Canada Among Nations 2000: Vanishing Borders

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom and The History of Fort St. Joseph, and the co-author of
Invisible and Inaudible in Washington: American

Vanishing Borders is the 16th volume in the Canada Among Nations series
and the first volume devoted to Canada’s bilateral relationship with a
single country, in this case the United States.

Chapter 1, “Does the 49th Parallel Matter Any More?”, by Fen Osler
Hampson and Maureen Appel Molot (both of Carleton University), includes
a table that shows the increased economic interdependence between Canada
and the United States since continental free trade began in 1989. In
Chapter 2, Andrew F. Cooper of the University of Waterloo points out
that Prime Minister Jean Chrétien encouraged Lloyd Axworthy to pursue
treaties on land mines and the International Criminal Court despite
Washington’s objections, but on serious economic matters insisted that
NAFTA would remain and that Sheila Copps must conform to WTO guidelines
on split-run magazine editions. Christopher Sands, affiliated with a
Washington think tank, discusses in Chapter 3 the multidimensional
nature of Canada–U.S. relations and gives several reasons why they are
of diminishing importance to Americans. In Chapter 5, Professor Joseph
Jokel, a noted American authority on Canadian defence policy, warns that
Canada’s refusal to cooperate with a White House decision to abrogate
the 1972 ABM treaty and deploy a missile shield will mean the end of
NORAD.

Despite submissions by such celebrities as Professor Robert Bothwell
and businessman Thomas d’Aquino, Yvon Grenier’s Chapter 13—“Our
Dictatorship: Canada’s Trilateral Relations with Castro’s
Cuba”—has the most punch. Grenier condemns the efforts of successive
Canadian governments and NGOs to assist Fidel Castro’s repressive
regime. Castro has resisted all efforts to liberalize and Canadians have
done what they have done for a bad reason: to demonstrate Canada’s
independence from the United States; unfortunately, Cubans have paid the
price. Scholars of Canada–U.S. relations must read this book.