Change at White House could shift our thinking about reopening border with U.S.
WASHINGTON— Late last week, as Canadian and American authorities were confirming the inevitable continuation of the border shutdown between the two countries that has been in place since March, U.S. President Donald Trump offered a prediction. “We’re going to be opening the borders pretty soon,” he said, explaining, “Canada would like it opened.”
Which would be news to Canadians. Seldom in our history has an issue galvanized public opinion like the resolve to keep the border closed to pandemic-stricken Americans. Earlier this month, 90 per cent of Canadians in a Research Co. poll said they want to keep the strict border restrictions in place.
As pollster Frank Graves of EKOS Research said, “When I ask, ‘When do you think we should think about opening the border?’ they go, ‘Well, maybe never.’ ”
That kind of reaction has certainly cast doubt on Trump’s forecast. “I do not think that border is opening any time soon, I can tell you that,” said Kathryn Friedman, an expert on North American relations at the University at Buffalo.
It’s not that it doesn’t hurt — it does. The travel and tourism industry in Canada has been devastated. In border communities like Niagara Falls and Sarnia, a drop in car traffic across the border of almost 95 per cent has a severe impact on entire civic economies. Airlines and hotels are struggling to stay afloat.
“Some sectors have been pummelled and their very existence is at stake,” Goldy Hyder, president and CEO of the Business Council of Canada, told CNN earlier this month.
Besides which, many Canadians own property in the U.S., have family and friends there, and enjoy visiting regularly.
None of that is seen as important next to the threat of COVID-19 that Canadians see coming from Americans.
Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati told Politico this month he didn’t expect any change before the election. “Early November, there’s going to be a U.S. federal election. We’re trying to stay out of the politics of the United States,” he said. “We’re thinking at this point, just leave the borders, don’t touch anything, let’s get through this election.” And then? “It depends, I guess, on who wins …”
The experts I spoke to agreed the election could have a significant effect for two reasons.
One is the difference in how Trump’s policies and those of his opponent, Democratic nominee Joe Biden, would impact the spread of the pandemic. Trump has largely declared victory over the coronavirus, even though it continues to infect and kill many more Americans per capita than it does Canadians. Biden has proposed aggressively changing course on the national response to COVID-19, and even considered imposing a mask mandate.
Those approaches may be expected to lead to different public health outcomes. “It’s a hard problem regardless,” said Jeffrey Shaman, a Columbia University epidemiologist who has been a harsh critic of Trump’s response. He said what he’s heard from Biden leads him to expect “a more proactive and muscular response that actually would address some things” if the Democrat were to become president.
But those I spoke to thought something else about the election result was equally important: Canadians’ perceptions of the approaches of the potential presidents.
Graves’s research at EKOS suggests 72 per cent of Canadians believe the United States “would stand a better chance of recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic” if the election results in a “change of government.”
“If a Biden administration is elected, I do think that the entire tenor of the relationship will change,” Friedman said. She believes that in a Biden administration, Canada would be elevated back to its traditional role as a close ally with the U.S., leading to “conversations that will begin on how to lift the restrictions in a sensible manner.”
Chris Sands, who heads the Canada Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., says conversations about how to open the border likely need to happen sooner or later anyway for economic reasons — and they may need the type of opening that a warming of relations under a new administration might provide.
“There’s a limited amount of ammunition of fiscal stimulus that you can do now,” Sands said. “Whoever is in government in Canada is going to be sitting there saying, ‘Well, we need to get the growth back … We’re going to have to deal with the border.’ And all of that becomes more difficult if you’ve got somebody sowing divisions and making it hard to build a national consensus around action.”
Trump can say Canada wants the border to reopen all he wants. Although it would be better for many of them if it were to reopen safely, Canadians wholeheartedly disagree.
Going into the election, Trump himself seems to be the biggest obstacle to changing that.