonviolent, based upon proven facts, followed prior attempts to rectify the law including negotiations, and rooted in principled motives.19 Indeed, he reasoned that direct action by citizens would precipitate a needed crisis, thus forcing a community that has previously refused to negotiate any changes to laws, to reconsider and engage in compromise and negotiations.20 The impetus for the reflections of these leaders, from Jefferson to King, lay in no small part to the position of Blacks in American society and the original institutions of slavery. In sum, this more recent tradition of civil disobedience accepted protests and direct action as legitimate if constituted as a non-violent, public, conscientious breach of the law that was undertaken with the intent to induce a change in laws or government policies and if preceded by peaceful, lawful attempts to effect changes in the law.21 Under these conditions, protests were a

Protests, Diversity, and Differences That Matter

means of improving the state and its laws, not undermining authority, although at times defying unfair laws. However, the shadow still looms of Jefferson’s more unruly rebellions that remind lawmakers to attend to public affairs and avoid institutional degeneracy whenever protests become violent and protestors fail to accept the authority of the state to punish unlawful actions. The two traditions of “legitimate” protest coexist uneasily, often producing heated debates. In democracies then, the tougher question is not whether protests are permissible – they are generally viewed as a legitimate form of dissension if they abide by King’s rules. No, the tougher question is to what extent protests that become violent or advocate disregard of the law or institutions of government as a means of forcing change (Jefferson’s storms) are to be tolerated in a democracy. These forms of protest – more recently rooted in critical race theory,22 “cancel” culture principles,23 or interrogating accepted evidence24 – both signify and foster a distrust of governing authority and institutions. When are these forms of protest instruments of healthy but fundamental changes so vital to sustaining a democratic state, and when do they constitute insurrections that delegitimize the state and undermine the foundations of democratic life? King’s view of just protests was widely accepted into Canadian public life. As Keith Fleming observes, from the nineteenth century into the twenty-first, every notable social movement incorporated elements of civil disobedience whether they addressed laws on labour, temperance, social welfare, environment, food security, conscription, language, voting rights, or educational matters, among others.25 As he writes, nonviolent civil disobedience was “a generally accepted form of political dissent within an accommodative Canadian political culture defined by its general deference to political authority and hierarchy, acceptance of interventionist government, preference for order and compromise over confrontation, and the need to balance personal freedom with the public good.”26 In contrast to the American tradition, then, Canadian acceptance of civil disobedience emphasized public order, the realization of individual rights within the collective good, accommodation, and an interventionist state rather than limited government. Social protest and direct action were further entrenched as legitimate means of achieving political change with the adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and its explicit commitments to freedom of association, speech, and conscience in the Canadian Constitution in 1982.27 Partly as a result of the Charter rights and the simultaneous recognition of Aboriginal and treaty rights in the Constitution, and partly owing to the history and political culture of Canada which emphasized the three founding peoples as English, French, and Indigenous, social movements and protests in recent times have been often focused on Indigenous issues. However, gender, race, and ethnicity have prompted important protests, debates, and reforms, with leaders from these social movements joining forces with Indigenous leaders to strengthen their cause with traditional decision-makers, often in environmental causes, and yet sometimes also clashing over Indigenous management of their resources. In Canada, like the US, the nature and context of civil unrest, political dissent, and social protest has changed in the past fifty years. Increasing mobility and emigration has produced a global consciousness and pattern of communication that transcends national borders and creates a

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cosmopolitan sense of citizenship that challenges national loyalties.28 International rights codes and orders have fostered heightened awareness of inequities within and across borders, laying bare the weaknesses of liberal democracies powered by a capitalist market system. At the same time, the global market is no longer stabilized by an imperial order, thus opening the door to social contestation and a new sense of belonging.29 Identities are constructed on a global level to create a sense of belonging and common humanity – meaning people identify with multiple ethnic and national descriptors (e.g., Irish-American, Asian-Canadian) and create identities that are more inclusive than mononational ones (e.g., Black, Indigenous, Feminist, Linguistic).30 Somewhat paradoxically, some of the literature has argued that the very nature of protest has changed further as more neoliberal, market-based values have entered the political arena31 causing protesters to innovate the way in which they operate.32 Most recently, the rise of social media has intensified this post-national, decolonizing and global awareness and simultaneously led to more usage of more aggressive confrontational tactics in expressing this awareness. Protestors have had to deal with the changing influence of social media because of the way these media shape communication among them.33 At the same time, scholars have asked questions about how the results of protests linked to social media can be quantified and analysed to illuminate their meaning.34 Despite these shifts, the focus tends to remain on political orders and the states because therein lies the dual power of accountability and change.35 Thus, while recent protests and acts of civil disobedience in Canada and the US might have similar objectives of targeting the state to effect change, might be manifesting more aggressive or even violent means of expression, and might be influenced by transnational and global events and ideas at any given point, important differences are also emerging in how the protest culture is being manifested in the two countries.

CITIZEN PROTESTS, SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, AND STATE RESPONSES Who is protesting in Canada and the US and why? A scan of various media outlets reveals that protests vary across nations from social movements protesting for democratic reforms, against what are perceived as unjust laws, to raise awareness of various environmental, social, and economic concerns, and to contest hegemonic ethnic cultures in favour of more ethnically diverse and accommodative policies and laws. However, a closer look at the American and Canadian cases reveals that in recent years, protests garnering a disproportionate amount of media attention can be divided into five main areas: Black Lives Matter, Indigenous activism (particularly around pipelines and natural resource development), MeToo, COVID-19-related matters, and ­Election-related protests. However, the way these issues are manifesting themselves in each country varies in interesting ways. This section briefly highlights each of these types of protests focusing on the main issues, saliency, and government responses. We begin with Black Lives Matter.

Protests, Diversity, and Differences That Matter

Black Lives Matter (BLM) Black Lives Matter is a current manifestation of previous social movements like the Civil Rights and Black Power movements in the 1960s36 and the Critical Race movement from the 1970s to 1990s37 to end racism and state (or state-condoned) violence against Black Americans. Created in the United States by three female activists in reaction to the 2012 acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Black youth Trayvon Martin, BLM took flight on social media (hashtag #BlackLivesMatter). It eventually united over fifty disparate groups whose aims include raising awareness of racism and discriminatory practices and generating changes in state practices and policies to empower Black Americans and ultimately reorder social relations.38 BLM has worked with local communities to improve the lives of Blacks and inspired some of the largest mass protests in American history, often in response to police violence against Blacks. A loose alliance with forty chapters in communities throughout the US, BLM is associated with a much broader, more amorphous group of protestors who use the hashtag and slogan to express dissent over the treatment of Blacks in the US.39 While public support for BLM peaked in May 2020 at 61 per cent of Americans with the death of George Floyd by police hands, it then declined throughout that year. In May 2021, a poll of more than 2,000 Americans indicated that less than half of Americans (48 per cent) held favourable views of BLM, with the highest levels of support among Blacks (89 per cent) and Democrats (88 per cent), and public support for the view that police violence is a serious problem had declined from 79 per cent to 69 per cent from 2020 to 2021. Still, the influence of the movement may be seen in the finding that during that period, Republicans viewing police brutality as a problem had risen from 43 per cent to 65 per cent, despite almost 75 per cent viewing BLM unfavourably, and over 77 per cent of Americans approved of the conviction of the officer who killed Floyd.40 BLM extended its reach to other countries, including Canada. By 2021, BLM had seven chapters in Canada, with the first one founded in 2014 in Toronto. BLM-Canada shares similar goals and tactics with its US counterpart, including working with communities to build better lives, cultures, and environments for Blacks. However, there is an interesting variation in the Canadian case. The Canadian movement aims to end all state-sanctioned oppression, violence, and brutality including Islamophobia and has extended its ambit to include Indigenous people.41 The BLM-Canada website proclaims that they “join calls to decolonize Turtle Island and Nunavut Nunangat … There is no Black Liberation without Indigenous Liberation.”42 A September 2020 online poll conducted by Leger in Canada surprisingly found that 67 per cent of 1,500 Canadians viewed BLM-Canada positively compared to only 55 per cent of 1,000 Americans polled. However, opinion in the two country samples converged with only 33 per cent of both Canadians and Americans believing that BLM would lead to lasting change and 45/46 per cent respectively doubting its efficacy.43 However, online polls are not representative because the sample is not random and they do not have valid margins of error.

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Have the BLM in the US and Canada been effective? Certainly, BLM has been highly visible in the US with its massive demonstrations that have arguably buoyed Canadian support as well. As the previous data indicate, both movements have raised public consciousness of police brutality and the need for courts to respond appropriately. “Taking the knee” to protest discrimination against Blacks in the US became a frequent sight at sporting events, with former president Trump speaking out against it and President Biden supporting it. Even Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took to his knee to support BLM in Canada.44 In response to BLM calls to defund the police, police forces in Canada and the US have joined voices with other government and non-government agencies in condemning racism and in reviewing and revising current policies and practices to end discrimination, including employing alternatives in “hot” situations such as social workers rather than police officers as negotiators. However, President Biden’s bill on police reform has stalled in the Senate,45 the BLM calls to Defund the Police have not garnered majority support with the public, in part due to confusion over its meaning,46 and BLM has been criticized as detached from the grassroots. In Canada, BLM activists decry the lack of systemic change in the system while other groups and individuals argue that the BLM tactics are too confrontational for Canada, the issue of police brutality is not as significant in Canada, and the movement is too elitist.47 Indeed, in October 2021 the Ontario Court of Appeal cautioned judges not to overemphasize race as a factor in sentencing Black offenders as they do for Indigenous offenders.48 In sum, there have been some policy changes but not massive structural and cultural changes in the US, Canada, and other similar countries.49 Further, in Canada BLM is an imported movement that fits the US history and culture. It is less fitted to the Canadian culture if it is adopted with the same aims and issues without modification, hence the need to join forces with other social movements and organizations, especially Indigenous ones. Still, in both countries, the wheels of change have begun to roll, with further to go in the US perhaps.

Indigenous Activism On October 8, 2021, President Joe Biden proclaimed that Columbus Day (the second Monday in October) would also be known as Indigenous Peoples’ Day. In this way, he recognized the efforts of Native American campaigns to change the focus of that day from celebrating the legacy of explorer Christopher Columbus to remembering the resilience of Indigenous peoples in the face of “the painful history of wrongs and atrocities that many European explorers inflicted on Tribal Nations.”50 By contrast, that same week in October, the Canadian prime minister was suffering from the sustained and vociferous backlash over his decision to treat the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation (September 30) as a holiday by travelling to join his family on vacation in Tofino, British Columbia, instead of attending commemorative events for First Nations survivors of residential schools.51 The outrage over his callous disregard of the day his government had created as a response to Indigenous suffering was compounded by his evident

Protests, Diversity, and Differences That Matter

neglect of invitations to attend First Nation commemorative events in BC and his obfuscations over his itinerary.52 High rhetoric attaches to both governments’ commitments to Indigenous issues but actions often contradict those words. Despite this contrast, Indigenous issues often receive more attention in Canada. The Indigenous population is simply more visible in Canada than in the United States as the figures in table 13.1, shown previously, would suggest, and thus their concerns emerge as a factor in Canadian federal political calculations. Western provinces and territories have a vested interest in ensuring that the federal government attends to Indigenous concerns and socio-economic problems, lest they have to absorb the costs. Indigenous peoples in Canada have a political voice within the institutional structures of government that lacks an equivalent force in the United States, with the exception of some western US states where they tend to ally with Democrats more than Republicans.53 The distribution of the Indigenous populations in ­Canada has ­resulted in Indigenous representatives being elected to provincial legislatures and to the federal Parliament; they hold the majority of elected seats in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. As a result, Canadian political parties regularly court this vote. Further, the concerns of C ­ anadian Indigenous peoples are more immediate given that they are the most ­disadvantaged portion of the population, while the concerns of American Indians and Alaskan Natives may seem less pressing than those of the disadvantaged and more numerous African American population. Indigenous protests in the US tend to be more focused, less predominant and issue-­specific but no less important than in Canada. Recent protests have concerned the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah and the Dakota Access Pipeline protests in North Dakota. The Bears Ears protest involved a caravan of twelve activists in ten cars towing a totem pole from the Lummi Nation north of Seattle to the lands of the monument in southeastern Utah in July 2021. The issue concerned the protected lands allocated for the monument by President Barack Obama which had been reduced by 85 per cent by President Donald Trump. On the same day that President Joe Biden had proclaimed Indigenous Peoples’ Day, he announced plans to restore the protections for the two sprawling national monuments, Bears Ears and Grand ­Staircase-­Escalante. The juxtaposition of these two declarations caused speculation that they were made in response to the actions of tribal members who had mobilized the vote for the Democrats in some western states, pushing them over the top in the 2020 election.54 Similarly, the Dakota Access Pipeline protest in 2018 involved a decision made by Donald Trump reversing the Obama administration’s denial of a key permit for pipeline construction. In April 2021, much to the surprise and disappointment of Indigenous and other protestors, the Biden administration informed the federal judge overseeing a legal challenge to the pipeline that it would not shut down the pipeline while an environmental assessment was ongoing despite a contrary campaign promise.55 Other recent Indigenous protests have involved demonstrations against Donald Trump during the election, and attempts to stop a lithium mine and other mines and natural resource developments on Native lands and waterways.

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As in the US, Canadian Indigenous protests tend to focus on land issues, hunting and fishing claims, natural resource development and pipelines, and economic developments on unceded lands, many of which are part of First Nations’ specific claims. In contrast to the US, Canadian protests over such matters have had higher visibility and resonance in Canadian public and political life. For example, in Canada, 2020 has been dubbed the year of Indigenous activism.56 The flashpoint was the Wet’suwet’en First Nation protest against the Coastal Gaslink Pipeline running through its territory. A court injunction against protestors, including the Hereditary Chiefs who objected to the tribal council decisions, and subsequent attempts to dismantle the barricades to development resulted in media images of elderly and Indigenous protestors facing police in tactical gear similar to images of police brutality in the US against Blacks,57 igniting solidarity protests right across the country that halted much of road and rail operations. Protests occurred in Victoria (capital of British Columbia), Vancouver, Nelson (BC), Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Sherbrooke (Quebec), Halifax, and other spots. Ports, roads, and bridges were blockaded, including vital linkages to the US (Niagara Falls, Thousand Islands Bridge), little Prince Edward Island, and important business centres in Ontario and Quebec. Rail lines critical to the country’s passenger and freight infrastructure were stopped, forcing Canadian National Railway to reach an agreement with Canadian Pacific Railway to share tracks on essential national lines, although other lines remained down or subject to intermittent disruptions.58 While Prime Minister Trudeau was reluctant initially to intervene in either the blockades or Coastal GasLink dispute, eventually pressure from the opposition parties, public, and provincial governments forced the prime minister to intervene personally and the federal government to negotiate a compromise memorandum of understanding recognizing Aboriginal title and rights. One complicating factor alluded to above in many of these protests is the historical division between governments set up under the Indian Act and factions within communities who object to these governments as imposed, or who represent traditional governments, or who claim to be entitled to rule by custom. This division can be traced back to a historical divergence in policy in the two countries. Both Canadian and American policy with respect to First Nations governance diverged from the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which recognized Aboriginal title to land and established a process for land transfers to non-Indigenous settlers through the Crown. American policy in the fledgling state tended to regulate external aspects of tribal life while British colonial and later Canadian policy tended to extend into the internal life of tribes as well. This difference became particularly pronounced after the 1830s, when the American legal concept of Indian tribes as domestic dependent nations was developed and offered some protection to American Indigenous governments. Simultaneously, in what was to become Canada, the 1830s saw the transfer of authority over Indian affairs from the military to civilian colonial authorities and a more intrusive, active policy. Canadian policy was predicated on a disregard of First Nations and Métis governance, while American policy was founded upon a begrudging acceptance of tribal governance, although not uncommonly subject to one-sided interpretations of existing treaties.

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From 1868 well into the twentieth century, the Indian Act (consolidated in 1876) set the policy direction in Canada by denying First Nations sovereignty for most all practical purposes. Tribal powers of self-government were curtailed. Goals of protection and assimilation were pursued. Almost every conceivable facet of First Nations life and culture was subject to scrutiny and regulation by Indian Affairs officials. The residential school system for Indian children was adopted, with day school becoming compulsory in 1920. The Indian Act denied First Nations legitimate powers over economic resources, education, cultural and religious practices, and political affairs. Provisions were made for a transfer from traditional forms of government on reserves to elected band councils subject to the control of Indian agents. Resistance to Indian Affairs control was quickly squelched. This policy direction began to shift in the aftermath of the Second World War and the reaction against despotism. In 1973, the Supreme Court of Canada ushered in a new legal era by recognizing Aboriginal title to traditional lands for the first time in Canadian history in the Calder case.59 The federal government followed in like spirit by transferring more administrative authority to First Nations communities. The change in attitude was captured and enshrined in 1982 and 1983 when the federal and provincial governments amended the constitution to recognize and affirm Aboriginal rights and title for Indian, Inuit, and Métis peoples. Once rights were recognized in the constitution, there was no turning back the clock – despite the uneven progress. The courts began to identify Aboriginal rights as including traditional hunting and fishing and other customary practices exempt from federal and provincial laws. Although further political attempts to extend and define Aboriginal rights in the constitution have failed, the constitutional talks and judicial decisions have promoted general awareness of Aboriginal issues and encouraged progress toward addressing key problems facing Aboriginal peoples. Ironically, although the courts can be unpredictable allies in Canada and the US, in recent times they have provided a firmer basis for recognizing the original rights and treaties of Indigenous peoples in Canada than in the US, where the effect has been to curtail tribal powers in key areas.60 The mix of legal and political principles and actors in addressing social protests over lands in the two countries has added a layer of complexity in the resolution of these matters.61 In Canada, as in the United States, the cause of violence against Indigenous women has animated numerous protests and forced government action. In the US, protestors have repeatedly decried the high rates of sexual violence, trauma, and trafficking affecting Native women. Under the Barack Obama administration the Violence Against Women Act was amended to authorize tribal governments to investigate and prosecute cases of violence against Native women regardless of the race of the perpetrator. In Canada, the plight of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls was catapulted onto the federal government agenda by protestors and the resultant public outcry. In 2016, the federal government responded with an inquiry into unresolved cases of women who had disappeared. The inquiry report, Reclaiming Power and Place,62 released in 2019, contained sweeping recommendations for reforms within the justice system and Canadian public life. On June 3, 2021, the Canadian government announced a national

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action plan to implement recommendations from the report in consultation with Indigenous communities and pledged significant funding for this work.63 This issue and the protests have inspired movies and documentaries in Canada and the US, although the underlying problems remain unresolved in both countries. This is not a difference but a similarity that should count more in both countries. One area of Indigenous protest has taken on a uniquely Canadian tone despite some ­echoes in the United States. Indigenous protests over the past twenty years have arisen out of the shameful and heartbreaking legacy of the residential school system. Emerging from the Indian Residential Schools Agreement, which was the largest class action suit in Canadian history, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) investigated residential schools and issued a report in 2015 with ninty-four Calls to Action to redress these past wrongs.64 There has been an outpouring of academic and other articles and books on this topic, but the TRC report remains the most authoritative account. The failure of the federal government and other governments and institutions to make significant progress on the Calls to Action has instigated many protests. On Canada Day 2021 alone, more than 10,000 Canadians marched in protest of the residential schools and in celebration of the resiliency of Indigenous survivors. In 2021 and 2022, the protests were especially poignant owing to the discovery of unmarked graves associated with residential schools and gave rise to the haunting and tragic images of hundreds of shoes placed by demonstrators to honour the little children forever lost to their families in these schools. These pictures of children’s shoes resonate in Canada with an intensity similar to the pictures of the George Floyd killing in the US. Two interesting observations may be made regarding protests involving Indigenous and race issues and the government responses in the two countries. First, in the US race issues resonate at a higher level than Indigenous issues, but in Canada Indigenous issues resonate at a higher level. In part, this is owing to the relative population sizes of Indigenous and Black populations in the two countries but more to the history of relations between the two populations and the US and Canadian governments. The legacy of slavery and segregation provides a powerful narrative underlying race claims in the US, while the legacy of colonial oppression and segregation of Indigenous peoples tells a potent tale in Canada. In both countries, these protests took on a very public dimension, often targeting monuments and physical spaces associated with the grievances of the protesters.65 The physical, representational images of the heritage of slavery, colonialism, and political marginalization have been targeted and in various cases forcibly removed from public spaces across the globe. The different foci in the two countries is captured in table 13.2, which is based on the current trend in protests to remove statues and public names honouring people who helped build the two nations but who are now associated with violence committed against Black and Indigenous peoples historically and recently: slavery and the Civil War in the US; colonialism, oppression, and residential schools in Canada.The evidence indicates by a massive margin that demonstrators primarily targeted statues associated with violence and offences against Blacks in the US, and violence and offences against Indigenous peoples in Canada.

Protests, Diversity, and Differences That Matter Table 13.2.  Monuments removed in Canada and the United States 2015–21 US – Confederate Monuments US – Indigenous People Canada – Racism/BLM Canada – Indigenous People

146* 58 3 35

* 94 of these monuments had been removed after George Floyd’s death

Second, there is a fundamental difference in the way both governments hear and respond to BLM and Indigenous voices and protests. In both Canada and the US, Indigenous peoples are represented by multiple power structures within the two systems. For example, the US government has one department dedicated to Indigenous affairs while Canada has two government departments dedicated to Indigenous matters. In both countries, Indigenous peoples tend to be concentrated on designated lands with separate or quasi-separate governance structures or have organizational representation, as in urban centres that provide a focus and structure for issues to be raised or supported. In both countries, Indigenous peoples have strong traditions of original governments that can directly represent issues to the national governments. And both populations have strong organizations at national, regional, and provincial/state levels to represent their concerns.These institutional structures all echo the voices of protestors but may also rely on protestors to increase the saliency of issues. In turn, these institutional structures provide both national governments with a means of negotiating and implementing redress for issues raised in protests. Many issues addressing the social, economic, and health concerns of Indigenous peoples can be addressed through government-to-government or government-to-organizations negotiations. Moreover, Indigenous leaders and governments can influence protestors, helping issues to become quiescent when accommodations are found. In contrast, while BLM provides a focal point, it is still a loose coalition with many disparate voices and actions being taken under that name. No institutional or government structure exists to negotiate and navigate comprehensive change as in the Indigenous communities. As a result, the ability of national and local governments to deal with race issues in a manner that is satisfactory to the disparate and loosely aligned protestors involved with BLM is more difficult. Thus, reconciliation or resolution of popular discontent about Indigenous issues is more likely to be successful than BLM and race issues. Conversely, the lack of an institutional and governing framework means that race issues may spiral out of control more readily if the warnings of protests are not heeded. In political systems grounded in consent and voluntary acceptance of authority, governments would be wise to listen to grievances of Blacks and Indigenous communities and act justly as Jefferson, Lincoln, Thoreau, and King sagely caution.

MeToo MeToo was born as a social movement by women to disrupt rape culture and end sexual harassment, sexual abuse, and sex crimes but also to provide a safe and reliable source of support

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for victims of these crimes (https://metoomvmt.org/). Using social media (#MeToo) to connect women and others who have suffered from the actions of sexual predators and encourage them to speak out, founders like Tarana Burke (2006) and later supporters like Alyssa Milano (2017) hoped to track the extent of the issue and validate the feelings of victims in the face of social denial and pressure to remain silent. While the movement has focused on some high-profile individuals and called them out, it aims to change social attitudes generally and laws specifically to foster a more gender-inclusive and safe space for all people and to end gender discrimination by promoting gender equality across the world.66 While the impact of this high-profile movement is difficult to gauge, Luo and Zhang report that the MeToo movement and protests in reaction to the case of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein did appear to lead to notable changes in the employment of women as writers and directors in Hollywood film-making.67 The Canadian Women’s Foundation reports a “sizeable increase in demand on Canada’s sexual violence support services; calls to the Ottawa Rape Crisis Centre increased 100 per cent during the last year alone,”68 a rise also noted in the US and other countries.69 While some high-profile celebrities and politicians have stepped down as a result of accusations of sexual misconduct and worse, the impact of the movement is difficult to assess. Questions have arisen as to the efficacy of MeToo in achieving gender equality. For example, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced a “zero tolerance” policy for sexual assault, harassment, and discrimination, proclaimed his commitment to feminism by naming a gender-equal cabinet in 2016, and initiated investigations into a cabinet minister and a number of male Liberal MPs facing sexual misconduct accusations, resulting in their loss of office or party affiliation. However, when accusations arose about his conduct toward women (in 2016 of elbowing aside a woman legislator in the House of Commons and in 2018 of allegedly groping a reporter), he deflected criticisms. While he eventually apologized for the former incident,70 in the latter case he stated there was no need for an investigation into his actions and that men and women can experience these incidents differently.71 The comments were disappointingly similar to traditional replies discounting such allegations. On a more general level, examples also disappoint. While Kamala Harris is the first Black and female vice-president of the US and Chrystia Freeland is the first female to hold the powerful dual position of deputy prime minister and finance minister in Canada, both remain in secondary, supportive positions within their governments. Time will tell if they can succeed their leaders as elected heads of government. History suggests otherwise: despite Hillary Clinton being a powerful and accomplished political leader in the Obama Democratic government and Kim Campbell being a powerful cabinet minister in the Brian Mulroney Conservative government who succeeded him as the first unelected prime minister for just over four months in 1993, neither was able to win the top seat of an elected government. Similarly, the media, opposition party, and internal party treatment of Annamie Paul as the first Black, female political party leader and of Hillary Clinton as the first woman presidential candidate reveal undercurrents of misogyny.72 These examples and the lack of women elected to the highest office in both countries might suggest the glass ceiling remains in place, although cracks are appearing, given that women now hold senior offices more regularly in both governments.

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COVID-19-Related Matters Not only has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted health care,73 the economy,74 globalization and trade,75 and the way government has implemented policy,76 but it also heightened many of the social and personal challenges that individuals face. Specific segments of the population have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic and by the policy responses that have been put in place by the authorities. The elderly early on emerged as a very vulnerable cohort, especially when in residential care,77 and there is strong evidence that COVID-19 rates of infection, deaths, and food insecurity differ across race and ethnicity,78 with persons of colour having clearly worse outcomes in these areas in the US. In Canada, First Nations people were 3.5 times more likely than other Canadians to contract COVID-19 as of September 28, 2021, and to suffer severe shortages of medicines and medical personnel.79 Furthermore, economic capacity80 and an individual’s status as an immigrant81 also contribute to a complex social, economic, political, and personal policy space that has increased pressure on governments and administrations alike across the world. It is not surprising that a pandemic with such sweeping effects would produce demonstrations, protests, and social movements. While protests are a critical element of working democratic systems,82 the pandemic introduced a complex dynamic. On the one hand, laying bare key inequalities may have triggered a wave of protests,83 but on the other hand the pandemic pitted public health – and in particular limiting contact among people to reduce ­transmission – against the right to protest.84 In both Canada and the US, protests have been held to call for protective equipment, to challenge government lockdowns, masking policies, restrictions on personal mobility and business operations, to demand more vaccines, and to protest mandatory vaccinations, among other things. While the media images of protests have often captured the demonstrators – particularly anti-vaccination and vaccination-hesitant protestors – as white, burly, less-educated males, the reality is different. An Abacus poll of 30,000 Canadians found that the average vaccine-hesitant person is likely to be an ideologically moderate, well-­ educated woman who lives in Ontario, votes Liberal, distrusts government and vaccines, and is between thirty and forty-four years old, while the vaccine-refusers may fit the stereotype more closely.85 While the pattern of protests has been similar in the two countries, the higher rate of vaccinations in Canada suggest that trust of government and an interventionist state remains higher there than in the US.86 Protestors in the US include people against mandatory vaccinations for healthcare workers, while in Canada, protests have been held by anti-vaxxers at hospitals and healthcare facilities, prompting some jurisdictions to impose or consider imposing bans on protests at those locations consistent with the Canadian preference for public order. This experience s­uggests that trust in government and respect for order may be higher in Canada than in the US. In early 2022, this accepted experience and view was challenged in Canada. The “Freedom Convoy” began as a protest against mandatory vaccinations, including for truckers crossing the

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Canada-US border, in late January. By January 28, a significant number of trucks had rolled into Ottawa to protest in front of the Parliament buildings, causing traffic congestion and upsetting residents as thousands of protestors arrived to demonstrate.87 The public was outraged when one protestor climbed on top of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (although apologizing when she was told to dismount),88 when a statue of anti-cancer crusader Terry Fox was draped with a flag, and even more so when the protestors settled in, honking horns at all hours and even erecting a bouncy castle for their children to play on. The underresourced Ottawa police used similar policing tactics of watching, building relations, issuing fines, and standing back that had been accepted, albeit criticized, in previous Indigenous and BLM protests such as ­Caledonia and #idlenomore for longer periods of time, and made numerous requests for additional resources, but after almost three weeks the Ottawa police chief, man of colour Peter Sloly, resigned under a cloud. Ironically, this occurred a day after the prime minister had declared an emergency, as had the premier of Ontario, and reinforcements had begun to arrive to disperse the protestors.89 Associated with the Ottawa protest were several blockades of Canada-US ­border crossings across the country, causing Canadian and US governments at the national and sub-national level discomfort as trade lines were significantly disrupted.90 Four dimensions of this protest were significant here. First, the prime minister’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act91 on February 14 was widely criticized as overreach. He revoked the act on February 23, the day after the Canadian Senate had publicly questioned the decision and indicated that it might revoke the act and declare it unnecessary given that the protest had been cleared.92 A mandatory parliamentary review of the use of the act indicated in its hearings that it was skeptical of the need for the declaration, given that seven of the ten provinces did not believe an emergency existed.93 One lingering effect was that the prime minister’s approval rate dropped significantly as Canadians asked why he had let the protest go on and had not acted sooner.94 Second, the other blockades at border crossings were cleared without the need for extraordinary police actions as engaged by the declaration of a public order emergency.95 Third, unlike the January 6 protest at the US Capitol that turned violent (discussed below), there was no storming of Parliament or even attempts to assault it and no aggravated violence, although there were reports of racial taunts and slurs and some extremist elements penetrated the demonstrations.96 Fourth, the demonstrators left largely peacefully, with many arrested and some charged to later stand trial without significant incident.97 This captured the Canadian predilection for reasonable protests that challenge laws but accept the state’s role to enforce the laws balanced by government action that is necessary and timely but not excessive. The January 6 storming of Congress stands in contrast as discussed below.

Election-Related Protests Earlier in the chapter, we noted that Thomas Jefferson’s praise of rebellions as checks on government overreach was countered by Abraham Lincoln’s cautions about the dangers of mobs and

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the fragility of democracy if laws are not obeyed.To avoid the danger of protests becoming mob actions that undermine civil order,Thoreau and later King stipulated that civil disobedience was a legitimate means of protest in a democracy, if citizens took action that was public, nonviolent, directed against unjust laws (conscientious), and accepting of the authority of the state to punish unlawful acts. These words became especially meaningful in 2021 as the US prepared to undergo a transition of power following the 2020 electoral defeat of incumbent president Donald Trump by Democratic leader Joe Biden. On January 6, 2021, thousands of Americans motivated by many disparate grievances and factors participated in what began as a largely peaceful gathering in Washington to protest the results of the November 2020 election. Largely incited by the speech of the defeated president, Donald Trump,98 many of the protestors marched on Congress, and the demonstration degenerated into a violent and fatal storming of the Capitol building by some of the protestors. Viewers around the world were shocked at the actions of the demonstrators and what it all portended for the state of American democracy. Despite the vacillations of the outgoing president, order was restored later that day. Many of the perpetrators of the worst violence were arrested subsequently to stand trial for their actions. The president stood trial in Congress for his words that day and was impeached for the second time. This deplorable incident speaks to three lessons on protests and social movements in democracy that underscore the importance of the ideas of Jefferson, Lincoln, Thoreau, and King. First, demonstrations are an important check on the exercise of power when conducted peacefully (Thoreau, King). Had the demonstration remained peaceful, it could have been a powerful reminder to legislators of the need to review elections for fairness and justice. Once the protest turned into a mob action with violent ends, the legitimacy of the protest and concerns being voiced were called into question. Second, it demonstrates the fragility of democratic institutions and the need to govern by gaining the trust and respect of citizens. Demagoguery may incite people to a cause, but once a mob goes beyond protesting an unjust law to directly challenging authority, it lacks the means of exercising restraint and prudence so essential to good rule (Lincoln).Third, it is a reminder of the need for legislators to heed citizen concerns before they become so acute that citizens may be swayed into insurrection and incendiary acts (Jefferson). Many of the demonstrators that day were not violent, and were attending to protest not just the election but also political disregard of their concerns over the direction of US democracy and the impact social and economic changes were having on their lives. Incoming president Joe Biden recognized this complexity of concerns and motivations in his inaugural address when he rejected the riotous mob, racial hatred, and divisive anger in favour of respectful dissent and unity and pledged that he would govern for all Americans.99 Action from legislators is necessary to forestall the degeneracy of state as cautioned by Jefferson. In Canada, demonstrations preceding and during the 2021 federal election were largely about government restrictive measures to contain the pandemic. While police intervened in some protests, the protests remained largely peaceful although vociferous. However, on

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S­ eptember 6, 2021, at least one protestor threw some gravel at Prime Minister Trudeau during the election campaign stop in London, Ontario.The prime minister was not hurt. Immediately afterward, all of the major party leaders condemned the action of the protestors and reminded Canadians of the need to be peaceful and respectful. The prime minister had previously cancelled a campaign rally in August in response to security concerns over protests.100 While these actions have been far less extreme than the US riot at the Capitol or the 2022 Canadian vaccine mandate protests, they do raise the question of whether protests are becoming more violent and protestors are more inclined to show disrespect for government institutions – a troubling idea in democracies. Legislators in both countries need to hear their citizens’ concerns and act accordingly.

CONCLUSION: WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENCES THAT MATTER? This review of civil disobedience and social protests in Canada and the United States reveals that differences matter but that some differences impact the political and policy landscape of the two countries to different extents. Conversely, while similar trends of civil disobedience and protests are present in both countries, they have been affected differently in critical ways by the historical and material elements that predominate in Canada and the United States. These differences have influenced not just how protest movements are organized and how they approach their goals, but also how the aims of those protests shift in different directions. It would be naïve to assume that two countries that share as much as Canada and the US would not see some convergence over issues like BLM and Indigenous matters. Certainly, these are present, but what is striking are the differences in the approach. Racial issues derived from the historical and recent experiences of the Black population have been a key driver of protests in the United States, not just during the period in which we centre our analysis but for decades, and race itself has been a key policy and political driver. In Canada, while present in the political discourse, issues protested by race-based movements like BLM ­remain unresolved and underestimated, often being bundled with the perceived ­Canadian exceptionalism in immigration policy and attitudes, which has very specific limits and ­foundations.101 By contrast, Indigenous issues have been much more topical and stood front-and-­centre in the news and in the political debate in Canada and to a lesser extent in the US.Whether this position has translated into an effective set of changes in the lives of Canadian Indigenous peoples is highly debatable, of course, but it signifies its formal recognition as a critical policy area. Both protests and the issues affecting the two populations are important, but the differences in the saliency of the two movements and their protests are striking. It also illustrates

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the need for further research on where protests grounded upon ethnicity and immigration concerns rest, particularly given the unique identity of Quebec in Canada and its unique approach to cultural integration – too much to discuss here.102 The particularly complex effects that marginalization written large impose on certain groups of the population in both countries became blatantly evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, when higher social, health, and economic vulnerability translated into higher mortality rates and increased job insecurity for people of colour, Indigenous populations, ethnic minority populations, and women. Even in this case, much has been said by politicians, academics, and the news media, but very little practical progress or even policy planning has been evident on how to tackle these issues. In this chapter we also noted that not all p­ rotests – even when they can mobilize support – are equally effective in achieving change. The MeToo movement is a clear example of this: while there has been near unanimous support for change, little substantive change seems to have been achieved and the glass ceiling remains firmly in place for women – at least for the highest offices. One of the most disappointing findings here is that women, especially Indigenous women, still face a heroic struggle in both countries. The chapter also highlights an increased amount of civil disobedience, often peaceful but at times degenerating to include a degree of violence, particularly in the United States, around critical issues that some part of the population considers fundamental. The question then is – at least in part – not so much about what triggers protests and whether the increased intensity and frequency of these protests represent the “natural” relief valve of a democratic system but whether they signal a lack of alignment between the rulers and the democratic polity. This is not a trivial issue, as Jefferson, Lincoln,Thoreau, and King pointed out in their discourses on the place of citizen rebellions and civil disobedience in healthy democracies. The lack of effective policy change in response to many of the issues at the core of the protests may have been critical in contributing to the lack of trust in democratic institutions and the increased perceived distance between segments of the population and their governments that opens the door to demagogic drifts, not just in North America but globally. Ultimately, civil disobedience and protests have a fundamental role in well-functioning democratic systems. It is not wholly unexpected that some issues arising from them may receive more attention from policy-makers than others when protests arise, be it because they are closer to the political vision of those in power or because a policy window is open that allows ­decision-makers to tackle the issue. However, responses to protests, especially widespread protests rooted in historical wrongs as recent ones have been, need to be carefully considered, especially at a time of great political, economic, and social fluidity like the present. Lack of response or the wrong response are likely to drive elements of the electorate to more extreme populist choices with unpredictable consequences for the polity as a whole.

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STUDY QUESTIONS 1. Why are protests important within the scope of a healthy democratic system? 2. When are protests no longer legitimate in a democratic system and how should leaders respond when faced with protests they do not believe are legitimate? 3. What have been the key differences between protests in the United States of America and Canada during the 2019–22 period? 4. The nature and focus of protests have evolved in the two countries over the past half century. How have they changed, and what have been the main drivers of that evolution? 5. Have race and ethnicity been less of a focus in Canadian protests than Indigenous issues? Have Indigenous issues been less of a focus in US protests? Why the differences? 6. In recent years, both Black Lives Matter protests and protests over the legacy of residential schools have resulted in policy change. Why have these protests been more successful at changing attitudes and policy than many protests over other important issues? Why do ­policy windows open for change to occur in modern democratic ­societies, and what stops change? 7. Two current controversies centre on statues and monuments ­commemorating significant moments and public figures in history. Why are these forms of commemoration important in a democracy? What role do they play on a national and citizen-centred level? What criteria should govern who or what is immortalized in this fashion? 8. Under what conditions are protests healthy forms of democratic expression, and when are they more likely to exacerbate a social or economic problem and prevent a political or policy solution from emerging? 9. What political, social, or economic issue would cause you to protest? Why?

NOTES 1 Elizabeth Acorn, “Behind the SNC-Lavalin Scandal: The Transnational Diffusion of Corporate Diversion,” Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue Canadienne de Science Politique (December 2021): 1–26, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423921000664.

Protests, Diversity, and Differences That Matter 2 Robyn Bourgeois, “Adversarial Politics: Understanding the Colonial Context of Indigenous Women’s Political Participation in Canada,” in Women, Power, and Political Representation: Canadian and Comparative Perspectives, ed. Roosmarijn de Geus et al. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021), 41–9. 3 Alex Marland, “The SNC-Lavalin Affair: Justin Trudeau, Ministerial Resignations and Party Discipline,” Études Canadiennes / Canadian Studies. Revue Interdisciplinaire Des Études Canadiennes En France, no. 89 (December 1, 2020): 151–77, https://doi.org/10.4000/eccs.4064. 4 Philippe Fournier, “Jody Wilson-Raybould Has the Lead over Trudeau Liberals,” Maclean’s, June 3, 2019, https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/jody-wilson-raybould-has-the-lead-over -trudeaus-liberals/. 5 Celina Caesar-Chavannes, “Why the Former Liberal MP Is Throwing Her Support behind Conservative Candidate,” CTV News, September 13, 2021, https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics /federal-election-2021/celina-caesar-chavannes-why-the-former-liberal-mp-is-throwing-her -support-behind-conservative-candidate-1.5583306. 6 “What We Know about Justin Trudeau’s Blackface Photos – and What Happens Next,” CBC News, September 26, 2019, https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-votes-2019-trudeau -blackface-brownface-cbc-explains-1.5290664. 7 Leyand Cecco, “Trudeau Apologizes for ‘Smug, Mean’ Jibe at Indigenous Activist,” Guardian, March 28, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/28/justin-trudeau-indigenous -activist-apology-thank-you-donation. 8 Jody Wilson-Raybould, Indian in the Cabinet: Speaking Truth to Power (Toronto: HarperCollins, 2021). 9 Devika Desai, “First Photo in Colour of Trudeau Donning Blackface Emerges on Eve of Election Night,” National Post, September 20, 2021, https://nationalpost.com/news/first-photo -in-colour-of-trudeau-donning-blackface-emerges-on-eve-of-election-night. 10 Marie-Danielle Smith, “Who Won the Leaders Debate? Everyone and No-One: Poll,” Maclean’s, September 14, 2021, https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/who-won-the-leaders -debate-everyone-and-no-one/. 11 Nina M. Moore, “Why Black Voters Chose Biden,” in The 2020 Democratic Primary: Key Developments, Dynamics, and Lessons for 2024, ed. Luke Perry, Palgrave Studies in US Elections (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2021), 53–79, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75572-0_4. 12 Daniel Salée, “Transformative Politics, the State, and the Politics of Social Change in Quebec,” in Changing Canada: Political Economy as Transformation, ed. Wallace Clement and Leah F.Vosko (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003), 25–50. 13 Clark Banack, “Ethnography and Political Opinion: Identity, Alienation and Anti-Establishmentarianism in Rural Alberta,” Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue Canadienne de Science Politique 54, no. 1 (March 2021): 1–22, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423920000694. 14 Thomas Jefferson, “A Little Rebellion Now and Then Is a Good Thing: A Letter from Thomas Jefferson to James Madison,” Early America Review 1, no. 1 (1996). 15 Jefferson, “A Little Rebellion.” 16 Abraham Lincoln, “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions,” in On Civil Disobedience: Essays Old and New, ed. Robert A. Goldwin (1838; repr., Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969), 1–9. 17 Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience,” in On Civil Disobedience: Essays Old and New, ed. Robert A. Goldwin (1848; repr., Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969), 11–32. 18 Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience,” 12–13. 19 Martin Luther King, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” in On Civil Disobedience: Essays Old and New, ed. Robert A. Goldwin (1963; repr., Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969), 61–78.

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Kathy Brock and Andrea Migone 20 King, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” 63–4. 21 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999). 22 Kimberlé Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller, and Kendall Thomas, eds., Critical Race Theory:The Key Writings that Formed the Movement (New York: New Press, 1995); Mia Moody-Ramirez, Gabriel Tait, and Dorothy Bland, “An Analysis of George Floyd-themed Memes: A Critical Race Theory Approach to Analyzing Memes Surrounding the 2020 George Floyd Protests,” Journal of Social Media in Society 10, no. 2 (2021): 373–401, https://thejsms.org/index.php/JSMS/article /view/847/537. 23 Aja Romano, “The Second Wave of Cancel Culture,” Vox, May 5, 2021, https://www.vox.com /22384308/cancel-culture-free-speech-accountability-debate. 24 Azhar Hussain, Syed Ali, Madiha Ahmed, and Sheharyar Hussain, “The Anti-vaccination Movement: A Regression in Modern Medicine,” Cureus 10, no. 7 (July 3, 2018): e2919, https:// doi.org/10.7759/cureus.2919, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6122668/. 25 Keith Fleming, “‘Socially Disruptive Actions … Have Become as Canadian as Maple Syrup’: Civil Disobedience in Canada, 1960–2012,” Journal of Canadian Studies 54, no. 1 (June 1, 2020): 181–212, https://doi.org/10.3138/jcs-2018-0046. 26 Fleming, “Socially Disruptive Actions,” 183. 27 Fleming, “Socially Disruptive Actions,” 185–6. 28 Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism (Toronto: Penguin Books, 1994). 29 Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging. 30 Anna Duszak, ed., Us and Others: Social Identities across Languages, Discourses and Cultures, Pragmatics & Beyond, new ser. v. 98 (Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Pub, 2002). 31 Dawson Barrett, The Defiant: Protest Movements in Post-Liberal America (New York: NYU Press, 2018). 32 Dan J. Wang and Sarah A. Soule, “Tactical Innovation in Social Movements: The Effects of Peripheral and Multi-Issue Protest,” American Sociological Review 81, no. 3 (June 1, 2016): 517–48, https:// doi.org/10.1177/0003122416644414. 33 Lina Dencik and Oliver Leistert, Critical Perspectives on Social Media and Protest: Between Control and Emancipation (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015); John T. Jost et al., “How Social Media Facilitates Political Protest: Information, Motivation, and Social Networks,” Political Psychology 39, no. S1 (2018): 85–118, https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12478. 34 Deen Freelon, Charlton McIlwain, and Meredith Clark, “Quantifying the Power and Consequences of Social Media Protest,” New Media & Society 20, no. 3 (March 1, 2018): 990–1011, https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816676646;Vincent Raynauld, Emmanuelle Richez, and Katie Boudreau Morris, “Canada Is #IdleNoMore: Exploring Dynamics of Indigenous Political and Civic Protest in the Twitterverse,” Information, Communication & Society 21, no. 4 (April 3, 2018): 626–42, https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2017.1301522. 35 Miriam Catherine Smith, A Civil Society? Collective Actors in Canadian Political Life, 2nd ed. (North York: University of Toronto Press, 2018); David R. Cameron and Janice Gross Stein, “The State as Place and Shifting Spaces,” in Street Protests and Fantasy Parks: Globalization, Culture, and the State, ed. Janice Gross Stein and David R. Cameron (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002), 141–59. 36 Natascha Adama, “Book Review of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity by Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 44, no. 13 (October 21, 2021): 2422–4, https://doi.org /10.1080/01419870.2021.1877315; Jeffrey Ogbonna Green Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity, updated ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019).

Protests, Diversity, and Differences That Matter 37 Carl E. Enomoto, “Public Sympathy for O.J. Simpson: The Roles of Race, Age, Gender, Income, and Education,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 58, no. 1 (1999): 145–61; MoodyRamirez, “An Analysis of George Floyd-themed Memes.” 38 Christopher J. Lebron, The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of an Idea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Frank L. Roberts, “How Black Lives Matter Changed the Way Americans Fight for Freedom,” American Civil Liberties Union (blog), July 13, 2018, https://www.aclu.org/blog /racial-justice/race-and-criminal-justice/how-black-lives-matter-changed-way-americans-fight. 39 Alvin B. Tillery, “What Kind of Movement Is Black Lives Matter? The View from Twitter,” Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics 4, no. 2 (September 2019): 297–323, https://doi.org/10.1017 /rep.2019.17. 40 Palash Ghosh, “A Year After George Floyd Killing, Fewer Americans Support Black Lives Matter Movement, Poll Finds,” Forbes Magazine, May 25, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/palashghosh /2021/05/25/a-year-after-george-floyd-killing-fewer-americans-support-black-lives-matter -movement-poll-finds/?sh=77bb432f53a2. 41 Channon Oyeniran, “Black Lives Matter-Canada,” in The Canadian Encyclopedia, 2020, https:// www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/black-lives-matter-canada. 42 BLM–Canada, “BLM–Canada,” 2021, https://www.blacklivesmatter.ca/. 43 “Black Lives Matter Has More Support among Canadians than Americans: Poll,” Global News, September 24, 2020, https://globalnews.ca/news/7356841/black-lives-matter-canada-poll/. 44 “Black Lives Matters Activists Say Now Is the Time to Act on Promises from 2020,” CBC News, February 26, 2021, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/black-lives-matter-promises-2020-blm -1.5928455. 45 White House, “Statement by President Joe Biden on Police Reform Negotiations,” The White House, September 22, 2021, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements -releases/2021/09/22/statement-by-president-joe-biden-on-police-reform-negotiations/. 46 Nathaniel Rakich, “How Americans Feel About ‘Defunding the Police,’” FiveThirtyEight (blog), June 19, 2020, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-like-the-ideas-behind -defunding-the-police-more-than-the-slogan-itself/. 47 Oyeniran, “Black Lives Matter-Canada.” 48 Sean Fine, “Ontario Appeal Court Tells Judges Not to Over-Emphasize the Effects of Racism When Sentencing Black Offenders,” Globe and Mail, October 8, 2021, https://www .theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ontario-appeal-court-tells-judges-not-to-over-emphasize -the-effects-of/. 49 Stephen Frost, “George Floyd Murder One Year On – What’s Changed?,” Forbes, May 24, 2021, https:// www.forbes.com/sites/sfrost/2021/05/24/george-floyd-murder-one-year-on--whats-changed/. 50 Zeke Miller and Ellen Knickmeyer, “Joe Biden Becomes First US President to Mark Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” Globe and Mail, October 8, 2021, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world /article-joe-biden-becomes-first-us-president-to-mark-indigenous-peoples-day/. 51 Kristy Kirkup, “Trudeau Says Travelling to Tofino on National Day for Truth and Reconciliation Was a ‘Mistake,’” Globe and Mail, October 6, 2021, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics /article-trudeau-says-travelling-on-national-day-for-truth-and-reconciliation/. 52 Kirkup, “Trudeau Says Travelling to Tofino.” 53 Gabriel Sanchez, “What Might We Expect from Native American Voters in the Upcoming 2022 Election?” Brookings Institution, December 16, 2021, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we -rise/2021/12/16/what-we-might-expect-from-native-american-voters-in-the-upcoming -2022-election/.

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Kathy Brock and Andrea Migone 54 Miller and Knickmeyer, “Joe Biden Becomes First”; Marco della Cava, “For Native American Activists Crossing the Nation with a Totem Pole, Sacred Lands Are Their Notre Dame,” USA Today, July 16, 2021, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/07/16/native-american -activists-joe-biden-bears-ears-utah/7992863002/. 55 Kristen Holmes and Gregory Wallace, “Biden Administration Will Not Shut Down Dakota Access Pipeline during Environmental Review, DOJ Lawyer Tells Court,” CNN, April 9, 2021, https:// www.cnn.com/2021/04/09/politics/dakota-access-pipeline-biden-administration/index.html. 56 Taylor C. Noakes, “2020 Was the Year of Indigenous Activism in Canada,” Foreign Policy (blog), December 17, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/17/2020-indigenous-activism -canada-trudeau/. 57 Noakes, “2020 Was the Year.” 58 Wikipedia, “2020 Canadian Pipeline and Railway Protests,” Wikipedia, 2021, https://en .wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Canadian_pipeline_and_railway_protests. 59 Calder et al. v. Attorney General of British Columbia [1973] S.C.R. 313 (SCC). Aboriginal title refers to the rights of First Nations to the lands they occupied prior to the arrival of the non-Aboriginal population. 60 Kathy L. Brock, “First Nations: The Dangers of Denial,” in Canada and the US: Differences That Count, ed. David R. Thomas and David Biette (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 361–85. 61 Ken Coates, “Canada’s Failure to Properly Respond to Protests Threatens Democracy and the Rule of Law,” Globe and Mail, December 4, 2021, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion /article-canadas-failure-to-properly-respond-to-protests-threatens-democracy/. 62 National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (Canada) et al., Reclaiming Power and Place:The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (2019), https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report/. 63 Justin Trudeau, “Statement by the Prime Minister on the Second Anniversary of the Final Report from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls,” Prime Minister of Canada, June 3, 2021, https://pm.gc.ca/en/news/statements/2021/06/03 /statement-prime-minister-second-anniversary-final-report-national. 64 Canada Crown Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs, “Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,” 2021, https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1450124405592/1529106060525. 65 Maria O’Sullivan, “Protest in a Pandemic – The Special Status of Public Spaces,” Australian Public Law, July 27, 2020, https://auspublaw.org/2020/07/protest-in-a-pandemic-the-special -status-of-public-spaces/. 66 Rachel B.Vogelstein and Meighan Stone, Awakening: #metoo and the Global Fight for Women’s Rights (New York: PublicAffairs, 2021). 67 Hong Luo and Laurina Zhang, “Measuring the Impact of #MeToo on Gender Equity in Hollywood,” Harvard Business Review, May 19, 2021, https://hbr.org/2021/05/measuring-the -impact-of-metoo-on-gender-equity-in-hollywood. 68 Jessica Howard, “The #MeToo Movement in Canada | Learn the Facts,” Canadian Women’s Foundation, accessed October 18, 2021, https://canadianwomen.org/the-facts/the-metoo -movement-in-canada/. 69 Mike Cummings, “#MeToo Makes a Difference in Sex-Crime Reporting, Study Shows,” YaleNews, January 27, 2020, https://news.yale.edu/2020/01/27/metoo-makes-difference -sex-crime-reporting-study-shows.

Protests, Diversity, and Differences That Matter 70 John Paul Tasker, “Uproar in the Commons after Trudeau Accused of Getting ‘Physical’ with 2 MPs,” CBC News, May 18, 2016, https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau -conservative-whip-1.3588407. 71 Marie-Danielle Smith and Adrian Humphreys, “After ‘Reflecting Very Carefully’ on Groping Allegation, Trudeau Says He Doesn’t Feel He Acted Inappropriately,” National Post, July 6, 2018, https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/justin-trudeau-responds-to-groping-allegation. 72 Marieke Walsh and Ian Bailey, “Green Party’s Annamie Paul Rejects Bid to Oust Her as ‘Racist’ and ‘Sexist,’” Globe and Mail, June 16, 2021, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article -annamie-paul-rejects-bid-to-oust-her-as-racist-and-sexist/; Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, American 1st ed. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017). 73 Phil B. Fontanarosa and Howard Bauchner, “Covid-19 – Looking Beyond Tomorrow for Health Care and Society,” JAMA 323, no. 19 (May 19, 2020): 1907–8, https://doi.org/10.1001 /jama.2020.6582; David Blumenthal et al., “Covid-19 – Implications for the Health Care System,” New England Journal of Medicine 383, no. 15 (October 8, 2020): 1483–8, https://doi.org/10.1056 /NEJMsb2021088; Sirina Keesara, Andrea Jonas, and Kevin Schulman, “Covid-19 and Health Care’s Digital Revolution,” New England Journal of Medicine 382, no. 23 (June 4, 2020): e82, https:// doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp2005835. 74 Badar Nadeem Ashraf, “Economic Impact of Government Interventions during the Covid-19 Pandemic: International Evidence from Financial Markets,” Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance 27 (September 1, 2020): 100371, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbef.2020.100371; Sophia Chen et al., “Tracking the Economic Impact of Covid-19 and Mitigation Policies in Europe and the United States,” IMF Working Papers (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund, July 2020). 75 Mohammad Reza Farzanegan, Mehdi Feizi, and Hassan F. Gholipour, “Globalization and the Outbreak of Covid-19: An Empirical Analysis,” Journal of Risk and Financial Management 14, no. 3 (March 2021): 105, https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm14030105; Anoop Madhok, “Globalization, De-Globalization, and Re-Globalization: Some Historical Context and the Impact of the Covid Pandemic,” BRQ Business Research Quarterly 24, no. 3 (April 15, 2021), https://doi.org/10.1177 /23409444211008904; Nistha Shrestha et al., “The Impact of Covid-19 on Globalization,” One Health 11 (December 20, 2020), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.onehlt.2020.100180. 76 Daniel Béland et al., “Social Policy Responses to Covid-19 in Canada and the United States: Explaining Policy Variations between Two Liberal Welfare State Regimes,” Social Policy & Administration 55, no. 2 (March 2021): 280–94, https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12656; Kathy L. Brock, “The Impact of Covid-19 on the Future of Governance in Canada: A White Paper,” School of Policy Studies Working Group on Governance (Kingston: School of Policy Studies, 2020); Andrea Migone, “The Influence of National Policy Characteristics on Covid-19 Containment Policies: A Comparative Analysis,” Policy Design and Practice 3, no. 3 (July 2, 2020): 259–76, https://doi.org /10.1080/25741292.2020.1804660. 77 M. Bernabeu-Wittel et al., “Death Risk Stratification in Elderly Patients with Covid-19: A Comparative Cohort Study in Nursing Homes Outbreaks,” Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics 91 (November 1, 2020), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.archger.2020.104240; J.-F. Daoust, “Elderly People and Responses to Covid-19 in 27 Countries,” PLOS ONE 15, no. 7 (July 2, 2020), https://doi .org/10.1371/journal.pone.0235590. 78 Vida Abedi et al., “Racial, Economic, and Health Inequality and Covid-19 Infection in the United States,” Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities 8, no. 3 (June 1, 2021): 732–42, https://doi

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Kathy Brock and Andrea Migone .org/10.1007/s40615-020-00833-4; Laurent G. Glance, Caroline P. Thirukumaran, and Andrew W. Dick, “The Unequal Burden of Covid-19 Deaths in Counties with High Proportions of Black and Hispanic Residents,” Medical Care 59, no. 6 (June 2021): 470–6, https://doi.org/10.1097 /MLR.0000000000001522; Cato T. Laurencin et al., “Excess Deaths Among Blacks and Latinx Compared to Whites During Covid-19,” Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities 8, no. 3 (June 2021): 783–9, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-021-01010-x; Tetyana P. Shippee et al., “Covid-19 Pandemic: Exacerbating Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Long-Term Services and Supports,” Journal of Aging & Social Policy 32, no. 4–5 (October 2020): 323–33, https://doi.org/10.1080/08959420. 2020.1772004; Brianna N. Lauren et al., “Predictors of Households at Risk for Food Insecurity in the United States during the Covid-19 Pandemic,” Public Health Nutrition 24, no. 12 (2021): 1–8, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1368980021000355. 79 Indigenous Services Canada, “Confirmed Cases of Covid-19,” 2021, https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng /1598625105013/1598625167707; Noakes, “2020 Was the Year of Indigenous Activism in Canada.” 80 Toba Bryant, Scott Aquanno, and Dennis Raphael, “Unequal Impact of Covid-19: Emergency Neoliberalism and Welfare Policy in Canada,” Critical Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal 15, no. 1 (July 31, 2020): 22–39; Lauren C. Zalla et al., “A Geography of Risk: Structural Racism and Covid-19 Mortality in the United States,” American Journal of Epidemiology 190, no. 8 (March 12, 2021): 1439–46, https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwab059. 81 Yang Hu, “Intersecting Ethnic and Native–Migrant Inequalities in the Economic Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic in the UK,” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 68 (August 1, 2020): 100528, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2020.100528; Christina Greenaway et al., “Covid-19: Exposing and Addressing Health Disparities among Ethnic Minorities and Migrants,” Journal of Travel Medicine 27, no. 7 (November 9, 2020), https://doi.org/10.1093/jtm/taaa113. 82 Donatella della Porta, Mobilizing for Democracy: Comparing 1989 and 2011 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199689323.001.0001; J. Craig Jenkins, Michael Wallace, and Andrew S. Fullerton, “A Social Movement Society? A Cross-National Analysis of Protest Potential,” International Journal of Sociology 38, no. 3 (September 1, 2008): 12–35, https:// doi.org/10.2753/IJS0020-7659380301. 83 Geoffrey Pleyers, “The Pandemic Is a Battlefield: Social Movements in the Covid-19 Lockdown,” Journal of Civil Society 16, no. 4 (October 1, 2020): 295–312, https://doi.org/10.1080/17448689.20 20.1794398. 84 Binoy Kampmark, “Protesting in Pandemic Times: Covid-19, Public Health, and Black Lives Matter,” Contention 8, no. 2 (December 1, 2020): 1–20, https://doi.org/10.3167/cont.2020 .080202. 85 Bruce Anderson, “Typical ‘Vaccine Hesitant’ Person Is a 42-Year-Old Ontario Woman Who Votes Liberal: Abacus Polling,” Macleans.ca (blog), August 11, 2021, https://www.macleans.ca/society /typical-vaccine-hesitant-person-is-a-42-year-old-ontario-woman-who-votes-liberal-abacus -polling/. 86 Anderson, “Typical ‘Vaccine Hesitant’ Person”; Edelman Trust Barometer 2022: Global Report, Powerpoint, January 25, 2022, esp. slides 21, 42, https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191 /files/2022-01/2022%20Edelman%20Trust%20Barometer%20FINAL_Jan25.pdf 87 “The Convoy Crisis in Ottawa: A Timeline of Key Events,” CBC News, February 17, 2022, https:// www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/timeline-of-convoy-protest-in-ottawa-1.6351432. 88 Private conversation with a volunteer guardian of the tomb and war memorial, February 19, 2022. He also observed that many demonstrators came over to the tomb and war memorial, knelt and said a prayer, and all were respectful.

Protests, Diversity, and Differences That Matter 89 “The Convoy Crisis in Ottawa,” CBC News, February 17, 2022. 90 Kathy Brock and Geoffrey Hale, Managing Federalism through the Pandemic (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023 forthcoming). 91 R.S.C. 1985, c. 22 (4th supplement). 92 Jacques Gallant, “‘What Emergency Exists Today?’ Senators Ask for More Details on Government’s Need for Special Powers,” Toronto Star, February 22, 2022, https://www.thestar.com/politics /federal/2022/02/22/what-emergency-exists-today-senators-ask-for-more-details-on -governments-need-for-special-powers.html. 93 Senate and House of Commons Special Joint Committee on the Declaration of Emergency, Hearings, March 3, 2022, Report and Government Response, https://www.parl.ca/Committees/en /DEDC/StudyActivity?studyActivityId=11567651. 94 Angus Reid Institute, Trudeau Tracker, March 22, 2022, https://angusreid.org/trudeau-tracker/. 95 Brock and Hale, Managing Federalism through the Pandemic, 2023. 96 “The Convoy Crisis in Ottawa”; Senate and House of Commons Special Joint Committee, 2022. 97 David Fraser, “Most Key Participants in Ottawa Convoy Protest Not Yet Charged,” CBC News, March 30, 2022, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/convoy-protest-police-ottawa -freedom-trucks-occupation-1.6401510. 98 Brian Naylor, “Read Trump’s Jan. 6th Speech, A Key Part of Impeachment Trial,” NPR, February 10, 2021, https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-trumps-jan-6-speech-a-key-part -of-impeachment-trial. 99 President Joe Biden, “Inaugural Address by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.,” The White House, January 20, 2021, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/01/20 /inaugural-address-by-president-joseph-r-biden-jr/. 100 “Protesters Throw Small Rocks, Debris at Trudeau as He Leaves Ontario Campaign Stop,” National (Global News), September 6–7, 2021, https://globalnews.ca/news/8170813/canada-election -trudeau-rocks-protesters/. 101 Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos, “The Foundations, Limits, and Consequences of Immigration Exceptionalism in Canada,” American Review of Canadian Studies 51, no. 1 (January 2, 2021): 3–17, https:// doi.org/10.1080/02722011.2021.1923150. 102 Eric Andrew-Gee, “Quebec Undergoes a Culture Shift as ‘Woke’ Politics Is Redefined in the Province,” Globe and Mail, September 26, 2021, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada /article-quebec-undergoes-a-culture-shift-as-woke-politics-is-redefined-in-the/; Alain G. Gagnon and Raffaele Iacovino, Federalism, Citizenship and Quebec: Debating Multinationalism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007).

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Twin Crises, Twin Ambitions, Twin Vulnerabilities: Confronting Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss in Canada and the United States Andrea Olive and Debora VanNijnatten

Two vast and life-altering environmental threats are facing humanity: climate change and ­biodiversity loss. Over the past decade, these issues have received considerable worldwide public attention – even amid a global health pandemic. Indeed, climate change is now top-of-mind for most Canadians and Americans. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when economies shut down and stay-at-home orders were passed, it was common to see reporting on drops in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Later, after the vaccine effort across Canada and the US lifted restrictions, the news cycle broke from 24/7 COVID-19 reporting to cover the devastating drought and intense heat in the American west as well as the “heat dome” on Canada’s west coast that killed hundreds of people and ignited forest fires, one of which destroyed an entire town in a matter of hours.1 In 2023, Americans and Canadians can now describe what climate change means as well as what kinds of policies we need to address it, and they are more likely to accept that these policies need to be implemented. Biodiversity loss might not be as familiar to people, but it is a problem equal in magnitude. It refers to the extinction of species in the wild as well as the reduction of species in certain regions or habitats. One example is the hairy braya – a white flowering plant that is found only in the Northwest Territories. It is threatened by climate change, particularly rising sea levels. Without measures to protect it, its entire population will go extinct and the hairy braya will cease to exist on Earth. Biodiversity loss is driven mainly by habitat loss and degradation, but other causes include climate change, overharvesting (hunting and fishing), pollution, and competition from invasive species that are introduced or move into an area and compete for resources.2 It is a life-altering problem not only because of the moral implications of millions of species going extinct, but also because human life depends on biodiversity for food, medicine, recreation, and other ecosystem services.

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Climate change and biodiversity loss are considered “twin crises” because they are occurring at the same time and are inherently linked.3 Biodiversity is necessary for mitigating climate change (e.g., carbon sinks) and adapting to climate change (e.g., shade from trees or biodiverse food sources that are resistant to extreme weather), while mitigating climate change is necessary for the protection and recovery of biodiversity. This chapter will focus on these twin crises to the exclusion of other shared US-Canada environmental problems, like algae blooms in the Great Lakes or toxic chemical pollution in the Arctic. While the main arguments we make here about policy goals, instruments, and outcomes in the two countries generally apply to other environmental issues, we choose to focus on climate change and biodiversity loss because other issues simply will not matter if we do not confront these two in the immediate future. They are unquestionably the most important environmental (and social justice) challenges facing Canada and the US. What we show in this chapter is that, in both countries and in both cases, policy goals have seesawed between ambition and retrenchment, along with the varying ideological stances of executive leaders vis-à-vis environmental protection. Sometimes there is direct alignment between the two countries as progressive or conservative administrations line up, and sometimes there is misalignment when the countries are governed by executives of varying partisan stripes. Here, then, the story is not one of similarity or difference per se, but rather two winding paths that sometimes meet up – though these paths meander through the same neighbourhood of policy choices. Canada and the United States have tended not to be too far out of sync with one another on environmental policy.4 In terms of the policy instruments that each country uses to meet its goals, the two countries have in the past tended to use different kinds of tools, with the US leaning more on e­ nforceable statutes that bind the executive branch and the states. Canada, meanwhile, has traditionally relied more on legislation with softer mandates that allow for considerable executive discretion, cooperative compliance agreements with industry, and funding packages to support industry transitions.5 More recently, however, there has been some convergence in policy instrument choice, stemming from changes in the US institutional framework. While Canada’s parliamentary system has long been characterized by executive dominance in policy-making (at both the national and provincial levels) and its ability to prod the activities of agencies and other actors through legislative and budgetary dominance, the US is increasingly moving toward a system, termed “The Administrative Presidency,”6 whereby the executive seeks to act independently of a polarized and paralyzed Congress through the use of executive orders and regulatory actions, particularly on environmental issues. Significantly, this development has implications for environmental outcomes. In earlier eras American environmental statutes put strong and enforceable mandates in place, and this tended to result in better environmental quality improvements than was achieved in Canada.7 Now, however, the increased reliance on executive actions means that the measures taken are much more vulnerable to the changing whims of the next government, as opposed to

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legislation which serves to guide action long after a particular administration is out of office. In this, the two countries are now treading the same ground, which may not provide solid footing as we attempt to address escalating climate change impacts and biodiversity loss on our shared continent.

CLARIFYING THE CONCEPTS In public policy, there is debate about the extent to which policies across jurisdictions become similar and what drives any similarities we see.8 The term “convergence” refers to the coming together of two or more discrete entities or phenomena over time.9 This definition emphasizes that, to demonstrate convergence, the phenomena in question must have been more distinct in earlier periods than they are now. By contrast, arguing that two or more phenomena are “similar” requires only that the researcher show the ways in which these phenomena are alike, at a specific point in time. In this vein, an argument for policy “divergence” requires demonstrating that phenomena are moving away from each other in different directions. When neither convergence nor divergence can be observed, one can conclude that the phenomena continue to be “distinct.” In this chapter, we distinguish between policy goals, policy instruments, and policy outcomes in our comparison of the two countries. Policy goals refer to the stated or expected ends of the course of action to which a government is committed. For example, both Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden have stated a goal of protecting 30 per cent of terrestrial land and water by 2030. That is a clear goal with a clear timeline. Policy instruments refer to the actual means or devices that governments have at their disposal to achieve policy goals. These can include things like regulation, subsidies, taxation, and reporting systems. In the case of climate change policy, jurisdictions can reduce GHGs by imposing emission cuts through regulation, or by instituting some sort of taxation on emissions that would create an incentive for reduction, among other options. Policy outcomes refer to the measurable impact of implementing instruments to achieve goals. This can be the total acres of protected land, the total number of species listed as endangered or threatened, or the amount of pollutants, like carbon dioxide or methane, emitted into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels. Monitoring environmental indicators over time provides some indication of whether an environmental program or policy is “working” or not to achieve a stated goal. Environmental policy goals, instruments, and outcomes are thus separate phenomena, each of which can be observed over time for signs of convergence, divergence, similarity, or continuing distinctiveness. Using the case studies of climate change and biodiversity loss, this chapter illustrates that policy goals experienced a marked period of divergence during the Trump-Trudeau era but now are re-converging in the Biden-Trudeau era. More importantly, the chapter argues that while policy instruments have tended to be distinct across the two

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countries, resulting in measurable differences in environmental outcomes, they now appear to be converging. This convergence is a result of changes to political institutions and processes in the US whereby presidential administrations are moving away from working with Congress and instead using all levers available within the executive branch to make progress on policy goals, independently. Thus, Canada and the US are beginning to look more similar in terms of both goals and instruments at this point in time, but the results may not be optimal in terms of environmental outcomes.

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY AGENDAS AND GOALS: WINDING (BUT GENERALLY PARALLEL) PATHS National environmental agendas in the two countries have tended to be broadly similar over time.10 Both governments committed themselves to “sustainable development” in the late 1980s, and the positions of the two countries were similar enough on several environmental issues to allow for a common negotiating position at the international level.11 In 1992, Canada and the US attended the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and went on to ratify the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Both countries have continued to participate in all UNFCCC negotiating forums and workgroups, with the common aim of moving all countries toward significantly reducing GHGs. Also at the Earth Summit, both endorsed the Convention on Biological Diversity, though only Canada went on to actually ratify the treaty. However, the US already had shown ambition in terms of biodiversity policy goals with the passing of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, and it also had increased the amount of protected lands through the national park system as well as initiatives under the Departments of the Interior and Agriculture. Within these broadly similar trajectories, however, specific policy goals have differed. ­Table 14.1 (below) traces the long and winding climate and biodiversity policy paths taken by the two governments since their early commitments. At first glance, policy goals adopted by Canada and the US often seem out of alignment, but we can make a few observations here. First, misalignment occurs almost always in cases where there is a progressive administration in one country and a more conservative administration in the other, e.g., Obama-Harper or TrumpTrudeau. Certainly,Trump represented an extreme anti-environmental challenge over 2017–20, but actions taken to undermine climate and biodiversity policy ambitions in the international and domestic arenas under the Bush and Harper administrations were also very damaging to the environmental agenda. Second, if one digs underneath the international policy pronouncements, the domestic differences are less pronounced. For example, while Canada has tended to ratify global agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, national and provincial governments have failed to put in place appropriate implementation measures at home. For its part, the US regularly chooses not to ratify global agreements (because of Senate opposition),

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Andrea Olive and Debora VanNijnatten Table 14.1.  Chronology of climate change and biodiversity goals by administration President-Prime Minister

Similar Goals: Climate Change

Clinton–Chrétien (1992–2000)

Yes, until Canada ratified the Kyoto Protocol and US did not in 1997. However, US executive branch continued to engage in international climate processes.

No. Canada ratified Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and US did not. But Canada lacked national policy while US had a domestic Endangered Species Act (ESA, passed in 1973).

Bush–Chrétien/ Martin (2000–6)

No. In 2002 Canada adopted target 6% GHG reduction from 1990 levels by 2012. Outside of the Protocol, in 2001 US endorsed goal of reducing emission intensity of US economy by 18% by 2012.

No. Canada works through CBD to create National Biodiversity Strategy while US failed to implement and enforce its ESA.

Bush–Harper (2006–8)

Yes. Bush continued to avoid reduction target; Harper flirted with regulatory options to meet Kyoto target then backed away.

Yes. Both countries fail to take federal action for conservation or species at risk (by refusing to add new species to their protected lists).

Obama–Harper (2009–15)

No. Harper pulled out of Kyoto in 2011, while US adopted 17% GHG reduction from 2005 levels by 2020. However, both committed to “low carbon America” with Mexico in 2009.

No. Canada drags its feet on fully implementing Species at Risk Act and does not make progress toward the UN CBD. US starts to add species to the ESA again. Obama oversaw creation of 22 national parks and added ~550 million acres of protected habitat.

Obama–Trudeau (2015–16)

Yes. Both adopt a Nationally Determined Commitment (NDC) for GHG reductions in Paris: US 26–8% reduction below 2005 emissions by 2025; Canada 30% below 2005 levels by 2030.

Yes. Trudeau and Obama both support domestic species at risk legislation and set ambitious conservation agenda, especially joint initiatives in the Arctic region.

Trump–Trudeau (2017–21)

No. Canada develops PanCanadian Framework for achieving emission reduction goals under Paris Agreement; US disavowed any national goal for climate change and withdrew from Paris Agreement.

No. Trudeau continues with CBD (Aichi Targets), provides $1.3 billion in conservation funding, and announces new Pan-Canadian Framework for species at risk. Trump removes land from protection, opens up drilling in sensitive areas (ANWAR), weakens the ESA.

Biden–Trudeau (2021–

Yes. US rejoins the Paris Agreement, which Canada signed in 2015; both adopted more ambitious reduction targets at UShosted April Climate Summit. US to slash emissions by 50% by 2030; Canada to reduce 40–5% by 2030.

Yes. Both countries pledge to protect 30% of terrestrial land by 2030 and both countries work on species protection through national legislation; but only Canada has ratified CBD.

Similar Goals: Biodiversity

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yet it has a strong framework of national legislation in place on air, water, endangered species, and land conservation which guides the behaviour of all levels of government and major economic actors. The period since 2015 provides probably the most extreme example of the seesawing ­ambition-retrenchment and alignment-misalignment phenomena. The election of Justin Trudeau in Canada in 2015 signalled a hard 180-degree turn toward environmental policy action. The previous government of Stephen Harper (2006–15), after a decade of avoiding climate action, had reluctantly agreed to match US commitments on climate change made by the Obama administration, had aligned vehicle emissions policies with American standards, and had made some cooperative noises on clean energy supports.12 Like Obama had in 2008, Trudeau campaigned on an activist climate agenda and pledged to support science as well as Indigenous communities and knowledge. He also committed to bringing Canada back into the global community’s efforts to address pressing environmental challenges after Harper had adopted a more isolationist approach.The Liberal Party won almost 40 per cent of the popular vote in the 2015 federal election – along with a stunning 184 seats, which was an increase of 148 seats for the party over the previous election. This gave Trudeau a majority government and validation of his campaign strategy to put environmental issues front and centre. Trudeau immediately renamed Environment Canada, the main federal environmental agency, “Environment and Climate Change Canada,” signalling his government’s intended focus. He prioritized the UN Paris Agreement, moved quickly to attend the UN conference, and then held a provincial summit to hash out a domestic implementation plan for Canada’s international target. The resulting Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change was anchored by a federal regulatory commitment to carbon pricing. This was an unprecedented action, never taken by any previous federal political executive. The Framework was agreed to by most governments, including Alberta (then led by a NDP government), in 2016. Only Saskatchewan refused to play ball. In naming Catherine McKenna – a lawyer – as his minister of environment,Trudeau signalled that environmental laws, including the Species at Risk Act, would be respected. His government pledged to create and implement recovery strategies and action plans for the hundreds of listed species awaiting documents (long after the legal window for creating policy had lapsed during the Harper years). There is no denying that the election of Donald Trump in late 2016 abruptly changed the political landscape of North America and beyond. Trump came storming into office in January 2017 with an agenda that gave little thought to Canada or to shared environmental concerns. Indeed, Trump broke with history when Canada was not his first foreign visit, nor was there any official state visit during his entire presidency. Canada-United States relations were defined by “insults and threats” emanating from south of the border, and observers feared that environmental cooperation would also reach a low point.13 The disappointment among environmental advocates was acute, given that Trudeau and Obama had announced so many joint initiatives during their one year of overlapping leadership. During Trump’s tenure, while

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the more “institutionalized” components of the environmental relationship – e.g., the Great Lakes, Pacific Salmon, and Air Quality Agreement – continued to bump along, climate and biodiversity suffered. In fact, Trump had campaigned on climate change denial ideology and made clear his intention to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement. He was also pro-coal, pro-fracking, pro-oil, and anti-environmental “red tape” and regulation. During his first week in office, all mentions of climate change were removed from the White House websites, and a few weeks later the same purge happened to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) websites. He slashed the EPA’s budget and appointed the fossil-fuel industries’ close friend Scott Pruitt as administrator (he resigned in less than two years under a cloud of ethical controversy). He also immediately appointed Montana Congressman Ryan Zinke, a Navy SEAL, as his secretary of the interior. Zinke has been criticized heavily by the media for his expensive helicopter trips and use of military planes for speaking engagements. Just over a year into his position, Zinke was under investigation by the Justice Department. More importantly, Zinke’s cuts to protected areas and parks were “the largest rollback of public land protection in American history.”14 It was clear from the very onset of Trump’s presidency that climate change and biodiversity conservation were not priorities – and, if anything, were obstacles for Trump in his bid to “Make America Great Again.” The US refusal to acknowledge the climate change crisis, let alone take any action to lower GHG emissions, emboldened critics of climate mitigation within Canada, especially newly elected conservative provincial premiers who were not keen on Trudeau’s agenda. Nevertheless, Trudeau’s government steamed ahead with carbon pricing (in the face of court challenges from several provinces), rolled out an immense green infrastructure program, and put serious budget allocations into clean energy and mitigation technologies. The Greenhouse Gas Pollution ­Pricing Act was passed in 2018, providing a firm legislative basis for the carbon pricing regime; vehicle emissions standards were tightened; regulations limiting methane emissions from the oil and gas sector were put in place; and a Clean Fuel Standard was developed. While Trudeau attracted serious and sustained criticism for his support for oil and gas pipeline development in the West, his actions on climate change mitigation have undeniably been more ambitious than those of any previous Canadian government. And, with the July 2021 passage of the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, the current and future governments will be held to account for meeting short-, medium-, and longer-term emission reduction targets. Opposing Canada-US agendas on biodiversity and conservation also emerged. Trump focused on reducing wilderness areas and allowing natural resource extraction to occur just about anywhere – including Arctic waters and protected areas. He did pass the Natural Resources ­Management Act in 2019, which added 1.3 million acres of wilderness lands to those already protected in the US.15 However, he also reduced the size of two national monuments in Utah – and those reductions were larger than the 1.3 million acres added, resulting in a net loss to protected areas. Further, Trump oversaw seemingly subtle changes to the bureaucratic implementation of

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the ESA that actually amounted to a significant weakening of the act.16 His approach to biodiversity conservation was non-existent and in complete opposition to Canada’s. In the 2018 budget, Trudeau shocked the conservation community when he allocated a historic $1.35 billion in funding for conservation and land preservation. His government sought to immediately and substantially increase protected areas – in line with Canada’s CBD ambitions of 17 per cent of terrestrial area and 10 per cent of marina area protected by 2020.17 A substantial “Canada Nature Fund” is available to not-for-profit and Indigenous organizations, as well as to provinces and territories, to protect biodiversity through the creation of protected and ­conserved areas as well as species recovery initiatives. Of the total budget, $155 million is specifically allocated for species at risk, and in 2018 the new Pan-Canadian Framework for Species at Risk Conservation was developed.18 Joe Biden, like Obama before him, ran on a pro-environmental campaign. Climate change was not merely a talking point, but an anchor to Biden’s broader economic and social policy agenda. The Democrats placed significant emphasis on climate action through the lens of a “just” green transition that would entail moving the economy toward clean technology and green energy with the primary aim of creating high-paying jobs for American workers. Even so, observers were surprised by the breadth and depth of the climate policy commitment, both in terms of how the new administration quickly organized itself to deliver on climate goals (creating new climate-focused senior positions and making climate mitigation central to the mandates of department secretaries, even in Agriculture, Interior, and Commerce) and the boldness of its early actions (rejoining the Paris process, convening an international Climate Summit, initiating regulatory action, and rolling out supports for green technology). On biodiversity, the new administration imposed a moratorium on any oil development in the Arctic and launched a broad review of the Trump administration’s actions on ESA, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and oil and gas development on federal lands. Canada and the US have thus arrived at a rare moment in political time, when ambitious action on both climate and biodiversity is possible, both at home and together. In February 2021, the US president and Canadian prime minister released a joint statement, noting “[i]t is in the shared interest of the United States and Canada to revitalize and expand our historic alliance and steadfast friendship to overcome the daunting challenges of today and realize the full potential of the relationship into the future.” They committed to collaboration on COVID-19 actions that lead to “building back better.”19 As part of that, they agreed to a series of actions on “accelerating climate ambitions,” which bore fruit at the April Climate Summit hosted by Biden, wherein Canada committed to reducing its emission by 40–45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 and achieving net zero by 2050, and the US to achieving a 50–52 per cent reduction below 2005 levels by 2030 and net zero by 2050. The prime minister and the president also agreed to be “partners in protecting nature, including by supporting Indigenous-led conservation efforts” and to “work together on environmental restoration and conservation efforts, and to advancing nature-based climate solutions.”20 In September 2021, Justin Trudeau was

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re-elected as prime minister (with a minority government), suggesting that the coming years of a Biden-Trudeau partnership will further entrench these shared goals.

POLICY INSTRUMENT CONVERGENCE AS EXECUTIVES TAKE FIRMER HOLD ON THE REINS More often than not, then, Canada and the US have shared big-picture environmental policy agendas, even if they have differed on particular policy goals, at specific points in time. The Trump era is a more extreme example of misalignment, and what makes it surprising is that there are so many good explanations for commonalities and cooperation on policy goals.21 Certainly, the degree of economic integration between the two economies is of great significance in terms of thinking about “push” factors for policy similarity. Canada is very dependent on the US market; in 2019, Canada’s exports to the US totalled $336 billion, accounting for 75.4 per cent of Canada’s total exports.22 The two countries have also responded to environmental policy challenges from the vantage point of similar economic and fiscal contexts, from the oil shocks of the 1970s to the recessions of the 1980s, to the focus on national deficits and debt in the 1990s, the recession of 2007–8, and the COVID-19 global pandemic with economic shut-downs for major portions of 2020–1. Essentially, with integrated economies, Canada and the US have shared economic reasons for environmental cooperation, including now the global shift to cleantech products and investments. In addition, the two countries have had to respond to similar problems, such as wildfires, ­pollution, wildlife disease, and invasive species. In the process of addressing these problems, ­Canada has tended to emulate the larger and more technically advanced United States; in most cases, Canada became active on problems first identified and acted upon by their southern neighbour.23 Obvious examples here include the policy tool of environmental impact assessment, invented by the United States and included in its ground-breaking 1969 National Environmental Policy Act, as well as fuel economy standards for automobiles, which first emerged in California and spread across the United States and then into Canada. In addition, similar trends in environmental activism and public opinion have likely encouraged action on the part of both Canadian and American governments in certain periods.24 One of the most compelling explanations of similarity in agendas and goals, of course, derives from the reality of sharing a 6,416-kilometre (3,987-mile) border from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific that comprises multiple ecosystems. Canada and the United States have a lengthy tradition of cooperation on environmental issues beginning with the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty. Numerous agreements dealing with such issues as water quality in the Great Lakes, transboundary air quality, fisheries management on both coasts, as well as migratory species have served to deepen the bilateral environmental relationship, as have the many cooperative mechanisms that have been put in place to administer them. In this vein, there has also been active cooperation

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among regional groupings of states and provinces in the Great Lakes, Northeast, and Pacific Northwest, to address cross-border environmental challenges.25 This development makes sense for many of the same reasons that the Canadian and US national governments have adopted similar policy approaches, namely close economic ties and intense trade relations, g­ eographic proximity, and the imperative of sharing imperilled ecosystems and polluted airsheds. Thus, these three explanations – integrated economies, similar challenges, and shared ecosystems – have encouraged common goals and cooperation. For example, various US and ­Canadian agencies have collaborated on the development of clean coal, carbon capture and storage (CCS), co-generation and renewable technologies, as well as climate change science and research.26 The neighbours also created the US-Canada Clean Energy Dialogue, which was to enhance the focus on cooperation in clean energy science and technology.27 On the biodiversity file, US and Canadian agencies have developed joint “Peace Parks” like Glacier National Park and Waterton National Park, shared scientific information on transborder species, worked through joint forums on invasive species in the Great Lakes, and joined with Mexico to create the trilateral Commission for Environmental Cooperation. This all paints a picture of environmental policy coordination. But if the US and Canada have shared such a long history of collaboration, then why was it so easy for the US to forge a new path on environmental policy goals under Donald Trump? Even more interesting, although his government blazed a radical trail, the successor Biden administration has been able to quickly put out the fires. To answer this question, we need to focus on what is happening with US political institutions and processes in comparison with the Canadian case. Certainly, the deep differences in political institutions in Canada and the United States have served to encourage environmental policy instrument differences between the two countries. In Canada, given the dominance of the governing party over both the executive and legislative branches of government in a situation of majority control, as was the case from 2011 to 2019, policy discussions and conflict within the federal government typically take place in cabinet and at the highest levels of the bureaucracy – within the political executive. At the same time, Canada has a decentralized federal system, in which provinces possess the lion’s share of jurisdiction over lands and resources. For example, while the federal government has the constitutional means to negotiate and ratify an international treaty such as the Convention on Biological Diversity or the Paris Agreement, the provinces possess the jurisdictional levers for undertaking habitat/land conservation and the regulation of GHG emissions from industries, energy development and use, consumer goods, and the residential sector. This means that environmental policy-making in Canada features a federal government that in most cases is forced to bargain with muscular provinces so extensive consultation is necessary. Since at least the 1990s, it has been common for the federal government and provinces to negotiate and sign accords (essentially, Memorandum of Understanding, or MOU) and create pan-Canadian agreements. The 2016 Pan-Canadian Framework for Clean Growth and Climate Change as well as the 2019

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Pan-Canadian Framework for Transforming Species at Risk Conservation in Canada are the most recent examples of this style of consultation, negotiation, and collaboration. The Canadian environmental policy legacy is one of softer mandates in legislation that allow for considerable executive discretion (i.e., whereby the minister makes the final decision), large policy variations among the provinces (because they have the jurisdiction to choose their own policy paths), and a reliance on unenforceable instruments or “management systems” rather than direct regulation. Cooperative partnerships with industry to encourage compliance are also common. Indeed, even the national Species at Risk Act lacks any regulatory teeth and defers to the provinces to protect habitat on non-federal lands (which is almost all land across the ten provinces).With respect to climate change policy, there has been a slight shift under the Trudeau government with an attempt to regulate greenhouse gas emissions – as opposed to relying only on softer instruments like tax incentives, funding for research, and investments in renewable energy. And certainly the imposition of a federal carbon tax is a bold (and highly unusual) move. Some of this more formal action can be attributed to the fact that Trudeau currently leads a minority government, and opposition parties are more actively engaged in policy discussions than is generally the case under majority government situations. If we look south of the border, we see a very different environmental policy-making dynamic. The major differences lie in the relationship between the executive and legislative branches in the law-making process (each of which effectively has a veto) and the role that the US federal government plays vis-à-vis states. The US legislative process is conflict-ridden and painstaking, requiring that proponents build multiple coalitions in Congress that encompass interests of industry as well as environmentalists, different state interests, and the interests of individual ­members of the House and Senate. Moreover, this coalition-building must be replicated in House and Senate subcommittees and committees, as well as before full votes, with the executive seeking to use its influence at every point in the process. The American process might also be viewed as more rigorous, resulting in detailed statutes that (if passed – big IF) spell out enforceable action to be taken by agencies, states, and industries, and that are closely monitored by both Congress and the executive branch. Institutionalized distrust, in the American political system, is thus beneficial in terms of “requiring” other actors in the system to take action, whereas Canadian governments facing less opposition and scrutiny (especially in a majority government context) are less likely to bind themselves by imposing regulatory requirements, particularly when they may need to manoeuvre around provincial interests. In the Canadian parliamentary system, a majority government can move relatively quickly to create or dismantle environmental laws, something that is considerably more difficult in the American system. In addition, the US Congress may impose environmental mandates on the states in most areas of environmental protection. These mandates are then implemented by the regional offices of federal agencies, primarily the Environmental Protection Agency for climate change and the Department of the Interior (US Fish and Wildlife Service) for endangered species and conservation (although the Bureau of Land Management and US Forest Service are also important land managers).

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Close observers of the US political system, however, argue that the extreme partisan division in Congress, and the inability of a president’s party and administration to achieve their policy aims through congressional processes, have contributed to an increasing tendency of presidents and their senior officials to “go it alone,” using whatever levers they can access through executive branch functions, even pushing them past the limits imposed by convention. The current level of stalemate between the parties in Congress is unprecedented, attributed to the closeness of partisan balance in both houses, how little anything changes after elections (with just a few swing districts determining party majorities) and the degree to which all interactions are underlain by “hatred toward the other party.”28 Further, the use of filibuster on cloture in the Senate – cutting off debate in order to bring the measure under discussion to a vote – means that a motion sponsored by the president’s party requires sixty votes to even get to the stage where a vote can be called. During Obama’s administration, the Republicans smashed records in their use of the filibuster, blocking most of his agenda by refusing to allow motions to come to a vote, including judicial nominees. When Biden won the presidency, Republicans in the Senate indicated they would continue to use the filibuster to block the Democratic agenda. In this context, presidents have sought other tools to pry open more governance power. Obama, for example, after the failure to pass climate change legislation in Congress in 2009, utilized executive orders, put in place agency regulations under existing legislative authorities (primarily the Clean Air Act), made investments in clean energy and mitigation technologies, and announced international bilateral agreements with numerous other countries.The ­administration also halted development on federal lands. Very little of this required that the ­president go to Congress for authority – although there were certainly budgetary battles. The use of executive orders is also on the increase, with the Biden administration issuing more executive orders in his first 100 days than any previous president in the post–Second World War era.29 Many of these were related to climate change, and as the Biden administration moves forward with its Climate Plan, they appear to be using the same tools that Obama and Trump used to push their agendas forward. This movement toward executive-driven instruments for climate and biodiversity policy in the US, coupled with the increasing tendency under the Trudeau government to use regulation by pushing existing legislative authorities, indicates a convergence with respect to policy instruments across the two countries.

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY OUTCOMES: CONVERGING ON VULNERABILITY? So, what is the likely impact of these changes in the US policy-making process on environmental policy, and the convergence of policy instruments between Canada and the US, on environmental outcomes? Eight to ten years ago, the answer seemed clearer. The reluctance of Canadian authorities to employ stringent command-and-control, or even market-based instruments, to

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achieve environmental ends, and their overreliance on less coercive instruments such as government spending, seems to have contributed overall to a less impressive record in addressing environmental degradation than is the case in the United States, which has a stronger tradition of regulation.30 There is, for example, simply no comparison between the Species at Risk Act in Canada and the American Endangered Species Act. The former is a largely discretionary instrument that provides a list of species and collects scientific data on protection and recovery, while the latter is the “pit bull” of environmental legislation.31 The American ESA is the quintessential command-and-control policy that regulates all land – state and private – for the purposes of a common national goal, and it has bound presidential administrations (and ­Congress) for five decades! However, the increasing reliance on executive instruments by US administrations to push for action on climate change and biodiversity may yield limited short-term gains, but they are much more vulnerable to policy reversals by the succeeding administration. Here, we might note that the Biden administration has undertaken more executive actions to revoke orders from the previous Trump administration than each of the previous three administrations – by a factor of four.32 And while it did take the Trump administration the full four-year term to unravel the Clean Coal Plan, in the final analysis they did succeed. If a Republican takes the reins after the 2024 election, would a full set of reversals again take place? This seems likely to exacerbate the seesawing policy phenomena that we are increasingly seeing in the US, and that has long characterized environmental policy-making in Canada. It is also worth noting that, as a starting point, neither the Canadian nor American records on climate change and biodiversity are particularly impressive. They are not the same, however. Looking at the 2020 Yale Environmental Performance Index, which ranks 180 countries on their overall environmental performance, Canada is twentieth and the US is twenty-fourth in the world.33 Digging into the details, Canada is ranked thirty-seventh for climate change and ninetieth for biodiversity. The US is ranked fifteenth for climate change and sixty-seventh for biodiversity (but worse than Canada on other indicators such as air and water quality). Despite Donald Trump’s recklessness, the US is still doing better than Canada when it comes down to the things we can “count.” This is largely explained by instrument choice and the existence of US national legislation governing emissions across media (as Canadian goals have been consistent and ambitious since 2015). Without the ability to regulate climate change emissions (until recently!) or protect the habitat of federally listed species at risk, Canada has struggled to meet its national goals. A weak f­ederal government is no match for strong provinces that have differing agendas, approaches, and ­instrument choices. One clear example is land conservation. In 1992, when Canada committed to the UN CBD, it had 6 per cent of its terrestrial land and water classified as protected. By 2018, that number had crawled to 10 per cent, and then to 12.5 per cent by 202034 – finally catching up with the United States, which also had 12 per cent of its total land classified as protected. Unfortunately, Canada has not caught up with the US on marine protected areas, as the US protects close to 26 per cent of its oceans and Canada protects only 6 per cent.35 However,

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another way that Canada’s record on conservation is distinct from the US lies in the way that Indigenous knowledge increasingly informs policy and programming and that Indigenous communities are undertaking their own forms of conservation action. In working toward the UN Aichi Targets (under the UN CBD), the Trudeau government has increased funding for conservation and also for Indigenous initiatives.36 The Indigenous Circle of Experts published a report, We Rise Together, to spell out how Indigenous peoples and settlers can work together to achieve conservation goals.37 Three Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs) – Ts’udé Nili˛né Tueyata, Edéhzhíe, and Thaidene Nëné – were established in the Northwest Territories.38 By 2021, twenty-seven communities were receiving federal funding to establish IPCAs while another twenty-five were in the early planning stages for similar projects.39 While harder to measure, Canada’s efforts to support Indigenous-led conservation is another “difference that counts.”

INCREASING CONVERGENCE INTO THE FUTURE? The Trudeau-Trump years illustrated a clear divergence in policy goals on climate change and biodiversity loss. However, the Trudeau-Biden era has shown, thus far, a realignment of goals, including for climate change targets and biodiversity conservation. Indeed, they have already released a joint statement on their desire for mutual cooperation. There is also mounting pressure on the Biden administration to ratify the UN CBD,40 which would enable it to work even more closely with Canada on shared conservation goals. At the same time, we are seeing some convergence between the two countries on policy instruments.While Trudeau has tried to build some federal legal muscle, his government continues to lead from cabinet and engage in negotiations with industry, Indigenous governments, and the provinces. Pan-Canadian Frameworks based on provincial action but anchored by federal funding are likely to be the primary tool that Canada uses to tackle climate change and biodiversity in the coming years. This is also the direction that the Biden administration is moving in, given the unlikelihood that Congress will accede to its demands for climate legislation or all of the clean tech funding it has requested. The reliance on executive branch tools that are not anchored in legislation, which make it less likely they can withstand the buffeting winds of different partisan administrations, may also mean that any improvements to environmental outcomes are fleeting. Right now, the outcomes that matter most are a reduction in greenhouse emissions and an increase in protected habitat for terrestrial and marine wildlife. The challenge will be achieving both outcomes at the same time – not addressing one at the expense of the other. Progress cannot be made by laying down solar farms and windmills on bison habitat or disturbing marine species with tidal power generation. Both countries need to use COVID-19 as a critical juncture on the road to get the kind of transformative changes that are necessary to avoid the worst-case scenarios of climate change and biodiversity loss.

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STUDY QUESTIONS 1. What are policy instruments? How are they related to policy goals and policy outcomes? Provide current examples. 2. Do Canadian and US policy goals often diverge? Why or why not? Are they converging now? 3. What are the most significant differences in policy instruments ­between Canada and the US? How does executive discretion impact policy instruments – and outcomes? 4. From an institutional perspective, is one country better equipped to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss than the other, and what accounts for the very differing roles of the states and the provinces when it comes to environmental issues and policy choices? 5. Canada and the United States have integrated economies, shared ecosystems, and similar challenges. What factors are likely to prevent them from closely aligning their climate change and ­biodiversity goals over the next few years? And what factors might ­encourage this?

NOTES 1 Hallie Golden, “The Heat Dome Explained,” Guardian, June 29, 2021, https://www.theguardian. com/us-news/2021/jun/28/portland-seattle-heatwave-heat-dome-temperatures; Andrew Weichel, “Number of Deaths Recorded During BC’s Heat Wave Up to 808, Coroner Say,” CTV News, July 16, 2021, https://bc.ctvnews.ca/number-of-deaths-recorded-during-b-c-s-heat-wave-up-to-808 -coroners-say-1.5512723. 2 J. Currie, J. Snider, and E. Giles, eds., “Living Planet Report Canada: Wildlife at Risk” (Toronto: WWF Canada, 2020). 3 Daniel A. Farber, “Separated at Birth? Addressing the Twin Crises of Biodiversity and Climate Change,” Ecology Law Quarterly 42, no. 4 (2015): 841–88, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43920966. 4 Stephen Brooks, “Canada-United States Environmental Relations during the Trudeau-Trump Years: A Story of Divergence and Resilience,” American Review of Canadian Studies 50, no. 1 (2020): 48–65, https://doi.org/10.1080/02722011.2020.1742998; Debora L.VanNijnatten, “Environmental Policy in Canada and the United States: Climate Change and Increasing Distinctiveness,” in Canada and the United States: Differences That Count, 4th ed., ed. David M. Thomas and David N. Biette (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014). 5 Justina Ray, Jaime Grimm, and Andrea Olive, “The Biodiversity Crisis in Canada: Failure and Challenges of Federal and Sub-national Strategic and Legal Frameworks,” FACETS 6 (2021): 1044–68, https://doi.org/10.1139/facets-2020-0075.

Twin Crises, Twin Ambitions, Twin Vulnerabilities 6 Frank Thomson, Kenneth K. Wong, and Barry G. Rabe, Trump, the Administrative Presidency, and Federalism (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute Press, 2020). 7 VanNijnatten, “Environmental Policy in Canada.” 8 Brendan Boyd and Andrea Olive, Provincial Policy Laboratories (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021). 9 Keith Banting, George Hoberg, and Richard Simeon, Degrees of Freedom: Canada and the United States in a Changing Global Context (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997). 10 VanNijnatten, “Environmental Policy in Canada.” 11 Debora L.VanNijnatten, “Canadian-American Environmental Relations: Interoperability and Politics,” American Review of Canadian Studies 34, no. 4 (2004): 649–64, https://doi.org/10.1080 /02722010409481693. 12 VanNijnatten, “Environmental Policy in Canada.” 13 Brooks, “Canada-United States Environmental Relations.” 14 Christal Hayes, “Ryan Zinke: The Controversies that Defined His Tenure as Trump’s Interior Secretary,” USA Today, December 15, 2018, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/12/15 /ryan-zinke-secretary-interior-donald-trump/2322324002/. 15 “President Trump Signs Sweeping Lands Package into Law,” US Senate, 2019, https://www.energy .senate.gov/2019/3/president-trump-signs-sweeping-lands-package-into-law. 16 Thomson Reuters, “Trump Administration Overhauls Endangered Species Act Protections,” CBC News, August 12, 2019, https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/us-govt-endangered-species-act -1.5243971. 17 Carol Linnit, “Canada Commits Historic $1.3 Billion to Create New Protected Areas,” Narwhal, February 28, 2018, https://thenarwhal.ca/canada-commits-historic-1-3-billion-create -new-protected-areas/. 18 Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), “Pan-Canada Framework for Transforming Species at Risk Conservation in Canada,” 2018, https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/eccc /documents/pdf/species-risk/pan-canadian-approach-transforming-species-risk-conservation -canada.pdf. 19 White House, “Roadmap for a Renewed US-Canada Partnership,” February 23, 2021, https://www. whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/02/23/roadmap-for-a-renewed -u-s-canada-partnership/. 20 White House, “Fact Sheet: President Biden Takes Executive Actions to Tackle the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, Create Jobs, and Restore Scientific Integrity Across Federal Government,” January 21, 2021, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/01/27 /fact-sheet-president-biden-takes-executive-actions-to-tackle-the-climate-crisis-at-home -and-abroad-create-jobs-and-restore-scientific-integrity-across-federal-government/. 21 George Hoberg, Keith Banting, and Richard Simeon, “North American Integration and the Scope for Domestic Choice: Canada and Policy Autonomy in a Globalized World,” in Capacity for Choice: Canada in a New North America, ed. George Hoberg (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001). 22 USTR (United States Trade Representative), “Canada: US-Canada Trade Facts,” n.d., https:// ustr.gov/countries-regions/americas/canada. 23 George Hoberg, “Canadian-American Environmental Relations: A Strategic Framework,” in Canadian Environmental Policy: Context and Cases, 2nd ed., ed. Debora L.VanNijnatten and Robert Boardman (Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2002), 172.

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Andrea Olive and Debora VanNijnatten 24 Kathryn Harrison, Passing the Buck: Federalism and Canadian Environmental Policy (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1996), chap. 4–6. 25 Debora L.VanNijnatten, “Environmental Cross-Border Regions and the Canada-US Relationship: Building from the Bottom-Up in the Second Century,” in Transborder Environmental Governance in Canada and the United States, ed. Barry G. Rabe and Stephen Brooks (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, 2009). 26 Douglas Macdonald, Debora L.VanNijnatten, and Andrew Bjorn, “Implementing Kyoto: When Spending is Not Enough,” in How Ottawa Spends 2004–2005, ed. G. Bruce Doern (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004). 27 Debora L.VanNijnatten, and Neil Craik, “Designing Integration: The System of Climate Change Governance in North America,” in North American Climate Change Policy: Designing Integration in a Regional System, ed. Neil Craik, Isabel Studer, and Debora VanNijnatten (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013). 28 Lee Druitman, “How Hatred Came to Dominate American Politics,” FiveThirtyEight, 2020, https:// fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-hatred-negative-partisanship-came-to-dominate -american-politics/. 29 John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, “Biden in Action: The First 100 Days. Biden Compared to Prior Presidents,” American Presidency Project, April 30, 2021, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu /analyses/biden-action-the-first-100-days. 30 VanNijnatten, “Environmental Policy in Canada.” 31 Andrea Olive, Land, Stewardship & Legitimacy: Endangered Species Policy in Canada and the United States (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014). 32 Woolley and Peters, “Biden in Action: The First 100 Days.” 33 Zachary A. Wendling, John W. Emerson, Alex de Sherbinin, Daniel C. Esty, et al., “Environmental Performance Index,” Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy, 2020. 34 Government of Canada, Canadian Protected and Conserved Areas Database, n.d., https://www .canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/national-wildlife-areas/protected -conserved-areas-database.html. 35 Arthur Middleton and Justin Brashares, “More Than Twice the Size of Texas,” New York Times, December 21, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/21/opinion/biden-climate-change -conservation.html. 36 Melanie Zurba, Karen F. Beazley, Emilie English, and Johanna Buchmann-Duck, “Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs), Aichi Target 11 and Canada’s Pathway to Target 1: Focusing Conservation on Reconciliation," Land 8, no. 1 (2019): 10, https://doi.org/10.3390 /land8010010. 37 Indigenous Circle of Experts (ICE), “We Rise Together,” 2018, https://static1.squarespace.com /static/57e007452e69cf9a7af0a033/t/5ab94aca6d2a7338ecb1d05e/1522092766605/PA234-ICE _Report_2018_Mar_22_web.pdf. 38 Indigenous Leadership Initiative, “Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas,” n.d., https://www .ilinationhood.ca/indigenous-protected-and-conserved-areas. 39 Government of Canada, “Indigenous Leadership and Initiatives,” n.d., https://www.canada.ca/en /environment-climate-change/services/nature-legacy/indigenous-leadership-funding.html. 40 Benji Jones, “Why the US Won’t Join the Single Most Important Treaty to Protect Nature,” Vox, May 20, 2021, https://www.vox.com/22434172/us-cbd-treaty-biological-diversity -nature-conservation.

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

Canada–US Energy Futures in an Age of Climate Change: Balancing Market, Environment, and Security Imperatives in Uncertain, Disruptive Times Monica Gattinger and Julien Tohme

The twenty-first century has been and will be one of the most disruptive, volatile, unpredictable, and uncertain periods for energy in Canada and the United States. Over the last twenty years, the North American energy landscape has transformed: the “shale revolution” converted the US from hydrocarbon-poor to hydrocarbon-rich; the ascendance of climate change on political and policy agendas put the emissions profile of energy systems into sharp focus; and the rise of civil society activism and local community engagement in decisions over major energy projects challenged the planning, permitting, and construction of infrastructure. The next twenty years and beyond will continue to be full of change. Lowering greenhouse gas emissions requires a sweeping transformation of the energy systems and economies of both countries. And the effects of climate change will require new thinking to ensure energy systems are resilient and reliable in the face of extreme weather events. These changes will need to take place in ways that support prosperity and keep energy affordable for industry and citizens alike.They will also need to be done in a way that fosters domestic and global energy security. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine underscored the ongoing importance of energy security in national and international energy markets. An unprecedented amount of innovation, investment, behavioural change, and policy skill will be required for Canada and the US to effectively navigate their energy futures in an age of climate change. Given these common challenges, one might think energy is a case with many similarities in policies and outcomes. Indeed, there are numerous parallels: both countries have tremendous energy potential across multiple energy sources; both have largely market-based systems for energy development and deep bilateral energy trading relationships; both are major oil and gas producers committed to ambitious climate action; both have experienced growing

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division over energy and climate, with civil society playing an increasingly active role; and both are federations in which sub-national governments hold powerful policy levers. But beyond these general similarities lie fundamental differences shaping each country’s policy choices and outcomes: the challenges of decarbonizing energy play out differently in each jurisdiction given their distinctive geological, regional, and electricity generation characteristics; the US has more experience and bench strength on energy security than Canada because it has relied for decades on oil and gas imports to meet domestic needs; reconciliation with Indigenous peoples is an overriding imperative in Canada; and the federal government’s role differs in each country because of distinctive constitutional arrangements and systems of government. Both countries have struggled and will continue to struggle over energy in the decades ahead, but for different reasons and with different outcomes. This chapter explains why and provides a number of recommendations for the future. The text begins with an overview of contemporary energy policy-making, and the need for policy-makers to find workable balance points between market, environmental, security, and social acceptance imperatives that stand the test of time. It then examines the energy profile of each country and the extent of interdependence and trade between them. The following two sections turn to the evolution of energy policy in each jurisdiction, beginning with a brief overview of policies in the twentieth century and then a deeper dive into policies over the last two decades. The final section brings forward the similarities and differences that count when it comes to current and future challenges and how to successfully navigate the transformative years ahead.

ANALYSING ENERGY POLICY: GOVERNMENTS AND THE ENERGY POLICY MESS1 Energy policy-making is multifaceted and complex, and must address four demanding imperatives: market, environment, security, and social acceptance (the energy policy MESS). Addressing all four imperatives simultaneously is the holy grail of energy policy-making – most ­governments struggle mightily to do so, often making a “MESS” of energy policy in the process. The first imperative, markets, is about ensuring that energy markets function efficiently and competitively and support economic growth. Both Canada and the US liberalized their oil and gas sectors beginning in the 1970s and 1980s. This included price deregulation, increasing competition, trade liberalization (the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement, followed by NAFTA), and unbundling functions within energy firms to create open, non-discriminatory access to their services and facilities for other companies.2 Liberalization of the electricity sector began in the 1990s, with most Canadian provinces and US jurisdictions introducing competition into electricity generation and wholesale/retail sales.3 The second imperative comprises the environmental impacts of developing, transporting, and consuming energy. While climate change has topped environmental policy agendas in the

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US and Canada in recent years, environmental imperatives also encompass the local impacts of energy on land, air, human health, and water. Because impacts often cross political borders, there are many multilateral and bilateral agreements in this space, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Canada-United States Air Quality Agreement. Energy security is the third imperative. It comprises the availability, reliability, and affordability of energy sources. Europe’s desire to wean itself off Russian oil and gas in the wake of the war in Ukraine has been a devastating reminder of the real-world domestic and international politics and economics of energy security. In North America, energy security has focused predominantly on security of oil and gas supplies in the United States, but with rapid increases in American oil and gas production over the last two decades, energy security descended on domestic political and policy agendas. For Canada, because the country is a net energy exporter, security concerns have focused less on oil and gas supply disruptions and more on vulnerability to price volatility. Energy security also encompasses the physical and cyber-security of critical energy infrastructure like pipelines, powerlines, nuclear power stations, and refineries. In addition, it includes electricity reliability and, in the context of climate change, the resilience of energy systems to more frequent and extreme weather events. The fourth imperative is social acceptance – or lack of acceptance – of energy development. In recent decades, public opposition to energy projects has grown in frequency, intensity, scope, and complexity, expanding from opposition based mainly on local impacts of energy projects (NIMBY, “not in my backyard”) to broader regional, national, and global concerns, notably climate change and Indigenous rights. Central to this imperative are growing demands from civil society for government and industry to provide meaningful opportunities for engagement and consultation in project decision-making. Indigenous peoples in Canada possess the legal right to be consulted and accommodated and, increasingly, hold decision-making power over projects and negotiate partnerships with project developers. Analysing Canadian and American energy policy through the lens of the energy MESS reveals that both governments have historically focused on energy market and security imperatives, but they now are increasingly grappling with environmental and social acceptance imperatives as well. However, as this chapter shows, these issues play out differently in each country given their distinctive energy, institutional, and political circumstances.

ENERGY RESOURCES, PRODUCTION, AND TRADE IN THE US AND CANADA The US and Canada are energy powerhouses: both have abundant energy potential across virtually all energy sources and are major producers of all forms of energy. This strength encompasses not only oil, gas, and electricity, but also, increasingly, innovation in emissions-reductions

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technologies such as carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS), energy storage, and critical minerals for the production of much-needed technologies like batteries. Canada and the US also have highly integrated and interdependent energy systems, with extensive cross-border trading relationships and infrastructure. One of the largest transformations over the last two decades has been the “shale revolution”: using the twin technologies of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) and horizontal drilling to profitably develop the continent’s massive reserves of unconventional oil and gas (shale/tight oil and shale gas). This transformed the oil and gas reserve and production picture in the United States, a country that began the twenty-first century profoundly concerned about energy security given its growing dependence on oil and gas imports. Thanks to the shale revolution, the US rapidly became – and remains – the largest oil and gas producer in the world. In 2019, the US possessed 44 billion barrels of proved oil reserves, higher than any previous figure and a doubling of reserves in a decade.4 In natural gas, proved reserves of shale gas skyrocketed more than fifteen-fold in about a decade, from 23 trillion cubic feet (tcf) in 2007 to 353 in 2019.5 Proved reserves of all forms of natural gas in the US stood at 495 tcf in 2019,6 just about doubling in a decade’s time. Despite the shale revolution, Canada’s oil resources still eclipse those of the US, given its long-standing proved reserves of 168 billion barrels of oil, almost all in Alberta’s oil sands. In gas, US proved reserves dominate Canada’s by a wide margin: in 2018, Canadian proved reserves stood at 73 trillion cubic feet.7 Globally, these figures position Canada and the US as among the largest reserve holders in the world: third and eleventh for oil, respectively, and seventeenth and fourth for gas.8 Canada and the US are also among the top oil and gas producers, with the US the largest, producing some twenty per cent of world oil supplies and about a quarter of global gas supplies.9 US crude oil production more than doubled between 2005 and 2019, from 5.2 million barrels per day to 12.2 – a level well beyond the American oil production peak in the early 1970s of 9.5 million barrels per day.10 Oil production increases prompted the US Congress to lift the ban on exporting crude oil beyond North America in 2015, something that would have been unimaginable a few short years prior. The US will continue to be a net importer of petroleum products – its domestic requirements exceed 20 million barrels per day11 – but import volumes are predictably on the decline. The country reduced petroleum imports by more than 4.5 million barrels per day between 2005 and 2019 (from 13.7 to 9.1 million barrels per day),12 with the majority of the decline accounted for by reduced imports from OPEC, from 5.6 million barrels per day in 2005 to just 1.6 in 2019.13 The pandemic appears to have sharpened these trends, with imports dipping down to 7.9 million barrels per day in 2020,14 and imports from OPEC cut almost in half in one year (to 0.9 million barrels per day in 202015). As for imports from Canada, they have increased over this period, from 2.2 million barrels per day in 2005 to 4.4 in 2019.16 While on the face of it this is a good news story for Canada, the reality is more complex: lower oil prices in North America and a lack of pipeline capacity to US markets have challenged producers

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in Canada to capture the full economic value of the resource. Nonetheless, oil production in Canada grew over the last decade from 3.3 million barrels per day in 2010 to 5.4 in 2019, positioning the country as the fourth largest producer in the world.17 US natural gas production jumped from 18 tcf in 2005 to 34 tcf in 2019.18 In contrast, Canadian production held relatively steady during this time period at about 6 tcf in 2019,19 positioning the country as the sixth largest producer in the world. US production increases had a predictable impact on Canada-US natural gas trade: the US has been a net gas importer for decades, with almost all imports coming from Canada. Now, the US exports natural gas in increasing volumes (including to Canada): gas exports grew sixfold over the last decade, rising from 729 billion cubic feet in 2005 to 4.7 trillion cubic feet in 2019.20 By 2017, the United States was a net exporter of natural gas – the first time since the 1950s.21 US imports of Canadian natural gas declined from 3.7 tcf in 2005 to 2.7 in 2019.22 Production increases had a predictable impact on affordability, placing strong downward pressure on prices in North America. Over the last twenty years, the price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the main marker for oil in North America, peaked at about $100 a barrel in 2008, but by 2015 was about half that, and averaged about $50 a barrel in the years leading to 2020.23 Natural gas prices also peaked in 2008 at about $9 per million Btu, but dropped to floor levels in the years leading to 2020, averaging about $3 per million Btu.24 Oil and gas prices rallied substantially in 2021 and soared in 2022, as countries emerged from pandemic lockdowns and imposed sanctions on Russian energy imports in response to President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. How long these tendencies will hold remains to be seen, but their impact has been substantial, placing strong upward pressure on prices for everything from transportation to home heating to fertilizer to food. This has undoubtedly been good news for energy producers, but along with tight global supply chains, it pushed inflation to levels not seen since the 1970s and propelled affordability and energy security ever higher on political agendas the world over. As for US oil and gas imports, the shale revolution has reduced them over time, albeit in a way that sees imports from Canada representing a much larger share of energy coming into the country. This is a little-told story. In petroleum, imports to the US from Canada have grown from 2.2 million barrels per day in 2005 to 4.4 in 201925 and have come to represent a much greater proportion of total imports, rising from 16 per cent in 2005 to almost half (49 per cent) in 2019,26 edging out OPEC suppliers on the way. In natural gas, US imports of Canadian natural gas declined from 3.7 trillion cubic feet in 2005 to 2.7 trillion cubic feet in 2019,27 but Canadian imports edged out gas from virtually all other countries, with the proportion of gas imports from Canada rising from 85 to 98 per cent between 2005 and 2019.28 Canada and the US have robust electricity sectors, generating, respectively, 644 terawatt hours and 4,287 terawatt hours,29 but they have very different power generation profiles.Thanks to hydropower and nuclear, the Canadian electricity sector has a much lower emitting profile than the US – over 82 per cent non-emitting30 – compared to 40 per cent in the US, where

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coal- and natural gas–fired power remain widespread.31 The two countries have extensive electricity trade and interties, with most power flowing south from Canada to US markets. Canada exports roughly 10 per cent of the electricity it generates, while the US exports a fraction of one per cent of its power.32 US imports from Canada grew from 41.5 terawatt hours in 2006 to a peak of 68.5 terawatt hours in 2015, but declined to 52.3 terawatt hours in 2019, with the proportion of imports from Canada declining from 97 to 88 per cent over this period as imports from Mexico grew.33 While power imports from Canada only account for about one per cent of US power consumption, the interties are invaluable to both countries, strengthening electricity reliability and resilience, and, in the case of the US, reducing emissions by importing lower-emitting energy from Canada.

ENERGY POLICY IN CANADA34 Any discussion of energy policy in Canada must begin with the constitutional division of powers. Canada has one of the most divided and decentralized constitutional arrangements for energy among Western industrialized countries.35 Exploring these arrangements through the energy MESS framework reveals that this is primarily the case when it comes to energy markets, but less so for environment, security, and social acceptance. Indeed, the more that these imperatives – especially the environment – have become central to policy-making, the more that federal and provincial governments are both central players. When it comes to energy markets, the provinces dominate. They have constitutional jurisdiction over non-renewable natural resources, including exploration, development, management, royalties, and intra-provincial energy trade and commerce. They also have jurisdiction over the generation, transmission, distribution, and sales of electricity within their boundaries (nuclear energy, which Ottawa regulates, is the exception). The federal government’s powers most closely related to energy markets derive from its jurisdiction over interprovincial and international trade and commerce (including foreign investment), international treaty-making, taxation, fisheries, and energy development offshore and on frontier lands. Ottawa also intervenes in the energy sector via the federal spending power and equalization, as well as in cases of energy development on or crossing Indigenous territory (provinces can also be key to the latter). The environmental imperative of energy policy generates the greatest level of involvement of both provincial and federal governments in the energy sphere. Provinces have jurisdiction over the conservation of energy resources within their boundaries as well as intraprovincial environmental impacts of energy. The federal government has jurisdiction over transboundary environmental impacts, as well as fisheries, navigation and shipping, agriculture, criminal law, and the power to legislate for peace, order, and good government. Any single energy project is very likely, therefore, to trigger both federal and provincial governments’ involvement through their respective environmental powers.The federal government retains a key role in the security

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dimension of the energy MESS through its role in critical energy infrastructure protection and nuclear safety. Energy policy in Canada is also shaped by demographics and the distribution of energy reserves, energy production, and greenhouse gas emissions. Alberta is the dominant reserve-holder and producer of oil, followed by Saskatchewan and East Coast offshore (mainly ­Newfoundland and Labrador). The largest natural gas reserves are located in Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan; these provinces are also the major producers, followed by Newfoundland and ­Labrador and Nova Scotia. Although hydraulic fracturing has opened the possibility of developing shale gas resources in other provinces, social opposition to shale development, notably in Quebec and New Brunswick, has resulted in provincial governments placing moratoria on development of the resource. Crucially, oil and gas reserves and production tend to be in the west, north, and east, while more than half of Canadians live in the central provinces of Ontario and Quebec. This characteristic accentuates the differences in provincial GHG emissions, with major hydrocarbon producers like Alberta and Saskatchewan emitting the highest volumes of GHGs in both absolute and per capita terms. All provinces generate electricity for domestic consumption36 and many – notably British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland and Labrador – export to the United States. Provinces tend to develop their respective energy policy frameworks – whether for electricity, oil, or gas – in relatively independent ways and with limited regard for the policies of other governments, federal or provincial. Nonetheless, viewed through the energy MESS framework, a number of tendencies can be discerned. The twentieth century was dominated by market and security imperatives. The discovery of natural gas and oil reserves in Alberta in the 1930s and 1940s (respectively) spurred development of hydrocarbon exports in the early postwar period, as the country began to produce more oil and gas than it needed for domestic requirements (prior to this time, coal was the dominant fuel source and Canada imported most of its oil and gas from the US37). Provincial governments played pivotal roles developing the electricity sector, particularly in the postwar period, creating crown corporations and investing billions of dollars building hydroelectric dams to supply domestic and US markets. Energy security was an overriding imperative, with policy-makers keen to ensure energy supplies (whether of oil, gas, or electricity) were available, reliable, and affordable, and that energy produced in surplus in one part of the country would help to support energy consumption in another. Market imperatives were also key, with policy-makers keen to seize the economic potential of oil, gas, and electricity development. The energy crises of the 1970s, discussed in the next section, propelled energy security to the top of policy agendas, and led the federal government to institute the National Energy Program (NEP). The NEP imposed export restrictions on oil and gas, established pricing policies that prevented Canadian producers from fully benefiting from world prices, and nationalized portions of the industry.38 The NEP put Ottawa at loggerheads with producing provinces and left a lasting legacy of provincial distrust of federal overreach into provincial jurisdiction. The NEP was undone with the neoliberal turn of the 1980s that led to a wave

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of deregulation and restructuring in energy markets to liberalize trade, deregulate prices, and introduce more competition into energy. As for environmental and social acceptance imperatives, they came into sharp focus in the last few decades of the twentieth century, with growing global attention to sustainable development and the rise of Indigenous rights in Canada. The 1992 Rio Earth Summit that created the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 1982 constitutional amendments in Canada enshrining Aboriginal and treaty rights were key milestones. In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, environmental and social acceptance imperatives continued to rise in salience. The geological, demographic, and emissions characteristics described above have generated political cleavages over energy and climate between “producing” and “consuming” provinces. Oil and gas production represents about a quarter of the country’s GHG emissions, and, as noted in the previous section, production has grown in recent years. Given the country’s failure to reduce national emissions – despite international commitments to do so beginning at the 1992 Rio Summit – hydrocarbon production has been an enduring point of conflict in the country. Environment and social acceptance imperatives have come into tension with market imperatives.39 For all of Canada’s energy exporting history, the focus of trade has been on the ­Canada-US border, but the shale revolution called into question the size and viability of American appetite for Canadian energy and led to growing efforts to export Canadian energy ­resources to international markets beyond North America. As noted in the previous section, the main impact has been on natural gas, where exports to the US have declined, but for oil, price differentials have meant Canadian producers secure lower revenues in North America than they would abroad. Between 2010 and 2014, average annual WTI prices trailed those for a barrel of Brent, the main marker in Europe, with average annual differentials approaching $20. The discount between WTI and Western Canadian Select, the main marker for oil sands oil, also grew, reaching almost $40 in December 2013, after which time it levelled off to approximately $10, thereafter edging up again in 2018 to $25 or more before Alberta mandated production cuts.40 The twin impact of the coronavirus and a Saudi-Russia price war was catastrophic for oil sands producers, with oil prices crashing into negative territory in spring 2020. Price differentials between natural gas in North America and international markets also grew, with prices diverging beginning in about 2008, reaching their peak between 2011 and 2014. In 2012, the average price of natural gas at the US Henry Hub was just under $3 per million Btus, compared to over $9 in the UK and more than $16 for Japan LNG.41 By the end of 2019, differentials had narrowed, but North America still had the lowest gas prices by far: $4.50 per million Btus in the US, compared to just under $5 in the UK and about $10 for Japan LNG42 (as noted above, oil and gas prices climbed in 2021 and 2022 as countries emerged from the global pandemic and in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine). It is no accident, then, that the last twenty years have seen multiple major projects proposed (pipelines and liquefied natural gas facilities) to carry Canadian energy to international markets

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beyond North America. The main proposals for oil have sought to bring oil east to eastern Canadian and export markets (TC Energy’s43 Energy East pipeline and Enbridge’s Line 9 reversal), and west to British Columbia’s coast for export to Asia (Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion [TMX] Project and Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline). For gas, multiple LNG export proposals have been tabled in British Columbia. TC Energy’s Keystone XL pipeline, while destined for the US, aimed to facilitate Canadian oil producers’ access to US Gulf Coast refineries. Remarkably, only two of these projects – Enbridge’s Line 9 reversal and its Line 3 replacement – are in service.Three have been cancelled (Northern Gateway because the federal government rejected the proposal; Energy East because TC Energy pulled the plug; and Keystone XL, which was moving into construction after receiving a presidential permit from President Trump, but which was subsequently revoked by President Biden after he campaigned on cancelling the project). All the others – even those with regulatory approval like TMX and positive final investment decisions like LNG Canada’s $40 billion gas export facility in BC – have experienced delays and been subject to ongoing opposition (one notable exception is the Woodfibre LNG project, which entered into an innovative agreement with the Squamish First Nation). Of note, opposition can be far more than a local affair. Protests against the Coastal GasLink project to carry gas to LNG Canada’s export terminal ground supply chains to a virtual halt across the country in early 2020. Protestors erected rail blockades at multiple choke points in the national rail network in solidarity with a small group of hereditary chiefs opposed to Coastal GasLink – despite support for the project from the community’s chief and council, as well as all of the communities along the pipeline route (TC Energy has since signed an equity deal with more than a dozen First Nations along the route). Successive governments have dealt with the above energy policy dynamics in a variety of ways. Relations between Ottawa and the provinces can be heated, with the latter arguing – ­either politically or through the courts – that federal policies must not hamper provincial capacities to develop energy resources. In 2002, for example, Alberta Premier Ralph Klein spoke out against the Chrétien Liberal government’s (1993–2004) Kyoto targets at a press conference on a Team Canada trade mission abroad. Canada’s Kyoto commitments “provoked concern in the West that Kyoto could be ‘another NEP,’ that is, another unilaterally imposed policy by eastern governments over western oil and gas.”44 In response, the Chrétien government tried to balance the market and environmental dynamics by establishing the principle that no region should be unfairly burdened by Kyoto implementation – a commitment made to assuage Alberta45 but that reduced Ottawa’s capacity to make meaningful progress on national climate change policy. The Harper Conservative government (2006–15), for its part, focused first and foremost on securing and maintaining market access for Canadian energy exports. Environmental imperatives – especially climate – took a back seat at home and abroad. This was made clear early in the government’s first mandate when environment minister Rona Ambrose stated in 2006 that Canada would not meet its Kyoto GHG reduction targets. This was followed in 2007 with revised Canadian GHG emissions reductions targets: a 20 per cent reduction in 2006 levels by

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2020, a target that cut in half the country’s original Kyoto commitment. After this came the government’s 2015 GHG emissions reduction commitment: a 30 per cent cut in emissions from 2005 levels by 2030. Environmental groups critiqued the objective because it was less ambitious than the US, because regulations for the oil sands – Canada’s fastest growing source of emissions at the time – had yet to be announced, and because the government was not on track to meet its prior climate commitments.46 No comprehensive climate plan was ever announced by the Harper government. When the Liberal Party released its proposal to implement a carbon tax in the lead-up to the 2008 federal election, Prime Minister Harper came out strongly against it, referring to the plan as an “insane” idea that would “screw everybody,” comparing it to the National Energy Program.47 By 2014, the prime minister said it would be “crazy” to establish climate regulations on the oil and gas sector, and made it clear that his government put the economy over the environment, saying “We are just a little more frank about [doing it], but that is the approach that every country is seeking.”48 The Harper government encountered tremendous difficulty when it came to social acceptance, responding to growing opposition to major energy projects by doubling down on its market access objectives. Beginning in 2012, it rolled out a suite of policy measures under the mantle of Responsible Resource Development, many of which intensified opposition and were roundly critiqued by opponents for placing the economy over the environment. What’s more, the government’s policy style rubbed many of its opponents (and possible allies) the wrong way. Instead of working with industry, other governments, civil society, and Indigenous groups to identify balance-points among market, environment, and security imperatives that would garner social acceptance, the government pursued its market access objectives in ways that generated conflict. In the absence of a forum to make meaningful progress on climate change and other social issues, environmental NGOs turned their efforts to a forum where they could get traction: blocking pipeline projects in the regulatory process. Of note, the Harper government refused to engage with the provinces in their efforts through the Council of the Federation to develop a shared vision for energy in Canada.49 The premiers described the economic opportunities and importance of energy to the c­ ountry, but also the challenges to its responsible development in environmental and social terms. Their vision comprised three planks that mirror the market, environment, security, and social acceptance elements of the energy MESS: “continued economic growth and prosperity,” “a high standard of environmental and social responsibility,” and “secure, sustainable, reliable and ­competitively-priced supply.”50 Unfortunately, momentum behind the provinces’ national vision withered in the face of conflict between Alberta and British Columbia over pipelines and in the absence of federal engagement on the file. The election of the Trudeau Liberal government (2015–present) brought a different approach to the table. Prime Minister Trudeau made it clear his government intended to strike a progressive balance among market, environmental, and social acceptance imperatives, stating in 2016 that environmental and market imperatives could be reconciled: “The choice between

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pipelines and wind turbines is a false one. We need both to reach our goal, and as we continue to ensure there is a market for our natural resources, our deepening commitment to a cleaner future will be a valuable advantage.”51 The Liberals committed to ambitious action on climate change, prioritizing reconciliation with Indigenous peoples and giving communities more say in energy project decision-making, with Trudeau going so far as to state, “Governments grant permits, communities grant permission.”52 The Liberals moved quickly on their commitments. In December 2015, then environment minister Catherine McKenna (re)committed Canada to the Harper government’s target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 at the Paris global climate meeting. Minister McKenna also committed to maintaining the rise in global temperatures “well below” 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times, with the ambition to limit the rise to 1.5 degrees. This was immediately followed by intensive engagement with the provinces and territories to create the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change. The March 2016 Framework committed all governments to a range of measures to address climate change, including establishing a price on carbon in 2019 equivalent to $20 per tonne, ramping up to $50 a tonne by 2022. Governments could either develop their own plan, or, failing that, have the tax “imposed” by the federal government. The provinces of ­Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Manitoba challenged the constitutionality of the tax. The case ultimately went to the Supreme Court after provincial courts of appeal found in favour of the federal government in the first two cases and in favour of Alberta in the third. The Supreme Court ruled the tax constitutional. Ottawa also moved on strengthening public confidence in energy decision-making shortly after coming into power by establishing two expert panels to consult Canadians and make recommendations to the government about how to reform environmental assessment and the National Energy Board. Both panel reports recommended sweeping reforms to energy ­decision-making processes, including much deeper consultation and engagement, the consideration of a much broader range of impacts (environmental, social, cultural), and the development of more comprehensive pre-planning processes for projects. In response, the government tabled Bill C-69, An Act to enact the Impact Assessment Act and the Canadian Energy Regulator Act, to amend the Navigation Protection Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts. Passed in spring 2019, the Act establishes the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada, which assesses a much broader range of project impacts, requires much deeper and broader consultation and engagement, and works with shorter timelines for project decision-making. While the legislation was welcomed by most in the environmental community, industry and multiple provinces sounded alarm bells, arguing that the legislation would drive investment out of Canada due to increased uncertainty and unpredictability in decision-making. Since then, the Liberal government has announced multiple plans: a strengthened climate plan that includes raising the carbon tax to $170 per tonne by 2030, national strategies and action plans for critical minerals, hydrogen and small modular reactors (a strategy is forthcoming

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for carbon capture, utilization, and storage), net zero emissions by 2050 legislation, Clean Electricity Regulations to create a net zero grid by 2035, multiple financial incentives for innovation and clean technology deployment (e.g., a CCUS investment tax credit, $8 billion for the Net Zero Accelerator Fund, and $15 billion for the Canada Growth Fund), and a mandate that 100 per cent of new sales of light-duty vehicles be zero-emitting by 2035 (60 per cent by 2030, up from a prior commitment of 50 per cent). The government also substantially boosted Canada’s climate targets: from a 30 per cent reduction of 2005 levels by 2030 to a 40–45 per cent reduction. Given that emissions haven’t budged since 2005, this means cutting Canada’s emissions almost in half in less than seven years. In addition, Prime Minister Trudeau confirmed at the fall 2021 United Nations Conference of the Parties on Climate Change what the Liberal Party announced during the federal election campaign: that Ottawa will cap and cut emissions from the oil and gas sector on the road to net zero by 2050. This has been met by vocal opposition from some in producing provinces, notably Alberta’s then-premier Jason Kenney.53 It is an open question whether the current government is striking a durable balance between environmental (notably climate) and market imperatives. It is also an open question whether global energy security imperatives raised by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and by rising energy prices and mounting inflation will see security, which has been consistently absent from the government’s energy policy, take a more prominent place in its agenda. To date, the Trudeau government’s response to the crisis in European oil and gas markets has been tepid, with limited enthusiasm for exploring how Canadian oil and gas exports can help strengthen global energy security.The focus has instead been on the longer-term prospect of hydrogen exports to Europe.

ENERGY POLICY IN THE UNITED STATES As in Canada, the constitutional division of powers over energy in the United States is shaped by federalism. States are largely responsible for their own internal energy policies and markets.54 Congress’s jurisdiction over energy matters began with its attempts to regulate interstate and international energy commerce in line with the US constitution’s commerce clause.55 Energy commerce between states was the primary focus of early legislation, including the Federal Power Act of 1935 and the Natural Gas Act of 1938. However, as in Canada, the boundaries between federal and state jurisdiction are neither straightforward nor clean, and the centre of power and authority tends to shift back and forth between states and Washington.56 State governments have historically had relative autonomy in their internal energy policies57 as federal oversight is subject to changing national political winds and, increasingly, polarization.58 Indeed, congressional deadlock has prevented comprehensive energy legislation from being passed since 2007.59 States have often stepped into the breach, especially on energy and climate, with California frequently seen as a national leader in environmental policy and emissions reductions.60

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Notwithstanding the challenges of passing comprehensive federal energy legislation, Washington still plays a crucial role in the development and implementation of energy policies and priorities through the executive branch.61 Historically, the principal department at play is the Department of Energy (DOE), established in 1977 under the Carter administration to develop national energy policy for short-, medium-, and long-term energy issues, to emphasize the development of renewable energy sources, to promote consumer interests in reliable and affordable energy, and to incorporate environmental protection into policies.62 The DOE is also responsible for overseeing the country’s nuclear arsenal through the National Nuclear Security Administration.63 The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is also a crucial body that regulates multiple aspects of energy, including interstate energy flows, proposals for liquefied natural gas terminals and interstate natural gas pipelines, hydropower project licences, the transmission and wholesale sales of electricity, electricity reliability, and various environmental matters.With the rise of environmental imperatives in energy policy-making, other federal agencies and departments have also become prominent, in particular the Environmental Protection Agency, which the Obama administration relied on extensively to pursue emissions reductions in the electricity sector. Other departments like Transportation also play a strong role in areas like fuel efficiency standards. In contrast to Canada, energy did not become a core area of policy attention in the US until the energy crises of the 1970s. Indeed, referring to “energy policy” in the United States prior to the 1970s is an anachronistic exercise64 because there was no clear conceptualization of “energy” as a separate sector worthy of government consideration. Rather, policies that sought to regulate and administer industries or activities that are today understood as belonging to the energy policy domain were instead thought of as belonging to other domains such as commerce and trade, or were left entirely to the private sector.65 One exception to this occurred during the Second World War, a time that propelled considerations of national security to the forefront, and saw the creation of the Office of Petroleum Coordinator for National Defense and the Manhattan Project.66 The latter eventually grew beyond its initial military applications to support the development of commercial and civilian nuclear applications. But it was the 1970s Arab oil embargo that left the most enduring imprint on American energy policy and marked the true beginning of “energy policy” in the country.67 The embargo led to an acute shortage of fuel, long lines at gas stations, and a rise in fuel prices close to 500 per cent.68 Less than a month into the 1973 crisis, President Nixon unveiled Project Independence69 with the goal of “complete US energy self-sufficiency by 1980.”70 Though the project had no tangible impacts in reducing dependence on foreign oil, the narrative of self-sufficiency, energy independence, and energy security held firm in the minds of American policy-makers. Indeed, the crisis and its aftermath brought forward two fundamental notions: the need to develop a coherent national energy policy in a single agency to replace the previous disjointed, uncoordinated, and siloed approach (this culminated in creation of the Department of Energy by the Carter administration noted above),71 and enduring concern over dependence on foreign sources of energy, a dependence seen to undermine the country’s energy security, national security, and economic stability.72

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In short, the United States is distinct from Canada in that energy security and independence have been major and recurring themes in energy policy, and the federal government has played a much stronger role in energy policy as a result. Security featured prominently under US President George W. Bush (2001–9) even before the terrorist attacks of 9/11. US dependence on foreign energy sources had doubled between 1980 and 2000, and the greatest growth in dependence took place over the last decade of the twentieth century.73 The Bush administration’s May 2001 National Energy Policy emphasized energy security. The plan, Reliable, Affordable, and Environmentally Sound Energy for America’s Future, listed its goals in order of priority. Environmental considerations took a decided backseat to increasing energy supply. Energy security was also a key priority under the Bush administration because of the “Great Blackout” of 2003 that left some 50 million Canadians and Americans without power in Ontario and the northeastern and midwestern United States. The Canadian and American governments collaborated extensively following the outage, creating a bilateral task force to investigate its causes and recommend how to decrease the possibility of such outages in the future. The task force found that the outage was largely preventable and that failure of some electricity sector players to comply with voluntary industry standards was a major contributing factor. The group’s final report called “first and foremost” for reliability standards to be made mandatory.74 This led to the US Energy Policy Act of 2005, which called for creation of an Electric Reliability Organization (ERO) to develop and administer mandatory reliability standards under the oversight of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.75 However, as detailed earlier, the paradigm of energy scarcity76 was turned on its head in dramatic fashion by energy market changes. Policies to maintain stable access to affordable energy in the face of scarcity propelled policy-makers and industry to collaborate on developing alternative and unconventional fuel sources to confront the energy shortages of the 1970s.77 After some initial developments in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s helped establish a nascent shale gas industry, major advances in the 2000s based on horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing opened up production of vast fossil fuel reserves. Further spurred by a rise in energy prices at the beginning of the millennium, these developments led to a massive surge in the domestic production of unconventional resources to the point that the US is now the largest oil and gas producer in the world, as detailed earlier.As a result, the country’s energy policy emphasis shifted. It also shifted because the Democrats came to power under President Barack Obama (2009– 17), whose administration focused on climate policy. Early in his first mandate the president aimed to create a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions, but the global financial crisis and recession knocked cap-and-trade off Congress’s agenda.What’s more, climate policy became an increasingly partisan issue in the US, which challenged legislative progress on the topic. Instead of pushing for legislation, the president channelled efforts through the Environmental Protection Agency, which succeeded in defining carbon dioxide as a pollutant, and therefore under its jurisdiction to regulate. This led to creation of the Clean Power Plan, a flagship Obama initiative to cut carbon emissions in electricity generation. The Obama administration also put in place a Clean Energy Dialogue with Canada and spearheaded Mission Innovation, a global alliance to reduce emissions.

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But this focus on climate was not to last. When the Trump administration came to power in 2017, the president anchored his energy policy in the shale revolution and announced a new slogan: energy dominance.78 As explained by Trump, energy dominance meant the country would “no longer be vulnerable to foreign regimes that use energy as an economic weapon; American families will have access to cheaper energy, allowing them to keep more of their hard-earned dollars; and workers will have access to more jobs and opportunities.”79 Energy Secretary Rick Perry further stated that “an energy dominant America means self-reliant. It means a secure nation, free from the geopolitical turmoil of other nations who seek to use energy as an economic weapon ... An energy dominant America will export to markets around the world, increasing our global leadership and influence."80 Energy abundance spurred the Trump administration to try to use oil and gas as potent playing cards in broader geopolitics and maintain international influence in global energy markets.81 In this sense, US energy policy and reserves could help the country “to avoid getting involved in foreign wars or to help European allies thwart the influence of overreliance on Russian energy supplies.”82 While US oil and gas exports to Europe did increase during the Trump administration, they did not do much to reduce European reliance on Russian supplies. Nonetheless, the president’s stance would prove to be prescient. President Trump’s enthusiasm for market imperatives did not extend to environmental imperatives: the administration repealed and revoked a range of environmental regulations and restrictions.83 Most notable was the decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2017, followed closely by the repeal and replacement of the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, support for the coal industry, and continued use of coal in power generation.84 Paradoxically, however, the shale revolution has been the single largest factor reducing GHG emissions in the US through fuel switching from coal to ­lower-emitting cheap natural gas in the power sector. GHG reductions from the electricity sector alone account for 70 per cent of the country’s total energy-related decline in emissions over the decade.85 Of the 3,176 million metric tonnes (MMmt) reduction in emissions from the electricity sector between 2005 and 2016, 2,007 MMmt can be traced to the shift to natural gas.86 Gas replaced coal as the primary source of energy for electricity generation, going from 21 per cent in 2008 to 34 per cent in 2018,87 while coal went from 50 to 29 per cent in the same period.88 These trends continued under the Trump administration, despite the president’s vocal support for coal; market forces and economic developments in the last two decades undermined the capacity of the coal industry to make a substantial comeback, even with the repeal of the Obama administration’s climate policies.89 Interestingly, energy market developments to enhance energy security created an energy landscape that fostered substantial emissions reductions in the US power sector. Of note, this would not have been the case in Canada, where the grid was already very low-emitting well before the onset of the shale revolution. But fuel-switching to gas isn’t the only development in the power sector reducing emissions. Between 2008 and 2018, the share of renewables in electricity generation in the US almost

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doubled, from 9 per cent to 17 per cent, mostly due to wind and solar power.90 The increasing performance of renewable technologies, coupled with a decline in installation costs, created a market environment that favoured the growth of solar and wind power in the United States.91 Growth of renewable power was also spurred by renewable portfolio standards in multiple states specifying a percentage of power generation that must be accounted for by renewable sources. The extent to which these policies do – or do not – recognize Canadian hydropower as renewable has been a key bilateral issue for provincial crown corporations aiming to sell into the US marketplace.92 But even in the absence of government support for renewable power (at the federal level this includes wind production and solar investment tax credits), prices of renewable energy are expected to remain low enough to remain competitive, particularly in environments accepting and supportive of renewable energies.93 With the election of Joe Biden as president, climate action returned as a central federal priority in the US. Among President Biden’s first actions was reversing President Trump’s approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, a project that had become a major symbol of US action – or inaction – on climate change. Biden also organized a global Leaders’ Climate Summit in spring 2021, at which the US announced increases to its climate ambition above its existing Paris commitments to 50–2 per cent emissions reductions below 2005 levels by 2030 (Canada raised its commitment to 40–5 per cent at the summit). Climate action is also a priority in the president’s legislative agenda, including his $3 trillion infrastructure plan, which directs spending to climate mitigation and adaptation, environmental justice, and clean energy jobs, and the flagship Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which includes $370 billion in incentives for emissions reductions in areas like CCUS, electric vehicles, renewable power, battery manufacturing, nuclear energy, and heavy industry. Implementation of the IRA is projected to reduce the country’s GHG emissions by 40 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030. On the regulatory front, the administration plans to bring in tougher regulations for methane emissions and energy efficiency. But climate isn’t the only thing on Biden’s agenda. As energy prices soared and the war in Ukraine intensified, the president turned his attention in earnest to energy security, releasing a historic one million barrels of oil per day for six months from the country’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, calling on producers in the US to rapidly ramp up production, and increasing natural gas exports to Europe to help reduce its reliance on Russian supplies. The president says he remains committed to climate action, but it is clear that energy security has re-emerged as a crucial imperative for the United States. In sum, over the last two decades, despite partisan polarization over energy and climate, the US has managed to simultaneously increase oil and gas production, begin exporting oil and gas beyond North America, and reduce emissions through fuel-switching from coal to natural gas in the power sector. This is in contrast to Canada, where the country has yet to export oil and gas beyond North America and has failed to reduce emissions over the last fifteen years. Energy market, constitutional, geographical, and political factors help to explain these strikingly different outcomes.

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DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: CHALLENGES ON THE ROAD AHEAD – SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES THAT COUNT The twenty-first century will be disruptive and uncertain for energy in Canada and the United States. If the first two decades were marked by the shale revolution, the rise of climate change on policy and political agendas, and growing public engagement in energy project decision-­ making, the next two and beyond will be marked by efforts to transform both countries’ energy systems and economies to lower emitting configurations that withstand extreme weather, unprecedented innovation to develop and deploy lower emitting energy technologies, and a growing focus on secure, affordable, and reliable energy. Time will tell whether the renewed global focus on energy security in the wake of the war in Ukraine will persevere, and how it will play out in Canada and the United States. At time of writing, energy security has re-emerged as an imperative for the US. This is not a surprise given the prominence of security imperatives in the country’s energy policy history. In Canada, meanwhile, security continues to play a less prominent role, in line with the country’s energy policy history. Looking ahead, both countries seem set to continue to capitalize on their vast energy potential and address climate change. Both will need to find workable balance points among market, environmental, security, and social acceptance imperatives that stand the test of time, a task that will be ever more challenging and complex. But beyond these general similarities lie differences, and success for each country in the years ahead will depend on factors driven by their distinctive geological, demographic, constitutional, political, and historical characteristics. In Canada, relations between federal and provincial leaders are a pivotal factor shaping energy and climate decision-making. This is particularly the case for politics and decision-making over oil and gas production. Ottawa’s announcement at COP26 that it plans to cap and reduce emissions from the oil and gas sector in line with net zero emissions by 2050 is a case in point. This could either stimulate producing provinces and the federal government to negotiate a ­federal-provincial agreement to that end, or lead to intractable conflict and even a national unity crisis. Importantly, federal-provincial conflict could extend to all provinces. As Ottawa aims to further reduce emissions in power generation and to electrify more of the country’s economy with low-emitting electricity, the stage could be set for conflict with all provinces, given their constitutional jurisdiction (and provincially owned crown corporations) in the electricity sector. In the US, given the country’s presidential-congressional system of government and separation of powers, relations between the Republican and Democratic parties are a pivotal factor shaping decision-making. Polarization over energy and climate issues has been a major stumbling block to bipartisanship and can lead to legislative gridlock and policy reversals, as seen with multiple flipflops on the Keystone XL pipeline and President Trump’s withdrawal from the Kyoto protocol. Looking forward, the unprecedented innovation agenda in the years ahead could represent a fruitful opportunity to reach across the aisle, as has been seen with carbon capture, utilization, and storage,94 and the bipartisan infrastructure law and Inflation Reduction Act, discussed above.

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Sub-nationally, provincial and state governments play crucial roles shaping the domestic energy futures in both countries, but Ottawa and Washington have different levers at their disposal.While the Canadian federal government can act more swiftly and decisively on policy and legislation because of the country’s parliamentary system, as noted above, collaboration with the provinces is essential. In the US, meanwhile, the country has a much stronger federal energy regulator that has not been shy to regulate energy markets. This includes the creation of electricity transmission corridors, which will be crucial to foster development of the infrastructure needed to bring lower-emitting electricity from one part of the country to another. Finally, given the deep energy interdependence between the two countries, there are rich opportunities for collaboration on energy markets, environmental issues, security imperatives, and social acceptance. The February 2021 Roadmap for a Renewed US-Canada Partnership sketched out a number of areas for climate collaboration, including on zero-emissions vehicles, battery and renewable storage technologies, and climate-related financial risk disclosure. This agenda could be broadened to include innovation in important areas like hydrogen, nuclear, CCUS, and energy security, as well as the cost and carbon competitiveness of North American oil and gas for domestic and international markets. Although collaboration doesn’t always come easily – Canada has had to advocate to US lawmakers and the White House to avoid or reduce protectionist measures for things like electric vehicle rebates and manufacturing – with the ­uncertain, disruptive times ahead, it will be essential to enable both countries to successfully address market, environment, security, and social acceptance imperatives.

STUDY QUESTIONS 1. How do market, environment, security, and social acceptance imperatives combine to challenge energy policy-making in Canada and the United States? How have policy-makers in each country addressed these imperatives in similar and different ways since 2000? 2. Examine the role of history, geology, federalism, and politics in each country’s approach to the energy MESS. Looking forward, what differences between the two countries are likely to count the most when it comes to their respective energy policies? 3. Given the ascendance of climate change on political and policy agendas in Canada and the United States, might their domestic energy policy choices start to converge? Why or why not? 4. How does the extent of energy trade and interdependence between Canada and the US shape their respective approaches to energy policy? Are the two countries likely to turn toward or away from one another in trade and policy terms in the years ahead?

Canada–US Energy Futures in an Age of Climate Change NOTES 1 For a fuller discussion of the energy policy MESS framework, see Monica Gattinger, “CanadaUnited States Energy Relations: Making a MESS of Energy Policy,” American Review of Canadian Studies 42, no. 4 (2012): 460–73. 2 André Plourde, “The Changing Nature of National and Continental Energy Markets,” in Canadian Energy Policy and the Struggle for Sustainable Development, ed. G. Bruce Doern (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 51–82. 3 See Plourde, “Changing Nature,” and Paul Joskow, “Restructuring, Competition and Regulatory Reform in the U.S. Electricity Sector,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 11, no. 3 (1997): 119–38. 4 United States, Energy Information Administration, “Proved Reserves of Crude Oil and Natural Gas in the United States,Year-End 2019” (Washington, DC: US EIA, January 2021), Table 5, 27, https:// www.eia.gov/naturalgas/crudeoilreserves/pdf/usreserves.pdf. 5 United States, Energy Information Administration, “US Shale Proved Reserves” (Washington, DC: US EIA, January 1, 2021), https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/res_epg0_r5301_nus_bcfa.htm. 6 US EIA, “Proved Reserves of Crude Oil and Natural Gas,” Table 9, 35. 7 Canada, Natural Resources Canada, “Natural Gas Facts,” Energy Facts (website modified October 6, 2020), https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/energy/facts/natural-gas/20067. 8 BP, Statistical Review of World Energy 2021, 70th ed. (London: BP, 2021). 9 BP, Statistical Review of World Energy 2021. 10 United States, Energy Information Administration, “Monthly Energy Review, July 2021” (Washington, DC: EIA, 2021), Table 3.1, 59, https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/mer.pdf. For comparison purposes, data from 2019 have been used instead of those from 2020 given production declines resulting from the pandemic. Average daily production was 11.3 million barrels in 2020 and 10.9 million barrels in the first six months of 2021. 11 US EIA, “Monthly Energy Review, July 2021.” This dipped to 18.1 million barrels per day in 2020 due to the pandemic but bounced back to a daily average of 19.0 in the first six months of 2021. 12 US EIA, “Monthly Energy Review, July 2021.” 13 US EIA, “Monthly Energy Review, July 2021,” Table 3.3c, 66. 14 US EIA, “Monthly Energy Review, July 2021,” Table 3.1, 59. 15 US EIA, “Monthly Energy Review, July 2021,” Table 3.3c, 66. 16 US EIA, “Monthly Energy Review, July 2021,” Table 3.3d, 67. 17 BP, Statistical Review of World Energy 2021. 18 US EIA, “Monthly Energy Review, July 2021,” Table 4.1, 101. 19 Canada, Natural Resources Canada, “Natural Gas Facts.” 20 US EIA, “Monthly Energy Review, July 2021,” Table 4.1, 101, 21 US EIA, “Monthly Energy Review, July 2021.” 22 US EIA, “Monthly Energy Review, July 2021,” Table 4.2, 102. 23 United States, Energy Information Administration, “Spot Prices (Crude Oil in Dollars per Barrel)” (Washington, DC: July 28, 2021). 24 US EIA, “Proved Reserves of Crude Oil and Natural Gas.” 25 US EIA, “Monthly Energy Review, July 2021,” Table 3.3d, 67. 26 US EIA, “Monthly Energy Review, July 2021,” Table 3.3d, 67. 27 US EIA, “Monthly Energy Review, July 2021,” Table 4.2, 102. 28 US EIA, “Monthly Energy Review, July 2021,” Table 4.2, 102. 29 BP, Statistical Review of World Energy 2021.

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Monica Gattinger and Julien Tohme 30 Canada, Natural Resources Canada, “Energy and Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHGs)” (website modified October 6, 2020), https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/science-and-data/data-and-analysis /energy-data-and-analysis/energy-facts/energy-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions-ghgs/20063. 31 United States, Energy Information Administration. Electric Power Annual 2019 (Washington, DC: US EIA, 2020). 32 BP, Statistical Review of World Energy 2021. 33 US EIA, Electric Power Annual 2019, Table 2.14, n.p. 34 The material in this section up until the twenty-first century draws on Monica Gattinger, “A National Energy Strategy for Canada: Golden Age or Golden Cage of Energy Federalism?,” in Canada: The State of the Federation 2012: Regions, Resources, and Resiliency, ed. Loleen Berdahl and André ­Juneau (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), 39–69. 35 G. Bruce Doern and Monica Gattinger, Power Switch: Energy Regulatory Governance in the 21st Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003). 36 The exception is Prince Edward Island, which imports most of its electricity from New Brunswick. 37 André Plourde, “Canada,” in Oil and Gas in Federal Systems, ed. George Anderson (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2012), 88–120. 38 See G. Bruce Doern and Glen Toner, The Politics of Energy:The Development and Implementation of the NEP (Toronto: Methuen, 1985). 39 For more on this tension, see Monica Gattinger, “Canadian Energy in North America and Beyond: Between an Economic Rock and a Progressive Hard Place,” in Navigating a Changing World: Canada’s International Policy Relations in an Age of Uncertainties, ed. Geoffrey Hale and Greg Anderson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021). 40 Government of Alberta, Oil Prices (2021), http://economicdashboard.alberta.ca/OilPrice. 41 BP, Statistical Review of World Energy 2021. 42 BP, Statistical Review of World Energy 2021. 43 Formerly TransCanada. 44 G. Bruce Doern and Monica Gattinger, “Another ‘NEP’? The Bush Energy Plan and Canada’s Political and Policy Responses,” in Canada Among Nations 2002: A Fading Power, ed. Norman Hillmer and Maureen Appel Molot (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2002), 74-96, 80. 45 Doern and Gattinger, “Another ‘NEP’?,” 88. 46 Shawn McCarthy, “Ottawa Commits to 30-per-cent Cut in GHGs But No Regulations for Oil Sands,” Globe and Mail, May 15, 2015, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national /ottawa-commits-to-30-per-cent-cut-in-emissions-but-not-for-oil-sands/article24453757/. 47 CBC News, “PM: Dion’s Carbon Tax Would ‘Screw Everybody,’” CBC News, June 20, 2008, http:// www.cbc.ca/news/canada/pm-dion-s-carbon-tax-would-screw-everybody-1.696762. 48 Les Whittington, “Stephen Harper Says Economy Trumps Climate Action,” Toronto Star, June 9, 2014, http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/06/09/stephen_harper_says_economy _trumps_climate_action.html. 49 Council of the Federation, A Shared Vision for Energy in Canada (Ottawa: Council of the Federation, August 2007). 50 Council of the Federation, A Shared Vision for Energy, 3. 51 Joanna Smith, “Trudeau Wants Canada to Play Key Role in Fighting Climate Change,” Toronto Star, March 2, 2016, https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/03/02/canada-will-play-leading -role-in-new-economy-trudeau-says.html.

Canada–US Energy Futures in an Age of Climate Change 52 “Trudeau: ‘Governments Grant Permits, Communities Grant Permission,’ Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Reacts to Quebec Seeking an Injunction Against the Energy East Pipeline” (video, n.d.), CBC News, https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2684686536. 53 Lee Berthiaume, 2021. “Ottawa Must Consult Provinces on Emissions Cap for Oil, Gas Industry: Alberta Premier,” CBC News, November 15, 2021, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada /edmonton/ottawa-must-consult-provinces-on-emissions-cap-for-oil-gas-industry-alberta -premier-1.6250111. 54 Roger Karapin, “Federalism as a Double-Edged Sword: The Slow Energy Transition in the United States,” Journal of Environment & Development 29, no. 1 (March 2020): 26–50. 55 Johannes Saurer and Jonas Monast, “Renewable Energy Federalism in Germany and the United States,” Transnational Environmental Law 10, no. 2 (July 2021): 293–320. 56 Andreas Balthasar, Miranda A. Schreurs, and Frederic Varone, “Energy Transition in Europe and the United States: Policy Entrepreneurs and Veto Players in Federalist Systems,” Journal of Environment & Development 29, no. 1 (March 2020): 3–25. 57 Karapin, “Federalism as a Double-Edged Sword,” 30; Daniel A. Mazmanian, John L. Jurewitz, and Hal T. Nelson, “State Leadership in US Climate Change and Energy Policy: The California Experience,” Journal of Environment & Development 29, no. 1 (March 2020): 51–74. 58 Karapin, “Federalism as a Double-Edged Sword,” 39. 59 Jeff Lane, Jennifer Morrissey, and Andrew Shaw, “US Energy and Environmental Policy under President Trump: As the Federal Government Scales Back, Will States Step In?,” International Association for Energy Economics Energy Forum (Second Quarter 2017). 60 Mazmanian, Jurewitz, and Nelson, “State Leadership,” 52. 61 International Energy Agency, Energy Policies of IEA Countries:The United States 2019 (Washington, DC: International Energy Agency, 2019), 42. 62 Department of Energy, Organization Act of 1977, Public Law 91-95, 42 US Code Chapter 84, Title 42 – The Public Health and Welfare. 63 National Nuclear Security Administration, 50 US Code Chapter 41, Title 50 – War and National Defense. 64 Peter Z. Grossman, US Energy Policy and the Pursuit of Failure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 1. 65 Robert R. Nordhaus and Sam Kalen, Energy Follies: Missteps, Fiascos, and Successes of America’s Energy Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 9–11. 66 Department of Energy, Timeline of Events: 1938–1950, accessed January 3, 2023, https://www .­energy.gov/management/office-management/operational-management/history/doe-history -timeline/timeline-events. 67 Nordhaus and Kalen, Energy Follies, 98; Grossman, US Energy Policy and the Pursuit of Failure, 1. 68 Nordhaus and Kalen, Energy Follies, 108. 69 Nordhaus and Kalen, Energy Follies, 111; Grossman, US Energy Policy and the Pursuit of Failure, 31. 70 Grossman, US Energy Policy and the Pursuit of Failure, 3. 71 Nordhaus and Kalen, Energy Follies, 107–20; Department of Energy, Organization Act of 1977. 72 Nordhaus and Kalen, Energy Follies, 108; Grossman, US Energy Policy and the Pursuit of Failure, 2. 73 North American Energy Working Group, North America:The Energy Picture (Canada, Mexico and the United States: Natural Resources Canada, Mexican Secretariat of Energy and US Department of Energy, 2002).

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Monica Gattinger and Julien Tohme 74 United States-Canada Power System Outage Task Force, Final Report on the August 14, 2003 Blackout in the United States and Canada: Causes and Recommendations (United States and Canada, April 2004). 75 For more on this, see Monica Gattinger, “Canada-United States Electricity Relations: Test-Bed for North American Policy-Making?,” Canadian American Public Policy 77 (2011): 460–73. 76 Meghan L. O’Sullivan, “US Energy Diplomacy in an Age of Energy Abundance,” Oxford Energy Forum, no. 111 (Oxford: Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, November 2017): 8–11. 77 Qiang Wang, Chen Xi, Awadhesh Jha, and Howard Rogers, “Natural Gas from Shale Formation – The Evolution, Evidences and Challenges of Shale Gas Revolution in the United States,” Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews 30 (February 2014): 1–28. 78 Vasileios Balafas and Efstathios T. Fakiolas, “From Energy Security to Energy Dominance: US’ Blending of Politics and Economics,” Strategic Analysis 44, no. 2 (March 2020): 91–105; Sarah Ladislaw, “Dissecting the Idea of US Energy Dominance,” Oxford Energy Forum, no. 111 (Oxford: Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, November 2017): 5–8. 79 As cited in Ladislaw, “Dissecting the Idea of US Energy Dominance,” 5. 80 As cited in Jason Bordoff, “Trump’s Energy Policy: A Sharp Shift but Markets Trump,” Oxford Energy Forum, no. 111 (Oxford: Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, November 2017): 11–15. 81 O’Sullivan, “US Energy Diplomacy,” 8; Bordoff, “Trump’s Energy Policy,” 11. 82 Ladislaw, “Dissecting the Idea of US Energy Dominance,” 5. 83 IEA, “Energy Policies of IEA Countries: United States 2019,” 30. 84 IEA, “Energy Policies of IEA Countries: United States 2019,” 30; Bordoff, “Trump’s Energy Policy,” 13; Lane, Morrissey, and Shaw, “US Energy and Environmental Policy Under President Trump,” 9. 85 IEA, “Energy Policies of IEA Countries: United States 2019,” 44. 86 David Robinson, “The USA and Climate Change: The Importance of Electricity,” Oxford Energy Forum, no. 111 (Oxford: Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, November 2017): 40–3. 87 IEA, “Energy Policies of IEA Countries: United States 2019,” 155. 88 IEA, “Energy Policies of IEA Countries: United States 2019,” 233. 89 David Schlissel, “Can the US Coal Industry Come Back?,” Oxford Energy Forum, no. 111 (Oxford: Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, November 2017): 35–40. 90 IEA, “Energy Policies of IEA Countries: United States 2019,” 90. 91 Schlissel, “Can the US Coal Industry Come Back?,” 37–8. 92 Schlissel, “Can the US Coal Industry Come Back?,” 37–8. 93 Schlissel, “Can the US Coal Industry Come Back?,” 37–8. 94 “The Bipartisan SCALE Act: Increasing Investments in CCUS,” National Law Review, March 18, 2021, https://www.natlawreview.com/article/bipartisan-scale-act-increasing-investments-ccus.

Data Sources for Future Research: Policy Differences, Policy Challenges, and Policy Change Barbara Boyle Torrey edited and revised by Joshua Baker in consultation with authors

Considerable data exist in Canada and the United States on the topics in Part Four. Some public and private sources of data are briefly mentioned below as illustrations.

ENVIRONMENTAL AND ENERGY CHALLENGES • Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC; https://www.canada.ca/en/environment -climate-change.html). The ECCC (also known as Environment Canada) is the department of the Government of Canada responsible for coordinating national environmental policies and programs. ECCC is also responsible for the preservation of the natural environment and the advancement of renewable resources development. • United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA; https://www.epa.gov/). The US EPA is an independent agency of the United States federal government tasked with protecting and preserving the environment. The EPA also releases numerous reports regarding the effects of climate change, such as the “Climate Change and Social Vulnerability” report and the “2020 Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program” data, which are currently available. • Yale University Environmental Performance Index (EPI; https://epi.yale.edu/). The 2020 EPI provides a data-driven summary of the current state of global sustainability. The EPI ranks 180 countries on the environmental health and vitality of their respective ecosystems. The EPI will allow further research to gauge how the United States and Canada have progressed, along with their climate goals and environmental policy targets. • United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UNIPCC; https://www.ipcc .ch/). UNIPCC provides up-to-date assessments of the scientific basis of climate

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change and its impacts and potential future risks while recommending viable options for adaptation and mitigation. Reports prepared by UNIPCC are produced on topics agreed to by member nations and their governments. Methodology reports are also available that provide recommended guidelines for the preparation of greenhouse gas inventories. • Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES; https:// ipbes.net/). The IPBES is an independent, intergovernmental organization that produces scientific assessments for policy-makers with clear objective scientific knowledge regarding the earth’s biodiversity, ecosystem, and the benefits they provide to people. The IPBES also suggests tools and methods that policy-makers can utilize to protect and promote the sustainability of the earth’s vital resources.

ENERGY INTERDEPENDENCE AND THE FUTURE Foreign Policy • Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI; https://www.cgai.ca/). The Canadian Global Affairs Institute is one of Canada’s most credible institutions regarding global affairs. CGAI’s publications are authored by leading practitioners and academics within Canada and abroad. The experts at CGAI publish on topics focusing on key issues like defense, diplomacy, trade, resources, and development. As such, government officials, business and civil society leaders, and the media often seek out the expertise of CGAI to confront challenging issues of the twenty-first century and the post-pandemic world. • Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI; https://www.macdonaldlaurier.ca/). The Macdonald-­ Laurier Institute for Public Policy was founded in 2010 and is based in the Ottawa area. Within a decade, MLI has risen to become one of Canada’s leading think tanks. MLI’s research areas focus on but are not limited to defence and security, foreign policy, immigration, economic policy, Canada-US relations, and Aboriginal affairs. Experts at MLI look to provide thoughtful, non-partisan research and commentary to suggest meaningful alternative solutions to key issues faced by Canadians and their elected officials. • Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada (APF Canada; https://www.asiapacific.ca/). The Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada is one of Canada’s leading think tanks focused on expanding Canada’s relationship with Asia. APF Canada strives to strengthen the ties between Canada and Asia, focusing on business, demographics and polling, security, emerging technologies, expanding networks, advancement of education, and sustainable development. Research produced by APF Canada aids business leaders, government officials, and academics by providing custom research, data, briefings, and Asia competency training for Canadian organizations.

Data Sources for Future Research

• C.D. Howe Institute (https://www.cdhowe.org/research-main-categories/trade-and -­international-policy). The C.D. Howe Institute is considered to be Canada’s most influential think tank. The institute is a registered charity and an independent non-profit institution that pursues economic and public policy research to increase the living standard in Canada. The institute produces a variety of sources such as intelligence memos, opinions and editorials, graphic intelligence, videos, and podcasts. • Global Affairs Canada (GAC; https://www.international.gc.ca/). Global Affairs Canada is a federal department of the Government of Canada that manages Canada’s diplomatic and consular relations. GAC’s website may be used for, but is not limited to, researching Canada’s trade relations, listings of international treaties and the texts that Canada signs, and listings of Canada’s international assistance projects worldwide. • Canada Institute,The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (https://www.wilsoncenter.org/program/canada-institute). The Wilson Center – Canada Institute, located in Washington, DC, is a global leader for policy-makers, academics, and business leaders in Canada and the United States. The Wilson’s Canada Institute is also the only public policy institute devoted to the full range of the bilateral relationship between Canada and the United States. The Canada Institute produces non-partisan dialogue through various platforms that seek to better understand the current US-Canada relationship and expand upon it into the future. • Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE; https://www.piie.com/). Located in Washington, DC, the Peterson Institute for International Economics is an independent non-profit, non-partisan research centre focused on strengthening prosperity and human welfare in the global economy. PIIE’s research staff and fellows are drawn from various academic and practitioner backgrounds who focus on international trade and investment, international finance, macroeconomic policy, and globalization in key economic regions. Currently, PIIE has several ongoing projects ranging from, but not limited to, US-China Trade War, Economic Outlook, Coronavirus, Inequality, and Labor. • Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS; https://www.csis.org/regions). The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is one of America’s leading and most credible think tanks. CSIS’s regions of focus include both America and the Arctic. The Americas Program works with several CSIS projects that aim to understand key regional issues between the United States and Canada. Additionally, CSIS’s Arctic Program provides credible and reliable research for the public who wish to understand the geopolitical and strategic importance of the region for the United States and Canada. • Brookings Institution (https://www.brookings.edu/topic/international-affairs/). Based in Washington, DC, the Brookings Institution produces non-partisan, in-depth research that leads to practical solutions for stakeholders at the local, national, and global levels.

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The Brookings Institution is home to 300+ scholars of diverse viewpoints whose research focuses on foreign policy, economics, development, governance, and metropolitan policy. • United States Department of State (DOS; https://www.state.gov/). The Department of State leads America’s foreign policy through diplomacy, advocacy, and assistance by defending the interests of the American people and their economic prosperity. The Joint Strategic Plan available on the Department of State’s website provides vital insight for researchers wanting to understand the vision and direction of each administration. Additionally, the “Newsroom” available on their website provides key developments, a collection of press briefings, and speeches from key figures in the US government.

Conclusion: Counting the Differences That Count in Canada–United States Relations Christopher Sands

This is the fifth edition of a textbook that was the brainchild of my co-editor, David M.Thomas. David had the crucial insight that students and fellow scholars who are in the habit of making comparisons between Canada and the United States in casual conversation would benefit from a more rigorous examination of the data.The data might support the casual observations drawn from personal experience but might also reveal assumptions and stereotypes that have crept into our perceptions of one another. As set forth by the scholars who contributed to this edition (and the four previous editions, for which David was the constant intellectual lodestar), the data show two societies encountering similar phenomena and responding in diverse ways. The sources of the differing policy responses by Canada and the United States vary, but consistent with the comparative politics and comparative public policy literature, the authors in this volume focus on values and institutions. In the nineteenth century, John Stuart Mill proposed two approaches to comparative analysis.1 The first is a “Most Similar Systems Design” that considers two polities that share similar challenges and capabilities and focuses on the explanation of differences.2 The second is a “Most Different Systems Design” model that take disparate polities and explores the reasons for a similar response or outcome.3 Most comparative study of Canada and the United States follows the Most Similar Systems model, for example John Harles’s excellent chapter in this book on the persistence of inequality in both countries. Harles observes that Canada and the United States share a commitment to reduce inequalities through policies designed by democratically accountable governments within a free-market capitalist economy across a vast geography that includes important regional differences.What explains the differences in inequality that persist and the differences in policy approach taken by these governments? But the books in the Differences That Count series and the chapters in this book explore Most Different Systems, too, as Kathy Brock and Andrea Migone do in their chapter on contemporary protest movements and political activism. Canada and the United States have different

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political systems. Canada’s parliamentary government can act quickly to design and implement policy, and multi-party politics allow for the inclusion of regional or issue-specific concerns. The United States’ Madisonian republic distributes power across multiple branches, US competitive federalism allows state and municipal governments to challenge federal policies and to experiment at a local level, while two “big tent” political parties bring together centrists and progressive or conservative challengers to the status quo. Historical differences matter here, too, with the American history of enslavement of African Americans and subsequent denial of civil rights, large-scale immigration of poor newcomers (whether from Ireland, Italy, or Latin ­America) that has fostered persistent contention over migration, and military conquest of ­Indigenous populations in the nineteenth century all sparking protests and inspiring activism beyond the affected communities. Canada has a quite different history, but Brock and Migone note that protest movements in Canada have taken up similar banners, from Black Lives Matter to social justice. What, they ask, accounts for the commonalities? Methodologically, the Differences That Count series is diverse and even ecumenical. Authors present quantitative and qualitative analyses, as well as institutional comparisons and policy history, to compare Canada and the United States. Darryl Bricker and John Ibbitson look at the numbers to explore population demographics and the policy implications of birth rates and immigration. Michael Adams looks at trends in public opinion and differences in values found through survey research. Stephen Brooks takes a qualitative approach to delve into the ways that Canadians and Americans view one another and what this means for cooperation. Institutional comparisons provide rich insights into differences between the two countries across what scholars in the United States refer to as the four branches of government. Thomas Bateman compares the government’s chief executives: the presidents and prime ministers. Melissa Haussman and Lori Turnbull consider the differences in legislatures and party systems. Chios Carmody looks at the increasing importance in both countries of judicial institutions in debates of inequality and public policy. David Thomas consider federalism, the fourth division of powers that is structured differently in the constitutional design of both countries. Since elections are the accountability mechanism voters use to pass judgment on how these institutions work,4 Michael Boda and Keith Archer look at election administration at a time when minority parliaments, contested electoral outcomes, populist referenda, and electoral reforms are shaking institutional foundations and legitimacy in both countries. It is an imperfect analogy, but to some extent institutional structures provide the grammar of government that underpins policy conversations. For me, the chapters on policy differences and similarities are among the most profound and represent a distinctive contribution of the Differences That Count series across the five editions. Munir Sheikh looks at fiscal policies under pressure from the enormous public health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, a history that is still unfolding as this book goes to press.The different models of health care in the United States and Canada provide Antonia Maioni and Pierre Martin with an opportunity to observe how these different systems perform under the strain of a global pandemic. Another global crisis,

Conclusion

climate change, casts light on the differences between Canada and the United States in the chapter here by Andrea Olive and Debora VanNijnatten.The two countries are energy interdependent and share a network of pipelines and power lines and a debate about decarbonizing economies that Monica Gattinger and Julien Tohme note frequently amplifies the differences between them rather than fostering collaborative approaches to policy and public infrastructure investments. All these policy challenges place Canada and the United States in contrast with each other, but also in a global comparative context, since the pandemic and climate change are, unfortunately, worldwide concerns today. They are not the only such concerns, and the fascinating chapter by former Canadian diplomats Deanna Horton and Roy Norton builds on an analysis that finds shared international concerns to ask whether the two countries could work together, or independently, to address them. This is an unusual contribution in a comparative politics textbook for reasons that have to do with age-old feuds between comparativists and foreign policy scholars, but Horton and Norton show the value of crossing this line.5 It is tempting, when reading the chapters in this book one after another, to consider the overall volume to be a snapshot of the topics that were important to politics at the time the book was published. Readers should resist this temptation. While David Thomas has had a distinguished academic career, my own background has included work on Canada and the United States in think tanks and universities. Think tanks are by nature seized with current affairs; relevance to immediate policy concerns is often necessary for funding think tank research. Universities, even in professional schools of international affairs, invoke contemporary challenges to teach students the values of rigorous analysis, applied theory, and methodological toolkits. We have approached this volume with students in mind. Each chapter includes study questions, and each section includes a list of topical data sources for future research recommended by the chapter authors. The assessments contained in the individual chapters should be viewed as demonstrations of the potential of comparative analysis that students may use as a catalyst for their own research, using the study questions and data sources to replicate or update or even refute what they have read. The chapters of this book document an inheritance of problems and attempted solutions that student readers will take up in future roles in government, academia, or as engaged citizens. Counting out the differences between the institutions, values, and policy approaches of the two countries should first prompt the question: what can we learn about our own situation considering the situation and experiences on the other side of the border? A second and important question to consider is whether Canadians and Americans can work together, or compete with one another, or will end up in conflict over these and other issues. Over five volumes,6 the contributors to the Differences That Count series present a compelling case that the future will include a mix of cooperation, competition, and conflict between Canada and the United States. Yet the series viewed collectively supports another important conclusion: Canada and the United States are stuck with one another.

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On November 2, 2020, on the eve of the 2020 US election, former editor-in-chief of the Globe and Mail and Montreal Gazette Norman Webster quoted former Social Credit Party leader Robert Thompson who said, “The Americans are our best friends, whether we like it or not.”7 It is a memorable summation that captures the mood in Canada-United States relations today. In September 2021, former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, the most pro-American Canadian prime minister of the twentieth century, expressed concern over the rising hostility among Canadians toward the United States.8 As David Thomas noted in his introductory chapter to this volume, many Canadians and Americans are worried about the trajectories of the two countries and the future of the bilateral relationship. Those concerns are warranted but come at a time of change and extreme stress. Change is coming through the gradual passing away of the Baby Boom generation which has dominated politics in both countries for decades, giving rise to a new generation of American and Canadian leaders drawn from younger generations. In the US elections in 2016 and 2020, and in the Canadian elections of 2019 and 2021, the largest cohort of voters was the Millennial generation. Generation Z is close on their heels. All five editions of Differences That Count include expressions of frustration over the mutual misunderstanding that plagues these two countries. Likewise, they all contain expressions of hope that shared values or problems are an opportunity for the two countries to work together to demonstrate to the world the value of partnership – even, as American scholar Charles Doran has noted, if Canada and the United States have often acted as though they had forgotten how and why their partnership worked.9 In his 1961 address to the Canadian Parliament, US president John F. Kennedy noted that it was economics that made Canada and the United States partners.10 Yet that has not always been the case. Both countries have alternated between periods of economic nationalism and economic integration. In the United States, the “American System” that established a high tariff to pay for infrastructure to support the settlement of western territories was an exercise in nation building.The National Policy of Canadian prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald had the same purpose. After the Second World War, Canada and the United States signed agreements to foster the integration of defence production and automotive manufacturing and, through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT, the precursor to the World Trade Organization), reduced bilateral trade barriers.11 Then in the 1970s, US president Richard Nixon imposed a 10 per cent import surcharge to protect domestic industry from imports, including those from Canada. In response to the oil price shocks of the same period, Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau adopted economic nationalism through industrial policies and market interventions like the National Energy Program. Another era of economic integration followed as the two countries signed the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The choreography of policy shifts between economic nationalism and economic integration is complex and frequently results in disputes between Ottawa and Washington when the macroeconomic policy of one country is different than the other. US presidents Donald Trump and

Conclusion

Joseph Biden have called for “Buy American” provisions alongside reinvestment in US infrastructure and received bipartisan congressional support.Yet both presidents support the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which was approved by the House of Representatives and Senate by larger and more bipartisan margins than either CUSFTA or NAFTA.12 It is striking that Canada and the United States cannot agree on the name of this latest trade agreement. In Canada, the agreement is called the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, or CUSMA, to put Canada first. Disagreement over an acronym is not a difference that counts for much. Supply chains tightly bind the two economies, and this integration of production serves as a kind of DNA for the production of goods and provision of services that has adapted to the increased border security that followed the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, DC, and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Management of bilateral relations based on sovereign equality has minimized the impacts of the asymmetries of population, wealth, and military capability. What counts in troubled times is not the differences, but the common values and the fact that when viewed in the context of global factors such as the globalization of production, changes to the climate, and international conflict, the differences in the way that Canadians and Americans respond to these challenges are less striking than the tendency of our responses to align over time. The tendency toward alignment in the Canada-US relationship has been the product of continuous dialogue among citizens and leaders.Technology has given us the internet and social media platforms that provide new ways for Canadians and Americans to communicate about the differences that remain. In the past, political leaders and diplomats managed differences and disputes discreetly. Today the dialogue between the two countries is disintermediated and raucous. Careful, balanced analysis often takes a back seat to online stupidity. Canada-United States relations have experienced a general breakdown in civility, reason, and trust. A classic study of Canada-US differences, written more than twenty years ago, noted that “Canada may be stronger at the institutional level to provide decisive, coherent policy to act autonomously of social forces, and to develop effective leadership.”13 Given the contested political institutions and weakened norms of US politics, this may, for the most part, still be true, but only if there is a will and a way to get provinces in Canada onside behind long-term national goals and the appropriate policy instruments (assuming that these have been developed). This is no easy task, and the Canadian party system produces regionalized minority governments. In the meantime, the United States, with its complex governmental machinery, “clogged with perverse incentives and exploitable bottlenecks,”14 is bedevilled by intense partisanship, including some in the Republican Party who sought to overturn the 2020 election results. Some Democrats are radicalized by the United States Supreme Court’s rulings on issues from abortion rights to environmental policy. Polarization makes it easier to block action than to find common ground. Against this backdrop, making comparisons between Canada and the United States is fraught – and essential. The challenges facing governments, businesses, and citizens have probably not been this complicated since the 1930s: a massive ongoing pandemic, enormous and growing deficits,

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economic insecurity, cybersecurity threats, great power rivalries, populism, nativism, migrant crises, inequality, supply-chain issues, racism and Indigenous rights issues, lack of trust in elites and in government from both the right and the left, environmental catastrophes – the list goes on. The pandemic has also heightened our sense of difference. US infection and death rates have been startlingly higher, and this has not been due to the superiority of the Canadian health system. Although access to health care is far easier in Canada and was a factor, higher US rates have been due to the behaviour of US citizens and political leaders, and to lack of trust in the system and in science and experts. “Peace, order, and good government” seems a far safer approach to a pandemic than “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and these comparisons have reinforced Canadians’ sense of difference. Differences do count, but they can also distort our sense of what is possible. At the start of 2023 Canada and the United States have more in common than we think, including a shared history of working together to overcome our differences and living as neighbours. Whether we like it or not.

NOTES 1 See John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive; Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1859). 2 Examples include Juan Linz and Alfred C. Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) and Seymour Martin Lipset and Noah M. Meltz, The Paradox of American Unionism:Why Americans Like Unions More Than Canadians Do but Join Much Less (Ithaca: ILR Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press, 2004). 3 Examples here include Theda Skocpol’s Democracy, Revolution, and History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998) and Studies in Comparative Federalism, Australia, Canada, the United States, and West Germany: An Information Report (Washington, DC: Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, 1981). 4 The United States has elections for judges and for law enforcement officers such as sheriffs, as Carmody notes, but in Canada democratic accountability is attained indirectly through Parliament. 5 Several years ago, I had the opportunity to teach at American University in Washington, DC. The university has strong public policy programs and faculty, as one would expect given its location in a national capital.Yet it divides faculty between a School of Public Affairs and a School of International Service. I taught courses in both schools; my course on North American comparative politics was offered in the School of Public Affairs, and my course on the international relations of North America was considered foreign policy and offered through the School of International Service. This is a vivid example of the split between comparativists and foreign policy scholars. 6 Previous editions share the same title but have different editors. The first and second editions were edited by David M. Thomas (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1993 and 2000). The third edition was edited by David Thomas and Barbara Boyle Torrey (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008). The fourth edition was edited by David Thomas and David N. Biette (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018).

Conclusion 7 Norman Thompson, “Canada Could Weep Over the Fate of Our Best Friend, America,” Globe and Mail, November 2, 2020. 8 L. Ian Macdonald, “Brian Mulroney on the Rising ‘Hostility’ between Canada and the United States,” National Post, September 4, 2021. 9 Charles F. Doran, Forgotten Partnership: Canada-United States Relations Today (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984). 10 The full quotation is frequently cited: “Geography has made us neighbours. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners, and necessity has made us allies. Those whom God has so joined together, let no man put asunder.” 11 For further reading and detail on the events of this important period in the relationship, see Stephen Azzi, Reconcilable Differences: A History of Canada-US Relations (Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2015). 12 The congressional votes for recent trade agreements are discussed in greater detail in A Winning Bet: The USMCA After One Year, which I co-authored with Andrew I. Rudman (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2021). 13 See Keith Banting, George Hoberg, and Richard Simeon, Degrees of Freedom: Canada and the United States in a Changing World (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997), 413. 14 Hendrik Hertzberg, “Shots,” New Yorker, January 7, 2013, 16–17.

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Contributors

Michael Adams is the founder and president of the Environics Institute for Survey Research, a non-profit agency that conducts in-depth public opinion and social research on the issues shaping Canada’s future. He co-founded the Environics Research Group, one of Canada’s leading marketing and public opinion research firms, in 1970, and served as the company’s president for many years. He is the author of seven bestselling books including Fire and Ice:The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values (2003), which won the Donner Prize as best book on public policy. Keith Archer is a professor emeritus of political science, University of Calgary. He served as chief electoral officer of British Columbia, 2011–18. He served on the electoral boundaries commissions of Alberta (2009–10) and British Columbia (2014–15). Joshua Baker is a researcher at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies cross appointed to both the Hopkins Center for Canadian Studies and the Merrill Center for Strategic Studies, and he is a graduate fellow of the North American and Arctic Defence and Security Network. He is a graduate of the University of Calgary and the Simon Fraser University - NATO Field School. Thomas M.J. Bateman is a professor of political science at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick. His research and teaching interests are in Canadian government, constitutional politics, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and religion and politics. He is co-editor of two leading collections of Supreme Court of Canada decisions and co-author of The Canadian Regime: An Introduction to Parliamentary Government in Canada. Michael Boda is the chief electoral officer of Saskatchewan and a policy fellow at the JohnsonShoyama Graduate School of Public Policy. He has served on the senior staff of the International

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Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) and as a visiting research fellow at the Brookings Institution and the National Endowment for Democracy. Darrell Bricker is the CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs, the world’s leading social and opinion research firm. He is the co-author with John Ibbitson of Empty Planet:The Shock of Global Population Decline (2019). Kathy Brock is a professor and senior fellow at the School of Policy Studies, Queen’s University in Canada, co-author with Geoffrey Hale of The Evolution of Federalism in Canada: Constitutional, Social and Political Realities (Understanding Canada Series, Irwin Law 2023), and a former advisor on constitutional, political, civic, and Indigenous issues. Stephen Brooks teaches Canadian and American politics at the University of Windsor. His book, National Images and United States-Canada Relations, will be published in 2024 by Edinburgh University Press. Chios Carmody is an associate professor of law at Western University in London, Ontario, where he teaches courses in international trade law, public international law and contracts. Since 2002 he has been Canadian national director of the Canada-United States Law Institute. Monica Gattinger is the director of the Institute for Science, Society and Policy, full professor at the School of Political Studies, and founding chair of Positive Energy at the University of Ottawa. Dr. Gattinger is an award-winning researcher and highly sought-after speaker, strategic adviser, and media commentator on energy politics, policy and regulation. She holds a PhD in public policy from Carleton University. John Harles is an emeritus professor of politics and international relations at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. He continues to teach in the political science faculties at Villanova University and Dickinson College. Formerly a visiting professor and Fulbright fellow at York University, his most recent book, Seeking Equality: The Political Economy of the Common Good in the United States and Canada, was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2017. Melissa Haussman is a political science professor at Carleton University, teaching and researching on comparative political institutions and policy in North America and more recently the UK. Her forthcoming books include Walking the Gendered Tightrope:Theresa May and Nancy Pelosi as Legislative Leaders, co-authored with Karen Kedrowski (University of Michigan Press, 2023) and Understanding American Politics, 3rd ed., co-authored with Stephen Brooks and Don Abelson (University of Toronto Press, 2024).

Contributors

Deanna Horton is a senior fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, specializing in the digital economy, Canada-US and Canada-Asia relations; other affiliations include the Wilson Center in Washington, DC, Asia-Pacific Foundation, and the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. Publications can be accessed through Twitter @DLHinTO. Her foreign service career ended at the Canadian Embassy in Washington as minister (Congressional, Public and Intergovernmental Affairs) after serving as ambassador of Canada to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. John Ibbitson is a writer at large for the Globe and Mail, Canada’s leading national newspaper. He is the co-author with Darrell Bricker of Empty Planet:The Shock of Global Population Decline (2019). Antonia Maioni is a professor of political science and public policy at the Institute for Health and Social Policy in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at McGill University. She is the author, notably, of Parting at the Crossroads: The Emergence of Health Insurance in the United States and Canada, (Princeton University Press, 1998) and Health Care in Canada (Oxford University Press, 2014). Pierre Martin is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the Université de Montréal and research associate at CÉRIUM, where he specializes in US politics and policy. He is the author, editor, or co-editor of several books, including Le système politique américain (Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2013). Andrea Migone is an assistant professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Toronto Metropolitan University. His research and publications focus on the intersection of public administration and public policy, with a special interest in the subfields of public sector innovation and leadership, procurement, decision-making, policy advice, and governance. He is past research director at the Institute of Public Administration of Canada (IPAC) and currently serves on the CAPPA Board. Roy Norton is a former Canadian diplomat with four US postings, including minister (advocacy) at the Embassy in Washington and consul general in each of Detroit and Chicago, in addition to serving as assistant deputy minister in the Government of Ontario (successively for trade and for international relations) and as chief of protocol of Canada. Since 2019, Roy has been adjunct assistant professor at the University of Waterloo; he’s a fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, and of the Canada Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC. He holds a PhD from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Andrea Olive is a professor in the Department of Political Science and the Department of Geography, Geomatics and Environment at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Her area of

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research is conservation politics and policy in Canada and the United States. She is the author of Land, Stewardship, and Legitimacy: Endangered Species Policy in Canada and the United States and The Canadian Environment in Political Context (University of Toronto Press). Christopher Sands, PhD, is the director of the Canada Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and professor and director of the Hopkins Center for Canadian Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. He serves on boards for the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States, the CanadaUS Law Institute, the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, and the Macdonald Laurier Institute, is a senior fellow of Massey College, and is a widely quoted source on Canadian-US affairs. Munir Sheikh is a research professor at the Department of Economics at Carleton University. He served the Government of Canada for over thirty-five years in various positions including the chief statistician of Canada, the deputy minister of labour, and the associate deputy minister of finance. He holds a PhD in economics from Western University and has published extensively in both academic journals and the media. His academic work has been widely quoted and reproduced in textbooks and included in books of collected readings. He has been an invited speaker at many universities including Harvard and Princeton. David Thomas, now residing in Calgary, was the vice-president academic of Vancouver Island University and is former dean of the Faculties of Community Studies and Business Studies at Mount Royal University. He has been the editor of all four previous editions of Canada and the United States: Differences That Count, collaborating with Barbara Boyle Torrey on the third edition and with David N. Biette on the fourth. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Calgary, and is the author of Whistling Past the Graveyard: Constitutional Abeyances, Quebec, and the Future of Canada (Oxford University Press). Julien Tohme is a doctoral candidate in public administration at the University of Ottawa’s School of Political Studies. His dissertation examines the economic, technical, and socio-­political dimensions of energy transition through a case study of France’s adoption of nuclear energy. Lori Turnbull is an associate professor of political science at Dalhousie University and director of the School of Public Administration. Her research focuses on parliamentary democracy and governance, public sector ethics, elections, and democratic reform. From 2015 to 2017 she served as a policy advisor to the Privy Council Office. She is the author of numerous articles, and her book Democratizing the Constitution: Reforming Responsible Government (Edmond Montgomery, 2011), co-authored with Mark Jarvis and the late Peter Aucoin, won the Donner Prize and the Donald Smiley Prize. 

Contributors

Debora L. VanNijnatten is a professor of political science and North American studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. She is the editor of Canadian Environmental Politics and Policy: Austerity and Ambivalence (Oxford University Press, 5th edition under development), co-editor of North American Climate Change Policy: Designing Integration in a Regional System (University of Toronto Press, 2013), and co-author of North American Environmental Policy: Capacity, Approaches and Transboundary Issues (University of Toronto Press, 2014). She has published more than fifty articles and book chapters on Canadian climate policy and transboundary environmental cooperation in North America.

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Index

Page numbers in bold denote figures. Page numbers in italics denote tables. 9/11 (September 11, 2001) attacks, 49, 161, 377 2015 Canadian parliamentary election, 47, 181, 263, 335, 356–7 2016 US presidential election, 12, 30, 120, 123, 156, 166, 335, 376 2019 Canadian parliamentary election, 12, 181, 304 2020 US presidential election, 12, 70, 109, 119–22, 124–5, 157, 166 See also January 6, 2021 2021 Canadian parliamentary election, 12, 25, 76, 113, 182, 304, 319–20, 337–8 Aboriginal and Treaty rights, 307, 312, 313, 354 See also Indigenous peoples abortion, 9, 10, 63–4, 138, 164, 196 accountability, 145, 153 Adams, Michael, 3, 9, 43, 374 Adelson, Sheldon, 288 “The Administrative Presidency,” 331 adversarialism, 202 Affordable Care Act (ACA), 11–12, 192, 257, 258, 260, 268

Afghanistan, 78, 93, 161–2 African Americans. See Black Americans aged, 4, 33, 257–8, 265–6, 296–7, 317 aging, societal, 24, 25–6, 27–9, 264 Aguilar, Pete, 196 Alaska, 31, 88, 113, 311 Alberta border crossing blockade, 89 carbon tax challenge, 357 climate change actions, 335 COVID-19 deficits, 235 energy production and policy, 48, 350, 353, 354, 355, 356 national norms and, 63, 145 population growth, 31 Senate seats in, 114, 115, 190 union coverage, 69 See also Keystone XL pipeline Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), 207 Amash, Justin, 187 Ambassador Bridge, 89 ambassadors and diplomats. See diplomacy Ambrose, Rona, 355 American Dream, 283 American exceptionalism, 13

American Indians. See Indigenous peoples American Medical Association, 259 American Political Science Association, 196 American Rescue Plan Act (ARP), 11, 143 American Revolution, 40, 133 “Americanization,” 50 anti-Americanism, 41, 50 anti-vaccination protesters, 89, 317 See also “Freedom Convoy” Apportionment Act of 1941, 114 appropriations bills, Congressional, 192–3, 195 Archer, Keith, 3, 374 Arizona, 31 armed forces. See defence Articles of Confederation, 44–5, 133, 153 Articles of the Constitution. See Constitution (United States) Asian Canadians, 117, 305 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit (2015), 84 Association for Canadian Studies, 92 Assumption University (Windsor, Ontario), 47

388

Index Atlantic Canada, 31 attack ads in Canada, 189 attorneys general, 170 Atwood, Margaret, 42, 44 AUKUS (trilateral security pact), 93 Australia, 82, 93, 142–3 authoritarianism, appeal in US, 8 authority, deference to, 58–9, 59, 62, 63 Auto Pact, 95 automatic stabilizers, 226 automotive industry, 83, 84, 87, 89, 376 baby boom generation, 27–8, 264, 376 backlash in Canada, 5, 6 backlash in the United States, 6, 57–62, 59, 63–5, 64, 65, 66–8 See also partisan polarization Baker, Joshua Thomas, 2 Bannister, Jerry, 47 Bateman, Thomas, 3, 374 Beam, Alex, 46 Bears Ears protest, 311 Bergen, Candice, 182 Bernier, Maxime, 69 Berton, Pierre, 42, 46 “Beyond the Border” declaration, 87, 94 bicameralism, 113–14 Biden, Hunter, 166 Biden, Joe, 87, 94, 319 Biden administration bilateral relations with Canada, 94 on biodiversity and conservation, 311, 332, 337 border, pandemic closure, 49, 89 Build Back Better Act, 87, 192, 193 “Buy American” policies, 87, 89, 376–7 Canadian peacekeepers and, 75 Canadian views on, 44 climate change agenda, 74, 87, 334, 337, 341, 362 on Cuba, 80 Indigenous Peoples’ Day, 310 Indigenous rights and protections, 74, 311, 337

Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), 11, 87–8, 144, 192, 193, 362 irregular immigration and, 32 pipelines, actions on, 87, 88, 311 “Quad,” emphasis on, 93 Ukraine, support of, 77–8 World Health Organization, engagement with, 75 Biette, David, 2, 73, 80, 89 bilateral relationship, Canada-US approach to, 82–3 in 2014-16, 83–4 in 2017-21, 84–7 2021-onward, 87–8 Canada-US policy, future of, 95–6 economic integration, 14, 338, 377 in the energy sector, 352, 353, 360 environmental cooperation, Canada-US, 338–9 foreign policy, future of, 94–5 governments, provincial and state, 91–2 Roadmap for a Renewed USCanada Partnership, 76, 79, 87, 89, 90, 364 See also climate change and biodiversity loss; defence; energy policy; trade; treaties bilingualism in Canada, 13, 68, 148n27, 179 Bill C-4 (Conversion Therapy ban; 2021), 194 Bill C-69 (establishing Impact Assessment Agency; 2019), 357 Bill of Rights, 133, 177–8 biodiversity loss. See climate change and biodiversity loss Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), 185 bipartisanship, 66, 67, 118, 187, 191, 193, 363 birth rates, 24, 28 Black Americans 2020 downturn, effects on, 243 Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, 65, 309–10, 315, 320–1 civil disobedience, 306–7

Great Migration, 67, 179 Jim Crow, 66, 67 “majority-minority” House districts, 185 per cent in prison population, 11, 300 population in US, 13 “Southern Strategy,” 67, 184 voting rights, 66, 116, 117 See also race; slavery Black Caucus, 185, 186, 193 Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, 65, 309–10, 315, 320–1 Blanchard, James, 83, 92 Blinken, Antony, 94 Bloc Québécois, 180 Bloomberg, Michael, 288 Blue Dog Southern Democrats, 186 Boda, Michael, 3, 374 Boehner, John, 187 boomers. See baby boom generation “border thickening,” 89 borders Canada-US, 40, 45, 48, 49, 82–3, 338–9 COVID-19, Canada-US closure for, 49, 89 irregular crossings of, 32–3 pipelines transiting, 48, 83–4, 87, 88 US-Mexico, 32, 51 See also immigration Boundary Waters Treaty (1909), 338 Boychuk, Gerard W., 134 Braudel, Fernand, 6 Brebner, J. Bartlet, 39, 40, 50, 70 Bricker, Darrell, 2, 3, 374 British Columbia border crossing blockade, 89 energy production and project proposals for, 353, 355 fixed election dates, 112 general election (October 24, 2020), 122–3 population growth, 31 Senate seats in, 114, 115, 190 British North America Act (1867), 110, 155, 174n4

Index Brock, Kathy, 2, 3, 373–4 Brokaw, Tom, 46–7 “brokerage” politics, 137 Brooks, Stephen, 3, 131, 374 Brown, Scott, 192 Buckley v.Valeo, 185 Budget Impoundment and Control Act, 192, 195 budgetary policy 2008–9 recession, 226–7, 227, 228, 229, 247 comparing across countries, 223–4, 225–6, 246–7 COVID-19, impact of, 224, 235, 242–6, 244, 246, 247 deficit financing, 232, 239, 239–40, 241, 247 deficits, 224, 227, 229, 230, 231, 232, 235 expenditures, 230–5, 233 fiscal stabilization, 224, 226–30, 227, 228, 229, 231, 246–7 long-term planning, 240–2, 246–7 retirement benefits, 237, 240 revenues, 230–2, 236, 236–9, 237, 238, 239 See also taxation Build Back Better Act, 87, 192, 193 Bureau of Land Management, 340 Burke, Tarana, 316 Burney, Derek, 91 Bush, George H.W., 67 Bush, George W., 67, 161–2, 174n7, 333, 334, 360 “Buy American” policies, 87, 89, 376–7 cabinet (Canada), 139–40, 163, 164, 170, 181 cabinet (United States), 139–40, 160, 170 Caesar-Chavannes, Celina, 303 Calder et al. v. Attorney General of British Columbia, 313 Calgary Herald, 7 California, 32, 113, 114, 140–1, 338, 358 Cambodia, 161

Cameron, David, 131–2 Campbell, Kim, 316 Campbell, Kurt, 79 Canada as “British,” narrative of, 12, 18n35, 40 self-image in, 6, 7–8, 40, 42–3, 44, 51 viewpoints on the US in, 10, 39–44, 48–51, 172 See also Aboriginal and Treaty rights; bilateral relationship, Canada-US; budgetary policy; climate change and biodiversity loss; Constitution (Canada); elections; energy policy; federalism; foreign policy; health care; immigration; Indigenous peoples; inequality; judicial systems; parliamentary system of government; provinces; race; Supreme Court of Canada; taxation; values; specific names of prime ministers; specific names of provinces Canada and Her Great Neighbor (Angus; MacIver), 42 Canada and Quebec Pension Plan (CPP/QPP), 145, 226, 240 Canada and the Canadian Question (Smith), 41 Canada Health Act, 143, 255, 262 Canada Health and Social Transfer (CHST), 143, 262 Canada Institute (US), 92 “Canada: Leader of the Free World,” 47 “Canada Nature Fund,” 337 Canada-United States Air Quality Agreement, 83, 336, 349 Canadian Alliance, 179 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), 40, 42, 43 Canadian National Railway, 312 Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, 336 Canadian Pacific Railway, 312 Canadian Senators Group, 190

Canadian Women’s Foundation, 316 Canadian-American Business Council (Washington, DC), 92 Cao, Joseph, 192 capacity to act (“energy”), principle of in US Constitution, 154 Capital in the 21st Century (Piketty), 282 carbon. See decarbonizing; greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; taxation Carmody, Chios, 2, 3, 374 Carter administration, 359 Case, Anne, 287 Cather, Willa, 46 caucuses in Canadian politics, 157, 169, 172, 190 in US politics, 156, 185, 186, 187, 188, 193, 195–6 CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), 40, 42, 43 Cellucci, Paul, 49 Census, 30, 106 Centers for Disease Control, 144 Centre for Research and Information on Canada (CRIC), 57 CETA (Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement), 76 Chair of the Rules Committee, 191 Chaoulli v. Quebec, 264 Chapnick, Adam, 92 Charest, Jean, 179, 182 Charlottetown Accord, 136, 180 Charmody, Chios, 2, 3 Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 5, 115, 117, 169, 179, 209, 307 checks and balances, 130, 132, 139, 165–8, 170–1 Chetty, Raj, 281 Chief Electoral Officers, 111, 118–19 childcare, 26, 284 children and youth baby boom, 28 data sources for, 296 family income and economic mobility for, 281, 285–6, 287, 296

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390

Index children and youth (cont.) fertility rates, 25 health care for, 258 of immigrants, social mobility of, 68–9 Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), 258 China, 14, 26, 33–4, 67, 73, 78–9 CHIPS and Science Act, 11, 144 Chrétien, Jean, 168, 176n62, 179, 189 Chrétien government, 49, 169, 334, 355 cities. See urbanization citizen protests approach to, 308 around COVID-19, 317–18, 319–20 Black Lives Matter (BLM), 65, 309–10, 315, 320–1 election-related, 318–20 Indigenous activism, 307, 310–15 MeToo, 315–16, 321 Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, 185 Civic Apathy (value), 61 Civil Code of Quebec (1866), 204 civil disobedience, 306–8, 319, 321 See also citizen protests Civil Rights Act (1964), 64, 116 Civil War (US), 130, 133, 134 civil war, potential for in US, 10–11, 56, 66, 68 Clark, Joe, 82 Clark, Katherine, 196 Clarke, Andrew, 186–7 class, 137, 181, 259, 278–9, 283, 286, 287 Clean Air Act, 341 Clean Electricity Standard, 358 Clean Energy Dialogue, 360 Clean Power Plan, 360, 361 climate change and biodiversity loss approach to, 330–2 environmental cooperation, Canada-US, 338–9 environmental outcomes, 341–3 federal-provincial policy-making dynamic, 339–40

goals, instruments, and outcomes, defining, 332–3 policy agendas and goals, 333–8, 334, 362 US executive-legislative policymaking dynamic, 340–1 Climate Summit, 337 Clinton, Bill, 67, 162, 166, 186, 259, 334 Clinton, Hillary, 30, 120, 160, 168, 316 coal, 342, 361 Coastal GasLink pipeline, 312 Cold War, 172, 259 Columbus Day, 310 Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada, 262 common law, 201–5, 210–11 Commonwealth, 82, 205, 209, 216n53 Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), 76 Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), 76 Comte, Auguste, 23 Confederation (1867), 133–4 confidence convention, 165, 168–9, 195 Confidence in Big Business (value), 63 Conflict of Interest Code, 188–9 Congress bipartisanship, 66, 67, 118, 187, 191, 193, 363 coalition-building, 340 foreign policy and, 90–1 January 6, 2021 attack on, 122, 131, 167, 319 lawmaking, effects of polarization on, 191–4, 195–6 powers, 140, 159, 161, 163, 195 selection of the executive, 112–13, 155–7 See also House of Representatives; Senate (United States) Congressional Black Caucus, 185, 186, 193 Connolly, Marie, 281

Conservative Party of Canada, 69, 179, 180, 184, 190, 263 constituency population. See representation by population Constitution (Canada) adjudicative jurisdiction, 206, 211 constitutional conventions, 155, 170–1 division of powers, 141 efficiency vs. accountability in, 153 elections and voting, 110, 113, 115 on health-related government responsibilities, 261 Constitution (United States) Article I, 110, 116, 140, 178 Article II,Vesting Clause, 158–9 Article VI, 140, 177 division of powers, 140–1 efficiency vs. accountability in, 153 elections and voting, 110, 114, 116 federal court system, 206, 209 interpreting words of, 159–60 origins of the presidency, 153–4 removal/impeachment of a president, 166–7 role in establishing federalism, 132–3 Constitution Act (1867), 110, 113, 141, 163, 174n4, 187–8, 206 Constitution Act (1982), 136, 142, 183 constitutional conventions, 155, 170–1 constitutional government, 153, 165 Consuls/Consulates, 90, 91 Consumption, Ostentatious (value), 61, 63 consumption and consumerism, 26, 28, 61, 63, 286, 287 consumption taxes, 236, 237, 247 Contadora Process, 82 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), 333, 334, 337, 339, 342–3 convergence, 49–50, 153, 171–2, 331–3, 338–43

Index Cooper, James Fenimore, 45 Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), 261 COP 21 (Paris), 74, 334, 335, 336, 357, 361 COP 26 (Glasgow), 74, 363 Corak, Miles, 281 Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES), 143 Coronavirus Capital Projects Relief Fund, 144 Could It Happen Here? (Adams), 43 Council of State Governments (CSG), 91 Council of the Federation, 139, 356 Council of the Great Lakes Region (CGLR), 92 courts, 178, 205, 206, 209 See also Supreme Court of Canada; Supreme Court of the United States COVID-19 pandemic backlash to controls, 5, 6 Canada-US border closure, 49, 89 death rates, 131, 144 elections during, 109, 119–24 federal responses to, 6, 131–2, 136, 137, 143–4, 181–2 fertility rates and life expectancy, effects on, 26 fiscal impact of, 224, 235, 242–6, 244, 246, 247 health care system and, 265–7 inequality, effect on outcomes, 272–3, 317, 321 Parliament, state of during, 165, 195 protests, 317–18, 319–20 vaccines, 132, 144, 266–7, 317 WHO funding suspension, by US, 75 See also “Freedom Convoy” CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership), 76 crime, 11, 297–301, 315–16 Critical Race Theory, 61, 307, 309 Crown, 113, 138–9

Cuba, 80 Cultural Assimilation (value), 63 dairy sectors, 86, 88 Dakota Access pipeline protests, 311 Daley, David, 178 data sources economic systems, taxation, safety nets, and democracy, 294–300 governance and governing mechanisms, 218–20 perceptions, impressions, values, and culture, 104–6 policy differences, policy challenges, and policy change, 369–72 Dawson, Laura, 84, 85 Dawson, Michael, 90 Dawson, R. MacGregor, 163 Day, Stockwell, 168 death penalty, 10, 139 Deaton, Angus, 287 debt ceiling, 192, 195 decarbonizing strategies, 74, 336, 339, 340, 350, 360 Deering, Christopher, 191, 194 defence armed forces, size of, 11 intelligence collaboration, 82, 93–4 NORAD, 75, 89–90 spending, 5, 75–6, 225, 232, 233, 234, 247 US criticisms of Canada, 48, 49, 75, 93 deficits. See budgetary policy Delaware, 113 democracy, 66, 124, 125, 139 Democratic party, 59, 60, 62, 66, 120–1 Democratic-Republican party, 177 demographics aging of population, 27–9 data sources for research, 106 gender ratios, 26–7 life expectancy, 24, 25, 26–7, 264, 287 one-person households, 28–9

representation by population, 29–31, 114 trends, 23–6 Denmark, 132 DeSantis, Ron, 187 DeSilver, Drew, 193 Detroit-Windsor bridge, 83 Dion, Stéphane, 169, 181 diplomacy, 83, 91, 372 direct democracy, 139 disabilities and resource access, 142, 243, 255, 257, 258, 288 discretionary actions in fiscal policy, 226 disenfranchisement, voter, 116, 117 dissent. See civil protests District of Columbia, 113, 260 diversity. See class; gender; identities; Indigenous peoples; race; women Doran, Charles, 376 downward mobility. See mobility, economic Duty (value), 58, 63 DW-Nominate framework, 185–6, 196 Dworkin, Ronald, 272 Eagleburger, Lawrence, 81 Ecological Fatalism (value), 61, 62 economic systems. See budgetary policy; health care; inequality; mobility, economic; taxation education, 2, 68, 105–6, 279, 285–6 “effective representation,” 115 El Salvador, 82 elderly. See aged elections administration of, 117–19, 123, 125 as check on presidential power, 166 during COVID-19 pandemic, 109, 119–24 electoral boundaries, 110, 113–15 electoral districts, 114 first-past-the-post electoral system, 29, 112, 137, 181 future of, 124–5

391

392

Index elections (cont.) of judges, 210, 216n59 jurisdiction and oversight for, 110–11 models, Canada vs. US, 125 monies spent on, 287–8 presidential vs. parliamentary system, 111–12 selection of the executive, 112– 13, 155–8 strategies in Canada and US, 30 super-PACs, 12, 185 See also 2020 US presidential election; voters; voting rights Elections Canada, 29, 119 electoral agencies, 117–19, 123 electoral boundaries commissions, 115 Electoral College, 30, 110, 112–13, 121, 155–6 Electoral Count Act of 1887, 122, 193 Electric Reliability Organization (ERO), 360 electricity sector emissions reductions, 358, 359, 360, 361–2, 363 liberalization of, 348 power generation, 351–2, 353, 361 reliability and resilience of, 349, 352, 360, 364 Emancipation Proclamation (1863), 162 Emergencies Act (Canada), 5, 89, 144, 318 Enbridge, 88, 355 Endangered Species Act (ESA), 333, 336–7, 342 energy crises, 1970s, 359 Energy East pipeline, 355 energy policy approach to, 347–8 challenges for, 363–4, 369–72 constitutional division of powers in Canada, 352–3 federal approaches to in Canada, 355–8 federal approaches to in the US, 358, 359–62

market, environment, security, and social acceptance (MESS) imperatives, 348–9 oil and gas production, 350–1 project proposals, opposition to, 354–5 provincial, 353–4 in states, 358 See also climate change and biodiversity loss; electricity sector; greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; pipelines energy security, 347, 349, 350, 353, 358, 359–60, 362 Environment and Climate Change Canada (formerly Environment Canada), 335 environmental impact assessments, 338 environmental issues, 26, 61, 62, 369–70 See also climate change and biodiversity loss; energy policy; greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 336, 340, 359, 360 equality in democracies, 273 See also inequality equalization, 68, 142–3, 252, 352 ethics, 188–9, 190 European Union (EU), 76, 81 Evans, Robert, 255 executive branch, 111–13, 155–8, 170, 171–3 Executive orders, 161, 331, 341, 342 “executive privilege,” 161 F-35 fighter jet, 90 Fabbrini, Sergio, 167 Fair Deal, 259 Federal Court of Canada, 205 federal court system of the United States, 178, 206, 209 Federal Electoral Commission (FEC), 118 Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, 359, 360

federal grants (US), 141–2 federalism approach to, 130–1 alternative responses, 4, 145–6 budgets, 143–4 cabinets, 139–40 characteristics of, 135 defining, 110 division of powers within, 140–1 evolution of, Canada vs. US, 132–4 federal grants in the US, 141–2 national vs. states’ rights, 177–8 political parties, 137–8 postwar national programs in Canada, 142 responses to COVID-19, 131–2, 136, 137, 143–4 Federalist Papers, 153–4, 158, 177, 178, 283 Federalist party, 153–4, 177, 178 Ferguson, Will, 134 fertility rates, 24–7 15th Amendment, 116 filibuster, 193–4, 341 financial crises. See recessions Fire and Ice (Adams), 43 firearms. See guns First Nations, 110, 117, 135–6 first-past-the-post electoral system, 29, 112, 137, 181 fiscal policy, 224, 226–30, 227, 228, 229 See also budgetary policy “Five Eyes,” 82, 93 Flanagan, Tom, 165 Fleming, Keith, 307 Florida, 31, 44, 80, 113, 118, 139 Floyd, George, 309 Foley, Michael, 173 foreign affairs, 160, 172 foreign policy China, Canada-US relations with, 78–9, 93 climate change initiatives, 74, 87 Cuba, Canada-US relations with, 80 data resources for, 370–2 future of bilateral relations, 94–5

Index future of multilateral relations, 93–4 G7 and G20, 73–4 making, in Canada vs. US, 90–2 multilateralism, US-Canada approaches to, 81–2, 93 Russia, Canada-US relations with, 77–8, 93 United Nations system, 74–5 Venezuela, Canada-US relations with, 80–1 14th Amendment, 116 Fox, Terry, statue, 318 fracking, 350, 353, 360 La Francophonie, 82 Fraser, John, 188 freedom, American conception of, 282–3 Freedom Caucus, 187, 193, 196 “Freedom Convoy,” 5, 69, 89, 182, 267, 317–18 Freeland, Chrystia, 78, 316 Freeman, Joanne, 184 French/English divide, 179 Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), 68 fuel economy standards, 338 G7 and G20, 73–4 Gattinger, Monica, 4, 375 GDP (gross domestic product) 2 per cent defence spending target, 75–6 2008–9 recession and, 226–7, 227, 228, 229, 247 deficit financing and, 232, 239, 239–40, 241, 247 equalization, 0.8 per cent of, 142 growth in, effect on incomes, 281 health care spending and, 232–3, 233, 252, 253 per cent spent on early childhood education, 285 per cent spent on family-friendly policies, 82 gender, 26–7, 181, 279–80, 315–16 geographic distribution of populations, 13, 23–4, 29, 30 George III, King, 153

Georgia (state), 31, 66, 122, 125 Gerry, Elbridge, 178 gerrymandering, 29–30, 178 Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 68 Gingrich, Newt, 186, 193 Ginsberg, Ben, 185 Giuliani, Rudy, 121 Glenn, Patrick, 203 Global Affairs Canada, 92 Global Consciousness (value), 60, 63, 307–8 Global Democracy Index, 66 globalization, 50, 51 Gorsuch, Neil, 194 Gotlieb, Allan, 81, 89, 91 governance and governing, data sources for, 218–20 Governing from the Centre (Savoie), 163–4 The Government of Canada (Dawson), 163 governments constitutional, 111, 153, 165 See also parliamentary system of government; presidential system of government Governor General, 112, 113, 163, 168, 176n47 governors, state, 91, 121, 139 Granholm, Jennifer, 88 Grant, George, 42 Grassley, Chuck, 12 “Great Blackout” of 2003, 360 “Great Divergence,” 274–6 “Great Gatsby Curve,” 282 Great Migration, 67, 179 Green Party, 180, 304 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions during COVID-19, 330 fuel-switching effects on, 361 Kyoto commitments, Canada’s, 355–6 policy-making on, Canada vs. US, 339–41 provincial energy industry and, 353, 354 reductions, policy instruments for, 74, 332, 336, 337, 357

renewables, effects on, 361–2 See also energy policy Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, 336 gross domestic product. See GDP (gross domestic product) guns, 10–11, 12, 68, 138, 180, 186 Haeck, Catherine, 281 hairy braya, 330 Hall, Emmett, 261 Hamilton, Alexander, 153, 154, 177, 178 Han, Lori Cox, 160 Hanna, Mark, 12 Hare, Christopher, 185–6, 187, 195 Harles, John, 3, 373 Harper, Stephen, 83, 165, 176n62, 180 Harper government “Beyond the Border” declaration, 87, 94 climate change policies, 333, 334, 335, 356 Detroit-Windsor bridge, 83 energy policies, 355–6 fixed election dates, 168–9, 183 Foreign Investment Protection Agreement (FIPA), 78 polarization in, 137 public subsidies decision, 189 similarities to US-style governing, 12 Supreme Court checks on, 169 Harris, Kamala, 120, 121–2, 193, 304, 316 Haussman, Melissa, 3, 374 Hawaii, 31, 69 Health Canada, 144 health care access to, 255–8, 284 approach to, 251 Canadian system, US criticism of, 48, 50 COVID-19 pandemic, 265–7 data sources for, 294 delivery systems, development of, 251–2, 258–63

393

394

Index health care (cont.) insurance, private, 252, 255, 257–8, 264, 267, 268 insurance, supplemental, 252, 256 outcomes, 263–4, 267 physicians, 252, 255, 256, 258, 262, 264, 286–7 public funding vs. public provisioning, 225 spending, 232–3, 233, 234, 252–5, 253, 254 uninsured people, 255, 257, 258, 259 universal, government role in providing, 68–9, 259, 268, 284 See also COVID-19 Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs), 257, 259 Health Security Act of 1993, 259 Heath, Diane J., 160 Hemingway, Ernest, 46 Henry, Bonnie, 6 Hispanic Americans, 11, 13, 195, 196, 243, 287 Horton, Deanna, 2, 3, 375 Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act, 261 Houghton, Amory, 187 House Liberty Caucus, 187 House of Commons Conflict of Interest Code, 188–9 “grandfather clause,” 115 ministers, 112 as part of Parliament, 113–14 political parties and, 157–8 power within federal government, 136 representation by population, 29–31, 114, 115, 127n6, 190 Standing Orders, 187–9 House of Representatives, 29–31, 112, 114, 137, 192–3 housing, affordable, 278 How Democracies Die (Levitsky; Ziblatt), 66 Huawei, 79 Hueglin, Thomas, 132 Hume, Brit, 160

“I Like Americans” (Hemingway), 46 “I Like Canadians” (Hemingway), 46 Ibbitson, John, 2, 3, 374 Idaho, 31 identities American, 60–1 Canadian self-image, 6, 7–8, 40, 42–3, 44, 51 constructing, 308 religious, 63–4 See also political partisanship Ignatieff, Michael, 181 Illinois, 31 immigration from Canada to the US, 41–2, 45 in Canada vs. US, 11, 23, 25, 31–4 DACA (Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals), 161 rules in Canada, US criticisms of, 48 xenophobia and, 60, 63, 66, 67, 68, 69–70 Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), 106 Impact Assessment Agency of Canada, 357 impeachment, 159, 161, 166–7, 171, 319 incomes, 62, 240, 256, 280–1, 295 See also inequality; taxation independence, principle of in US Constitution, 154 Independent Advisory Board, 190–1 Independent Counsel Law, 161 Independent Senators Group, 190 India, 34 Indian Act, 312, 313 Indian in the Cabinet (WilsonRaybould), 304 Indiana, 139 Indigenous Circle of Experts, 343 Indigenous peoples activism, 307, 310–12, 313–14, 320–1

American Indians, 243, 311 BLM-Canada and, 309 and Canadians’ self-image, 44 conservation initiatives, 335, 337, 343 and COVID-19 outcomes, 317, 321 First Nations, 110, 117, 135–6 governance and self-governance, 312–13, 349 health care access, 255, 264 inequality, effects on, 287 Inuit people in Canada, 117 issues awareness, Canada vs. US, 311, 314–15, 315 Métis, 312, 313 Native women, violence toward, 313–14 percentage of prison population in Canada, 11, 300 reconciliation, 181, 314, 315, 348 residential schools, 48, 313, 314 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 74 Wet’suwet’en First Nation, 312 Indigenous Peoples’ Day, 310 Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs), 343 individualism, 61–2, 63, 132 Indo-Pacific Strategy (Canada), 94 Indo-Pacific Strategy and Economic Framework (US), 93–4 inequality COVID-19 and, 272–3, 317 in earnings, 274–6, 275, 276, 277 effects on societies, 286–9 geographic distribution of, 273–4, 274 mobility, 280–1, 283–4 partisan viewpoints on, 62 policies affecting, cross-border differences, 280, 284–6 reasons for growing disparities, 279–80 views on, Canada vs. US, 281–4 in wealth distribution, 276–9, 278

Index Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), 11, 87–8, 144, 192, 193, 362 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, 11, 144, 151n54, 193, 362 Inglehart, Ron, 69 The Inner Level (Pickett; Wilkinson), 286–7 insurance private health, 252, 255, 257–8, 264, 267, 268 supplemental health, 252, 256 unemployment, 140, 225 uninsured people, 255, 257, 258, 259 universal health care, 268, 284 See also health care International Monetary Fund (IMF), 81 Inuit people in Canada, 117 Iowa, 156 Iran, 93 Iraq, 44, 49, 75, 161–2 Israel, Steve, 184 Jackson, Andrew, 45 Jackson, Ketanji Brown, 194 James, Henry, 46 January 6, 2021, 122, 131, 167, 319 Japan, 26 Jay, John, 153 Jefferson, Thomas, 45, 177, 178, 306, 318–19, 321 Jeffries, Hakeem, 196 Jennings, Ivor, 155 Jim Crow, 66, 67 Johnson, Lyndon B., 66, 152 Joly, Mélanie, 94 Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, 203 judicial systems common law, 201–5, 210–11 elections of judges, 210, 216n59 judicial appointments in Canada, 202, 208–9, 211 judicial appointments in the US, 202, 209–10, 216n55, 217n63 judicial independence, 201–3, 208–10, 215n47 judicial precedent, 203, 209

judiciary (branch of government), 111 jurisdiction, 205–8, 211, 214n29 “reasonable limits” clause, 5, 209 See also Supreme Court of Canada; Supreme Court of the United States Judiciary Act (1789), 178 Judt, Tony, 5 Just Deserts (value), 62 justice, principle of, 288 “Justin Trudeau: Is the Canadian Prime Minister the Free World’s Best Hope?,” 47 Kennedy, John F., 56, 162, 376 Kennedy, Ted, 192 Kent, James, 204 Key, Francis Scott, 45 Keystone XL pipeline, 48, 83–4, 87, 88, 355, 362, 363 Kim Jong Un, 86 King, Martin Luther, 306, 307, 319, 321 King, William Lyon Mackenzie, 157, 170, 174n10 Kingwell, Mark, 43 Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, 207 Klein, Ralph, 355 Kolbert, Elizabeth, 185 Kovrig, Michael, 79 Kristof, Nicholas, 47 Krugman, Paul, 274 Kushner, Alexandra, 2, 73, 80, 89 Kyoto Protocol, 334, 355–6, 363 labour movement, 259, 280 Labrador. See Newfoundland and Labrador Labrador, Raul, 187 Landon, Fred, 41 Laski, Harold, 283 The Last of the Mohicans (Cooper), 45 Latvia, 75 Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, 179 legal codes in the US, 204, 213n22

legislative branch, 111–12, 113–14 See also Congress; Parliament Lewis and Clark expedition, 45 Liberal Party of Canada diversity issues, 303–4 early history of, 179 on health care, 261–2, 263 leadership selection, 157–8, 184 minority governments, 2015, 2019, and 2021, 12, 181–2, 183–4, 304, 337–8 proportional representation and, 137, 168 sponsorship scandal, 181 See also Trudeau government (2015-) “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” 203, 282, 378 life expectancy, 24, 25, 26–7, 264, 287 Lighthizer, Robert, 85 Lima Group, 80–1 limited government, principle of in US Constitution, 154 Lincoln, Abraham, 146, 162, 283, 306, 318–19, 321 Line 5, 88 Line 9 and Line 3, 355 Living History (Blanchard), 92 lobbying, 10, 139, 190–1, 287, 293n59 Locke, John, 158 London, Jack, 46 longevity. See life expectancy Lovely, Mary, 85 Lower Canada, 133–4 lower house. See House of Commons; House of Representatives Loyalists, 40–1 Luo, Hong, 316 Macdonald, Sir John A., 179, 376 MacKay, Peter, 182 MacNaughton, David, 87 Madison, James, 153–4, 177, 178, 283 Maduro, Nicolás, 80–1 “Main Street Partnership” (MSP), 187

395

396

Index Maine, 113, 156 Maioni, Antonia, 3, 11, 374 Manchin, Joe, 193 Manitoba, 31, 89, 114, 115, 190, 357 Martin, Paul, 49, 169, 334 Martin, Pierre, 3, 11, 374 Martin, Trayvon, 309 Massachusetts, 139, 178, 192 McArthur, Doug, 170 McCarthy, Kevin, 187, 193, 196 McConnell, Michael, 158, 163 McConnell, Mitch, 194 McKenna, Catherine, 335, 357 McRae, Kenneth, 41 Meadows, Mark, 187 media, traditional, 7, 8, 45–8, 144, 162, 172 See also social media median age, 25 median household income and wealth, 278, 279 Medicaid, 143, 193, 252, 257, 258, 259, 260 Medical Care Insurance Act, 261 Medicare, 193, 252, 257–8, 259, 260, 261 Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act, 257–8 Meech Lake Accord, 136, 179–80 Members of Parliament (MPs), 157–8 Menendez, Robert, 80 Meng Wanzhou, 79 mental health, 245, 256 Mercer, Rick, 42 Métis, 312, 313 MeToo, 315–16, 321 Mexico, 14, 32, 51, 84–5, 339 Michaels, Al, 46 Michigan, 83, 88, 121, 184 middle class, 181, 259, 278–9, 286 Migone, Andrea, 2, 3, 373–4 Milano, Alyssa, 316 military spending. See defence Mill, John Stuart, 373 Milliken, Peter, 188 minimum wage, 280, 290n18 Minister of Justice, 170, 208

Ministry of Justice, 110–11, 208 Minnesota, 88 Mission Innovation, 360 Missouri Plan, 210, 217n63 mobility, economic, 280–1, 283–4 Modern Racism (value), 60–1 Montreal, 32 Morneau, Bill, 14 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 1, 6, 68 Mueller Inquiry, 166 Mulroney, Brian, 82, 179–80, 262, 316, 376 Multiculturalism (value), 51, 60, 63, 68, 69 multilateralism, 81–2 multi-party system in Canada, 6, 113, 137–8, 180, 194, 374 Mulvaney, Mick, 187 NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), 84–5, 94 See also USMCA/ CUSMA/T-MEX National Center for Health Statistics, 106 National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), 91–2 National Energy Program (NEP), 353–4 National Environmental Policy Act, 338 National Governors Association, 91, 139 National Nuclear Security Administration, 359 National Pride (value), 60 Native American Tribal Governments, 110 Native Americans, 116 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), 75–6 Natural Resources Management Act, 336 Neal, Richard, 84 Nebraska, 113, 139, 156 Nestlé USA v. Doe, 206, 207–8 Nevada, 31 Nevsun Resources Ltd. v. Araya, 206–8

New Brunswick, 114, 115, 133–4, 190, 353 New Deal coalition, 184 New Democratic Coalition (House of Representatives), 186, 187, 196 New Democratic Party (NDP), 76, 180, 182–3, 261, 304, 335 New France, 40 New Hampshire, 156 New Jersey, 80, 139 New York (state), 31, 69, 113 New York Times, 8, 47, 48 The New Yorker, 47 New Zealand, 132 Newfoundland and Labrador, 69, 114, 115, 122–4, 190, 235, 353 Nicaragua, 82 19th Amendment, 116 Nixon, Richard, 67, 161, 166, 184, 259, 359, 376 NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command), 75, 89–90 North Dakota, 31, 113, 311 North Korea, 86, 93 Northwest Territories, 114, 115, 127n6, 190, 311, 330, 343 Norton, Roy, 2, 3, 375 Nova Scotia, 46, 114, 115, 133–4, 190, 353 Nunavut, 114, 115, 127n6, 136, 190, 309, 311 Obama, Barack 2016 address to Parliament, 47 backlash to, 67 Cuba visit, 80 election of, 58 oratory style, 162 policymaking, 166, 167 professional relationships with Harper and Trudeau, 83, 84 Obama administration Affordable Care Act (ACA), 11–12, 192, 257, 260 Bears Ears and Grand StaircaseEscalante monuments, 311

Index “Beyond the Border” declaration, 87, 94 cabinet members in, 160 China engagement, 78 on climate change, 334, 335, 341, 359, 360–1 Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA), 161 Detroit-Windsor bridge, 83 on Indigenous rights, 74 Keystone XL pipeline, 83–4 Obamacare. See Affordable Care Act (ACA) Obedience to Authority (value), 63 Office of Petroleum Coordinator for National Defense and the Manhattan Project, 359 Office of the Federal Commissioner for Judicial Affairs, 208 Office of the Independent Counsel, 161 Ohio, 184 oil and gas sector, 348, 350–1, 353–5, 358 See also greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions Olive, Andrea, 4, 375 Omnibus Budget Act, 193 omnibus legislation, 165, 189, 193 one-person households, 28–9 one-person-one-vote principle, 114, 115 Ontario border crossing blockade, 89 carbon tax challenge, 357 in election strategies, 30 health care measures, 262 population growth, 31 Property and Civil Rights Act, 203 Senate seats, 114, 115, 190 The Oregon Trail (Parkman), 45 Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 77, 218–19, 232, 273 Organization of American States (OAS), 80 Ornstein, Norman, 191–2

Ostentatious Consumption (value), 61, 63 O’Toole, Erin, 169, 182 Ottawa Group, 77 Pacific Northwest Economic Region (PNWER), 92 Pal, Leslie A., 8 Pan-Canadian Framework for Species at Risk Conservation, 337, 339–40 Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change, 335, 339–40, 357 parental leave, 284 Paris Agreement (COP 21), 74, 334, 335, 336, 357, 361 Parkman, Francis, 45 Parliament, 110, 112, 165, 168–9, 183, 190–1, 195 See also House of Commons; Senate (Canada) Parliamentary Budget Officer, 165 parliamentary system of government confidence convention, 165, 168–9, 195 limits on prime minister’s powers, 168–71 minority governments, 168, 183–4, 194, 377 origins of the office of prime minister, 154–5 overview, 111, 112 parties in opposition, 165, 183, 189, 194–5 “personalization,” 153, 167, 171–3 selection of the executive, 112, 113, 157–8 See also House of Commons; Parliament; prime ministers; Senate (Canada) partisan polarization attack ads in Canada, 189 in Canada vs. US, 30, 56–7, 68–70, 144, 196 Congress and, 177–9, 185–7, 191–4, 195–6

COVID-19 response, 266–7 House of Commons and, 188, 189, 196 increase in US, 66 of judicial appointments in the US, 202, 209–10 national pride and, 60 in political parties, 137–8 red/blue divisions in US, 131, 138, 144 in US electorate and sub-national governments, 184–5 US Supreme Court and, 140 views on 2020 election and, 120–1 Patriarchy (value), 63, 65 patriotism, 60 Paul, Annamie, 304, 316 PBS (Public Broadcasting System), 7, 46 “peace, order, and good government,” 141, 203, 282, 352, 378 peacekeeping, 75 Pearson, Lester, 13, 75, 152 Pelosi, Nancy, 191–2, 193 Pence, Mike, 120, 122 Pennsylvania, 121, 184 pension plans in Canada, 69, 141, 143, 145, 226, 240 People’s Party of Canada, 12, 69 Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, 178, 184 Perry, David, 225 Perry, Rick, 361 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, 285 “personalization,” 153, 167, 171–3 Pew Research Center, 105 Phillips, Keven, 184 Philpott, Jane, 303 physicians, 252, 255, 256, 258, 262, 264, 286–7 Pickett, Kate, 286–7 Piketty, Thomas, 282 pipelines, 88, 312, 354–5 See also Keystone XL pipeline Poilievre, Pierre, 182

397

398

Index Poland, 75 polarization. See partisan polarization policing, 299–300, 309–10, 312, 318 political parties immigration support in Canada, 25, 32–3 in opposition, 165, 183, 189, 194–5 party discipline in Canada, 136, 168, 183, 188, 303 and presidential candidates, 156–7 and prime minister appointments, 157–8 regionalized multi-party system in Canada, 6, 113, 137–8, 180, 194, 374 strategies of, Canada vs. US, 65, 137–8 “two-party plus” system, 180 two-party system, 177, 195 See also specific names of parties The Politics of Pain (Pal; Weaver), 8 poll taxes, 116 Poole, Keith, 185, 186, 187, 195 popular vote, 29–30, 113, 127n7, 155, 156, 174n7, 179 populations data sources for research, 106, 296–7 distribution by race, 305 elected representation by, 29–31, 114 global declines, 24–6 immigration, effects on, 31–4 mix, in Canada and the US, 13 urbanization of, 24–5, 26, 29, 30–1 poverty, 25, 66, 279, 295 Preferred Provider Organizations, 257 premiers, 91–2, 139, 169–70 presidential system of government “The Administrative Presidency,” 331 checks and balances, 130, 132, 139, 165–8, 170–1 national vs. states’ rights, 177–8

origins of the presidency, 153–4 overview, 111–12 “presidentialization,” 153, 167, 171–3 selection of the executive, 112– 13, 155–7 two-party system, 137, 177, 195 See also Congress presidents, 112, 152–3, 155–7, 158–63, 170–3 primaries, 156 prime ministers appointments of, 157–8 holding office, requirements for, 112 limits on powers of, 168–71 “personalization” of, 153, 167, 171–3 powers of, 152–3, 163–5 terms, no limits on, 183 Prince Edward Island (PEI), 114, 115, 190 prison population, 11, 128n23, 174n11, 300 Problem Solvers’ Caucus, 187 “Product of USA” labelling rules, 88 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), 105 Progressive Caucus, 186, 193, 196 Progressive Conservatives (PCs), 137, 179–80, 189, 262 Progressive Senators Group, 190 proportional representation, 137, 168 prosecutorial independence, 170–1 protected areas, land and marine, 342 provinces debt, 5–6, 11 energy resources jurisdiction and management, 352–4 equalization, 142 federal assistance, 143, 255 health care plans, 255–7, 262 limits on federal powers, 169–70 powers and expenditures, 141 Pruitt, Scott, 336 Public Health Agency (Canada), 264

public space, 287 “Quad” (USA, Japan, Australia, India), 93 Quebec childcare program, 26 civil law, 204 French as official language, 32, 179 health care in, 262, 264 House and Senate seats, 114, 115, 179, 190 Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords, 136, 179–80 national norms and, 145 nationalism, 68 opposition to shale development, 353 referendum of 1995, 136 residents’ attitudes toward US, 44 role and place of, 133–4, 135–6 Quebec City, 46 race anti-Black backlash, 66–7 Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, 65, 309–10, 315, 320–1 and COVID-19 outcomes, 317, 321 Critical Race Theory, 61, 307, 309 distribution of population by, 305 Great Migration, 67, 179 issues awareness, Canada vs. US, 311, 314–15, 315 Modern Racism (value), 60–1 relations in US, 13, 59–61, 134, 136 slavery and segregation, 45–6, 66, 117, 133, 178, 314 “Southern Strategy,” 67, 184 voting rights, 66, 116, 117 See also Black Americans; Indigenous peoples Raffensperger, Brad, 122, 125 Ranney, Austin, 196 Reagan, Ronald, 67, 82, 162, 184

Index “reasonable limits” clause, 5, 209 rebellions, 305–6 reception, doctrine of, 203, 204 recessions 2020, 243–6, 244, 246 early 2000s, 226–7, 227, 228, 229, 247, 278, 338 Reclaiming Power and Place, 313–14 The Red Green Show, 46 redistribution of wealth, 62, 138, 284 REDMAP (“Redistricting Majority Project”) strategy, 184–5 Reflections of a Siamese Twin (Saul), 43 Reform Party, 180 Regan, Geoff, 188 Reid, Harry, 194 Reliable, Affordable, and Environmentally Sound Energy for America’s Future, 360 Religiosity (value), 58, 63, 64 renewable energy, 339, 361–2 representation by population, 29–31, 114, 115, 127n6, 190 representation by regions, 30, 113, 114, 115, 127n6, 190–1 Republican party 2020 presidential election, attitudes toward, 70, 120–1 anti-New Deal coalition and REDMAP, 184–5 approach to federal monies, 142 “Gingrich Senators,” 186 makeup of, 195 Tea-Party Republicans, 186, 192 Trump Coalition, 68 in US South and Midwest, 179 values, 58–9, 59, 60–1, 62, 66, 69 voter suppression, 58 See also caucuses “responsible government” principle, 113, 154, 168, 183 retirement benefits. See pension plans in Canada; Social Security Rising American Electorate (RAE), 57–8

Ritchie, Charles, 81, 83 Roadmap for a Renewed US-Canada Partnership, 76, 79, 87, 89, 90, 364 Roe v.Wade, 63–4, 196, 209 Rohde, D., 186 Romanow, Roy, 262 Romer, Christina, 245 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 162, 166, 170, 184 Rosenthal, Howard, 185–6, 195 Rota, Anthony, 188 Royal Commission on Health Care, 261 Royal Prerogative, 158 Royal Proclamation of 1763, 312 Rudalevige, Andrew, 163 rural communities, 30–1, 69, 256, 264 Russell, Peter, 141 Russia, 33–4, 77–8, 347, 351, 358 Ryerson University. See Toronto Metropolitan University Safe Harbour Day, 121 same-sex marriage, 48 Sanders, Bernie, 47, 186 Sands, Christopher, 4, 94 SARs virus, 264 Saskatchewan carbon tax challenge, 357 CCF’s health care plan, 261 on climate change, 335 general election (October 26, 2020), 122–3 oil and gas reserves, 353 population growth, 31 Senate seats in, 114, 115, 190 Saul, John Ralston, 43 Savage, Luke, 50 Saving on Principle (value), 58 Savoie, Donald, 163–4 Scheer, Andrew, 182, 188 Scherbatsky, Robin, 47 Schott, Jeffrey, 85 Schumer, Chuck, 88 Sebelius, Kathleen, 160 Senate (Canada) appointments, 164–5, 169, 181, 190–1

caucusing, 190 elections, calling for new, 112 power, lack of in federal government, 136 representation by regions, 114, 115 Senate (United States) filibuster, 193–4, 341 polarization among senators, 137 power within federal government, 136 representation by regions, 30, 113, 114 terms and elections, 112 September 11, 2001, 49, 161, 377 Sexism (value), 61 “shale revolution,” 347, 350, 351, 353, 354, 360, 361 Sheen, Martin, 47 Sheikh, Munir, 3, 11, 13, 374 Shultz, George, 82 Simpson, Jeffrey, 41 The Simpsons, 47 Sinclair, Barbara, 193 Singh, Jagmeet, 182, 304 slavery and segregation, 45–6, 66, 117, 133, 178, 314 Sloly, Peter, 318 Smith, David, 138–9 Smith, Goldwin, 41 Smith, Steven, 191, 194 SNC-Lavalin affair, 170–1 social media in Canada, 7–8 influence on civil protest, 308, 309, 316 influencers, 91 as source of division, 124 Twitter, 9, 94, 166, 172 Social Security, 140, 226, 236, 237, 240, 249n9, 258 softwood lumber exports, 86, 88 Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 207 South (US), 66, 67, 133, 134, 178–9, 184–5 See also health care South Carolina, 139 South Park, 47 Spavor, Michael, 79

399

400

Index Speakers (House of Commons), 187–8, 198n34 Speakers (House of Representatives), 191, 198n34 Species at Risk Act, 335, 340, 342 Speer, Sean, 84 The Spirit Level (Pickett; Wilkinson), 286–7 St. Laurent, Louis, 179 St. Lawrence Seaway, 95 stabilization, fiscal, 224, 226–30, 227, 228, 229 Standing Orders (House of Commons), 187–9 “Star-Spangled Banner,” 45 Star-Spangled Canadians (Simpson), 41 states, 11, 140–4, 177–8, 260 See also governors, state Statistics Canada, 106 Status Recognition, Need for (value), 61–2, 63 Stewart, Charles, 120 Story, Joseph, 204 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 46 suburbs, 30 super-PACs, 12, 185 Supreme Court of Canada Calder et al. v. Attorney General of British Columbia, 313 carbon tax challenge ruling, 357 Chaoulli v. Quebec, 264 constitutionality of legislation and, 141 judicial precedent, 203, 209 lack of polarization in, 140 Nevsun Resources Ltd. v. Araya, 206–8 selection for, 148n27, 164–5 as ultimate court of appeal, 20 Supreme Court of the United States Affordable Care Act ruling, 260 Buckley v.Valeo, 185 Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, 185 judicial appointments, partisan, 210 justices, numbers of, 178

Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, 207 Nestlé USA v. Doe, 206, 207–8 as polarizing, 140 provision for, in US Constitution, 206, 209 Roe v.Wade, 63–4, 196, 209 Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 207 Survey on the Performance of the American Elections (SPAE), 120 survival values, 61–2, 63 Switzerland, 13 Tai, Katherine, 88 “Talking to Americans,” 42 tariffs. See trade taxation approach to in Canada vs. US, 9, 68, 237, 238, 247 on carbon, 74, 340, 356, 357 on consumption, 236, 237, 247 corporate, 74, 236, 237, 237–9, 238, 247 data sources for, 297 payroll, 236, 237, 250n11 personal income, 236–7, 237, 247, 280 property, 236, 237, 286 provincial, 143, 250n11 Republicans vs. Democrats on, 62 social security, 226, 236, 237, 240, 249n9, 258 on softwood lumber, 86 state, 140, 142, 250n11 structures, 238 tax formula for equalization, 142 value-added, 236, 237 Taylor, Charles, 42 TC Energy, 88, 355 Tea Party Caucus, 187 television. See media, traditional Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), 285 Ten Year Plan to Strengthen Health Care (Canada), 262–3 Texas, 31, 32, 38, 113, 138, 139, 351 Theriault, Sean, 186, 196

third countries, 77–82, 93 Thomas, David M., 3, 246, 374, 375, 376 Thompson, John Herd, 49–50 Thompson, Robert, 376 Thoreau, Henry David, 46, 306, 319, 321 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 162 Tohme, Julien, 4, 375 Tombe, Trevor, 6 Toronto, 32, 43 Toronto Metropolitan University, 43 Torrey, Barbara Boyle, 1 trade, 76, 82, 84–8 Trade Expansion Act, Section 232, 85 Traditional Family (value), 63 Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), 76 Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP), 76, 86 treaties, international, 81–2, 83 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), 105 trucker convoy. See “Freedom Convoy” Trudeau, Justin controversies around personal behaviour, 303–4, 310–11, 316 Cuba visit, 80 elections, timing, 181–2, 183 electoral reform, promise of, 168, 181 on obstructionism in the House, 189 as performative prime minister, 172–3 popular culture views on, 47 professional relationships with US Presidents, 84, 86, 87, 94 requirements for Liberal MP candidates, 164 taking a knee for BLM, 310 Trudeau government (2015-) on biodiversity and conservation, 332, 333, 337 China, negotiations with, 78–9 climate change agenda, 74, 333, 334, 335, 336, 337, 340

Index energy policies, 356–8 Indigenous protests, actions on, 312 SNC-Lavalin affair, 170–1 Trudeau, Pierre Elliott, 70, 179, 376 Truman, Harry, 259 Trump, Donald anti-Black backlash and, 66–7 border wall promise, 32 Canadian attitudes on, 44, 57 criticisms of NATO members, 75–6 desire to exit Afghanistan, 162–3 impeachments of, 166, 319 national pride, appeal to, 60 as performative president, 172–3 popular vote loss, 30, 156 presidency, long-term effects of, 8 professional relationship with Justin Trudeau, 86, 94 racial resentments, stoking, 59 “winners-versus-losers” rhetoric, 62 See also 2020 US presidential election Trump administration bilateral relations with Canada, 94 on biodiversity and conservation, 311, 336–7 cabinet members and advisers, 160 China tariffs, 79 on climate change, 332, 333, 334, 335–6, 361 COVID-19 response, 132, 265 Cuba, actions taken on, 80 ineffectiveness, 166, 167 KXL and Dakota Access pipelines, actions on, 84, 311 Paris Accord withdrawal, 74, 361 prosecutorial independence and, 171 resistance within, 160, 167–8 suspension of WHO funding, 75 TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) withdrawal, 76, 86 trade measures initiated by, 85–6

USMCA/CUSMA/T-MEX, 84–5, 377 on Venezuela, 80–1 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), 314 TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership), 76 Turnbull, Lori, 3, 374 24th Amendment, 116 26th Amendment, 116 Ukraine, 77–8 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe), 46 Underhill, Frank, 41 unemployment insurance, 140, 225 unions, 69, 280, 290n19 United Kingdom, 82, 83, 93, 110, 113, 118, 273 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP), 74, 334, 335, 336, 357, 361, 363 United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), 333, 334, 337, 339, 342–3 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 74 United Nations Earth Summit (1992; Rio de Janeiro), 333, 354 United Nations Education, Social and Cultural Organization Institute for Statistics (UNESCO), 105 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 333, 349, 354 United Nations Population Division (UNPD), 24, 106 United Nations Security Council, 74 United Nations system, 74–5 United States (US) viewpoints on Canada in, 10, 39–40, 44–8, 49–51 See also Aboriginal and Treaty rights; backlash in the United States; bilateral relationship, Canada-US; budgetary policy; climate change and

biodiversity loss; Constitution (United States); elections; energy policy; federalism; foreign policy; health care; immigration; Indigenous peoples; inequality; judicial systems; partisan polarization; presidential system of government; race; Supreme Court of the United States; taxation; values; specific names of presidents; specific names of states Upper Canada, 41, 133–4 upper class, 283, 287 upper house. See Senate (Canada); Senate (United States) urbanization, 24–5, 26, 29, 30–1 US Department of Education, 106 US Department of Energy (DOE), 359 US Department of Interior, 340 US Department of Transportation, 359 US Energy Policy Act, 360 US Fish and Wildlife Service, 340 US Forest Service, 340 US State Department, 92 US Treasury Department, 192 US-Canada Clean Energy Dialogue, 339 USMCA/CUSMA/T-MEX, 84–5, 88, 377 Utah, 31, 311, 336 vaccines, COVID-19, 132, 144, 266–7, 317 See also “Freedom Convoy” values in Canada, 62–5, 64, 65, 68–9 data sources for research, 104–5 divergence in, Canada vs. US, 56–7 regional divides in, 69 in the US, 57–62, 59, 63–5, 64, 65 See also partisan polarization VanNijnatten, Debora L., 4, 134, 375

401

402

Index Venezuela, 80–1 Vermont, 141 Vidal, Gore, 66 Vietnam War, 46, 47, 152, 161 Vilsack, Tom, 88 Violence Against Women Act, 313 von Heyking, Amy, 42 vote efficiency, 29, 30 voters behaviour changes during COVID-19 pandemic, 120, 123 eligibility to vote, 66, 116, 117, 128n23, 174n11 Indigenous, 311 Rising American Electorate (RAE) vs. traditional, 57–8 Special Ballots, 124 turnout, 12, 58, 136 See also elections Voting Accessibility for Elderly and Handicapped Act, 116 Voting Rights Act, 66, 116

War of 1812, 18n35, 41, 45 Washington, George, 44, 178 Washington Post, 8, 48, 87 “We Could Have Been Canada,” 47 We Rise Together (Indigenous Circle of Experts), 343 Weaver, R. Kent, 8 Webster, Norman, 376 Weinstein, Harvey, 316 welfare state, 159, 160, 170, 262, 280, 284–5 Wernick, Michael, 6 West Virginia, 31 Westminster parliamentary system, 6, 189 Wet’suwet’en First Nation, 312 Whitmer, Gretchen, 88 Why I Hate Canadians (Ferguson), 134 Wilkinson, Richard, 286–7 Wilson, Woodrow, 162 Wilson-Raybould, Jody, 170–1, 303–4

Winfrey, Oprah, 173 Wisconsin, 86, 88, 184 women, 26–7, 116, 117, 303–4, 313–14, 315–16, 321 working class, 283, 286, 287 World Bank, 81 World Health Organization (WHO), 27, 75, 294 World Trade Organization (WTO), 77, 81–2 Wyoming, 114 Xenophobia (value), 60, 63, 66, 67, 68, 69–70 Xi Jinping, 74 Yukon, 88, 114, 115, 127n6, 190 Zhang, Laurina, 316 Zimmerman, George, 309 Zinke, Ryan, 336