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237 13 Thinking Outside the Box in Canada-Mexico Relations: The Long Road from Convenience to Commitment andrew F. cooper The Elusive Balance Point and the Super-Sized Neighbour Canadian-Mexican relations can be described as being driven by a sense of convenience as opposed to commitment. Rather than operating as “like-minded” countries, these two countries have based their interconnection on an instinctive need to find ways of balance vis-à-vis the United States (Cooper 1999). This habit—although loosening somewhat under the weight of multiple contacts—is still strong enough to drive (and arguably distort) the relationship. Rather than building toward a strategic partnership based on their common geographical location and membership in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA),1 Mexico and Canada have a tactical perspective that prevails with a deep overview of sensitivity and tension contradicted only with bursts of common purpose on an episodic basis directed at their super-sized neighbour. Signs of this convenient behaviour obviously stood out prior to the NAFTA connection, as witnessed most famously by the shared resistance of the governments of Canadian prime minster Pierre Trudeau and Mexican president José López Portillo to Ronald Reagan’s proposal (as part of his initial presidential campaign in November 1979) for a North American accord. However, it came to the fore during the launch of the NAFTA project when Canada, at least at the outset , was a “reluctant” participant. Having signed its own deal with its dominant trading partner, in the form of the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement, Canada was highly skeptical about the value of entering into a set of negotiations that would extend this type of arrangement to include Mexico. Symbolically, NAFTA raised the spectre that Canada would no longer be special. Instrumentally, it raised the danger of Canada joining Mexico as a spoke in the American hub. Also recognized by participant/observers was the fact that this ambivalent attitude toward NAFTA was only overcome by the Canadian instinct for being an insider as opposed to staying on the outside (Burney 2005). 238 Andrew F. Cooper Even in the post-integration era, the image of convenience—even opportunism —is compelling. The Jean Chrétien government did its best to put the brakes on President Vicente Fox’s initiative for a NAFTA-plus agenda. And, despite the photo-ops of the three North American “amigos” at the April 2001 Quebec summit , the chemistry between Fox and Chrétien cooled considerably with Canada’s reluctance to bite on the “big enchilada” (Cooper 2001). Whereas Fox called for an expanded NAFTA that would eventually become a hemispheric version of the European Union with borders open to immigration as well as trade, Chrétien rejected the idea after saying it was the structure of North America, with two smaller countries on either side of the powerful United States, that made the idea unworkable (De Palma 2001; Pastor 2001). Yet, in early March 2003, at the most compelling moment of the Iraq crisis, Chrétien and Fox met and spoke to similar scripts about a compromise solution that would distance them from the Bush administration without putting them explicitly in the “un-willing” camp of France, Germany, and Russia. At a personal level, this meeting still exhibited some elements of tension (with Mexican newspapers commenting that Chrétien called Fox “indecisive”). On a structural level, however, the meeting was highly salient in showcasing a sense of solidarity against the US push to remove Saddam Hussein by force. Paul Martin’s main policy association with Mexico prior to becoming prime minister was his role with former president Ernesto Zedillo as joint chairs of the UN Commission on the Private Sector and Development. In conformity with this design, the Canadian-Mexican connection played out most robustly in the multilateral domain. Mexico was included on the list for a seat at the table of the proposed Leaders’ G-20 Summit, based on the G-20 finance ministers that Martin had campaigned for during his time in office. Although set in a very different context of North/South relations, this initiative echoed, in procedural terms at least, some of the techniques used in the 1981 Cancún meeting of selective world leaders co-hosted by Trudeau and Portillo. More cautiously, Canada and Mexico took parallel defensive positions on UN reform at least in terms of an expansion of the permanent members of the UN Security Council. Yet, if they were at odds with the claims of the...

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