Putting An End To Ottawa's Brat Act

Washington D.C. will be very, very glad to see the back of Paul Martin, and for much the same reason that Canadians voted against him. After years of investing him with all their brightest hopes for change, they came to see him as a weak, vacillating leader whose word could not be trusted.

Out of a long, long list of irritants, two stand out as the most fateful moments in the weakening of Washington's once enthusiastic admiration for Paul Martin.

The first came in February 2005, when the Martin government announced that Canada would not after all join the US missile defence plan. At the Bush-Martin summit meeting in Ottawa in November 2004, Martin had led Bush to believe that Canada would join. The reversal startled and offended the Americans, and especially President Bush, who sets great store by the personal trustworthiness of international leaders. (He famously disliked Germany's Gerhard Schroeder much more than Jacques Chirac, because he felt that Chirac had always been straightforward about his opposition to the Iraq war, while Schroeder had violated a promise not to campaign against it.)

It's probably not a coincidence that Martin's about-face on missile defence was followed in August by an equal American breach of faith: the refusal to accept a NAFTA panel's ruling in Canada's favour on softwood lumber.

The second turning point in the relationship came just last month, after Martin's speech to a UN conference in Montreal, criticizing the American position on climate change. The speech in itself was only moderately obnoxious. What gave true offence was the sequel:

Ambassador Frank McKenna requested a meeting to explain the Prime Minister's remarks. He was received by the head of the White House Office on Environmental Quality, who complained about the singling out of the United States. McKenna wrote up the complaint in a cable, sent it to Ottawa--where the Prime Minister's Office leaked it to the press, spinning it as a story of American arrogance and Canadian defiance: The "White House" "summoning" an ambassador for a "tongue-lashing." Martin on the hustings proudly announced he would not be "dictated to" (the headlines said "bullied") by the United States.

You can see why the Americans would feel they had been set up. And when the U.S. ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins, very mildly asked that Canadians leave the United States out of their election, the Liberal campaign swung around to target him.

Were the Martin government to have survived yesterday's election, it is hard to see how U.S.-Canada relations could be restored to a business-like footing anytime soon.

But a new government will have a new chance.

Throughout the election, Canadian reporters called down to Washington trying to entrap unwary American conservatives into saying something overly euphoric about Harper. (The headline sought: "Harper 'one of us,' U.S. right-wingers say.") I myself did a taped interview for French-language CBC in which I was asked literally six consecutive times whether President Bush would not be made ecstatic by a Harper victory.

Behind all these stories was an unstated premise: that bad relations with the United States were somehow in Canada's interest. In this version of reality, a prime minister who cannot get his phone calls returned deserves credit as a bold Captain Canada--while a prime minister with the credibility and clout to solve problems is some kind of vendu.

Canadians saw through this kind of anti-American manipulation in 2006, as they saw through it in 1988. That creates very positive atmospherics for Canadian interests in Washington.

Martin's defeat does something else too, something maybe even more important: It opens the way for a more mature, normal relationship between the two great North American countries.

Martin himself put it best, in his final ad of the campaign. "The United States," he said, "is our neighbour, not our nation." This is a fine admonition, but it is advice that the Chretien/Martin Liberals themselves could never follow.

Relations between allies normally proceed without much regard to the ebb and flow of party politics. Tony Blair went to war in Kosovo alongside a Democratic president--and to war in Iraq alongside a Republican. Blair's Conservative predecessor John Major likewise co-operated closely first with the elder Bush and then with Clinton. Precisely because America was not their nation, they did not allow Britain's foreign policy to be driven by their reactions for or against America's domestic policy.

Contrast that with Paul Martin! On the very day that he was slamming the United States on Kyoto, he was preening for the cameras with former president Bill Clinton. Was Martin trying to suggest that he had won the endorsement of George Bush's predecessor? Or was he trying to urge Canadians to vote for him as a way to register their preference for Clinton? Either way, it's not something that the leader of a proudly independent country should be doing.

Unlike Martin, Stephen Harper truly does know the difference between one's neighbour and one's nation. His foreign policy will be guided not by his feelings about America's domestic policy, as Chretien and Martin too often allowed theirs to be, but by his assessment of Canada's enduring international interests. That's the way mature countries comport themselves. After years of childish self-indulgence under two old men, this young prime minister will at last lead Canada back to the grown-ups' table. That change will be welcomed in Washington. It should be even more strongly welcomed where it matters most: in Canada.