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COMMENTARY
December 13, 2003
Something rotting
The political genius of Jean Chr?tien was for bluster. By refusing to acknowledge the law of contradiction in his public statements the retiring prime minister was often able to straddle incompatible positions. A prime example was Iraq where over two years he succeeded in preventing any lucid human being from discovering whether Canada supported the U.S.-led removal of Saddam Hussein's regime. To the last his gift for muddling and confusing the most straightforward issues was on display. When President Bush phoned to say his fare-thee-well the issue naturally arose. According to the White House Mr. Bush acknowledged that the exclusion of Canada from a list of 63 allies who could bid for U.S. taxpayer-funded reconstruction projects in Iraq was open to general discussion. It is extremely unlikely that in the circumstances Mr. Bush said anything else -- for he has repeated the same message to the leaders of France Germany Russia and others who did not make the list. But Mr. Chr?tien then told the media about another conversation entirely. In his first version Mr. Bush told him "not to worry" Canada wouldn't be blacklisted. Various among his aides struggled to explain this in various ways. Enterprising reporters ran these back to the White House press office which did not budge from its own account of the conversation. Later on Thursday emerging from his final cabinet meeting Mr. Chr?tien's recollection of the chat had "evolved". He now said Mr. Bush had said that Mr. Bush "wasn't happy" Canada wasn't on the list; adding this characteristic gibberish: "He was to do what is needed to change it. What is the words? You know 'I can fight with 20 guys in between.' It's what he said." Paul Martin might wish to speak like that but doesn't know how. Our new prime minister inherits a huge foreign policy problem: the Chr?tienization of our relations with the hyperpower that occupies 100 per cent of our land frontiers and upon whose goodwill our peace freedom and prosperity entirely depend. Mr. Martin has himself placed the improvement of this relationship among the several dozen "priorities" of his new government. He is in a fix. His predecessor played to the anti-American gallery in his own Liberal Party and on the Canadian left whenever he felt it was safe to do so. And Mr. Martin cannot now safely cease to play this game without putting the support of that constituency at risk. Yet it is hardly in the Canadian national interest for him to do in the present atmosphere anything other than shamelessly appease the American giant. Everything is political even politics and our new prime minister would be wise to read not only the messages from the Bush administration but the tenor of U.S. public opinion. The amount of unhappy attention Canada has received on for instance Internet weblogs across the States is an indication of the scale of our problem. We have joined France in the dungeon of U.S. public opinion (though in a slightly warmer cell). France itself is passing through a phase of soul-searching as a glance at the Paris nonfiction bestseller lists will show. It should disturb us that nothing of that nature is happening up here. The idea that we might be unreliable allies who have funked on our responsibilities towards the whole West is not something that has yet occurred to us. In Washington my impression is that the senior statesmen in the administration and Congress can go weeks without thinking about Canada at all -- which has been just as well since 9/11/01. For when they do think of us they do not have pleasant thoughts. Remarks such as those of Fran?oise Ducros the prime ministerial aide who called the U.S. president a "moron" and was not immediately fired have indeed penetrated. Canada's non-appearance in Iraq beside our old allies Britain and Australia was fully taken in. Our vain moral posturing on things like the Kyoto treaty and Guantanamo inmates has helped to rub the salt deeper. There remains a certain reserve of seemingly inextinguishable goodwill but it is based on events receding into the past when Canada was a much different country. For the present and foreseeable future the "special relationship" is gone and Canada is looked upon across a considerable breadth of the U.S. political spectrum as an unreliable and irritatingly mouthy neighbour. Or in the entirely off-the-record words of one of my Republican correspondents Something rotting at the back of our freezer. We make a great mistake on the other side if we assume the U.S. will retaliate against this. The U.S. pursues its national interest as we pursue ours and the Americans cannot benefit from making the relationship any more sour. But we are no longer trusted and Mr. Martin is unlikely to find the political room -- given the leanings of the Canadian media and his own political constituency -- to restore that trust. He can improve the relationship in minor ways however simply by resisting his predecessor's tendency to make incoherent rhetorical gestures. His formula should be: "If you can't say anything nice shut up." David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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