Second Canadian Summit

The Second Canadian Summit was a meeting of delegations of the European Federation and the United States at the Mattawa Line House in Canada, on the line between their territories, held from 10 January 2022. It was called in November 2021 to discuss the status of Quebec and Newfoundland, the eastern Canadian territories claimed by both powers. On 7 February 2022, during its second round, a member of the European delegation, Daniel Furlong, opened fire on the American delegation and killed three of its members. Within hours the Federation declared war on the United States, and nuclear weapons were used the same night, beginning the Second World War.

A Federation commission of inquiry found that Furlong had acted alone and could not determine his motive or whether anyone had instructed him.

Background

Eastern territories

Since the First Euro-American War Canada had been divided between the two powers along the line of 1947, which follows the canoe route of the voyageurs from Georgian Bay to the Ottawa River and north to James Bay. The United States annexed the province of Quebec and the dominion of Newfoundland by acts of Congress in 1941, during the war, while its forces held Newfoundland and the Eastern Townships of Quebec. Canadian and European forces retook Newfoundland in 1944 and the Townships in 1945. The acts were never repealed, and American maps showed both territories as American. The eastern Dominion of Canada has been self-governing under the Federation's protection since 1948, and Newfoundland a federal territory of the Federation since 1949.

First Canadian Summit

After the Iris arrived in 2020, the two powers cooperated for about six weeks under an observation accord signed at the Line House in February 2020. In 2021 the Federation proposed a summit to settle the Canadian line and restore the arrangements of the Kaltkrieg that had lapsed in 2018 and 2019. The United States accepted, and asked for Panama to be on the agenda: the Federation had condemned the emergency regulations imposed in the Canal Zone in 2019 and called for the liberation of its Panamanians (see Panama Question).

The First Canadian Summit sat at the Line House from 6 September to 6 October 2021, with delegations led by the Federation's Foreign Secretary, Marta Kask, and the American Secretary of State, Douglas Rourke. Its agenda ran to forty items, and the two delegations did not agree on their order: the Federation wanted the Canadian line and the arrangements discussed first, and the United States Panama. Three working groups, on territory, the sea and orbit, met for four weeks without reporting, and the summit closed on its thirtieth day without a communiqué.

Venue

The Mattawa Line House is a long timber hall built in 1949 on the flats where the Mattawa River meets the Ottawa, across the line itself. The American delegation entered by the north door and the Federation's by the south door, and the two sat on either side of a single table, along the line painted on the floor beneath it. Under the rules agreed in 1949, each delegation brought its own armed close-protection officers, who stood along its own wall.

Delegations

The Federation's delegation was led by Marta Kask. Its territorial team was headed by the Austrian diplomat Sophie Brunner, with Daniel Furlong as her deputy, and was accompanied by four legal advisers, observers from the government of the Dominion of Canada, and counsel from H&A, which built and operated much of the Federation's infrastructure in Labrador.

The American delegation was led by the Deputy Secretary of State, Gordon Pell, with Ray Kimball, Under Secretary for Northern Affairs, Brigadier General Alan Ruiz as military adviser, and a staff that included the note-taker Ellen Marsh.

Rounds

The summit was called on 15 November 2021 and opened on 10 January 2022. On the first day the Federation tabled a proposal for a referendum in both halves of Canada on which power each should belong to. The American delegation refused to put it on the agenda; the western provinces had been states of the Union since 1959, and the American position was that no state could vote to leave the Union. In the second week the American delegation offered to restore the arrangements of the Kaltkrieg, including the separation of warships, mutual inspections and the notification of orbital imaging passes, in return for an end to what it called the Federation's interference in Panama. The Federation declined to discuss Panama until the referendum was on the agenda, and the round closed on 21 January without agreement on the order of business.

The second round opened at 09:30 on Monday 7 February 2022. The first plenary session of the day was on the first item, the referendum.

Shooting

At about 15:30, six hours into the session, the agenda had not moved past the first item. At 15:41 Pell, closing the American position, said that the status of the eastern territories "will be settled, by agreement or otherwise"; the remark is in both delegations' transcripts. At 15:42 Furlong stood, walked to the Federation's wall, took the pistol from the holster of a close-protection officer, Kristian Holm, turned and fired eleven rounds across the table. Pell, Kimball and Marsh were killed and four other Americans were wounded, Ruiz among them. American security officers returned fire and killed Furlong and, in the crossfire, the Federation's adviser Pieter Rademaker. The shooting lasted about eighteen seconds.

Aftermath

The declaration authorised the Federation's forces to use theatre nuclear weapons in North America and the North Atlantic. The first detonation was at sea; the American record attributes it to a Federation nuclear torpedo fired at a destroyer group, and the Federation's to an American nuclear depth bomb dropped on the submarine Saint-Malo. The exchange that followed lasted about thirty hours, was confined to military targets and killed about 60,000 people. The European Parliament approved the declaration of war on 10 February, by 512 votes to 141; the United States Congress declared war on 8 February.

Inquiry

The Federation appointed a Commission of Inquiry into the Mattawa Shooting on 15 February 2022, chaired by Maria Kessel, a judge of the Federal Court of Justice. A closed sub-committee of three judges and an intelligence officer reviewed the delegation's classified papers. The commission reported on 30 September 2022. It found that Furlong had acted alone, with a weapon he took in the room, and found no evidence that any person or body had instructed him. Its report states: "The investigation could not determine motive. The investigation could not determine sanction."

The American inquiry, by the State Department's accountability review board, held the Federation responsible.

Daniel Furlong

Daniel Furlong (1980 – 7 February 2022) was born in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Labrador, where his father was a foreman at the fuel depots that supplied the air base. He studied law at Memorial University in St John's and at Leiden, joined the Federation's Foreign Secretariat in 2009, and was a reserve officer in the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. He was unmarried. Press reports after the shooting connected his Labrador origins with a negotiation over the territories; the commission found no evidence of such a motive.

See also

• Second World War
• Mattawa Line House
• Kaltkrieg
• First Euro-American War