Why Canadians and Americans view our relationship differently. wildpixel/Getty Images
Why Canadians and Americans view our relationship differently.
wildpixel/Getty ImagesThe stereotype is that Canadians are kind, but they by and large do not take kindly to President Trump’s idea of making Canada our 51st state. As of April, two-thirds of Canadians considered the U.S. to be “unfriendly” or an “enemy,” and 61% say they have started boycotting American companies. However, Canadian dislike and distrust of the U.S. is not new. Canadian views of the U.S. have trended down for decades, from a high of 81% of Canadians holding favorable views of the U.S. under Clinton in the ’90’s, to hovering in the 50-60% range in the aughts, to only 24% favorable as of March. Meanwhile, 87% of Americans view Canada favorably. There’s a huge mismatch there.
So what’s behind these decades of resentment? How does culture play into it? And what does it mean for our politics that our nations have fundamentally different ideas about our relationship to one another? Brittany discusses with Scaachi Koul, senior writer at Slate, and Jon Parmenter, associate professor of history at Cornell.
This episode was produced by Liam McBain. It was edited by Neena Pathak. We had engineering support from David Greenburg. Our Supervising Producer is Barton Girdwood. Our Executive Producer is Veralyn Williams. Our VP of Programming is Yolanda Sangweni.