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Contributor: cell
Date: 2003-02-06 14:56:49
If the U.S. doesn't want Canada, why have two of the last three Prime Ministers established residency in the U.S., e.g. Mulroney and Campbell?
If the U.S. doesn't want Canada, why has it sought to control Canada's policy towards Cuba, (Helms Burton), while during the Cuban Missile Crisis JFK was smoking cuban cigars?
If the U.S. doesn't want Canada, why does it unilateraly attempt to regulate the Great Lakes fisheries favouring tourism over commercial fisheries?
If the U.S. doesn't want Canada, how come the majority of our bright students educated with Canadian tax dollars are hired by U.S. firms? (That doesn't seem to be a NAFTA issue)
If the U.S. doesn't want Canada, who supplies a steady stream of accentless speech for the America broadcasting industry?
If the U.S. doesn't want Canada, where is the third sea in the American motto "from sea to sea to sea"?
If the U.S. doesn't want Canada, what do they want? Mexico? The Phillipines?
If the U.S. doesn't want Canada, why do American travellers wear Canadian flags on their backpacks?
The issue is that Canada needs the U.S., the U.S. needs Canada, and the U.K. uses Canada as a foreign policy buffer to maintain its global economic interests in the face of American corporate expansionism.
Vis a vis the concept of the 51st state, Canada is the 51st state, in that at the North American bargaining table Canada is only given the clout of a state, less than Texas, more than Maine.
It is perhaps the inability of Canada's leaders to recognize the richness of our resouces, natural, human, and diplomatic that has led to our current fracture as a nation, e.g. The Prairie centric Reform Party all but obliterating the federal P.C.'s, The P.Q. controlling the opposition in Chrétien's previous term, and the negotiations of a pacific rim economic community separating B.C. from the rest of Canada.
Don't fret, however, it is not as if the U.S. is attempting to control our domestic policy with a homeland security innitiative or anything, oh wait a second that's being negotiated.
It's alright though because Canada's notions of a free society directly reflect those of the U.S. that's why the underground railway didn't bring slaves to Canada, and Canadians deported all the Vietnam war draft dodgers, oops, the inverse is true.
But don't fret, if Canadians ignore the fact that California has polluted all their fresh water, that New York is regulating the Lake Ontario fisheries, that during the Quebec referendum the idea of franco annexation to the U.S. was hot news, and that NAFTA is directly biased against primary producers, we might just stay Canadian.
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