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President Bush has said that Canada and the USA are more than
just friends--"we're family." We share a
common culture, a passion for freedom and democracy, and the
world's longest unguarded border. You send us your
basketball players (at least until they start blubbering like
overpaid, overgrown babies about wanting to go back home to
mommy and the warmer weather), your runaway Hollywood
productions, and your television shows. In return, we
give you our hockey players, our top industry professionals, our
comedians, Peter Jennings and Pamela Anderson. Now if
that isn't love, then I don't know what is.
Our two countries have stood shoulder-to-shoulder through
various trials and tribulations--the latest being the September
11th terrorist attacks and the subsequent war. We
opened our airports, our hearts and our homes to our American
friends when US airports were shut down immediately following
the attacks. We raised millions of dollars to help
with the relief efforts at Ground Zero, and we sent our own
firefighters and police officers to New York to participate in
ceremonies honoring their fallen American brothers and sisters. Canadians
even traveled to New York City last year for an official
"Canada Loves New York Day" rally.
Whatever help President Bush has requested of Canada, he has
received. We have committed 2,400 soldiers to the War
on Terrorism. Our snipers covered US troops and cut
down heavily armed Al-Qaeda fighters during Operation Anaconda. Operation
Harpoon--a combat mission in eastern Afghanistan that involved
hunting down and clearing out any remaining al-Qaeda and Taliban
pockets hiding out in the caves and mountains south of Gardez--was
under Canadian command.
During the California brownout, Canada came to the rescue with
an abundant supply of power.
Now before that warm, fuzzy feeling sets in, I'll explain how
President Bush has thanked us Canadians for our unwavering
support: By sitting back and allowing for measures to
be taken that will devastate one of the main industries
responsible for putting food on our tables.
Bush stood beside Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien at a UN
conference in Mexico last week, and professed to be a staunch
defender of North American free trade. At the exact
same moment, his henchmen in Washington were inking a deal that
would slap a 29-per-cent tariff on Canadian softwood lumber--a
move that will cost Canadians tens of thousands of jobs, and
will cripple one of the country's biggest industries. The
spin-off effect will ripple through our entire economy.
I guess Bush is only a free trader when it suits him to be. The
new duty on Canadian softwood smacks of blatant protectionism. It's
another case of the tail wagging the dog. When the
influential American lumber producers whined to the US Commerce
Department and their allies in Congress and the Senate, they
should have been told to fix their industry to make American
lumber producers more efficient and competitive in a free trade,
free enterprise market. After all, aren't free
enterprise and market competition what America is all about? Instead,
it's the Canadians who have been given the high hard one on the
softwood issue. If Bush is such a staunch defender of
free trade, he should have intervened in this dispute and
exerted some influence. You're either in support of free trade,
or you're not--and Bush needs to stop playing both sides of the
court from the middle.
Incidentally, Canadians aren't the only ones who will be stiffed
by this duty. The American consumer will be paying
about $1,500 more for a new home. It would seem that
the support of deep-pocketed lumber producers means more to Bush
than the votes of a few new homeowners.
At a time when both the USA and Canada should be united in a
common purpose to fight much greater evils, a trade war is
heating up between the two countries. And don't look
for Canada to back down from this one. Wood and
lumber mean everything to Canada. Our national symbol
is a beaver, for crying out loud. And what do you
think we use to make hockey sticks?
Canada is already planning to take the issue to the World Trade
Organization, and to mount a challenge under NAFTA. Meanwhile,
Prime Minister Chretien has publicly dismissed any kind of
tit-for-tat retaliatory action against the USA, despite a poll
by the Globe and Mail (Canada's national newspaper) that found a
majority of Canadians in favor of some kind of retaliation
against the US over the tariffs. However, the
Official Opposition is suggesting that the Canadian government
tie the lumber issue to the Alaska oil pipeline that will have
to run through Canada from the Alaskan Arctic Wildlife Refuge to
the US. It is even being suggested that Canada use
its role as a partner in the continuing War on Terrorism to
leverage its position. At a time when Bush is looking
at taking out Saddam Hussein, and is seeking continued support
and commitment from his allies while sweating a shortage of
troops on the home-front, he couldn't have picked a worse time
for a fight with his closest friend and neighbor. I
would hate to see him give Canadians any reason not to lend the
USA their full support in any current or future war efforts.
Now is the time for Bush to walk the walk--to step up and
confront the US lumber producers and the Commerce Department,
and prove himself to be the staunch defender of free trade that
he claims to be. If we really are "family",
as Bush says, then he risks looking like the kind of brother who
would whip around and kick you in the unmentionables right after
you've helped him lay out a group of schoolyard bullies.
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