Canada–United States relations

Relations between Canada and the United States have historically been extensive, given the two countries' shared origins and border, which is the longest in the world. Starting with the American Revolution, when Loyalists fled to Canada, a vocal element in Canada has warned against American dominance or annexation. The War of 1812 saw invasions across the border in both directions, but the war ended with unchanged borders. The border was demilitarized, as was the Great Lakes region. The British ceased aiding Native American attacks on the United States, and the United States never again attempted to invade Canada. Apart from minor unsuccessful raids, it has remained peaceful.

As Britain decided to disengage, fears of an American takeover played a role in the Canadian Confederation (1867), and Canada's rejection of free trade (1911). Military collaboration was close during World War II and continued throughout the Cold War, bilaterally through NORAD and multilaterally through NATO. A high volume of trade and migration continues between the two nations, as well as a heavy overlapping of popular and elite culture; a dynamic which has generated closer ties, especially after the signing of the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement in 1988.

The two nations have the world's longest shared border (), and also have significant military interoperability. Recent difficulties have included repeated trade disputes, environmental concerns, Canadian concern for the future of oil exports, the issue of illegal immigration and the threat of terrorism. Trade has continued to expand, especially following the 1988 FTA, the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the 2020 United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA), which has progressively merged the two economies.
Co-operation on many fronts, such as the ease of the flow of goods, services, and people across borders are to be even more extended, as well as the establishment of joint border inspection agencies, relocation of U.S. food inspectors agents to Canadian plants and vice versa, greater sharing of intelligence, and harmonizing regulations on everything from food to manufactured goods, thus further increasing the American-Canadian assemblage.

The foreign policies of the countries have been closely aligned, yet ultimately independent, since the Cold War. For example, Canada maintains full relations with Cuba and declined to participate in the Vietnam War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. There is also diplomatic debate on whether the Northwest Passage is in international waters or under Canadian sovereignty.

History

Colonial wars

Before the British conquest of French Canada in 1760, there had been a series of wars between the British and the French which were fought out in the colonies as well as in Europe and the high seas. In general, the British heavily relied on American colonial militia units, while the French heavily relied on their First Nation allies. The Iroquois Nation were important allies of the British. Much of the fighting involved ambushes and small-scale warfare in the villages along the border between New England and Quebec. The New England colonies had a much larger population than Quebec, so major invasions came from south to north. The First Nation allies, only loosely controlled by the French, repeatedly raided New England villages to kidnap women and children, and torture and kill the men. Those who survived were brought up as Francophone Catholics. The tension along the border was exacerbated by religion, the French Catholics and English Protestants had a deep mutual distrust. There was a naval dimension as well, involving privateers attacking enemy merchant ships.

England seized Quebec from 1629 to 1632, and Acadia in 1613 and again from 1654 to 1670; These territories were returned to France by the peace treaties. The major wars were (to use American names), King William's War (1689–1697); Queen Anne's War (1702–1713); King George's War (1744–1748), and the French and Indian War (1755–1763). In Canada, as in Europe, this era is known as the Seven Years' War.

New England soldiers and sailors were critical to the successful British campaign to capture the French fortress of Louisbourg in 1745, and (after it had been returned by treaty) to capture it again in 1758.

American Revolutionary War

At the outset of the American Revolutionary War, the American revolutionaries hoped the French Canadians in Quebec and the Colonists in Nova Scotia would join their rebellion and they were pre-approved for joining the United States in the Articles of Confederation.
When Canada was invaded, thousands joined the American cause and formed regiments that fought during the war; however most remained neutral and some joined the British effort. Britain advised the French Canadians that the British Empire already enshrined their rights in the Quebec Act, which the American colonies had viewed as one of the Intolerable Acts. The American invasion was a fiasco and Britain tightened its grip on its northern possessions; in 1777, a major British invasion into New York led to the surrender of the entire British army at Saratoga, and led France to enter the war as an ally of the U.S. The French Canadians largely ignored France's appeals for solidarity. After the war Canada became a refuge for about 75,000 Loyalists who either wanted to leave the U.S., or were compelled by Patriot reprisals to do so.

Among the original Loyalists there were 3,500 free African Americans. Most went to Nova Scotia and in 1792, 1200 migrated to Sierra Leone. About 2000 black slaves were brought in by Loyalist owners; they remained slaves in Canada until the Empire abolished slavery in 1833. Before 1860, about 30,000–40,000 black people entered Canada; many were already free and others were escaped slaves who came through the Underground Railroad.

War of 1812

The Treaty of Paris, which ended the war, called for British forces to vacate all their forts south of the Great Lakes border. Britain refused to do so, citing failure of the United States to provide financial restitution for Loyalists who had lost property in the war. The Jay Treaty in 1795 with Great Britain resolved that lingering issue and the British departed the forts. Thomas Jefferson saw the nearby British presence as a threat to the United States, and so he opposed the Jay Treaty, and it became one of the major political issues in the United States at the time. Thousands of Americans immigrated to Upper Canada (Ontario) from 1785 to 1812 to obtain cheaper land and better tax rates prevalent in that province; despite expectations that they would be loyal to the U.S. if a war broke out, in the event they were largely non-political.

Tensions mounted again after 1805, erupting into the War of 1812, when the United States declared war on Britain. The Americans were angered by British harassment of U.S. ships on the high seas and seizure of 6,000 sailors from American ships, severe restrictions against neutral American trade with France, and British support for hostile Native American tribes in Ohio and territories the U.S. had gained in 1783. American "honor" was an implicit issue. While the Americans could not hope to defeat the Royal Navy and control the seas, they could call on an army much larger than the British garrison in Canada, and so a land invasion of Canada was proposed as the most advantageous means of attacking the British Empire. Americans on the western frontier also hoped an invasion would bring an end to British support of Native American resistance to American expansion, typified by Tecumseh's coalition of tribes. Americans may also have wanted to acquire Canada.

Once war broke out, the American strategy was to seize Canada. There was some hope that settlers in western Canada—most of them recent immigrants from the U.S.—would welcome the chance to overthrow their British rulers. However, the American invasions were defeated primarily by British regulars with support from Native Americans and Upper Canada militia. Aided by the large Royal Navy, a series of British raids on the American coast were highly successful, culminating with an attack on Washington that resulted in the British burning of the White House, the Capitol, and other public buildings. At the end of the war, Britain's American Indian allies had largely been defeated, and the Americans controlled a strip of Western Ontario centered on Fort Malden. However, Britain held much of Maine, and, with the support of their remaining American Indian allies, huge areas of the Old Northwest, including Wisconsin and much of Michigan and Illinois. With the surrender of Napoleon in 1814, Britain ended naval policies that angered Americans; with the defeat of the Indian tribes the threat to American expansion was ended. The upshot was both the United States and Canada asserted their sovereignty, Canada remained under British rule, and London and Washington had nothing more to fight over. The war was ended by the Treaty of Ghent, which took effect in February 1815. A series of postwar agreements further stabilized peaceful relations along the Canadian-US border. Canada reduced American immigration for fear of undue American influence, and built up the Anglican Church of Canada as a counterweight to the largely American Methodist and Baptist churches.

In later years, Anglophone Canadians, especially in Ontario, viewed the War of 1812 as a heroic and successful resistance against invasion and as a victory that defined them as a people. The myth that the Canadian militia had defeated the invasion almost single-handed, known logically as the "militia myth", became highly prevalent after the war, having been propounded by John Strachan, Anglican Bishop of York.

Post War of 1812 and mid-19th century

In the aftermath of the War of 1812, pro-British conservatives led by Anglican Bishop John Strachan took control in Ontario ("Upper Canada"), and promoted the Anglican religion as opposed to the more republican Methodist and Baptist churches. A small interlocking elite, known as the Family Compact took full political control. Democracy, as practiced in the US, was ridiculed. The policies had the desired effect of deterring immigration from United States. Revolts in favor of democracy in Ontario and Quebec ("Lower Canada") in 1837 were suppressed; many of the leaders fled to the US. The American policy was to largely ignore the rebellions, and indeed ignore Canada generally in favor of westward expansion of the American Frontier.

The Webster-Ashburton Treaty formalized the U.S.-Canada border in Maine, averting the Aroostook War. During the Manifest Destiny era, the "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight" agenda called for U.S. annexation of what became Western Canada; the U.S. and Britain instead agreed to a boundary of the 49th parallel. As harsher fugitive slave laws were passed, Canada became a destination for slaves escaping on the Underground Railroad.

American Civil War

Although the British Empire and Canada were neutral in the American Civil War, about 40,000 Canadians volunteered for the Union Army—many already lived in the U.S., and a few for the Confederate Army. However, hundreds of Americans who were called up in the draft fled to Canada. In 1864, the Confederate government tried to use Canada as a base to attack American border towns. They raided the town St. Albans, Vermont on October 19, 1864, killing an American citizen and robbing three banks of over US$200,000. The three Confederates escaped to Canada where they were arrested, but then released. Many Americans suspected – falsely – that the Canadian government knew of the raid ahead of time. There was widespread anger when the raiders were released by a local court in Canada. The American Secretary of State William H. Seward let the British government know, "it is impossible to consider those proceedings as either legal, just or friendly towards the United States."

Alabama claims

Americans were angry at the British role during the American Civil War. Some leaders demanded for a huge payment, on the premise that British involvement had lengthened the war. Senator Charles Sumner, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, originally wanted to ask for $2 billion, or alternatively the ceding of all of Canada to the United States.

When American Secretary of State William H. Seward negotiated the Alaska Purchase with Russia in 1867, he intended it as the first step in a comprehensive plan to gain control of the entire northwest Pacific Coast. Seward was a firm believer in Manifest Destiny, primarily for its commercial advantages to the U.S., Seward expected British Columbia to seek annexation to the U.S. and thought Britain might accept this in exchange for the ''Alabama'' claims. Soon other elements endorsed annexation, Their plan was to annex British Columbia, Red River Colony (Manitoba), and Nova Scotia, in exchange for dropping the damage claims. The idea reached a peak in the spring and summer of 1870, with American expansionists, Canadian separatists, and Pro-American Englishmen seemingly combining forces. The plan was dropped for multiple reasons. London continued to stall, American commercial and financial groups pressed Washington for a quick settlement of the dispute on a cash basis, growing Canadian nationalist sentiment in British Columbia called for staying inside the British Empire, Congress became preoccupied with Reconstruction, and most Americans showed little interest in territorial expansion. The "Alabama Claims" dispute went to international arbitration. In one of the first major cases of arbitration, the tribunal in 1872 supported the American claims and ordered Britain to pay $15.5 million. Britain paid and the episode ended in peaceful relations.

Late 19th century

Canada became a self-governing dominion in 1867 in internal affairs while Britain controlled control of diplomacy and of defence policy. Prior to Confederation, there was an Oregon boundary dispute in which the Americans claimed the 54th degree latitude. The Oregon Treaty of 1846 largely resolved the issue, splitting the disputed territory - the northern half became British Columbia, and the southern half eventually formed the states of Washington and Oregon.

Strained relations with America continued, however, due to a series of small-scale armed incursions called the " Fenian raids" conducted by Irish-American Civil War veterans across the border from 1866 to 1871 in an attempt to trade Canada for Irish independence. The American government, angry at Canadian tolerance of Confederate raiders during the American Civil War of 1861-1865, moved very slowly to disarm the Fenians. The Fenian raids were small-scale attacks carried out by the Fenian Brotherhood, an Irish Republican organization based among Irish Catholics in the United States. Targets included British Army forts, customs posts and other locations near the border. The raids were small, unsuccessful episodes in 1866, and again from 1870 to 1871. They aimed to bring pressure on Great Britain to withdraw from Ireland. None of these raids achieved their aims and all were quickly defeated by local Canadian forces.

The British government, in charge of diplomatic relations, protested cautiously, as Anglo-American relations were tense. Much of the tension was relieved as the Fenians faded away and in 1872 by the settlement of the Alabama Claims, when Britain paid the U.S. $15.5 million for war losses caused by warships built in Britain and sold to the Confederacy.

Disputes over ocean boundaries on Georges Bank and over fishing, whaling, and sealing rights in the Pacific were settled by international arbitration, setting an important precedent.

Early 20th century

Alaska boundary

A short-lived controversy was the Alaska boundary dispute, settled in favor of the United States in 1903. The issue was unimportant until the Klondike Gold Rush brought tens of thousands of men to Canada's Yukon, and they had to arrive through American ports. Canada needed its port and claimed that it had a legal right to a port near the present American town of Haines, Alaska. It would provide an all-Canadian route to the rich goldfields. The dispute was settled by arbitration, and the British delegate voted with the Americans—to the astonishment and disgust of Canadians who suddenly realized that Britain considered its relations with the United States paramount compared to those with Canada. The arbitration validated the status quo, but made Canada angry at London.

1907 saw a minor controversy over USS ''Nashville'' sailing into the Great Lakes via Canada without Canadian permission. To head off future embarrassments, in 1909 the two sides signed the International Boundary Waters Treaty and the International Joint Commission was established to manage the Great Lakes and keep them disarmed. It was amended in World War II to allow the building and training of warships.

Free trade rejected

Anti-Americanism reached a shrill peak in 1911 in Canada. The Liberal government in 1911 negotiated a Reciprocity treaty with the U.S. that would lower trade barriers. Canadian manufacturing interests were alarmed that free trade would allow the bigger and more efficient American factories to take their markets. The Conservatives made it a central campaign issue in the 1911 election, warning that it would be a "sell out" to the United States with economic annexation a special danger. The Conservative slogan was "No truck or trade with the Yankees", as they appealed to Canadian nationalism and nostalgia for the British Empire to win a major victory.

World War I

British Canadians were annoyed in 1914-16 when Washington insisted on neutrality and seemed to profit heavily while Canada was sacrificing its wealth and its youth. However when the US finally declared war on Germany in April 1917, there was swift cooperation and friendly coordination, as one historian reports:

Official co-operation between Canada and the United States—the pooling of grain, fuel, power, and transportation resources, the underwriting of a Canadian loan by bankers of New York—produced a good effect on the public mind. Canadian recruiting detachments were welcomed in the United States, while a reciprocal agreement was ratified to facilitate the return of draft-evaders. A Canadian War Mission was established at Washington, and many other ways the activities of the two countries were coordinated for efficiency. Immigration regulations were relaxed and thousands of American farmhands crossed the border to assist in harvesting the Canadian crops. Officially and publicly, at least, the two nations were on better terms than ever before in their history, and on the American side this attitude extended through almost all classes of society.

Post-First World War

Canada demanded and received permission from London to send its own delegation to the Versailles Peace Talks in 1919, with the proviso that it sign the treaty under the British Empire. Canada subsequently took responsibility for its own foreign and military affairs in the 1920s. Its first ambassador to the United States, Vincent Massey, was named in 1927. The United States first ambassador to Canada was William Phillips. Canada became an active member of the British Commonwealth, the League of Nations, and the World Court, none of which included the U.S.

In July 1923, as part of his Pacific Northwest tour and a week before his death, US President Warren Harding visited Vancouver, making him the first head of state of the United States to visit confederated Canada. The then Premier of British Columbia, John Oliver, and then mayor of Vancouver, Charles Tisdall, hosted a lunch in his honor at the Hotel Vancouver. Over 50,000 people heard Harding speak in Stanley Park. A monument to Harding designed by Charles Marega was unveiled in Stanley Park in 1925.

Relations with the United States were cordial until 1930, when Canada vehemently protested the new Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act by which the U.S. raised tariffs (taxes) on products imported from Canada. Canada retaliated with higher tariffs of its own against American products, and moved toward more trade within the British Commonwealth. U.S.–Canadian trade fell 75% as the Great Depression dragged both countries down.

Down to the 1920s the war and naval departments of both nations designed hypothetical war game scenarios on paper with the other as an enemy. These were routine training exercises; the departments were never told to get ready for a real war. In 1921, Canada developed Defence Scheme No. 1 for an attack on American cities and for forestalling invasion by the United States until British reinforcements arrived. Through the later 1920s and 1930s, the United States Army War College developed a plan for a war with the British Empire waged largely on North American territory, in War Plan Red.

Herbert Hoover meeting in 1927 with British Ambassador Sir Esme Howard agreed on the "absurdity of contemplating the possibility of war between the United States and the British Empire."

In 1938, as the roots of World War II were set in motion, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt gave a public speech at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, declaring that the United States would not sit idly by if another power tried to dominate Canada. Diplomats saw it as a clear warning to Germany not to attack Canada.

Second World War

The two nations cooperated closely in World War II, as both nations saw new levels of prosperity and a determination to defeat the Axis powers. Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and President Franklin D. Roosevelt were determined not to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors. They met in August 1940 at Ogdensburg, issuing a declaration calling for close cooperation, and formed the Permanent Joint Board on Defense (PJBD).

King sought to raise Canada's international visibility by hosting the August 1943 Quadrant conference in Quebec on military and political strategy; he was a gracious host but was kept out of the important meetings by Winston Churchill and Roosevelt.

Canada allowed the construction of the Alaska Highway

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