Canada hates us, but it's not all Trump's fault.

It's Been a Minute

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🗓️ 2 June 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

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Summary

The stereotype is that Canadians are kind, but they by and large do not take kindly to President Trump's idea of making Canada our 51st state. As of April, two-thirds of Canadians considered the U.S. to be "unfriendly" or an "enemy," and 61% say they have started boycotting American companies. However, Canadian dislike and distrust of the U.S. is not new. Canadian views of the U.S. have trended down for decades, from a high of 81% of Canadians holding favorable views of the U.S. under Clinton in the '90's, to hovering in the 50-60% range in the aughts, to only 24% favorable as of March. Meanwhile, 87% of Americans view Canada favorably. There's a huge mismatch there.

So what's behind these decades of resentment? How does culture play into it? And what does it mean for our politics that our nations have fundamentally different ideas about our relationship to one another? Brittany discusses with Scaachi Koul, senior writer at Slate, and Jon Parmenter, associate professor of history at Cornell.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Ira Glass of This American Life.
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0:22.7	this American life.
0:26.4	Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about
0:32.3	what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
0:43.6	Thank you. culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. What's the most underrated Canadian thing that you think that the U.S. should adopt?
0:50.0	Oh, a Caesar.
0:51.6	A what?
0:52.7	A Caesar is a Bloody Mary with clam juice, Brittany. Not Clamato juice,
0:56.6	clam juice. Yeah, yeah. No, that is what it is. That's what Clamato is. It's to mainline clam juice.
1:01.8	Yeah. Yeah. What? Yeah, man. Well, we got a couple of Canadians here today. John Parmentor,
1:09.7	Associate Professor of History at Cornell and Sachi Cool, senior writer at Slate.
1:14.5	Welcome to it's been a minute.
1:15.6	Thank you.
1:16.2	Thanks.
1:17.1	Okay, so you're both from Canada and live in the U.S. now.
1:20.3	How much do you find Americans know about Canada compared to how much Canadians know about the U.S.?
	...

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