BLAME CANADA!

“Canada a whiner and freeloader, says Buchanan

From Canadian Press

Canada is a "whining" country that has been ``freeloading" off the U.S. defence budget for decades, outspoken American talk-show host Pat Buchanan said today.
The latest attack to come from the failed Republican presidential candidate followed his televised comment that Canada is a "Soviet Canuckistan" - a term frequently used by an American Holocaust-denier.

Buchanan was responding to the objections Canadian officials made to a U.S. law demanding photos and fingerprints from some Arab-Canadian visitors to the country.

"Post 9-11, we've been making a tremendous effort to try to secure the American people," Buchanan said in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C., where he co-hosts a daily talk show.

"And to hear this kind of carping criticism from north of the border, from folks whom we give a $50-billion trade surplus each year and whom we defend while they have been in some ways freeloading off the United States, got a little bit into my craw."

"We exercise occasionally the right to criticize (Canada) and what I hear from up in Canada is some juvenile whining."

On Tuesday, the Foreign Affairs Department issued a warning to Canadians born in Iraq, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Syria highlighting a U.S. law that targets foreign visitors originally from those countries.

Two days later, Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham said he'd been told by American ambassador Paul Cellucci that everyone carrying a Canadian passport will be treated equally at the border, no matter where they were born.

On Friday, the U.S. clarified that apparent promise: finger-printing and photographing of some Arab-born Canadian citizens who travel there will no longer be automatic.

"Place of birth by itself will not automatically trigger registration," said a release Friday from the U.S. embassy in Ottawa.

While Buchanan called Canada a "safe haven for terrorists" and said Prime Minister Jean Chrétien had done an "appalling" job of securing the country's borders, he also said U.S. President George W. Bush has not done enough to counteract terrorism in his own backyard.

If Canadians don't want to visit the U.S. because they object to being fingerprinted and photographed, that's their prerogative, Buchanan said.

Buchanan's comments were first aired Thursday on the MSNBC show Buchanan and Press, with co-host Bill Press, on Thursday. Almost half a million people tune in for two hours daily to watch Buchanan, a notoriously conservative commentator who once wrote speeches for former presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, face off with the more liberal Press.

His reference to Canada as a "Soviet Canuckistan" apparently has some sinister origins. It's a term frequently used by American Holocaust-denier Eric Thomson on his Web site, a virulently racist and anti-Semitic site.

Buchanan's comments don't represent the way most Americans think, said Maude Barlow, spokeswoman for the Council of Canadians.

She said the remarks aren't "fair to most Americans because most Americans don't think the way Pat Buchanan does. But if you don't know anything about Canada and this is all you're seeing, it can spread a pretty vicious lie."

"He's using Canada as an excuse here to whip up racist sentiment in the United States, but what people need to start talking about right now is how to get along."

This week also wasn't the first time Buchanan has given Canada a verbal lashing.

In 1990, Buchanan wrote that if Canada shattered following the failure of the Meech Lake constitutional accord, "America would pick up the pieces."

Two years later, he said: "For most Americans, Canada is sort of like a case of latent arthritis. We really don't think about it, unless it acts up."”