Yes, where are all the "good Canadians"?

Christopher Sands, "an influential analyst on Canada-U.S. relations" for the Hudson Institute, Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the North American Competitiveness Council, brought his deep integration big stick up to Ottawa on Friday:

"In exchange for continued visa-free access to the United States, American officials are pressuring the federal government to supply them with more information on Canadians.
Not only about (routine) individuals but also about people that you may be looking at for reasons, but there's no indictment and there's no charge."

You mean people like Maher Arar?

"People in Canada have turned the man into some sort of national hero, but if you expect the next administration to join you in sending him laurels, I think you're going to be mistaken. Even Barack Obama ... is not going to go near that with a 10-foot pole."

Arar "will not have his name removed from the U.S. no-fly list "in my lifetime," he added.

Sands recounts a conversation with Stewart Baker, assistant secretary of policy at the Department of Homeland Security, for our edification :

"Canadians have "had a better deal than anybody else in terms of access to the United States and for that they've paid nothing."
Now "we want to give you less access, but we want you to pay more and, by the way, we're standardizing this (with other visa-free countries) so you're not special anymore."

According to Sands :

"Homeland security is the gatekeeper with its finger on the jugular affecting your ability to move back and forth across the border, the market access upon which the Canadian economy depends."

Dr Dawg's Shorter Sands : "Nice country you've got there--be a shame if anything happened to it."


It's really just too bad we mostly missed the boat on Iraq, isn't it?
Back in January 2007, Sands introduced Sockwell Day to the Hudson Institute thusly :

"I was struck back in 2003 after doing a briefing with some people in the Administration. It had been a rough year. We were getting ready to go to Iraq. Canada-US relations were somewhat strained by that. At the end of the briefing which had been a little bit grim -- about how Canada and the US could work together better in this war on terror that we were facing, the person I was briefing paused and said to me, 'Chris, where are all the good Canadians?'

When he said that it broke a little bit of my heart, because I'm an American but I love the Canadians. I think what he meant by that was 'Where are the Canadians of World War I and World War II, that people understood to be... even when Europeans didn't, those allies we had come to count on.'

Well, I have good news. Our speaker today is one of the good Canadians..."

Good Canadian Sockwell Day, our new Minister of International Trade.

Cross-posted at Creekside