Days Of Discord For U.S., Canada

This week, Canada's health minister issued a vague threat to overhaul the country's regulations on exporting prescription drugs, saying Canada would no longer be a cheap "drug store for the United States." The two allies also may jockey over global warming at the three-day Group of Eight economic summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, beginning Wednesday. The disputes are sometimes colored by fundamentally different outlooks stemming from the fact that Canada patiently negotiated step-by-step self-government from Great Britain while the United States abruptly declared independence 229 years ago on Monday to launch a protracted American Revolution. Top officials in both nations downplay differences between Canada -- a sprawling, well-to-do nation that has a population smaller than California's -- and the United States, which boasts an economy and population roughly 10 times that of Canada's. "People in the United States and Canada take each other for granted -- that is absolute fact," says Frank McKenna, the newly appointed Canadian ambassador to the United States, who has launched a whirlwind public relations offensive to explain Canada to Americans. Christopher M. Sands, a specialist on U.S.-Canada relations at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says relations have deteriorated because Americans are brushing aside Canadian concerns and Canadians are voicing deepening condemnations of President Bush. "It's become socially acceptable to criticize each other," Sands said. "There are a growing number of unprovoked attacks, with Americans and Canadians taking broad swipes at each other's entire country." The neo-conservative Weekly Standard recently offered American readers a story titled "Welcome to Canada: The Great White Waste of Time." Carolyn Parrish, a Liberal Party member of the Canadian Parliament, has called Bush's "coalition of the willing" in Iraq a "coalition of idiots." An aide serving then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien during Bush's first term dubbed the American president a "moron" -- a remark that forced the aide's resignation. Elected leaders in both nations often stress the positive aspects of the relationship as a way of keeping public focus on the upbeat side, recognizing that these neighbors share a language and the world's longest undefended border that means 200 million annual border crossings and nearly $500 billion in two-way commerce each year. That might not add up to a marriage made in heaven, but it does amount to a bond that seems destined to endure, come what may. Canada is dwarfed by the United States, an economic goliath with a population of almost 296 million and an economic output of $11 trillion that counts on Canada for barely 4 percent of U.S. economic output. Canada has 32.8 million people and an economy of barely $1 trillion a year. It does more business with Home Depot in the United States than it does with France -- a nation that once colonized parts of Canada and left a rich heritage in the province of Quebec. http://timesunion.com/AspStories/storyprint.asp?StoryID=375364 And more here: http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/12044957.htm

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