Paul Martin's Selective Bravado

When in doubt, pander: That is Paul Martin's motto as prime minister, and it goes double during election campaigns.

Last week was the Prime Minister's week to pander to anti-Americanism.

On Wednesday, he delivered a speech to the UN conference on climate change in Montreal that pointedly rebuked "any nation ... no matter how prosperous" that imagines it can "stand alone, isolated from the global community." Lest anybody mistake the Prime Minister's meaning, he made it explicit to reporters afterward that his remarks were aimed at "reticent nations including the United States."

Two days later, on the afternoon of Dec. 9, the CBC and the Canadian press broadcast and posted breathless stories that a "furious" White House had "summoned" ambassador Frank McKenna "onto the carpet" to protest the Prime Minister's words. The CBC added the piquant detail that Vice-President Dick Cheney was particularly upset and had directed that McKenna be called.

Paul Martin, though, was undaunted: "As far as my speech the other day," he said on Dec. 9, "I spoke what I believe. Let me tell you that as the prime minister of Canada I am going to speak for Canadian interests and Canadian values."

As it happens, the story of White House reaction to that speech turns out to have been wildly overhyped. The White House official who met with ambassador McKenna on Friday was not the Vice-President, not the National Security Adviser, not even the National Security Council's Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs: It was the head of the Council on Environmental Quality. Nor had McKenna been "summoned": He had requested the meeting himself. As for the administration's alleged fury, the true mood seems to have been closer to one of irritated resignation. Election time in Canada? Ah, brace yourself for six weeks of Liberal Yankee-bashing.

But anybody tempted to take Paul Martin's Captain Canada stunts seriously might want to consider this: If Paul Martin truly champions Canada's interests and Canada's values on the world stage, why do the names "Zahra Kazemi" and "Bill Sampson" so seldom pass his lips? Here are two Canadians, one raped and murdered, one imprisoned and tortured, by undemocratic Middle Eastern regimes.

In Kazemi's case, then deputy prime minister John Manley declared within two weeks of her death in July 2003 that "I don't think it's helpful to have a war of words." And so even as Iran has lied and stonewalled to protect Kazemi's secret-police murderers, Canada's prime ministers have bit their lips. Foreign Minister Bill Graham expressed at various times his dissatisfaction with Iran's "unacceptable behavior." His successor, Pierre Pettigrew, has acknowledged "frustration" with Iran. And the Prime Minister? What does the bold champion of Canada's interests and values have to say for himself?

"I think there's no doubt whether you are talking about international courts or whether you are talking about the UN Commission on Human Rights, I would certainly think the details of what happened to her now in the testimony that has been brought has got to make the world aware of just what Iran is all about and that they have got to be held to account." These were the words the Prime Minister spoke on April 1, 2005, after details of Kazemi's torture were made public.

Now consider the case of Bill Sampson, a Canadian detained in Saudi Arabia in December, 2000. Islamic terrorists that month detonated a car bomb in Riyadh. Rather than face the truth, the Saudi government blamed the attack on "liquor traffickers" and arrested seven Westerners. Sampson was held for 31 months. When visited by Canadian officials, he charged that his jailers were torturing him.

Foreign Minister Bill Graham's response? "What assurances we were given by Saudi authorities was that any torture was contrary to the Koran, and would be contrary to their religious beliefs, and therefore no torture would be used, but we still raised it with them." He said that Canada would assist if Sampson filed a complaint with the Saudis. And Paul Martin? He assigned a MP to examine the plight of Canadians detained abroad.

It's a compliment to the United States that a prime minister who hestitates to criticize the thug regime of Iran and the oil princes of the Persian Gulf should feel he can scold the Americans with impunity.

Then again, maybe he just assumed the Americans weren't listening. After all, he was not talking to them. He was using the UN, Bill Clinton, and the issue of global climate change as a series of props for a photo op aimed at left-leaning voters in British Columbia and southern Ontario. Which just goes to show: A prime minister does not have to come from a small town -- or even like golf -- to play cheap.