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COMMENTARY
September 25, 2001
Wasting their time
It is hard to see what Jean Chretien was doing in Washington yesterday besides wasting President Bush's precious time. It wasn't that he went down empty-handed: for government servants had spent days and nights reviewing Canada's military and security assets looking for something the Americans might want to use. Rather as became clear from the meeting we have nothing they could want or need -- besides the "world's longest undefended border". We must assume charitably there was an off-record briefing in which Mr. Chretien was told a little more about what is coming than we can yet know. But otherwise it appears the sole purpose of the trip was a bit of political hand-holding -- to get U.S. reassurances that the border will not be closed and that no snub was intended when the President didn't mention Canada in his speech to Congress last week. Mr. Bush seemed to be reading from a Canadian script saying precisely what the prime minister needed him to say: "America still loves you." Then rather than following in the footsteps of the other visiting leaders to make a solidarity pilgrimmage to New York Mr. Chretien flew back to a Liberal fundraiser. It strikes me that the first thing we can do to help the U.S. is to shut up. The Americans have a job to get on with. We do not have credible armed forces a large security establishment or an intelligence presence anywhere in the world. This is not only the prime minister's fault for he has been in power for less than nine of the last thirty-something years through which we've neglected our responsibilities in these areas. The apparent snub last week may or may not have been intended. I'm now inclined to think it was not: that Mr. Bush and his speechwriters honestly forgot we existed given the demands on their attention. But to put them to the trouble of assuaging our hurt feelings was not a friendly act. Colin Powell had already told us not to worry; now Mr. Bush was compelled to repeat this to the Canadian media in the middle of his day. These gentlemen are busy: leave them alone! The belief that we are somehow important or necessary is the product of years of unctuous nationalist indoctrination by our governments and in our schools. Yet paradoxically it is also the reason why we have become so unimportant. Had we kept our armed forces even at their level in 1965 (twice the present manpower) we might have been worth consulting. More distressing than anything else he could have said was Mr. Chretien's pre-departure musings on our "core values" such as multiculturalism the Trudeau Charter of Rights and our refugee-determination process. None of these things are presently in question and it is only by mentioning them that they go on the table. That we are even bothering to think about such things -- after an attack on the U.S. capital and largest city -- is an indication of the unreality. There they are preparing for war and here we are searching for our home planet. There are several things we can do to make ourselves useful if only to ourselves and while we should obviously co-ordinate with the U.S. we can do each project on our own. First we must address the domestic security problem. Significant new resources are needed to expand the RCMP CSIS and communications intelligence to overhaul our customs and immigration services and enhance police data collection across the country. The most immediate task is to entice capable people from the private sector and out of early retirements for we are facing a shortage not only of resources but of expertise. Second a dramatic effort is needed to create and build a civil defence agency. We are unprepared to respond to emergencies on the scale we witnessed in the States and have no idea what we would do against chemical biological or nuclear terror attacks. We must cease assuming that the Americans will have resources to spare and stop dreaming that anyway no one could wish to hurt us. Third we need a crash programme of re-armament. Once again decades of neglect have left us unable to turn our armed forces around quickly but we can at least do instantaneous wonders for morale. And we should concentrate not some but all of our fresh energy on developing the special forces side for which we have an inherited talent. (No tanks will be necessary.) Our strength such as it is comes from a long tradition as a martial nation. We did contribute proudly to victory in two world wars. To this day we maintain remarkably high standards for training despite a lack of equipment. Our pilots though not numerous are among the best in the world our soldiers tough and resourceful our security personnel much better than we deserve. We have some enviable expertise in aerospace especially satellite communications. In short we have the beginning of what it takes on the human side and at least among the people I think a real appreciation of what is required. We do not have to infringe anyone's rights to get each of these projects moving. Each would incidentally help to pull up some slack in the economy. But I seriously fear we are instead going to see our tax money poured into extravagant bail-outs for Air Canada and the Liberals' other corporate customers now waiting forlornly in line. And there is no serious opposition in Parliament. The people themselves must tell the government to wake to its priorities now. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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