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Asa McKercher looks to Canada’s future by understanding its past relations with the U.S.

He is described by colleagues as ‘one of our most prolific writers on Canada-U.S. relations.’

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Moira MacDonald

November 04, 2024

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Asa McKercher
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Editor’s note: the interviews for this article were conducted before the outcome of the 2024 U.S. presidential election was announced.

Asa McKercher has written, co-written and edited multiple books on Canada-U.S. relations, has dozens of papers and book chapters to his name  and has recently taken up the Steven K. Hudson Research Chair in Canada-U.S. Relations at the Brian Mulroney Institute of Government at St. Francis Xavier University.

But even with all that expertise, he is just as amazed as the less versed among us when it comes to how close the U.S. presidential election appears to be. It is a moment when “there’s a clear fork in the road about the direction of some fundamental issues in American politics that go right to the heart of the American experiment,” he says. “Among those issues are the rule of law, fundamental freedoms and notions of liberty.”

“Despite everything we know about [Republican presidential nominee] Donald Trump, despite the 34 felonies, despite the fact that he’s an adjudicated rapist and a serial liar, it’s still basically a coin flip, which is a fascinating situation in itself,” says Dr. McKercher, who landed in Antigonish, N.S. in August to take up his new position after his previous role as assistant professor in the department of history at the Royal Military College of Canada in his hometown of Kingston, Ont. Part of Dr. McKercher’s and his Mulroney Institute colleagues’ agenda will be sifting through the aftermath of the U.S. election – and its implications – joining perhaps many stateside election officials, lawyers and judges expected to do the same. While the Canada-U.S. relationship “could go in various directions,” Canada should prepare for a “more inward-looking” America when it comes to trade, foreign policy and migration, he advises, regardless of who wins. “The United States is becoming … a less important country in the world,” he says, with the rise of China and the development of new spheres of influence such as the BRICS group of emerging market economies.  Canada can no longer take a U.S.-led world order for granted, in which it has largely prospered since the 1940s. Less important is a relative term, though, and the fact remains that our immediate neighbour is and will likely remain our biggest trading partner.

“Asa is always finding new approaches, new sources, new ways to reconsider Canada-U.S. relations, including topics and periods that people often think are already very well covered in the literature.”

While Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris has criticized Mr. Trump’s call for up to a 20 per cent tariff on global imports, Dr. McKercher – who will also serve as associate professor in public policy and governance at St.Fx, as well as continue to hold fellow roles at the University of Toronto’s Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History and Queen’s University’s Centre for International and Defence Policy – points out she was one of 10 Democrat senators who voted against the modified NAFTA agreement made under Mr. Trump, and her party has also supported tariffs. “She’s interested in safeguarding American jobs and American industry,” says Dr. McKercher, who is curious about whether a “common consensus” between Canada and the U.S. on shared interests, such as eliminating trade barriers and constructive cooperative relationships between the two governments, is “breaking down after 70 or 80 years.”

As a teenager, Dr. McKercher’s younger self was already interested in history when he read Canadian historian Jack Granatstein’s, Who Killed Canadian History? a book that captivated his imagination: “The idea that we need a national story of some sort was a really big draw to me as a young person, and still is, to a certain extent,” he says.

Coming of age in the early 2000s as Bill Clinton’s presidency gave way to that of George W. Bush and the fateful day of Sept. 11, 2001, he began his undergraduate studies in history at the University of Ottawa in 2003, just months after the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The American war on terror had observers making comparisons to the Cold War, prompting him to investigate that historical period. “I got interested in history as a result of looking for parallels between the past and the present,” he says, adding that the discipline also seemed more based on evidence versus theory. “One thing kind of led to another.”

The same can be said for his scholarly progression. Completing his PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2013, he has since written and co-written widely on many aspects of Canadian foreign policy and Canada-U.S. relations, including books on the Eisenhower and Kennedy eras, and journal articles about diverse aspects of foreign policy under multiple Canadian prime ministers, including John Diefenbaker, Lester B. Pearson and Stephen Harper.

Calling Dr. McKercher “one of our most prolific writers on Canada-U.S. relations,” fellow historian and collaborator Susan Colbourn says one of his gifts is the ability to seize a unique perspective on a topic. He’s also generous in sharing what he finds in the archives, and has been among advocates for reform to Canada’s access to information laws, which keep many historical documents related to foreign policy, intelligence and defense out of scholars’ reach.

“Asa is always finding new approaches, new sources, new ways to reconsider Canada-U.S. relations, including topics and periods that people often think are already very well covered in the literature,” says Dr. Colbourn, associate research professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University in Durham, N.C. Case in point, he used a Cold War era bestselling book from 1961, called Peacemaker or Powder-Monkey: Canada’s Role in a Revolutionary World, to illustrate how, despite a history of foreign policy alignment with the U.S. and western countries, Canadians have sometimes flirted rather vigorously with the prospect of neutrality.

“A good history course is about more than the here and now. It’s really about the human experience, which I think a lot of people are looking for information about in today’s world.”

Unlike other countries that share borders with multiple neighbours they don’t trust, in Canada, foreign policy is rarely a hot-button issue, even if we are sensitive to any suggestions we are vassals to a larger power. When it does garner political attention, “a lot of foreign policy is domestic policy,” says Dr. McKercher. That means that it’s predicated on how foreign events affect domestic matters, such as late prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King’s maneuvers against bringing in conscription during the Second World War to avoid reigniting a divisive crisis over the issue with French Canadians.

Canada “is a relatively secure country,” says Dr. McKercher. “We have three ocean borders and a huge, relatively friendly country to our south.” But while Canada has enjoyed “the luxury of distance from the world’s problems … in a globalized world, maybe that’s not the case anymore.”

That may become only too apparent post-Nov. 5. The prospect of a Republican win raises some “very weird things to think about,” should former president Trump follow through on some of his campaign rhetoric, says Dr. McKercher.

“It could be some frightening times to be an American or someone whose country is next to the United States,” he says, giving the example of Canada’s challenge with an  an irregular border crossing between Quebec and Champlain, N.Y., used by 96,000 asylum seekers from the U.S. side between 2017, when then-President Trump drastically cut the number of refugees the U.S. would accept, and 2023, when it was closed under a negotiated agreement.

“What if there are 12 or 20 or 100 Roxham Roads in which there are tens of thousands of people escaping every day because they don’t want to be rounded up and deported from the United States or sent to camps? I mean, that’s what would happen if [Mr. Trump] wants to go through with deporting millions of people,” as he has pledged to do, says Dr. McKercher.

Dr. McKercher’s publishing pace continues with his latest book, in collaboration with RMC professor Adam Chapnick, out this October, called Canada First, Not Canada Alone: A History of Canadian Foreign Policy. Intended as a textbook for students, the book traces trends in Canadian foreign policy since the 1930s.

And there’s teaching to look forward to. Accustomed to spending a good chunk of time in the classroom at RMC, Dr. McKercher had a rare semester off this fall to get settled in Antigonish. “I never quite understand why some professors don’t like teaching,” he says. “It’s great interacting with students and gauging their interests and gauging their ideas on those kinds of things.”

The Mulroney Institute, with its emphasis on public policy, governance and leadership, aims to attract high-calibre students “who really want to change the world, and that’s nice to see as a professor,” he says. But history holds meaning for more than just future policymakers. “A good history course is about more than the here and now,” says Dr. McKercher. “It’s really about the human experience, which I think a lot of people are looking for information about in today’s world.”

Moira MacDonald

Moira MacDonald is a Toronto-based journalist.

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