Open Note to Trudeau 2.0 on North America

Dear Prime Minister Trudeau,

It seems you are headed to Washington March 10 for a little soiree with President Obama. The President likes you and is getting his staff to throw a big party. A State Dinner; the first for a Canadian Prime Minister in nearly two decades. Good on you. But before you get too carried away with "reset buttons" with Washington, I'd like to make a simple plea.

Canada's most important interests can be found right here in North America. Washington is top of the list. However, if, as you claimed during your campaign, you are serious about revitalising "North America," I'd like to see you get on your plane March 11 and go to Mexico City.


An Iron Curtain Has Descended

The aftermath of 9/11 has been rough on "North America" as a genuinely trilateral vision of cooperative action. Between 2001 and 2006, security seemed to revitalise a dormant North American agenda. The "idea" of trilateral cooperation on a host of issues of importance to all three countries was very much in the air. How to preserve the hard-won benefits of economic openness while addressing the new imperative of security was given serious thought in a number of quarters. The descent of a kind of "Iron Curtain" of Security on North America was to be expected, particularly with the advent and growth of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. We will live with the effects of that paradigm on how we view North America's borders for a very long time. Where we once fretted over the impact of increasingly porous borders on the cultures and politics of all three countries, we now fret over North America's borders as the ever-hardening focal point of security and choke-points standing in the way of our mutual prosperity.

There are many reasons for the failure of the North American Idea, but a major contributor to that failure over the last decade was your predecessor, Stephen Harper. Frankly, Mr. Harper's approach to North America was to re-bilateralize North American relations by ditching Mexico City and trying to advance Canada's interests with Washington on his own. In my view, things haven't worked out so well.

Trying to sideline of Mexico City was certainly in keeping with the Harper Government's broader efforts to shift away from Canada's postwar history of middle power internationalism. Under Harper, cooperation through the use of institutions, consensus building, and contributions commensurate with Canadian capabilities and interests seemed to give way to a muscular form of Canadian foreign policy that left many observers confused as to Harper's calculation of ends and means.

Most importantly for North America, the folly of re-bilateralization revealed Ottawa's complete misunderstanding of the importance of Mexico to the United States; socially, politically, and economically. Harper evidently thought Ottawa would get more traction, more quickly on a range of issues if it could just convince Washington of the merits of bilateral cooperation. As far as Ottawa was concerned, Mexico was simply slowing things down, its focus on migration and narco-violence along the U.S.-Mexican border a parochial concern of no importance to Canadians. Since 2008, North American Leaders' Summits have been unenthusiastic affairs, if they have happened at all. There was no Summit in 2010, and the last, in Toluca, Mexico in 2014, was mostly about the bilateral side-bars Harper and Nieto had with President Obama.

Harper could claim points of bilateral progress; Clean Energy Dialogue, Beyond the Border, Winter Olympic security cooperation, etc. Yet, nearly all of it was being replicated in North America's other bilateral relationship as well.

Mexican "Reset Button"

I suspect we'll never get close to what the North American Idea envisioned. Too much DHS water has gone under the bridge. North America's borders as significant barriers to the flow of goods and people are here to stay. However, much can still be achieved through the revitalization of trilateral cooperation. You've made a positive start by committing to reversing the visa requirement on Mexicans punitively imposed by the Harper Government in 2009. More can be done.

An official visit to Mexico City with the intent of hitting the "reset button" would help turn the tide of cooperation on a large and pressing trilateral agenda; everything from energy cooperation, to border security, to immigration, and even climate change.

Moreover, a visit to Mexico City could be more than some utilitarian strategy for ganging up on Washington. It would also usefully start a process of mutual awareness for Mexicans and Canadians about one another that has never really taken off. I, for one, would like to see a day in which interactions between the two cultures isn't limited to the beaches of Cancun.

So, enjoy the food in Washington. But use the hype and political capital of the early days of your government to re-start trilateralism. Propose to Obama and Nieto that you host a trilateral summit before President Obama leaves office.

Sincerely,

Greg Anderson
Student of the North American Idea