It's a little difficult to figure out where you want me to start.
How far do we need to go? Canada and the United States have a very long history of working together to resolve problems, going back to the 1935 trade agreement, where we first agreed that we would treat each other as best partners rather than worst partners, which was the case before that, through NORAD, NATO, and a whole host of agreements. We have more than 350 bilateral treaties in place between Canada and the United States right now, indicating the extent of cooperation between us.
But given the nature of our interdependence, both on the economic and the security fronts, the job is never done. There is always a new frontier to cross, a new opportunity to seize, and a new way of looking at things. In order to do that, we have to be conscious of the fact that the United States is our most important partner, whether we want them to be or not. And I think that's a very Canadian way of putting it.
The Americans live next door. They are a global power. We are not a global power, but we do have a high level of economic and security interdependence with the United States. For instance, on the security front, the idea of ensuring our security on anything other than a bilateral basis is just not possible. Canada doesn't have the resources required to ensure our security. We must do it on a bilateral basis.
Since the 1939 agreement between the Roosevelt and King administrations, we have done it on a bilateral, cooperative basis. And we've both benefited from that. So the idea that we can go our own way is a ludicrous idea in the Canadian context. It's with that kind of perspective that we say to the Americans: “We want to be your partner. We want to be a reliable partner. You can count on us. And on that basis, let's solve a few problems that we have on the security front.” That's the only way we're going to be able to do that.