One side note in all this is the somewhat hyperinflated view that the Canadian Left has of itself vis-a-vis the United States. Maybe in over-compensation for losing all of their best comedians to us, the Liberals seem to think that, well, what they say, you know, matters to us.
First, they dredged up this idea to propose a treaty banning weapons in space. The CTV and Globe and Mail and the rest all treated it as though it would actually prevent us from putting weapons in space! Are the serious? The Russians couldn't keep us from pulling out of ABM.
Second, there's the whole Kyoto thing. Now they rarely actually say so, but part of their pride in Kyoto is in the fact that we didn't sign in. As Steyn has pointed out, it's all well and good to go feeling morally superior to us for having signed, but we're the ones who've done better at keeping down greenhouse emissions.
Finally, there's ANWR. "ANWR? ANWR?," I hear you cry. "Isn't that in, like, Alaska?" Yes, but apparently the 2000-acre drilling site (that's 3 square miles, for those of you without a calculator) will utterly destroy 180,000 caribou, starving out the "Gwich'in," who seem to be people who don't use oil. So not only do the Canadians think they have a right, the liberals think they're the reason we haven't set up the rigs yet:
"If Bush father and Bush son have been unable to drill there, it's because Canada was supporting the forces of progress in the United States saying don't do that," [Environment Minister Stéphane] Dion said in an interview.
I've been following the ANWR debate with some interest, and I can't say that I've yet heard anyone say that we can't drill there because it'll tick off the Canadians.
In one way, all this is kind of cute, kind of like how Virginia Tech goes around claiming they're "The University of Virginia." The telling point is that you never see U.Va.-trained engineers making the reverse claim. Canada used to be a serious country. They also tamed their West, and did it with fewer travel weeks. They played a major role in D-Day. But somewhere in developing expertise in peace-keeping, they forgot about the peace-making part.
Geographically, they're North American, but spiritually, they've got the European Disease. Hopefully, that's about to change.
