Thread: CAN: Canada must respect Mexico (oh, really?)

Canada must respect Mexico

Ottawa needs to understand that America's southern neighbour has close, complex relationship with U. S.

By Julian Castro-Rea, Edmonton Journal
June 3, 2009

(Photo) Prime Minister Stephen Harper, right, walks with Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Parliament Hill in Ottawa in 2006.Photograph by: Chris Wattie, Reuters, File, Edmonton Journal

The recent article by Michael Dark, Greg Anderson and Anne McLellan ("Place a Call to Mexico City," Edmonton Journal, May 27) raises the issue of the importance of taking Mexico into account to strengthen relations between Canada and the United States. The article criticizes Prime Minister Stephen Harper for not being able to adjust to the Obama administration's changes to the North American partnership, and urges him to get closer to Mexico to match the United States' current interest in that country. This complex issue, however, needs to be put in the broader perspective of the whimsical love-hate relationship that Canada has entertained with Mexico, and cannot be exhausted by blaming Prime Minister Harper's incapacity to act otherwise.

While today it may seem obvious that the Harper government neglects Mexico and even competes with it for U.S. attention, the Chretien government did exactly the same. For example, in 2001, former prime minister Jean Chretien put the best of Canadian diplomacy into high gear to ensure that then-president George W. Bush would not host Mexico's former president Vicente Fox as the U. S.'s first state visitor after taking office.

At that time, Chretien claimed his right to the first meeting as a long-standing tradition, based on Canada's "special relationship" with the U. S. However, this claim failed to acknowledge that both Mexico and Canada have a long, special relationship with the U. S. that results from being neighbours and sharing the North American space.

In 1990,when Mexico and the U.S. were discussing the framework for a free-trade agreement, Ottawa virtually begged these countries to include Canada in the agreement. The proposed agreement, according to Ottawa, was a threat to the then existing Canada-U. S. FTA, and would divert U. S. investment to Mexico and pitch Canadian ex-porters against Mexican competitors within the liberalized U. S. market. Thus, NAFTA became a trilateral affair at the insistence of Canada, which reacted defensively to trump Mexico's cards.

During this process, Ottawa discovered Mexico's potential to benefit Canada economically and politically, and urged Canadians to explore and use that potential. Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs diagnosed a win-win situation with NAFTA, in which not only Canada and Mexico would compete on an equal footing but would be able to support one another in their dealings with the U. S. Officials then referred to the Canada-Mexico relationship as a "strategic partnership" that would support Canada's interests in its most important foreign relationship. The subsequent creation of a North America Bureau within Foreign Affairs signalled Canada's intention to deal with the United States and Mexico as a single, interrelated issue.

However, the trilateral experiment did not last very long in Ottawa. The symbolic who-would-be-the-first-to-visit 2001 incident was soon followed by additional actions undermining the three-way partnership defined by NAFTA.

The Sept. 11, 2001, events and their aftermath further tested how the three North American partners related to each other and dealt with security issues. In this context, Ottawa chose to go bilateral once again. Forgetting strategic partnership talk, the Canadian government went into a panic mode, wishing to negotiate the best deal possible to normalize border transactions. As a matter of fact, Ottawa's new mantra regarding North America became "avoid the Mexicanization of the Canada-U. S. border."That approach became clear with the adoption of the Smart Border Declaration in December 2001, bills C-36 and C-42,and the creation of the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, all measures that followed the U. S. lead and that were implemented by the Liberal party when it was in power. The culmination of that bilateral trend was, of course, Canada's involvement in the war in Afghanistan, and the subsequent and ongoing enhanced militaryco-operation --critics would say "integration" --with U.S. forces.

In the process, Mexico was bypassed because that country chose not to embrace all the U.S. security policies. Trilateralism was relegated to market transactions and also to the occasional summit with its string of platitudes with little policy consequence. Fox's calls for a "NAFTA Plus," coupling market liberalization with programs to help Mexico catch up with its wealthier partners, were ignored whenever they were not actively discredited in Ottawa. The 2005 Security and Prosperity Partnership undermined trilateralism even further, to the extent that this agreement allows any two North American countries to increase their co-operation regardless of whether the third partner is ready to follow. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, then, the two de facto historical bilateral relationships replaced NAFTA's three-way spirit.

The equation held for as long as the federal governments in the continent relied on each other and shared basic ideological tenets, following George W. Bush's lead. Now both Harper and Felipe Calderon, both representing conservative political options in their respective countries, are grappling with how to adjust to the strong winds of change coming from the Obama administration and its emphasis on trilateralism and inclusion. Canada is now showing some interest in Mexico, realizing how important that country really is to the U.S. However, this strategy is superficial because it seeks only to support U. S. interests involving Mexico, and not Mexico's real concerns within North America. Ottawa wishes to piggyback on Mexico's leverage in the U.S., without bothering to understand what Mexico really wants. This strategy is not only opportunistic but also ineffective and is doomed to fail in the long run.

The Canadian leadership needs to understand what is obvious to close observers: that Mexico's relationship with the U.S. is just as close and complex as Canada's. Mexico also claims to have a"special relationship" with its northern neighbour, given the deep-rooted historical realities-- territorial, demographic, cultural, sociological, economic, linguistic, etc. -- that bind these two countries together. Therefore, pretending that Mexico can be satisfied by simply serving the U.S.'s or Canada's objectives in North America is preposterous, even patronizing.

Canada will never be able to understand what matters to Mexico by simply reading the signals sent from Washington. Canada's knowledge of and empathy for Mexico cannot rely on the common neighbour's interpretation. For example, Canada's support to the current U. S. strategy for drug interdiction in Mexico, known as the Merida Initiative, is not the best way to rebuild good relations. This initiative is not among Mexico's priorities; in fact, it is quite unpopular in Mexico, which suspects it of reviving U. S. interventionist policies. Does Canada really want to be associated with this perception? The same applies to border policies, infrastructure, energy security and climate-change issues, which express what the U. S. needs from Mexico rather than what Mexico wants from its North American partners.

If Ottawa is truly interested in re-building a good working relationship with Mexico to better manage North American relations, the Canadian government needs to send clear signals that Canada understands Mexican priorities and supports them for what they are, and not just to please Washington.

Mexico cannot and will not be a simple tool to help Ottawa please Washington, for a true partnership must be built if a long-term strategy is sought. Only then can Ottawa and Mexico City see eye to eye and work for truly common objectives, and place calls to each other more frequently and more meaningfully than is now possible.

Julian Castro-Rea is an associate professor of political science at the University of Alberta.

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"Canada will never be able to understand what matters to Mexico by simply reading the signals sent from Washington."

No, Canadians are super-intelligent and they don't need to ascertain and gleen information from Washington regarding illegal Mexicans citizens' denegration of U.S. Culture, Economy and their disrespect of U.S. Citizens -- Canadians have "seen it with their own eyes" and, frankly, want nothing to do with it....