Deeper Than Dollars

Canadian officials in Ottawa, who frequently complain that Canada's genuine gripes against the U.S. seldom penetrate the famed "undefended border," last week were happily quoting a report published in Washington for the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. In it, Congressmen Brooks Hays of Arkansas and Frank M. Coffin of Maine, both Democrats, tartly warned of a disturbing "erosion in the traditionally excellent relationships between the United States and Canada," called on the U.S. to mend its thoughtless ways of dealing with its neighbor. Some Canadian newspapers saluted the report as confirming what they had been saying all along; others wondered if Canada's record was spotless.

On a special study mission, Congressmen Hays and Coffin interviewed some 125 leading Canadians in Montreal and Ottawa, heard familiar complaints about U.S. tariffs, oil import quotas, and price-cutting in sales of surplus wheat. They also found a nagging worry that U.S. corporations are gaining too much control over Canadian resources.

"Patronizing Assumption." But the sense of injury went deeper than dollars. Particularly galling to Canadians, the inquiring Congressmen found, were U.S. citizens who "adopted a patronizing assumption that Canada, like a poor relation, would remain at our beck and call." Among the symptoms of discontent: revived protectionist sentiment, a desire to divert trade away from the U.S. and "a tinge of 'anti-United States' sentiment which is usually hedged about with protestations of continued affection, but is nevertheless widespread."

The Congressmen found that a simple "lack of awareness" is at the root of many irritations; a careful regard for Canadian interests and sensibilities by U.S. officials and businessmen would do much to smooth relations. So would more frequent visits by Americans, and better coverage of Canada by U.S. newsmen.

Most Canadian newspapers applauded the good sense and good will manifest in the report. One, the Toronto Telegram, took occasion to read off a famed Canadian freelance writer, Bruce Hutchison, for using such overcharged expressions as "ominous," "hostile," and "disconcertingly painful" in a Harper's Magazine article in which he also referred to U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles as "an unmitigated disaster." Said the Telegram: "To explain to an American that Mr. Hutchison acts as an adviser to [Opposition Leader Lester] Pearson, has little acquaintance with leading figures in the new government at Ottawa, and has long exhibited a deep hatred of Mr. Dulles, hardly offsets the mischief in the article."

"Humorless Cry-Baby." For a few other newspapers that carped at the Hays-Coffin findings, the Ottawa Journal had only mock-serious despair. "The trouble, apparently, is that some stroke of cruel misfortune has placed Canadians, wise, virtuous, altruistic, full of grace, all but perfect in their thoughts, acts and general conduct, alongside a people who are imperfect, who lack our wisdom, idealism, grace and near-perfect behavior, leaving us in a mess. Are we not in danger of losing all sense of proportion--becoming in the process a sort of humorless cry-baby of the Western world?"

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