WINNIPEG – I am not inside Barack Obama’s big brain. So I have no idea whether the American president spends more than five minutes every 10 years thinking about Canada.
Having spent five years living in the U.S., I had the impression the average American spent less than five minutes per lifetime thinking about the “true north strong and free.” If he thinks about Canada at all, Obama should withdraw his insulting proposal to charge Canadians $5.50 a head for visiting America.
Memo to President Obama: “Hey Mr. President, the global financial crisis was created by dumb U.S. government policy, irresponsible U.S. interest rate policy and U.S. financial witchcraft.
“To be blunt, Canada wasn’t on the mattress when this baby was conceived. Why are you forcing us to share the incubator? Haven’t we done enough already? Hasn’t our economy alone suffered enough collateral damage from the Washington-Wall St. stink bomb? Haven’t we been helpful by giving you access to millions of litres of ethical oil?
“And what about all the hundreds of millions we are on the hook for to help your government bail out General Motors? Did we really have a choice? Had we chosen not to play ball, you would have turned the North American Free Trade Agreement into toilet paper.
“Sir, if you are honestly thinking of penalizing Canada for American mistakes, please remember the words of that great American songwriter Billy Joel: ‘We didn’t the start the fire.’ ”
Now if you’re a Canadian left-winger, you may be seething because I’m not lap dogging the Great Obama. But you need to grateful the Canadian head tax idea wasn’t conceived by the president you will always think of as the runt of the American litter, George W. Bush. Yes, he’s the one who, in your opinion, stole the election from the planet’s best friend, Al Gore.
Bush is the one who you believe would never have become president had the lock on the White House door not been picked by conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Bush is the dude who, in your opinion, gave democracy a bad name especially when he said he wanted Arabs to have a democracy in the cradle of civilization, Iraq.
Remember how willing you were to listen to the theory that Bush was so insecure with the thought of having to win re-election legitimately that he cooked up a conspiracy to murder thousands of Americans on Sept. 11, 2001. In order to do it, he had to use his daddy’s connections with the bin Laden family.
What you call history may be a fractured fairy tale to the rest of us. But is there any disgusting or barbaric theory you would not fall for if it was peddled as just another George W. Bush-induced nightmare? If you’re a left-winger, you have to be thrilled Bush isn’t the one with flypaper palms trying to pick up as many Canadian $5 bills as he can. If this head tax was a Bush idea, you would want to decapitate him.
Come on. Admit it to Uncle Chuck. Aren’t there times like this when you really miss your favourite enemy?
Charles Adler
Charles Adler is a national radio columnist, whose show runs on the Corus Radio Network. Charles can be heard Monday to Friday online by visiting www.charlesadler.com.
Adler’s column appears on NetNewsledger.com on a regular basis, as a means of offering new ideas, insights and opinion to the region.