Photo credit Citynews Toronto
The tariffs imposed on Canada by US President Donald Trump have clearly caused economic pain for Canada, but a US senator from Maine says he’s more worried about how Canadians are reacting on a personal level.
City News reports that the senator, Angus King told an international security conference on Friday that, “Like any neighbors, there’s always going to be issues back and forth, and we’ve been fighting about softwood lumber for as long as I could remember.
“But the deeper problem is the cultural break; the idea that Canadians don’t think of America as their friends and neighbours, but as adversaries.”
The annual Halifax International Security Forum opened on Friday. It has attracted delegates from around the world, including politicians, academics, government officials, military leaders and non-government associations.
The focus of this year’s conference is democracy.
However, questions about Canada-US relations touched off a heated debate on Saturday when King and three other American politicians were asked to talk about their country’s place in the world.
King, an independent, said the lingering rift between Canadians and Americans is particularly troubling in a state that borders on New Brunswick and Quebec.
In response, Republican Senator Thom Tillis reminded the audience that Canada and the US are part of a broader family of democratic countries that have a long history of squabbles over trade.
But this quickly pivoted to a critique of what he said was Canada’s failure to meet its financial obligations to NATO, saying Ottawa still owes the military alliance more than $300 billion.
Former California congresswoman Jane Harman, a Democrat, argued that Canada recently committed to spending more on defence. In June, {Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a plan to boost spending by $9 billion by March of next year, bringing defence to two per cent of Canada’s GDP.
While Tills scoffed at the promise, Republican Senator Kevin Cramer said King was right to call attention to the “cultural break” between the two countries.
