Neighborly relations have a tendency to be complicated and often difficult. Growing up in the Netherlands it was evident from a very early age that our neighbors to the east, the Germans, were not our natural friends. A different culture, a different way of organizing the economy, a distinctly dissimilar sense of humor and of course some fresh wounds incurred during the Second World War contributed to a sometimes testy relationship which at times (for instance when the Dutch and German soccer teams met) boiled over. At the same time however there has been peace for over 50 years and Germany is the Netherlands’ single largest trading partner. Relations are good, many Dutch spend their holidays in Germany and vice-versa, and you would hardly ever see polls in the Netherlands which tried to rate our feelings about our easterly neighbors or see lengthy discussions on whether Gerhard Schroeder is likeable or not, or whether values in each respective country are diverging or converging. Such exercises are largely pointless and apart from the occasional flare-up during the noted soccer meetings and discussions over the Germans attending Second World War memorials, the Dutch and Germans are doing fine. I certainly never felt any real animosity or dislike towards them. Why would I?

The same cannot be said for the Canadians and Americans. On the contrary on the Canadian side of the border there continues to be a need to define oneself vis-à-vis the southern neighbor, and there is an abundance of futile discussions over the relationship between the two countries. The Canadian identity to a large extent seems to be a continuous search for what is not Canadian, and very often the “what-is-not” is equated to what is American. The absurd thing is that we are talking about two countries that are economically more integrated than the Netherlands and Germany and are culturally closer than any two European countries. When I got here I was amazed at the anti-American invective and the small-mindedness of some of the points that were being put forward during discussions about America. I am, a very great friend of America and see Canada as a stepping-stone to launch some of my activities into the US, so I was always quite interested to talk about bilateral relations and especially to talk about things American. Conversations always turned into discussions, and discussions got lengthier and more complicated in the run-up to the war in Iraq and the Canadian reluctance to join that effort.

I write about this again as I came across this piece of news where a Canadian-based research firm analyzed the feelings of Canadians towards George Bush and they came up with the fact that more than 60% of Canadians dislike Bush, but still have an overall positive feeling about the US. I was irritated the moment I saw the heading and decided to do some research on what firm had generated these numbers. It was not a complete surprise that I found out that it was the Environics Research Group, a Canadian opinion research firm that has hit the news before with, in my view, some contentious research and numbers. The group’s founder, Michael Adams, appears in the news here on a regular basis and most recently he ruined one morning for me by appearing on the radio that I was listening to while driving into town, with the message that Canada and the US were culturally and socially diverging and not converging as most would believe and he had the numbers to support that thesis, or so he claimed. That sounded fishy as it contravened everything I had experienced in my 4 years here and I got the idea that Adams was not really engaged in social research, but in social research to help define and implement social and cultural engineering. His conclusion was based on comparing attitudes in both countries following the 9/11 attacks and he contrasts some very strong emotions prompted by the event in America with an absence, or a reduced incidence, of these emotions in Canada. That’s were you get different sets of data sure, but that does not mean that values on both sides of the border are diverging. Again, Adams is manipulating manifestations of social behavior in order to support his theory that Canadians are very different from Americans and are becoming increasingly different. Approaching your subjects with biased questions at specific points in time can get you any result you want.

Let me give you an example in order to illustrate what I think is really happening. Shortly after 9/11, Wal-Mart in Canada offered a small Stars-and-Stripes flag at its checkout. I promptly bought one which continues to be on display in our kitchen and I keep it there because I like America, but also because I like to provoke the Canadian visitors a bit and we get quite a few of them. And they bite, almost immediately. Once they have seen the flag (or even before that, in case we drink our coffees or beers before they have had a chance to enter the kitchen) the discussion centers around America and they feel the need to embark on an explanation of what is wrong with America and what Canada should be doing about it. This is a first line reaction I have discovered because once I start probing (and Irene is good at this as well) and outlining some of the flaws in their argument they quickly retract and acknowledge that this emotional reaction is a typical Canadian thing, but that in essence there’s nothing wrong with Americans. In fact if you probe further they are almost always quite positive and relaxed about America and many for instance – and the numbers bear this out as well – would have liked to see Canadian support for the coalition invasion of Iraq. Many Canadians do business in the States, have a second home in the States; and most of them eat, drink and sleep American culture and yes, many Canadians even turn out to be Americans when you ask them about where they are coming from.

Now a cross-section of our circle of friends may not meet the statistical rigor that Mr. Adams applies to his efforts, but it strikes me that his results are derived by touching the surface and it elicits an emotional first-line reaction. So his research on Bush generates a negative reaction but it is complemented with the comment that overall Canadians remain positive about Americans. But guess what makes the headlines? What his research fails to do is to dig deeper and find that underlying all this negative traditional emotional nonsense is a pretty balanced and articulate opinion about the USA which is not at all that negative. He may also find that given the economic convergence, social convergence is right around the corner and that culturally the two countries have been very much alike for a long time anyway.

There are other weird incidences. At a party quite a while ago, I met this very successful guy. Made millions, lives in a spectacular multi-million dollar home, yet when I mentioned I was a foreigner and new to Canada, he immediately retreated and said: “you probably think that we Canadians are pushovers, right?”. Huh? It never occurred to me that Canadians were, and even if they were it would most certainly not apply to this guy, but it truly amazed me that someone would go into a conversation with a stranger and qualify himself as a pushover, just because of his nationality. Would an American ever do that? Nope, I don’t think so. Would a Dutchman do that? Never ever.

But circling back to Adams and his research I believe that Adams’ objectives are not necessarily anti-American. Adams dislikes the nature of the political wind blowing from the south and he cleverly – or at least he thinks so – uses this to promote his views and the Canadian media give him of course unlimited airplay to do this. The Globe and Mail (not my political flavour, but a very good newspaper nevertheless) and the CBC perpetuate the myth about America by reiterating these surface-level observations for their own political needs. Those needs come from the left side of the political spectrum and everything that reeks of free-trade, privatization, low-taxes and pre-emption is directly associated with those evil neighbors down south and what is easier to do than play to some surface level emotions that you know will come to life once you appeal to them? It is an old tactic and has been used many times before and is used over and over again by those in Canada that are desperate to hang-on to some antiquated notions of statehood, culture and social-democrat dogmas. Canadians can do much better than that; people like Mr. Adams lead them to irrelevance.

The result is a distorted debate about Canadian-American relations, unpleasant incidents as we witnessed earlier this year and potential damage to the interests of those who do not think in terms of dividing and diverging but who think and live by working together and by advancing both nations in the spirit of co-operation and above all, freedom. Diverging? If Europeans with different cultures and languages are slowly converging how on earth can Canadians and Americans be diverging?