The New Reality: Nationalism

"As of this moment, Canada will become part of the United States of America. The Government of Canada is hereby dissolved ... To ensure that this transfer of power takes place smoothly and without incident, transport aircraft and helicopters of the United States Air Force carrying troops and equipment are now landing at airports in all major Canadian cities and at all Canadian Armed Forces bases..."

This chilling statement, attributed to the President of the U.S. in 1980, who is retaliating against Canada's refusal to surrender vast quantities of natural gas to the U.S., is the beginning of a 1973 Canadian bestseller entitled Ultimatum. By the time the novel ends, all is lost; the Governor General of Canada muses sadly, "We fought for our independence as long as possible, but it couldn't last." Even while Canadians were mulling over that fanciful prophecy, its stridently nationalistic author, Toronto Lawyer Richard Rohmer, was producing an equally flamboyant sequel, Exxoneration. This time the U.S. invades Canada but is beaten back by Canadian forces with some help from the Soviet Union.

Americans who fondly remember the days when both Canada and the U.S. boasted about sharing "the longest undefended border in the world" may be inclined to dismiss such extremist literary nonsense out of hand. Yet the best-selling Rohmer novels are bizarrely representative of one aspect of the current Canadian mood: a rising nationalism and its inevitable corollary, a growing anti-Americanism. The Toronto Star published a story last September alleging that the U.S. had actually massed tanks and heavy artillery at the border in preparation for an invasion during the terrorist kidnapings and crisis in Quebec in October 1970. The story was patently untrue but was taken seriously enough for the Canadian federal government to feel obliged to deny it.

Irritating Rhetoric. The new nationalistic spirit has been heightened by the energy crisis. Canada is the only Western industrial nation that is self-sufficient in energy, and it has not been hesitant about asserting its new-found strength, sometimes to the discomfiture of the U.S. Without the courtesy of consulting Washington, as it often did in the past on such matters, the Ottawa government last year increased the tax on its oil exports to the U.S. from 40¢ per bbl. to $5.20, thereby making Canadian oil, which accounts for 20% of all U.S. imports, the most expensive crude on the Chicago market. In a subsequent move, Canada announced a 60% price increase for the natural gas it exports to the U.S. Three weeks ago, Ottawa announced that it would sharply reduce oil exports to the U.S., from the present 900,000 bbl. per day to perhaps 650,000 by next summer. Under the new schedule, Canadian oil exports to the U.S. could end completely by 1982.