Wednesday, February 4, 2009


The real “travesty” of Obama's visit

I guess some Canadians just don’t have enough to be upset about, so they can afford to be angry that U.S. President Barack Obama will not be speaking to Parliament during his visit to Ottawa later this month.

It isn’t enough that Obama made sure that Canada would be his first foreign visit since assuming the presidency. But some are complaining that Obama is visiting at a time when Parliament won’t be in session. (Of course, this begs the question: Parliamentarians just went back into session, so why are they already getting time off? But that’s an issue for another day.)

Obama has already set up a meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and will likely meet with Opposition Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff. Obama will also likely to hold some sort of press conference so that he can speak to the nation without the pomp and circumstance of speaking in the House of Commons.

Some are framing this as the Canadian government somehow slighting Obama, but published reports say the government may simply be accommodating Obama. As the Toronto Star put it, “There has been no indication Obama wants to address Parliament.” Obama reportedly wants his Feb. 19 visit to include as little pomp as possible.

But that hasn’t stopped the political hyperbole. Ken Sherman, vice chair of the Canadian chapter of Democrats Abroad, even called the current situation a “travesty.”

Really? A travesty? The real travesty in Canada-U.S. relations is the protectionist, anti-free-trade “buy American” provision in Obama’s U.S. stimulus plan, a measure that is poor diplomacy as well as bad economics. But you don’t hear people like Sherman screaming about that. In fact, most Canadians know little or nothing about this, which could decimate Canada’s already-struggling steel industry.

No, whether or not Obama speaks in Parliament, and putting all the blame on the Canadian government, is seemingly a higher priority for these folks. Canadians, after all, were dancing in the streets when Obama was elected, but why aren’t they protesting in the streets against Obama’s protectionist tendencies that could start a global trade war as well as severely curtail America’s attempt to repair its image around the world?

But that is seemingly of little matter, when the formality of a state visit is at stake.

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