Edelgard Mahant and Graeme Mount examine details of White House policy from 1945 to the 1980s to assess the extent to which the United States could be said to have had a Canada policy. They challenge the popular nationalist view that Canada has been treated as peripheral and dependent, but also counter the opposing view that Washington has respected Canadian advice and benefitted from it. Instead, they argue that for the most part Canada has mattered little in Washington and that America's Canada policy is largely an ad hoc affair.