Paul Martin is
once more playing the anti-American card, this time in an attempt to win seats
in British Columbia and Ontario on January 23.The opportunity to do so was handed to him on
a silver platter - so fortuitous that one reporter even asked Martin whether he
had paid the U.S. ambassador
to Canada,
David Wilkins, to lambaste Martin’s government, in the middle of a federal
election campaign, for criticizing the Bush administration.
Martin, in his
10-year campaign to replace Jean Chretien as the leader of the Liberal Party,
often criticized other Liberals for America-bashing and promised a new, more
cooperative relationship with the Americans.He even subtly criticized Chretien for his decision not to send Canadian
troops to Iraq as part of
the U.S.
invasion and occupation, a position he dropped quickly as the Americans got
bogged down and Canadian public opinion against the invasion stabilized at
around 80 per cent. Martin also obviously learned from Chretien the benefits of
a tried and true Liberal tactic: push for closer integration with the U.S. while
bad-mouthing the Americans whenever it is expedient.
Under Martin,
legislation to further integrate security, immigration and economic policies
with both the U.S. and Mexico, under
the aegis of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), has been
introduced.Canada under the Liberals has been
the Americans’ strongest ally in their push to establish a hemispheric-wide
trading bloc under their control through the Free Trade Area of the Americas
(FTAA).Martin has renewed the
commitment Chretien made to send Canadian troops into combat (the first time
since the first Gulf War in 1991) as part of the U.S.-led occupation of Afghanistan.He has stood by silently while Canadian
citizens have been apprehended by the Americans and have either been held
indefinitely in prison camps in GuantanamoBay or Afghanistan or have been deported
to face torture in other countries.Only
on one question – ballistic missile defence – has Paul Martin not been
subservient to U.S.
wishes and reportedly on that question only because his own caucus was split
and signing on would most likely have triggered an election.
Publicly,
however, Martin has criticized the Bush administration repeatedly for its
failure to “live up to” its commitments under NAFTA, especially on the issue of
softwood lumber, and, just last week in Montreal,
on its refusal to comply with the Kyoto
accord.The day after Ambassador
Wilkins’ speech, Martin spoke from a B.C. community devastated by the illegal U.S. tariff on
softwood lumber and claimed to be a champion of Canadian sovereignty.Each criticism means a bump for the Liberals
in opinion polls.
It is quite
possible that painting the Conservatives under Harper as pro-American may
enable the Liberals to hang on to a second-term minority government, which
would explain why Martin has stepped up the rhetoric once again.