Foreign Affairs Committee on Feb. 11th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Good afternoon, colleagues.

This is meeting number three of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, Wednesday, February 11, 2009. Today we're going to begin our review of key elements of Canadian foreign policy.

As a witness, from Ekos Research Associates we have Frank Graves, the president.

Recently, on December 8, 2008, Mr. Graves made a presentation to the Canada-U.S. project at the Government Conference Centre in Ottawa entitled “Public Perspectives: Emerging Opportunities for Canada-U.S. Cooperation”. I've seen part of this presentation on the website. It contains a wealth of information concerning what the Canadian public thinks about a wide scope of issues in regard to the Canada-U.S. relationship.

Our committee is very interested in what you have to say to us, Mr. Graves. Certainly we recognize that the United States is our largest trading partner, our closest neighbour and our closest ally, so we look forward to your testimony.

I would also like to say that we very much appreciate your coming on such short notice. I guess that's one of the advantages of being close to the city, but we do appreciate your being here today.

Mr. Graves, the clerk passed on the order here. We'll give you time for an opening statement of approximately ten minutes, and then we'll go into the first round of questioning. Each party will have seven minutes. Then we'll go into the second and third rounds.

[Frank Graves, President, Ekos Research Associates Inc.]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I'm delighted to be here to speak with the committee.

This is a topic I'm extremely interested in. I've been studying this topic in some depth for over a decade, comparing not just Canadian attitudes but also looking at what Americans and sometimes even Mexicans think about these issues. Our research has been supported over that period of time by all three governments as well as significant parts of the private sector.

I have a fairly useful time series. Instead of saying how things look at some snapshot in time, I can give you a sense of how things have been evolving, what's changed and what hasn't, and what's particularly relevant in the current context. In many respects it is quite different from some of the features of this relationship we've seen in the past.

I do have a bit of missing data on the American side--my data are about a year old--but the rest of the data are quite timely.

I'm only going to take a few minutes. This is an extremely complicated topic. I can't think of another topic in social research or polling that provides the same combination of complexity, interests, and relevance.

I could take the time to show you a presentation that would give you a decidedly different view of what I think the overall conclusions are. The public opinion and public attitudes, more importantly, are a much more stable way of looking at things. We don't just look at opinions. We look at attitudes, we compare values, and we find that they are rife with contradictions. Finding out what Canadians really think about this relationship is a pretty daunting task. It's much more difficult than a lot of the more routine assignments in public opinion research.

I want to stress two fundamental conclusions that we're seeing about the relationship right now.

Despite some ambiguities and contradictions in Canadian and American attitudes and values, the similarities are far more impressive than the differences. More importantly, through time we're seeing a pattern where the differences between the two countries in terms of core values and attitudes are actually getting smaller and not larger. That's important, because it contradicts a lot of the perceived wisdom about the relationship between the two countries.

I would argue that the differences are magnified in the minds of Canadians by a narcissism. Many Canadians feel they would like to have the differences be larger than what they are. But in their heart of hearts, Canadians do acknowledge that they believe the differences are relatively modest and that they are actually getting smaller, which is consistent with a lot of the serious academic research.

There are significant differences, certainly; there are enough to sustain a separate sense of national identity. But overall you could argue that you would be hard-pressed to find two countries in the advanced western world that share more similar value systems than Canada and the United States.

The second point I want to make is that there are recent shifts in our reciprocal outlooks--how Canadians look at Americans and how Americans look at Canadians--coupled with political changes that have actually strengthened the opportunities for returning to a more ambitious bilateral, perhaps trilateral, North American agenda. I'll try to give you a few pieces of information in support of those claims, but I'm not going to go through these in any depth.

I'd like to start by noting that there is a sharp distinction between asking Canadians if we're becoming more or less like the United States and when we ask what we would like to happen. We find a very sharp difference. The clear majority of Canadians say they'd like to become less like the United States. In fact this is part of this point of difference. One of the things in the past that sustained a sense of national identity in Canada was that we're not sure exactly what our identity is, but dammit, we're not American, and that's a good thing.

When you ask, as well, if we are becoming more like the United States, by an equally clear margin in the reverse direction Canadians say that in fact we are becoming more like the United States. As I mentioned earlier, when we do the comparisons through time, and with some of our value comparisons, which are consistent with the international literature, they suggest that the value differences separating Canadians and Americans are relatively modest and the differences are getting smaller, not larger.

We find another area of considerable ambiguity in the U.S.-Canada relations and the Canadian optic on this. Despite the fact that at various times Canadians express deep reservations about the United States, its foreign policy, leadership, and so forth, we find the interesting statistic that about 95% of Canadians say it's at least somewhat important to strengthen relationships between the two countries. What do we find when we ask that question in the Untied States? It's exactly the same number. Despite the proliferation of irritants that have characterized the relationship over the last decade, there is a deep belief that the relationship should be strengthened and that there are mutual interests for both Canadians Americans in doing so.

What's also interesting is that the strains we see in the relationship over the past several years have actually dissipated to a large extent, and we've seen a warming in the outlook of both Americans on Canadians and Canadians on America. By the way, this movement pre-dated the change in administration. It started a couple of years ago. So Canadians would also acknowledge that the relationship has in fact improved and that that's an important thing to do.

It is the case that the American outlook on Canada, for the most part, ranges from being very favourable to benign. There are very few Americans who have a negative impression in the United States. In fact the incidence is less than 10%. It never goes much above that. In the Canadian public we do find a higher incidence of unfavourable attitudes, but again I would connect that back to that narcissism of difference and note that they aren't that deeply felt, because in contrast to the incidence of people who say they have an unfavourable view of the United States--roughly 30% or 40% as it oscillates through time--about 75% of Canadians say the United States is our best friend. And as I also mentioned earlier, almost 100% say we should strengthen that relationship. The instance of those who have a favourable outlook on the United States has actually been improving.

Another point that I thought was interesting as a point of comparison, which is an antidote to a lot of received wisdom within each of those countries about true attitudes to NAFTA and free trade, is we find, for example, that both within our country and in the United States, by commentators like Lou Dobbs, there is a sense that there is violent and growing opposition to free trade and protectionist sentiments are on the rise. There is no question that the United States has experienced a period of what borders on isolationism following the exuberant internationalism that emerged in the aftermath of September 11 and the perceived failure of the foreign policy to deal with that. What we have found is that notwithstanding those views, there are problems with the external world and a growing desire to pull up the drawbridge. We do find that the incidence of Americans who still support free trade is in the 60% to 70% range, and in fact it is somewhat higher in Canada.

We have seen some wobble in that support in recent years, and this is something we should be quite mindful of. Generally speaking, when we look at attitudes to trade, the free movement of Canadians throughout American society, the concerns with security threats emanating from Canada and so forth, we see that the general characteristic of the American outlook on Canada is that it is relatively benign. In fact, there is no country in the world that is seen as relatively less threatening than Canada. That's not to say that Americans aren't concerned about security with respect to Canada. They are. They are concerned with security with respect to the entire world, including their own country.

There is some evidence that the security ethic that has gripped upper North America since September 11 shows some signs of fraying, particularly in the United States. That will be interesting to watch.

By the way, in the theme of contradictions and ambiguity, again, there is the fact that we find majority support for free trade in both Canada and the United States, and indeed in Mexico as well, which is something that hasn't always been the case. If we go back to 1990, the obverse was the case: the clear majority in all three countries objected to free trade. But we find that this co-exists with the sense that free trade hasn't necessarily been all that good for me and my country. All the member countries think that the other partners did better than them. But it is important to recognize that beyond those irritations there's still a pretty strong commitment to free trade.

I already mentioned that there had been a warming in the relationship between the two countries that predated the change in administration, but Canadians have expressed almost a collective degree of Obama envy. As this phenomenon to the south has gripped the United States, they have looked at that with a considerable amount of intrigue and some degree of envy, but there is a sense that this is something that has the potential to fundamentally alter the relationship. About half of Canadians say it won't have much effect, but fully half of Canadians believe this is going to profoundly change the relationship between the two countries. And when we probe further and ask if that is a good or bad thing, by a very decisive margin virtually all of those people think the changes will be for the better. That's not to say that Canadians are not critical in their unabashed admiration for President Obama. When asked further about certain types of policy issues, like concerns about trade, they express deep concerns about possible protectionist sentiment. They also express a fair degree of resistance to a potential request to extend the mission in Afghanistan. So there is a mixture of admiration but a fairly circumspect view in terms of some of the policy questions that affect the relationships between the two countries.

I'd like to wrap up with one of the intriguing areas that seems to develop the highest levels of support. We asked what areas should be a focus, in terms of having a more ambitious renewed bilateral agenda. There's the idea of a blended approach to dealing with climate change, the economy, and security, where we would collectively figure out a strategy for dealing with the potential obsolescence of our manufacturing automotive sector. There is a sense that although Canadians strongly support the Kyoto ratification, trying to manage an entire globe is a good idea in theory but in practice extremely difficult. A continent now looks like a fairly appealing alternative.

There's also a sense that energy self-sufficiency as a bargaining tool couldn't help relax some of the tensions people have seen growing at the border. There has been a growing recognition by Canadians that the problems with the border have made it more difficult to travel to the United States to do business, and the hard economic data seems to support that there has been a downturn as well.

I think I've taken ten minutes, so I'm going to stop now. I'd love to answer any questions. I have all kinds of other data if you would like to ask questions on what I've presented, or any other related areas.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Graves.

We'll move to the first round of seven minutes with Mr. Pearson, please.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Mr. Graves, thank you for coming. We really appreciate it, especially on short notice.

Obviously, the way Canadians looked at the Obama thing was quite transformational. It seems to me--even my own staff were very much like this--that people drew a distinction between Mr. Bush and the American people, but when it comes to Mr. Obama it's indivisible; they join the two things together.

I realize you're saying that Canadians might have certain issues they disagree on, but is it your sense too that Canadians no longer separate the presidency from where the American people are?

[Frank Graves]

That's true to a large extent, but I believe it's important to recognize that Canadians disentangle some of the important substantive issues in our bilateral relationship. They don't bestow a halo effect that says he has carte blanche because he's such an overwhelmingly impressive guy--which they believe. They aren't saying at the same time that basically any ideas he comes up with are fine with them.

For example, Canadians will say they are quite impressed with the level of economic preparation President Obama seems to have generated in advance and as he took office. On the other hand and at the same time, Canadians expressed considerable concerns about the fiscal consequences of that program down the road.

Similarly, when we look at issues around protectionism and free trade, they express considerable concerns. The majority say they're quite wary and mindful of comments that President Obama made before he was elected about opening up the NAFTA agreement. When confronted with the question of whether they would be amenable to participating in a surge in or an extension of the Afghanistan mission--which President Obama has identified as an area of foreign policy he'd like to shift attention to--the answer comes back with a pretty decisive two-to-one margin saying no, they wouldn't be along.

The negative approval rating for President Obama was 3%. That's a pretty heady number. It will be difficult to sustain that, but nonetheless it gives you a sense that the people who don't think President Obama is a really terrific guy could have a meeting in a phone booth in Canada. So it's a view that is pretty well universal. But it is important to recognize that doesn't carry over to areas of public policy.

By the way, the separation of the administration and the American public is something the public has made for some time. At no point did we see Canadians say they didn't like Americans or didn't admire American society. They just weren't very impressed. And by the way, the numbers who didn't like the last administration weren't all that terribly different from what we saw in the American public.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

So in a situation like Afghanistan, I realize the Canadian people feel somewhat or maybe decidedly negative about that mission, but where are the American people on that file?

[Frank Graves]

The Americans are relatively divided on that issue. They are much more amenable to that than Iraq, where the attitudes are much more negative.

These issues have been moving around in both Canada and the United States. It's important to recognize, for example--we forget this in the aftermath of history--that within a month before the Iraq war was engaged, the majority of Canadians supported going to Iraq. The vast majority of Canadians--about 75%--supported the Afghanistan mission from the outset. That devolved into about an equal number who supported and opposed it as time went on, and it has remained relatively stable. But in the fall we saw a significant shift, largely caused by a growing sense of fatigue and frustration that the objectives of the mission--which everybody agrees are good--may not be achieved. We have seen a fairly precipitous decline in support for the mission.

So it's difficult to disentangle the fact that Canadians would reject President Obama's appeal from the fact that we have seen a downward movement in Canada in support of the mission in the last few months.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

On the issue of things like smart power that Secretary of State Clinton is throwing out there, we've talked about how Afghanistan is perceived a little bit differently in the United States than it is here. But let's take something like Darfur or Sudan, which have been on the agenda for some time. A well-known Canadian published a piece a couple of days ago in which he was calling on Canadians to start working with Mr. Obama on something like Darfur, and there is a pretty strong representation of Canadians who would like to see something done there.

In your interpretation, do you think that Canadians would feel re-energized around files like that--I'm not speaking of just Darfur, but other things--now that Mr. Obama is there? Do they feel there's more possibility?

[Frank Graves]

Yes, I do, but let me hasten to point out that they've never not felt energized about these issues. When I mentioned the polarization in Canadian society about the Afghanistan mission, that applied almost exclusively to the military mission, which has produced high levels of division. When we asked Canadians, “Do you support the humanitarian and development components of the mission?”, 90% of Canadians said they support that, and that number has remained fairly robust.

Secondly, I mentioned the fact that Canadians were in fact supportive of going to Iraq even before the hostilities actually ensued. The main reason that their support dissipated was the fact that it didn't occur under a multilateral aegis of the UN or some other body similar to that. So the appeal by President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton to smart power and multilateralism will resonate very strongly with Canadians who have already been quite strongly committed to these things.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Finally, on an issue like Iran, President Obama has shown a certain inclination to hold discussions. How is that perceived up here? How do we Canadians look at that part of the world? Are we basically insecure about it, or would we tend to follow his lead?

[Frank Graves]

I don't have specific data on that, but I do have data on how Canadians view the so-called “clash of civilizations” thesis, which argues that there are fundamental normative differences between the Islamic world and the western world. Although there is some support for that view in Canada, it would be roughly about half the level of support that we would find, for example, in the United States.

Canadian society, by the way, unlike both American and European, has remained fairly tenaciously committed to multiculturalism, and this is one of the distinguishing points. Just to give you one interesting point of comparison, in 2000 American opposition to immigration, predating September 11, ran in the same numbers as that of Canadians--about 40% said there were too many immigrants; in Canada it was 30%. Both countries jumped up, unsurprisingly, by about 10 points. What happened following that is really quite surprising. American opposition to immigration, which is at one-third of the levels of what it is in Canada, continued to rise and is now in the 60% range; in Canada it's in the mid-20% to 30% range. And that's true not just of attitudes to immigration, but attitudes to multiculturalism, diversity, and so forth. So Canadians are sort of taking a separate path.

I spoke about a world of convergence; it's not unique to Canada and the United States. The rhythms of post-materialism make most of the advanced western world look more and more similar with respect to values. This is one key area where Canadians are taking a different route.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Pearson.

Monsieur Crête.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As someone who has been quite involved with the Canada-US Interparliamentary Group over the past few years, I have to say that perception is not an indicator of knowledge. Have you assessed at all how well Americans know Canadians and vice-versa? The members of the Interparliamentary Group observed that Americans, even ones who hold high office, are not as knowledgeable about the features that make Canada distinct as they really should be.

[Frank Graves]

That's an excellent question. Do Americans know much about us? The answer is no. In fact, the levels of public fluency on Canada are relatively abysmal.

I'll give you one anecdote. I haven't updated this, but I know that when we tested in the early part of this decade the number of Americans who could identify our Prime Minister--who'd been around, at that point, for 11 years--it was about 7%. At the same time, they were able to name the Mexican president--who had just taken office and who did less business with them--to the tune of 25%.

Now, that's a good and a bad thing. Obviously, on some issues it would be best to have higher levels of fluency, because in some cases a higher level of fluency produces higher levels of sympathy. The trade and borders issue is a crucial one on which I think we should be summoning public opinion. One of the reasons I'm regretful that I don't have the most recent data to tell you about what Americans think about these issues is that I believe it would be highly useful for our embassy--and I think even at a sub-national level, for Canadians--to lobby to make the point of view known that the American public itself is not all that concerned about security threats emanating from Canada. In fact, there are other areas where, for example, it would be important to point out that the majority of Americans remain committed to free trade despite some concerns about what's going on with the economy.

I do think it would be important in certain areas to get some of the information in a more timely fashion and to share that with some of the key decision-makers. It's not just the American public. As you rightfully point out, the level of knowledge in even key decision-makers in Congress and so forth is not really what we had hoped it would be. I think this would be an area that requires concerted attention.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

I have a question for you on an entirely different subject,

Have you collected data by region in Quebec, Canada and the United States? I have travelled to different parts of the United States and let me tell you that Americans are very different, depending on where they live. Americans who live in New England are very different from their fellow citizens in Wisconsin. The same can be said of Americans who live in Pennsylvania and California. Have you compiled any data on this, from the Canadian as well as from the American perspective?

[Frank Graves]

Yes, I do. I studied these in some depth.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Is this data available?

[Frank Graves]

Absolutely. I've already published some of this. I have a number of articles that have been published in scholarly journals. I have some other ones that are in a more accessible format, which I'd be glad to pass on to the committee.

The regional differences in Canada with respect to attitudes in the United States are relatively straightforward and fairly easy to understand. For example, generally speaking, we find Albertans and, almost to the same extent, Ontarians more sympathetic and favourably oriented to the United States.

We have found one difference, really, which is for Quebec. Quebec went through a period of relatively negative views of the United States. The recent data I've seen suggests that's really improved quite significantly. It looks maybe a little more like it used to during the original free trade debate, when Quebeckers were ahead of the curve in some respects on attitudes to free trade in the early 1990s.

There are some other interesting differences as well. The really interesting differences, I think, occur more along demographic than social class lines. In the United States, the regional differences are extremely difficult to understand. American regional differences are very complex.

I mentioned that Americans and Canadians overall look relatively similar on many key issues and values, but the internal heterogeneity, the internal differentiation, within the United States is much more diversified than it is in Canada, and not just on a regional basis. American society is much more divided on issues of social class and race. We find much more consensus in Canada on many of the key issues than we do in the United States.

Yes, there are differences, certainly, that would occur across border states, but some of them are quite puzzling. I can pass those along. There are some recurring patterns, but there, they're considerably more challenging from a research perspective than understanding the more stable, familiar, and frankly less exaggerated patterns of difference across region and demographics that we see in Canada.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

The North American economy is very integrated. During the manufacturing process, a product often criss-crosses the border four, five or six times. Do people realize that our North American economy is integrated, or do Americans, Canadians and Quebeckers think that all products are manufactured at home and that barriers can be thrown up to protect jobs? Do we have any statistics on people's perception of the situation?

[Frank Graves]

Again, in Canada there is a very high level of awareness of the interdependent nature of our economies. Part of this sense of the importance of the relationship is focused not just on the fact that we think Americans are our best friends, but on a real politic understanding of the maturing business opportunities that go along with this.

As for American society on the levels of awareness, no. For example, we've tested whether Americans know that Canada is their strongest trading partner. No. It would rank sixth or seventh, well down the list. Do they understand the value-added process whereby goods flow back and forth across the border? No, they don't.

But what is interesting is that Americans, unlike their neighbours to the north, think Canadians are just like them, and they would consider that a compliment. They think Canadians are “just like us”, that they're a little different, that they're up north and a little colder, but basically they're just like Americans and therefore they don't have to worry about us that much. They would think that would be saying a good thing. Canadians would bridle at that, as I pointed out at the beginning of my presentation, and would say no, we're really quite different, and we shouldn't be reduced to being just like Americans, even if on many issues we are just like Americans.

By the way, the pattern of ignorance in the American public about what's going on in Canada, which is perhaps much more of a concern in the elite portions of American society, can be a mixed blessing. For example, we tested at one point whether Americans were aware that Canada was fighting alongside their soldiers in Afghanistan. No, they weren't, for the most part, or they had limited awareness. When you told them, they said that was a good thing and it made them feel a little more favourable. Interestingly enough, in the same survey we asked if Canadians were fighting alongside Americans in Iraq, and they replied yes, they were. So raising public fluency could be a mixed bag here. Let's be careful.

I'm also not a strong believer in American public opinion, which is very favourable to Canada. It's a pretty difficult beast to move. It's pretty inert. The idea that some kind of a rational discourse will raise this fluency and therefore everything will be fine is a bit of a mug's game. I believe that we have to be much more focused and strategic.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Crête.

We'll move to the government side, to Mr. Abbott, please.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Graves, your input is really very helpful. When you use the word “inert”, it strikes me that in other words it's not moving, it's just there. Canada just exists, the frozen north, and they're nice people and so on and so forth. Out of 300 million Americans, in your judgment, how many would give a thought to Canada in these next seven days?

[Frank Graves]

It would be a very small number, but I do believe there are portions, and we've done some segmentation analysis dividing up American society into certain groups where we should perhaps be focusing our efforts. One of the problems I've detected is that the most positive views of Canada tend to be among older Americans.

So a lot of the more cosmopolitan, well-educated young Americans, who are the folks who are going to be influencing the policy and the economic agenda of the next ten to twenty years, have basically almost no awareness of what's going on in Canada. That's not to say they wouldn't have very favourable attitudes if they were introduced to them. So we should be making a little headway on some of those groups, because a lot of our constituency isn't going to be around that much longer.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Let's just pick a number—60 million out of 300 million, 20%—just so you and I are talking about the same thing. Regarding that 60 million who might have had some interaction, might have a relative in Canada or somebody who moved down there, or might like Rich Little, or whatever—showing my age, I guess—my question is this. Do you have any research that would give us an idea of the perceptions Americans hold of Canadian values? In other words, which of our values, if we did an ink blot test and said “Canada”, would they choose? What value?

[Frank Graves]

I have tested what they think about our values, and as I mentioned earlier, they think our values are largely consistent and resonant with American values, and on that point they're right. If you look at the top values rated by Canadians and Americans, the hierarchy is almost identical. Freedom is at the top of the list. There are a few differences if we move into things like equality, for example, which is rated a little higher in Canada, but the differences are not that impressive.

When you ask them, top of mind, what's the first thing that comes to mind about Canada, as I mentioned, they tend to think of Canada as being like the United States, a little colder, a little smaller.

If you were to put a summary metaphor on how the countries look at each other, Canadians tend to look at the United States like this big turbo-charged Humvee, and it's really exciting—they wouldn't mind driving one, but they're a little concerned about its effect on the environment. So Canadians admire both the power and the wealth, but at the same time are wary of it.

Americans kind of look at Canadians as a Prius, kind of a little bit of a hectoring aunt who's very responsible, but they don't think they'd rather trade their Humvee in on the Prius, not yet. Maybe when the price of oil hits $1.50 they'll think about that.