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Memorandum by the Secretary of State to President Truman
The following background information concerning problems and personalities may be of possible usefulness during your visit to Ottawa on June 10–12:1
United States-Canadian Relations
United States-Canadian relations continue to be excellent. Economically, Canada is our best customer and our foremost supplier.
Joint military cooperation is proceeding very satisfactorily. In accordance with the recommendations of the Permanent Joint Board on Defense, United States–Canada, the two Governments are exchanging information, interchanging personnel, cooperating in the establishment of weather and Loran stations in the Far North, conducting joint experiments under Arctic conditions at Fort Churchill, and developing plans for the defense of the continent. United States troops are stationed at present at Fort Churchill (about 130), at the Army Airfield at Edmonton, and in comparatively small numbers at the weather and Loran stations. While joint military cooperation has the strong support of a majority of Canadians, there is an element in the country which declares that the arrangements threaten a violation of Canadian sovereignty and prejudice the chance of Canada maintaining peaceful relations with the Soviet Union.
The Hyde Park Agreement concluded by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister King in 1941 to mobilize the economic resources of the continent for defense and extended in May 1945 during the period of reconversion, continues in force although its effectiveness necessarily declines with the relaxation or abandonment of economic controls on both sides of the border.
The St. Lawrence Seaway project is the subject of special interest in Canada at the moment because of the hearings now being held by Senator Wiley’s Sub-Committee of the Senate Foreign Relations [Page 111] Committee. The two aspects of the enterprise under particular consideration at present are the new principle of self-liquidation through tolls on shipping, championed by Senator Vandenberg, and the importance of the project to the defense of the continent. In response to our request in March 1947 the Canadian Government informed us that it “is prepared to agree to the principle of making the St. Lawrence Seaway self-liquidating by means of toll charges subject however to the conclusion of arrangements satisfactory to both governments for the implementation of this principle”. In the event you may be interested in details concerning the tolls and national defense aspects of the project, I attach a copy of my statement before the Sub-Committee on May 28.2 There are the same kinds of support for, and of opposition against, the project in Canada as in the United States. Generally speaking the Canadian railroads, power interests, and eastern seaports are opposed.
[Here follows information on Canada’s government, politics and internal problems.]
- No records of the President’s discussions with Prime Minister Mackenzie King in Ottawa have been found in Department of State files.↩
- See Department of State Press Release No. 437, May 28, 1947. Documentation on the Seaway Project may be found in Department of State file 711.42157 SA 29. See also Canadian Department of External Affairs, External Affairs, vol. i, No. 2 (February 1949), pp. 3–11, and St. Lawrence Seaway Manual: A Compilation of Documents on the Great Lakes Seaway Project and Correlated Power Development, Senate Document No. 165, 83d Cong., 2d sess.↩