There’s only so much of substance that Canada can do to assuage President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for mouse-elephant relations. To address his concerns over border security — namely illegal migration and drug smuggling — ideas now in play include putting RCMP cadets on patrol … but it’s an awfully long border, and the Americans, with far greater resources, clearly don’t do a great job of policing their borders either.
On the free-trade front, a Harris poll conducted for the Guardian published last week found 59 per cent of Republicans believe the new tariffs Trump is threatening against us would lead to higher prices at the cash register; 69 per cent of Americans believed it overall. Some of them support the idea anyway, in the name of “bringing jobs home.”
That said, an Angus Reid Institute poll conducted in late October found just 16 per cent of Trump voters supported a “major tariff” on Canadian goods — versus 66 per cent for Chinese goods and 38 per cent on Mexican goods. So, American public opinion looks like less of an obstacle than Trump himself.
Nevertheless, we’re bringing in the Mad Men to make our case: The Ontario and federal governments are both launching advertising campaigns that, if successful, might take some pressure off this country.
Ontario’s television ad casts the province as something like America’s best and most faithful companion in all matters great and small. It comes on pretty hot and heavy!
“For generations, this ally to the north has been by your side. Ontario, Canada, a partner connected by shared history, shared values, and a shared vision for what we can achieve together,” the narrator intones. In an implicit nod to the idea of cutting Mexico loose from NAFTA, the ad suggests Ontario and the United States “work together” to “bring jobs home.”
I was reminded somewhat of a Doctor Who plot line in which evil aliens conquer Earth and brainwash humankind into believing they’re benevolent guardians. (Needless to say, the ad does not mention Canada’s powerful anti-trade dairy industry.) But the ad hits the right practical notes as well: “Ontario is your third-largest trading partner, and the number-one export destination for 17 states. Our longstanding economic partnership keeps millions of Americans working.”
I have no idea if the ad will “work,” and neither I suspect do the people who designed it. But it struck me as a reasonable effort.
Then there’s the federal ad campaign, which is designed to deliver sponsored links on search engines when people look for information about Canada’s asylum system. It’s the latest of several in recent years that attempts to convince people not to come here and try for refugee status, on account of they’re likely to be rejected. “Claiming asylum in Canada is not easy,” searchers will be told. “There are strict guidelines to qualify. Find out what you need to know before you make a life-changing decision.”
That’s certainly good advice.
“Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada is working to combat the spread of misinformation and disinformation about Canada’s immigration system, and to highlight the risks of working with unauthorized representatives,” a government spokesperson told Reuters.
Doubtless there is much “misinformation and disinformation” out there on the subject, which “unauthorized representatives” — i.e., human smugglers — spread and exploit. But the problem with the central message being conveyed is that it is easily disprovable. Relatively speaking it is easy to claim asylum in Canada, and it is easy to get that claim accepted — especially for people from certain countries.
Some 2023 statistics from the UN Refugee Agency :
– Canada issued decisions on nearly 66,000 refugee claims, or 164 per 100,000 Canadians. The equivalent figure in the United States was just 95 per 100,000 Americans.
– Of those claims, 99 per 100,000 Canadians were successful, versus just 19 per 100,000 Americans.
– The top five countries producing successful refugee claimants to Canada were Iran (4,929), Turkey (4,928), Colombia (3,119), Mexico (3,071) and India (2,919). With nearly 10 times the population, the United States accepted refugee claims from just 662 Iranians, 1,564 Turks, 1,223 Colombians and 824 Mexicans.
None of this is to suggest one country is doing it right and the other is doing it wrong — though when it can easily take two years to adjudicate a refugee claim, as it often does in Canada, it’s certainly being done wrong. The main point here is simply that the two countries do refugee-determination very differently, one much more generously than the other, despite the fact that both adhere to the same UN definition of a refugee.
That’s always going to be a problem when the two countries have different visa provisions for citizens of certain countries and a gigantic, largely undefended border between them. In a scenario like that, almost every day is Christmas for human smugglers. An unfamiliar outside observer would probably suggest the two countries get their acts together and harmonize their rules and processes on visas and refugee-determination.
Said observer would immediately be online-mobbed by furious Canadians, of course; it could become a political nightmare for any party that proposed it; and I don’t take particular pleasure in the idea myself. But it would be a natural extension of the free-trade relationship Canada wants to preserve and nurture. And it’s far more likely to advance our interests in Washington than any advertising campaign.
National Post
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