U.S. Oblivious To Political Crisis In CanadaFriday December 5, 2008
Lee-Anne Goodman, The Canadian Press
James Blanchard, the onetime U.S. ambassador to Canada, once described his adopted land as "the invisible world next door."
American oblivion about its biggest trading partner was evident again this week as scant few Washington power brokers paid any attention to the historic political crisis raging north of the border.
The New York Times, CNN and The Associated Press were among the few news organizations that regularly reported on Prime Minister Stephen Harper's fight for his political life against a hastily convened coalition of opposition parties.
Only in the immediate wake of Thursday's historic decision to prorogue Parliament did the crisis get much attention from the international media, including The Economist, The Christian Science Monitor newspaper and the International Herald Tribune.
"I Googled the word 'Canada' in some U.S. papers and they hadn't even had stories containing the word Canada in three days, never mind stories about the political crisis," David Biette, the director of the Canada Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said Friday.
An official at the Canadian Embassy was equally mystified that few in Washington seemed to be aware that the Canadian government had been on the brink of being toppled.
"No one seems to have any idea," the official said earlier this week.
In the Washington Post mid-week, an item at the height of the crisis was buried in a collection of foreign news briefs. The paper has run AP copy on its website, but many U.S. newspapers and websites have contained no mention at all of the events.
The Times, on the other hand, gave the story prominent play throughout the week, and the AP has had daily dispatches from Ottawa.
Biette points out that Americans are understandably consumed by their own historic events right now. Barack Obama, the first black man to be elected president in U.S. history, will be sworn in on Jan. 20, and officials in D.C. are busily preparing for the inauguration.
Spectator stands are already being constructed outside the White House and along the inauguration parade route, security details are being worked out, and thousands of D.C. residents are making arrangements to rent out their homes and apartments at top dollar when millions of visitors flood to town for the events.
And Congressional leaders have been preoccupied this week with the plight of the Big Three U.S. automakers. The CEOs of all three companies returned to the capital this week to plead for a financial bailout after coming up with measures aimed at running their businesses more efficiently.
Far from the Beltway and closer to the Canada-U.S. border, some were paying closer attention to their neighbours to the north.
Vermont Public Radio host Mitch Wertlieb had a segment on the drama on Friday, talking to a local political scientist about the chain of events.
"If you're one of those political junkies going through withdrawal now that the U.S. presidential contest is history, you can turn to Canada to get a fix of serious political drama," Wertlieb told his listeners.
But for the most part, Biette said, Americans just aren't following the drama.
"It doesn't affect us, I guess," he said. "Right now it's their family problem, and we'll just wait to see what happens."
The Woodrow Wilson Center established the Canada Institute with the stated purpose of exploring "one of America's most important bilateral relationships, but one that gets far less attention in Washington than it deserves."
Had the government actually fallen, Biette said, a conference of American politicians, scholars and business representatives would have been held at the institute to discuss the crisis.
Biette was in the process of organizing the event when Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean threw Harper a lifeline on Thursday by allowing him to suspend Parliament - a process known as proroguing - until Jan. 26.
"I was getting my ducks in a row if the government had fallen, and you had this rogue group of disparate politicians culled together, many of whom have dissed the U.S. in the past - there certainly would have been some interest here if that had happened," Biette said.
"That would have been quite fascinating because we wouldn't have known here what kind of situation Canada was getting itself into" - and may yet find itself.
Harper has until Jan. 26 to find a way out of the crisis, he added.
"That's six days after the inauguration, and Americans may indeed be paying attention then."
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This reminds me of when Quebec held the sovereignty vote in 1996, and when it was all over, politicians stateside flipped out when they realized how seriously close we came to breaking up as a country. They had no clue what was going on, how serious the situation was, ...and it was happening right under their noses.
