Canada and Other Matters of Opinion

by Rex Murphy

  I have some sympathy for the young woman. Before, her body was the commodity. Now, she has entered a version of Monica Lewinsky’s world—her self, her breath and being, are product. Talk shows, late-night monologues, stalking paparazzi, tell-all articles—poor young “Kristen” may even mistake it for celebrity.

  They’ll pick her up in limousines and bring her to grand hotels. Entertainment Tonight and its tacky peers will burble at her approach.

  Then the moment will pass and she won’t be able to flag down a cab.

  Which offers a fearful symmetry (another Blake caution) with the profession she probably thinks she’s left.

  BERNIER’S GIRLFRIEND | May 27, 2008

  Well, that was a short run. Not everyone gets to be minister of foreign affairs for a great nation, but Maxime Bernier’s gaffe-tormented tenure was more of a touchdown than a stay. But even butterfly-brief, what a touchdown it was. More a touch of Peter Sellers’s Clouseau or one of the more exotic episodes of Friends—Ross meets the biker chick—than The Diary of a Statesman.

  There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with dating the former girlfriend of a Hells Angels cavalier, but it would be a sign of minimal gravitas, if you happened to be one of the highest-ranking cabinet ministers of a national government, to fish from a less tumultuous pool. Even in our antiseptic, determinedly non-judgmental age, a man in the position of representing his country abroad should probably have sought a soulmate with less flamboyant associations than with the Quebec chapter of a continental biker gang. That would have been what an earlier age called simple good sense, or maturity.

  When Mr. Bernier’s associations were raised by the opposition, Mr. Harper, his boss, dismissed their questions as those of busybodies and issued a further statement that belonged more in the patronizing mouth of Dr. Phil than a prime minister: that Bernier’s private life was no one’s business.

  High office demands responsibility and judgment, and it is often in the very terrain of private life that those virtues are most exercised. Instead, Mr. Bernier, as numerous photo ops concur, acted more like a high school kid parading his cheerleader date than a high officer of the Canadian state. And to cap it off, yesterday’s revelations that he forgot some sensitive documents at Madame Couillard’s apartment. What could have made him so forgetful?

  But that was not the icing on this tawdry cake. That came with her—need I say inevitable—TV appearance following the breakup, in which she keened that Mr. Bernier had destroyed her life, a lament she tried to retail to the Toronto Star for fifty thousand bucks. Ruin and grief have their price. What’s more, she retailed to her Quebec television audience that Maxime was her wardrobe consultant and he picked the much-commented-on dress—no state secrets there—worn at his swearing-in last summer, and revealed something of his dating philosophy in words that will surely end up in a book of wisdom for the ages. Said Mr. Bernier, “I can’t switch girlfriends like I change shirts.” Hasn’t got the ring of “For better or for worse, in sickness or in health,” but it will do.

  No private life is worth anything these days until it’s all unravelled in full confessional mode to an audience of millions on television. The only commodity not on display in this gruelling farce was a smidgen of dignity. Mr. Bernier obviously thought his private life had a consequence higher than his public duties, or he would have been more scrupulous about seeing that the private did not intersect with the public.

  The office of foreign minister for Canada is less dignified today than it was some months ago, and Stephen Harper, for all his seeming austerity of manner, showed very little prudence and minimal judgment in setting this whole farce in motion with the appointment in the first place. The scorned busybodies were right, and Canada’s affairs of state are now just a sorry soap opera of Hells Angels, forgotten documents and the prime time confessions of a jilted lover.

  Our scandals are, usually, much tamer than the U.S. ones. We don’t have—thank every god—Nancy Grace or Dr. Phil to lend their graceful intellects to the parsing or reportage of the moral defaults of our public performers. Nor do we have the full echo chamber of the tabloids and Internet sites our brethren to the south employ for the amplification of every nuance and the relentless detailing of every awkward titillation. We also lack the full uninhibited appetite for the stuff, the relish of it. I think there is still some remnant of reserve in the Canadian temperament, which makes us a little less eager to pry over the wall, or peer into every window when occasion offers a spurious licence to do so—as every so-called public scandal does.

  The Couillard book, it is encouraging to note, did not do very well. If Spitzer’s pay-for-play young businesswoman were to put pen to paper, I suspect the resulting book would scale the alpine peaks of The New York Times bestseller list with the agility and rush of a frightened cat.

  CANADA AND THE U.S.

  HOW WE FLAGGED THE AMERICAN BULL | March 5, 2005

  Busy as a bee is the folkloric tag, and of all bees—those of the meadow or those that toil in more metaphorical hives—Martha Stewart is the very busiest. I’ve read that, within days of her going to jail, she was at work on a floral arrangement for a recently deceased corrections officer, and “fashioned a beautiful topiary, trimmed with pampas grass.”

  Just too good, that last detail—“trimmed with pampas grass.” How Martha. Your run-of-the-mill detainee would probably have stapled a few buttercups together, rubber-banded a few posies and called it a day. But put Martha on the job and, behind bars or not, that “topiary” will be “trimmed with pampas grass,” even if she has to grow the damn pampas to get it—a little bit of Argentina just under the guard tower.

  The Wall Street Journal says she also gave yoga lessons, kicked off a lecture series and “offered pointers for a prison weaving class.” A longer sentence, and the world might now have a second Taj Mahal constructed from Popsicle sticks. Bordered with pampas grass, undoubtedly.

  Martha is out now, more prosperous than ever, and more compelling as a news magnet than before the hit from the prosecutors. I tremble in the writing of this, but I believe she may be, as they say, “bigger” than Oprah.

  I wonder if Frank McKenna, freshly installed as our U.S. ambassador a mere day or so before Martha’s exit from her industrious durance, had the instinct and the courtesy to send her a thank-you card. It’s a test of an ambassador to know the moment, know whom to signal and what to watch.

  He arrived, to put it mildly, at an awkward time. George Bush is not returning our prime minister’s phone calls, there has been some temporizing on the timing of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s visit, and the air in the U.S. is, unwontedly, thick with abrasive comments on us, the usually invisible, congenitally nice neighbour to the north.

  In a U.S. Senate debate on the subject of reopening the border to Canadian beef, I heard a surly tone about Canada that was very nearly shocking. The worst came from Democratic senators. Democrats in Washington and Liberals in Ottawa are not exactly the Bobbsey twins ideologically, but insofar as either may be said to think, they think more or less alike. Harsh scolding from Democrats is not the predictable rant of Pat Buchanan (“Canuckistan”), say, or the comic bristling of Bill O’Reilly, the cranky tribune of all that’s “fair and balanced.”

  I am sure Mr. McKenna saw and heard more of that Senate debate than I, and probably shivered more from its acrimony than its actual result—a resolution to continue the ban on Canadian beef, which we are perhaps unrealistically confident that the president will veto when it reaches his desk.

  Even before the Senate debate, our new ambassador was offering his reflection that the recent, and badly conveyed, Canadian decision on missile defence was very likely coloured, the “temperature” of relations raised, by the stalemates on mad-cow disease and softwood lumber. He more or less claimed that Paul Martin’s call on missile defence grew out of the Americans’ stubbornness and intransigence on trade matters.

  It’s a rational reading, but I doubt it. I think the decision
on missile defence, from our government’s perspective, had less to do with beef and timber than with raw political considerations. Signing on to missile defence carries, for many Canadian voters, the dread stigma of that vilest carnality—climbing into bed with the Americans.

  Mr. McKenna is right. Canadians—certainly, cattle ranchers and people in the softwood lumber industry—are very angry. But the bigger anger, because of its clout, is actually that which is starting to drift from the U.S. to Canada.

  The temperature, as Mr. McKenna has it, is rising. When Canada’s “free ride” on continental defence makes it to the news billboards of CNN, when Lou Dobbs gives his precious attention to our defence budget, when the cable channels have a round of Canada-bashing—why, yes, things are getting hot for us. If cattle and defence weren’t linked before, they are linked now. Our stand on missile defence definitely caught the U.S. media spotlight.

  Fortunately for us, and our ambassador, its intense beam is fitful. What is mad cow and softwood lumber to measure against the allure of the iconic Wonder Woman of aspirant yuppiedom and the release (fringed with pampas grass or not) of Martha Stewart?

  For Frank McKenna, perhaps even more than for Martha, it was a very good thing.

  P.S. Make sure, Mr. Ambassador, that the card is one of a kind. Parchment with calligraphy would be nice.

  HOME TRUTHS FOR BOTH COUNTRIES | September 24, 2005

  Paul Cellucci’s tenure as U.S. ambassador to Canada may be described as a one-mission assignment. It was early in the term of his appointment that nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four airliners to work their murderous intent. The destruction of the twin towers, the scarring of the Pentagon, the appalling loss of life—all broadcast in real time to the television screens of the world—necessarily radicalized the United States’ sense of its vulnerability, and utterly transformed its conduct toward the rest of the world from that moment on.

  Mr. Cellucci quotes Prime Minister Jean Chrétien remarking after the towers fell that “the world has changed.” Chrétien was correct. From September 11 on, the world’s only superpower elevated the matter of its own security, the safety of its citizens at home and abroad, to the fundamental priority of its foreign policy. Everything was subordinate to that objective. Mr. Cellucci’s task was to translate the imperatives of that elevation in the particular arena of relations between his country and ours.

  Even in normal times—if, in a busy, chaotic world, “normal times” is a sustainable concept—the position of U.S. ambassador to Canada calls for formidable delicacy, nuance and sensitivity. We are friends and neighbours, have fought together in the two great wars of the last century, and the United States has been, up until a bare two weeks ago, Canada’s largest trading partner (China now owns that distinction). Canadians are immensely aware of the economic and cultural giant on our doorstep. We are grateful she is pacific toward us; 1812 is a buried memory.

  But we are acutely aware that the sheer cultural and economic mass of the United States almost inevitably has an impact on our way of life, and we therefore examine every interaction between our two countries with great self-consciousness and rigour, lest some portion of our statehood, our way of life and identity, be diminished, obscured or even obliterated. We are on a jealous watch up here.

  The spectrum of our sensitivity is a broad one. There is the blind contempt and overt disdain for all things American, from its president to its pop culture; there is pure and visceral anti-Americanism, which fuels the passion of the hard Canadian left, of which Carolyn Parrish’s occasional spiteful outbursts (“Damn Americans. I hate those bastards.”) are such obnoxious examples.

  Then, too, in polar reverse, is the worship of high capitalism and reverence for the great heroes of American republicanism, which warms the dreams of the hard Canadian right and has, as its fitful vehicle, the Conservative Party.

  In the middle, there is the sane appreciation of the Americans as neighbours and allies, and a reasonable admiration for their undeniable achievements and goodwill. This is coupled with a cautious recoil from the excesses of their sometimes unhinged and shameless culture, even as we mimic its more vapid splendours (witness Canadian Idol or the “Canadian” edition of Entertainment Tonight) or even export a few of that culture’s grossest exponents (Céline Dion, Tom Green).

  Whatever the Americans do—and sometimes whatever they do not do—as it refers to us, is put to a scrutiny and analysis of rabbinical finesse. They haunt us continually. What Pat Buchanan thinks, or what The Wall Street Journal on any given day may say, does not alter the temperature of the universe, and whether we are mocked or praised on blog or pundit panel should, by now, be a matter of the greatest indifference to us. But, of course, it isn’t.

  It was into this chamber of heightened cultural and political sensitivity—a sensitivity amplified on both sides of the exchange by the great horrors of September 11—that Mr. Cellucci wandered when he accepted the post of U.S. ambassador to Canada. After that day, from the Americans’ point of view, there were some messages that had to be delivered raw. There was neither time nor inclination for the more serpentine volubility of a traditional diplomatic approach.

  Which is probably why Mr. Cellucci’s memoir is titled Unquiet Diplomacy. His mission to us was the very plain one of making sure that we understood how serious, post-9/11, the Americans were. That, regardless of our long tradition of neighbourliness and the historic casualness of our cross-border relationship, there was nothing that would be allowed to impede or interfere with the Americans’ redrawing of their national priorities.

  We shared a continent, and the United States had enemies. It was at war. So, from the U.S. point of view, if there were deficiencies in our security that they felt would have an impact on their security, if our military’s anorexic state indirectly jeopardized their sense of safety, if our border controls did not measure up to their standards of strictness—then he, the new ambassador, was going to tell us. Straight out.

  His memoir is a chronicle of the key episodes during which he unfolded this message, and the events and issues that intersected with it. We Canadians first began to hear the new tone when Mr. Cellucci began “advising” us on the strength of our military. An interesting sidelight on this contentious issue is that Cellucci was specifically enjoined by Secretary of State Colin Powell to perform this task. It was the first and only specific injunction he received from Powell. Quite naturally, a fair portion of the Canadian public and our politicians were not pleased—either with the advice itself or that the ambassador was “lecturing” us on our affairs.

  He made it clear very early that in the changed world, “Security trumps trade.” This pithy formulation had an edge of threat. Canada’s economic fortune hangs—even in these mixed days of softwood lumber disputes—on the easy flow of goods between our two countries. What Cellucci was underscoring with his formula was that even his relentlessly capitalist country would not nurse trade at the expense of security. That unless Canada tidied up its house, monitored its borders and ports with renewed zeal, showed that we had a determination equal to the Americans’ to forestall future attacks, the economic nexus between our two countries would be broken.

  The issue of continental defence, specifically its anti-ballistic missile component, was the most troublesome and annoying, according to Cellucci, to the Americans and President George W. Bush. On the system itself, the Americans did not understand why we wished to exempt ourselves. It was not going to cost us anything. We were already partners in NORAD—indeed, on the day of the terror attacks, Canadian Air Force General Rick Findley “was in command at Cheyenne Mountain … and scrambled the jets in response to the President’s orders.”

  Further, they did not appreciate the description of missile defence, which so appealed to the critics of the system, as “the weaponization of space.” Finally, they were disappointed not only that Canada did not “sign on,” but that the Canadian government had been confusing in its signals on this issue, temporizing
over its resolution and then adding another disappointment with “the clumsy manner in which it was announced.” Pierre Pettigrew communicated the decision to Condoleezza Rice, while Prime Minister Paul Martin, who was actually with Bush (both men were attending a NATO meeting), didn’t tell him. As Cellucci notes, they “were standing side by side. But not a word was said.”

  It’s a subtheme of these memoirs that the Americans found our government’s method of communicating policy choices more annoying than the choices themselves. Cellucci gives solid evidence that he grew to learn of the complexities of Canadian parliamentary politics, especially in its current “minority” phase. He is aware of the inescapable perils that visit Canadian leaders if they are seen to be “too close” to the Americans on some issues, or—sprinkle the holy water—actually get chummy with their presidents. Brian Mulroney singing “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” with Ronald Reagan at the so-called Shamrock Summit evoked a national cringe that probably registered on the Richter scale.

  But Cellucci hints, more than once, that even with those complexities, a stronger leadership and some daring on the part of the two prime ministers he has dealt with, Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, might have led them to make wiser choices than they did, and might also have worked to raise and reinforce Canada’s standing in Washington and the world.