Is Canada becoming “anti-american” or have its people and leaders seen enough of morons like Bush? Is animosity with Bush worth losing the $1 billion daily trade with US?
**Canada **
Monday December 16, 2002
The Guardian
Now whereabouts on the axis of evil can we be? The country’s long-reigning leader thinks the president of the US is contemptible, a sentiment heartily reciprocated. The leader’s official spokeswoman directly insulted Bush, and she was repudiated only grudgingly. Almost every day some new outrage perpetrated by the US is reported in the newspapers, whereupon the Americans are denounced by commentators and letter-writers. Academics travelling across the country on book promotion tours say they are astounded by the level of anti-American vituperation out in the hinterland. Top-level relations with Washington, it is agreed, are at their worst level in decades. Can this mean war?
Well, maybe not. This is Canada that we’re talking about.
Since George Bush came to power, the neurosis has begun to turn in the direction of psychosis, because the current Washington orthodoxy is wholly inimical to the Canadian political culture. Canadians care about the environment (they have a lot of it). They are instinctively drawn to multilateral bodies, such as the UN and the international criminal court, which the Americans scorn. The idea of an inessential war against Iraq is widely regarded as insane. The most startling recent poll showed 84% of Canadians consider the US wholly (15%) or partly (69%) to blame for September 11. It is a remarkable indication of fundamental antipathy.
Furthermore, the Bush administration has compounded this with a series of gratuitously casual snubs. When the president spoke to congress after the attacks and praised Tony Blair and Britain to the skies, Canada - whose cooperation was crucial to the return to any kind of post-attack normality - was forgotten. When four Canadian soldiers were killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan, the American response was slow and brusque. And there have been various new-normality incidents involving Canadians, of Arab descent and otherwise, being given a disagreeable time by US border guards and cops.
North of the border, these incidents send the letter-writers bananas. Some of the trouble stems from the awful relationship between Bush and the Canadian prime minister, Jean Chretien, who was less skilful than Tony Blair in keeping his preference for Al Gore quiet during the 2000 election. Bush at least appears to know who Chretien is: only 8% of American adults, in the most recent poll, could name the neighbouring country’s leader, and even that number suggests a sample skewed towards Harvard - the usual figure is around 2%, with an undertow of support for Pierre Trudeau, who happens to be dead. Even so, only one-in-five knew that Ottawa was Canada’s capital.
These kind of polls, always well-publicised in Canada, add to the Canadians’ contempt for their neighbours. When Chretien’s spokeswoman, Francoise Ducros, called Bush a “moron” last month, the significant fact is not the remark - which is common global currency - but the circumstances. She said it to a Canadian journalist, in a manner that suggested she was saying something that was obvious, rather than something that could cause any embarrassment. Had she not been overheard by a less sympathetic reporter, it would have gone unreported.
“The Canadians will say (regarding Iraq invasion) we would prefer that they go through the security council,” said the Toronto Star columnist Haroon Siddiqui. “There will be demonstrations, but polite ones, because this is Canada. There will be stinging editorials. Then we will fold and join them, because we have no choice. There is a rightwing cheering section allied with the US that says ra-ra-ra to everything. It’s not a majority. But the reality is we cannot have our trucks stalled at the border. They have to keep rolling.”
