The Canadian Connection
Whose brother are we anyway?

By Neil Seeman, senior researcher & lawyer with the National Citizens' Coalition, a research and advocacy group in Toronto.
September 26, 2001 11:25 a.m.

eeting on Monday with Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, President Bush called his northern neighbor "a brother" in the war on terrorism. Mr. Chrétien assured reporters in Washington that when the United States needs Canada, "we will be there." One would expect as much: The United States is Canada's largest trade partner and military defender. But if Canada is a "brother" to the United States, he is a nasty one. Even in this time of war, anti-Americanism is a national sport up here; so too, it seems, is Canada's breezy indifference to fighting terrorism.

According to intelligence reports, 50 global terrorist groups are actively operating in Canada. It's "a piece of cake" for terrorists and spies to obtain forged or legitimate Canadian passports, says one high-level agent from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). Once they pony up for a passport, terrorists flood into the United States on work or tourist visas. And if that fails, they can always hop into border states through a prairie cornfield.

Canada is a Club Med for terrorists, but nobody in the government seems to give a damn. Last May, two ministers attended a fundraiser for the Tamil Tigers, a terrorist organization that targets civilians in Sri Lanka. Those of us who criticized the Liberals for coddling terrorists were called racists.

So hell-bent is the Liberal government on maintaining Canada's place as a nation of "tolerance" that it elevates political correctness above national security. A confidential White House report leaked on Monday but written some time ago says Canada is a gateway for organized crime groups to infiltrate the United States. Elinor Caplan, the minister of immigration, said the report had forced Canada to beef up its lax immigration policies. But those changes have yet to be implemented.

The immigration minister is the high priestess of official "diversity"; during the last election, she accused the official opposition — without evidence and without apology — of being "Holocaust deniers." Another Liberal, the "minister of multiculturalism," hallucinated in the press about an imaginary rash of Ku Klux Klan-style cross burnings in British Columbia.

All of this Orwellian psychodrama would be comical were it not for the fact that it's threatening Americans' lives. At least four suspects in the World Trade Center attacks crossed into the U.S. through the porous Canadian border. Canada, according to former CSIS chief of strategic planning David Harris, is "a big jihad aircraft carrier [terrorists use] for launching strikes against the U.S."

These terrorists fund their activities with the generous welfare payments they collect from the Liberal government. Ahmed Ressam, a suspected Algerian terrorist who planned to blow up the Los Angeles airport in 1999, even convinced the Department of Foreign Affairs to issue him a Canadian passport. Although he was caught carrying a truckload of explosives into the U.S. by American police at the Port Angeles, Wash., border crossing, he had evaded capture for five years after making a bogus refugee claim. When he arrived in Canada, he told Canadian authorities he was a suspected terrorist (accused of plotting a millennial bombing in Dahoumane) but was nonetheless allowed to stay in the country on "compassionate" grounds. Ressam, who was a member of a bin Laden terrorist cell, opened bank accounts in Canada and took vacations to Afghani terrorist training camps.

We in Canada want to believe that snafus like the Ressam imbroglio are born of simple incompetence. That would be terrible, to say nothing more, but at least we can cure incompetence. A more troubling prospect is that Canada's foot-dragging on security issues flows in part from the Liberal government's bitter anti-Americanism. In 1997, when referring to America's decision to approve new NATO members, our prime minister said: "It's not for reasons of security. It's all done for short-term political reasons to win elections." In 1991: "I don't want to be friends with George Bush." In 2000: "[Canada is] the United States with none of the inconveniences." At election time, the Liberals routinely attack opposition policies for championing "American-style" health care; "American-style" tax reform; "American-style" immigration reform, etc., etc.

The question then remains: Is Canada a "brother" of the United States? I wish it were so.