Not that this is surprising, but it is still disappointing. Further ties to the southern neighbour is not a good route for our future home to take. More spending on the military, depletion of natural resources, no universal health care, the "with us or against us" foreign policy . . . . These are reasons we're trying to get out of the US, we sure don't want them to follow us up here.
From today's Vancouver Sun:
Conservatives snuggle up to Washington
U.S. ambassador hails a ‘new era of cooperation’
BY MIKE BLANCHFIELD CanWest News Service
OTTAWA — Canada and the United States have entered a “new era” of cooperation, the American ambassador said Tuesday, hours after new federal government documents proclaimed Ottawa’s top foreign policy priority to be “greater collaboration” with Washington.
Though Prime Minister Stephen Harper has made strengthening relations with Washington a key part of his international agenda, the relationship was identified as the country’s top foreign policy priority in the government’s spending estimates formally tabled in Parliament on Tuesday.
According to the estimates, tabled by Foreign Affairs, that means backing the U.S. in its “indispensable role” in promoting Middle East peace, deepening ties between Canadian and American diplomats abroad, and an attempt “to balance American priorities with traditional Canadian foreign policy” in dealing with major international issues such as Iran’s nuclear ambitions and Iraqi reconstruction.
Later in the day, a speech in Ottawa by U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins heralded the onset of a renewed era of stronger ties between the two as he took a thinly veiled swipe at the previous Liberal governments of Paul Martin and Jean Chretien for undermining relations with the Bush administration.
“We are truly entering a new era of cooperation where there is a focus on shared responsibilities for dealing with problems — certainly more interested today on fixing the problem rather than fixing the blame,” Wilkins told hundreds of delegates at the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada’s annual meeting.
Nope, don't like it, don't like it at all.
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4 comments:
I still think that CIC and whatever we're calling the INS these days (I forget) should arrange an exchange program. One Canadian "conservative" gets to come South, a US "liberal" gets to go north. Yeah, flawed on many levels, but sounds fun on its face.
Reminds me of a post I should go write!
mseh,
That sounds like a PERFECT solution . . . wish I had thought of it.
Eventually we could get our new home to be close to Nirvana - Not a bad visual image as far as I'm concerned!
In the back of my mind I am holding the fear that after going through the 18 month or so immigration process that Canada will move further to the right.
Though as I've been told, "to the right" in Canada still places the country left of center in the US. I'm sure that's a point that many would like to debate, but I'm going to take it as gospel.
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