Time's Attack on Canada Doesn't Ask Right Question

By: David Olive

The cover of Time magazine's latest Canadian edition notes that our "nation's influence in the world is shrinking".

Inside this edition of the branch-plant magazine are 10 pages of features and columns on Canada's pint-sized military, dwindling diplomatic corps, and shrinking foreign aid budget. Plus a reminder it's not too late for Canada to win a coveted prime ministerial invitation to George W. Bush's ranch in Texas by following the ennobling Aussie example of outsourcing your foreign policy to Washington.

The cover image is a map of North America in which there's a big empty space where Canada used to be. And the main headline: "Would anyone notice if Canada disappeared?"

Well, hypotheticals are tough.

What if Austria disappeared? Or Donald Rumsfeld? Or kabuki?

My own speculations run in the opposite direction.

What if George Orwell came back, or the Marx Brothers?

Would anyone miss Time, whose reporting on the Iraqi crisis lacked the investigative enterprise of Newsweek, the Washington Post and Britain's Guardian?

Iraq, and Canada's non-participation in the U.S.-led assault on that country, is of course what prompted this latest attack on our tender sensibilities.

Soon enough, editorialists and callers on the CBC's talk-back lines will respond to this latest slur.

They will argue that Canadian-inspired or heavily supported initiatives like the land-mines convention and the new International Criminal Court, and our break with the U.S. in ratifying the Kyoto accord on global warming, and deciding not to join Iceland and the Solomon Islands in the "coalition of the willing" in Iraq, have projected our influence in the world far more substantially than any increase in our defence budget could do.

Canada is an act of faith, which like the Eucharist, cannot be reduced to a lapel pin.

We haven't made much progress, and possibly we shouldn't, since D'Arcy McGee lectured an audience of Haligonians in 1864 that the only objections to the proposed confederation were from "those who have a vested interest in their own insignificance".

The Canadian editors of Time Canada are not alone among us in perpetuating this hoary stereotype of insignificance. Any response to what they're selling could hardly be more forceful than the messages I received from U.S. correspondents who e-mailed me in response to Star articles about the Iraqi debacle over the past few months.

For war supporters in the U.S., Canada's skepticism about White House war aims in Iraq was sharply irksome, relevant because America's friend and neighbour, of all places, was disputing their conception of a moral cause.

And Americans with an anti-war view seemed to feel that if Canada disappeared, North America would lose its last bastion of democracy and free speech.

An arguable point, for sure, but less so than the undeniable importance of Canada to Americans who dissented from what they perceived as a pro-war groupthink in their country.

Here's what some of them had to say:

"The people leading my country are very scary and at times I even consider moving to our neighbours to the North. Hopefully, this madness will only last for 1¾ years. And we can get a new administration with a more mature view of the world."

- M.M., Washington, DC

"Thank God that we can read articles like yours distinct from the U.S. newspapers and media that do not travel in lockstep with our administration."

- S.R., Olympia, WA

"I am an American, even a South Texan, but despise Bush and his insane cartel in this lunacy called 'Iraqi Freedom'. I am pitifully grateful for rays of sanity from Canada. What has happened to the U.S.?"

- J.J., Houston, TX

"I read your column on antiwar.com. Thanks from a Yank vet. Too bad we USA citizens need to get our best coverage from Canada and the Brit papers."

- D.H., (no address)

"I live in the U.S. and the only place we can get any truth in the news is from Canada, or Europe. I'm afraid the Bush cabal is going after Syria next. You won't hear anything about this in the U.S. press, however, it's being censored."

- M.B., South Haven, MI

"Thank you for a Canadian perspective. I truly believe that my country is no longer a 'democracy' because this nightmare started with the installation of the Bush government. More than half of us did not vote for this man."

- D.E., Soquel, CA

"I'm American and so you can imagine my profound frustration, surrounded by a population that just sucks up the deception and is oblivious of our collective denial."

- T.W., Santa Fe, NM

"We have blind Americans hating dissenting Americans, even in 'victory'. It's sickening."

- C.N., Boston, MA

"I am an American, and am against this war. I love my country, but don't love its foreign policy. Unfortunately, your article will be dismissed as anti-American, just as everyone living in this country who disagrees."

- S.J., Des Moines, IA

"The U.S. is bullying the world by the 'Coalition of the Mindless'. I am an American but sadly not proud of it at this point in our history. Thank you for being one of the unwilling."

- B.R., Honolulu, HI

"Your Canadian perspective is sorely needed down here amidst the glut of flag-waving U.S. 'journalism'. Three cheers for 'Old Europe' and our friends in Canada."

- M.M., Coventry, VT

Some of America's friends in Canada worried that the U.S. would look like a bully in this unequal contest, undermining its moral stature. Rather late, pro-war pundit Thomas Friedman of the New York Times during his travels in Iraq this week has discovered that Iraq was in no position to defend itself. And the depredation has only grown worse since the great victory was secured.

"With all due respect to the U.S. military," Freidman wrote yesterday, "in socio-economic terms, "we were at war with the Flintstones."

Something like 3% of the world population agreed with this war. For the rest - watching the Philippine dissidents now being suppressed by the Pentagon, the U.S.-backed Christian Sudanese at war with the regime in Khartoum, the Chileans suddenly frozen out of free-trade talks by a vengeful White House - the question that should trouble Time's editors in New York is: "How many people in the world wish that America was a little less visible right now?"