The Growing Importance of Mexico

(Embassy – David Crane)

Ever since Mexico signalled its desire to be a North American nation by joining the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, Canada has had a distinctly mixed, uneasy response. While officially welcoming Mexico, many of those who advocate much closer Canada-U.S. ties appear to resent Mexico’s joining the club.

One reason would seem to be that Canada and Mexico are now in competition for U.S. attention – hence the jockeying over who has the first meeting with a new U.S. president – or that Americans would favour Mexico over Canada.

When president Vicente Fox visited George W. Bush in the White House in 2001, Bush declared that “the U.S. has no more important relationship in the world” than the one with Mexico. This was quickly misinterpreted by paranoid Canadians as meaning Mexico, in fact, had become more important than Canada in the eyes of the new U.S. administration.

This fear can be found more recently in a report of the Carleton University Canada-U.S. Project, which argues for much greater focus on Canada-U.S. relations. It sees Mexico as a distraction and little value for Canada from trilateral summits. “There is much more common ground between Canada and the United States – i.e. ‘Upper North America’ – than there is between Mexico and either of its northern partners,” the report argues. Read more here.