Why Canada Did Not Join the Iraq Coalition

Diane Francis, Shorenstein Fellow Fall 2005
Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government

December 2005


INTRODUCTION

On March 17, 2003, two days before the Coalition of the Willing invaded Iraq, Prime Minister Jean Chretien stood up in the House of Commons and read out a terse statement: “Over the last few weeks the UN Security Council has been unable to agree on a new resolution authorizing military action. Canada worked very hard to find a compromise to bridge the gap in the Security Council. Unfortunately, we were not successful. If military action proceeds without a new resolution of the Security Council, Canada will not participate. We have ships in the area as part of our participation in the struggle against terrorism.”

Anti-war activists admired Canada for its refusal to join the Coalition of the Willing which invaded Iraq in 2003. Even some Coalition supporters may now wish their countries had chosen to sit on the sidelines as Canada did, now that the situation deteriorates and casualties mount.

But the Prime Minister’s terse statement had nothing to do with principles, skepticism over intelligence reports about weapons of mass destruction, foreign policy considerations or consistency, Canadian public opinion or press endorsement. It surprised Canadians as well as his personal pollster and many of his own cabinet ministers. It took Canadian military and diplomatic officials aback who were actively participating, with the Prime Minister’s consent, in the planning of the Iraq invasion with other Coalition partners. Canada even talked to Washington about sending up to 1,500 troops to Iraq but this was suddenly taken off the table causing Canadian Major General Cameron Ross to resign. The nature of the announcement also represented a notable breach of diplomatic protocol which dictates that countries affected by such decisions, namely the U.S. and Britain, be given a heads-up so that they could have time to prepare thoughtful responses. But leaders in those countries heard the news when everyone else did.

The goal of this paper will be to analyze the personality clashes, politics, press coverage, polls, diplomatic infighting and policies leading up to this historic break by Canada from its closest allies, the United States and Britain.


PART I – THE POLITICS

On January 28, 2003, President George Bush made it clear in his State of the Union address that he was prepared to depose Saddam Hussein despite concerns by some that a second United Nations mandate specifying forced removal would be needed. Despite his threat to proceed unilaterally, however, he continued to make strenuous efforts to obtain a second resolution. So did Britain and other allies. Throughout the weeks leading up to the March 19, 2003 invasion, British Prime Minister Tony Blair never wavered and followed through on his commitment to send troops. But Canada’s Prime Minister Jean Chretien and his government sent mixed signals.

In early 2003, the Canadian military had discussed deploying up to 1,500 troops or various other supports to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Canada’s Minister of Defense, John McCallum, hinted in January that Canada might contribute these forces to a U.S.-led war even without UN approval. Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham also said Canada could not rule out going to war if getting Security Council authorization was not feasible. By contrast, Prime Minister Chrétien repeatedly spoke of the need for authorization by the United Nations, but equivocated in a news conference on January 23, 2003 when he said that a war could be justified under an existing UN resolution on Iraq, adding: “Saddam Hussein -- he is no friend of mine.”

Canada’s United Nations mission lobbied, along with the British and Americans, to get the Security Council to act on its Resolution by imposing a firm deadline on Saddam Hussein to disarm. In early March, Canada suggested an April deadline to give inspectors more time. A day or two later, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw proposed a March 17 deadline. Rumors were that Prime Minister Jean Chretien was upset that the British deadline, and not Canada’s, was supported by the United States. When Canada’s deadline was ignored, Prime Minister Chretien chose the British deadline, March 17, to announce that Canada would not participate with the British and Americans in the coalition.

“Instead of leadership, there was indecision, mixed signals and confusion,” wrote former U.S. Ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci. “I think that even some of the senior members of the cabinet could not figure out what was going on. For those who were watching events in Ottawa, the decision to stay out of the war in Iraq was not entirely a surprise. There had been disquieting warning signs. For months, Prime Minister Chretien had been insisting that the Iraq problem should be settled through the United Nations. Of course, that was what President Bush and Colin Powell had been trying to accomplish.”

In early 2003, anti-war protests were staged around the world and public opinion was divided in most countries, including in the United States, Britain and Canada. But divisions weren’t severe in Canada, except in Quebec.

“The [Canadian] military wanted in and was getting ready to go in,” said Ambassador Cellucci in an interview in November 2005. “We believed that Canada would push very hard to get the UN to endorse this and they tried very hard. Then we thought, if push came to shove, they’d still come in. [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair’s position was more precarious than that of Prime Minister Chretien’s, because large parts of his own Labor Party were opposed to the war. Canadians were divided but were looking for direction from their government. Blair took the risk. Chretien did not.”


The Players

George W. Bush and Jean Chretien grew up in politically active families. But that’s where any similarity ends. Mr. Chretien’s beginnings were humble. He was his parents’ eighteenth child and grew up in rural Quebec in the small mill town of Shawinigan. His father was an active member of the Liberal Party in the community and young Jean became a lawyer first then was elected as Member of Parliament in 1963 at only 29 years of age. He served in senior cabinet positions, then left politics between 1986 to 1990.

By contrast, Mr. Bush was the eldest of five children born into a life of privilege. He attended America’s best schools – Yale as an undergraduate then Harvard for an MBA -- and became a businessman in Texas. In 1988, he helped run his father’s successful presidential election campaign and also his unsuccessful one in 1992. Two years later, in November 1994, he was elected as Governor of Texas at the age of 48 years.

Mr. Chretien became Canada’s 20th Prime Minister in 1993 and quickly developed a close relationship with his American counterpart at the time, President Bill Clinton. The two golfed together and became close friends. In fact, Clinton did Chretien a favor by breaking the long-standing tradition of staying out of the Canadian unity issue by wading dramatically and purposefully into the 1995 Quebec referendum debate. Playing “good” cop and “bad” cop, President Clinton said he favored a united Canada while his Secretary of State Warren Christopher warned that Quebec could not presume it would enjoy the same “close ties” with the U.S. as Canada enjoyed. The White House made certain that Canadian media were present for both officials’ remarks.

President Clinton said he could not understand why a country that is a “model to the world” was contemplating a split. “Everybody’s got problems, but Canada looks like a country that is really doing the right things, moving in the right direction, has the kind of values that we’d all be proud of. Just since I have been president, I have seen how it works, how our partnership words, how the leadership of Canada in so many ways throughout the world works and what it means to the rest of the world to think there’s a country like Canada where things basically work.”
Their friendship explains why Prime Minister Chretien, in April 1999, returned the favor by switching from being opposed to any kind of foreign military action to becoming a hawk by wholeheartedly endorsing the Clinton-led bombing of Kosovo. The United Nations had not sanctioned this action, but NATO members had done so. In fact, Chretien’s Defense Minister, Art Eggleton, even shocked Washington by suggesting an invasion by ground troops, including Canadian ones.
It was uncharacteristic of Chretien to be unequivocal about military intervention or to use high-blown rhetoric. But in his speech to support Clinton, he sounded presidential: “These three elements – our values as Canadians, our national interest in a stable and secure Europe and our obligations as a founding member of NATO – led Canada to take up arms with its NATO partners. And it is because of our values, our national interest, and our obligations that we must see the job through,” he said.

By contrast, nine years before, in October 1990, Chretien, as the newly-crowned leader of the Liberal Party, opposed the United Nations-sanctioned invasion of Kuwait in order to push Saddam Hussein’s army out of that conquered country. He called the planned military action “illegal” and said Hussein would withdraw from Kuwait if economic sanctions were applied. “He [Chretien] also urged the anti-Iraq coalition to be more flexible in negotiating with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and to drop the demand for an unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait,” wrote The Toronto Star.


A Very Bad Start

During the U.S. Presidential election in 2000 between Vice President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush, Prime Minister Chretien’s nephew, Raymond Chretien, committed a serious blunder. Appointed as Canada’s Ambassador to the United States by his uncle, Raymond Chretien told an audience of Canadian government officials that Gore’s victory would be best for Canadians.

“’We know Vice-President Gore. He knows us. He’s a friend of Canada,’ Mr. Chretien, the prime minister’s nephew, said yesterday in an unusually forthright speech to federal government executives. ‘Governor Bush, on the other hand, doesn’t know us as much. When he thinks of borders, he thinks of Mexico, not of Canada. Obviously, we have to work on him quite a lot,’ said the ambassador. He then joked about Mr. Bush’s positive reaction when he was told, by a comedian on the satirical television show in Canada called ‘This Hour Has 22 Minutes’, that Canada’s Prime Minister `Jean Poutine’ backed him for the presidency.”

(“Poutine” is an unhealthy, but popular, French Canadian dish consisting of French fries topped with curds and gravy. The prank was designed to hold Bush up to ridicule for not knowing the name of Canada’s Prime Minister.)

Ambassador Chretien was criticized for these comments, which were widely reported. He, in turn, disclaimed them as “fabrications”. But Joe Clark, the Canadian Conservative Party leader, said: “If this had happened with any other diplomat, that diplomat would have been called in and reminded of the duties of a Canadian diplomat. There should not be a double standard for Raymond Chretien simply because he’s the Prime Minister’s nephew.”

In September 2000, Raymond Chretien was removed from Washington and sent to Paris as Ambassador to France. That autumn, both countries were involved in divisive federal elections. Chretien won his third term on November 28, 2000 and obtained a majority but with only 40.9% of the popular vote. The rest of the vote was divided among three other parties. Bush lost the popular vote, but eventually got the nod in December after hotly contested balloting practices in Florida were adjudicated in his favor.

The Bush camp took power and immediately returned the insult. In January 2001, he broke with diplomatic tradition, dating back to FDR, which was that the U.S. President always made his first state visit to Canada. Instead, Bush announced that he would make his first official state visit to Mexico, not Canada. In fact, George Bush never made an official visit to Canada until Jean Chretien had left office three years later. The two met either at summits or on Bush’s turf in Washington.

Their first face-to-face was in early February 2001. Weeks later, reports were published from sources inside the Liberal caucus that a frustrated Chretien dubbed George Bush a “cowboy”, according to the Liberal, nationalist Toronto Star. “If Bush wants to play rough on issues such as Canadian potato and softwood lumber exports, Chrétien told a closed-door meeting, he would play just as rough or rougher when it came to U.S. energy needs. Export taxes on Canadian oil and gas or electricity can damage an already fragile U.S. economy, Chrétien said, according to sources. He warned MPs he is dealing with a new American administration that is largely ignorant of Canada. Behind closed doors, the sources say, the Prime Minister lamented the fact he had to explain to Bush where Prince Edward Island was before he could discuss the U.S. ban on potato exports from the province. He also had to explain to the American president the size of the Alberta tar sands as part of an effort to bring him up to speed on this country.”

“As well, he criticized the U.S. leader's cowboy-style demeanor, what Chrétien called the `damn the torpedoes’ attitude in the current standoff with China after Bush told Chinese authorities to release the crew members of a damaged American spy plane. Without using the terms, one source said, he left caucus with the impression he felt the new U.S. president was politically naive and had a steep learning curve when it came to relations between Ottawa and Washington. Chrétien's unusually blunt assessment of the Bush administration comes little more than two weeks before the Prime Minister is to host the hemispheric trade summit in Quebec City. Some caucus sources expressed surprise on two points: They were stunned Chrétien would `slag’ Bush on an issue as volatile as the Washington-Beijing standoff.”

The acrimony was not one-sided. The Ottawa Citizen reported that White House officials referred to Chretien by an unflattering nickname of “Dino as in dinosaur”. “There is a certain irony to that, as Mr. Chretien at 68 is only 12 years older than Mr. Bush, but there has been a generational change in politics in the past decade, with relative youngsters like Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin taking over the world's big stage while the politicians of the '70s and '80s fade into history. `There is a perception that you hear a lot from the administration people that Chretien's a lot like the old Mexican PRI guys,’ says Christopher Sands, director of the Canada Project at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. ‘There's a sense that he's this unreconstructed guy who hasn't quite changed with the world, that he doesn't quite get it’.”
9/11

Immediately after terrorists drove jetliners into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington on September 11, 2001, American air space was shut down. Hundreds of planes, carrying 25,000 passengers, were headed for the United States and were too far from home to return so they were routed to Canada. These stranded travelers were welcomed by Canadians, transported to hotels gratis or billeted in private homes wherever accommodation was unavailable. In addition, there was an enormous outpouring of sympathy in Canada. The day after the tragedy, on September 12, Prime Minister Chretien was the first leader thanked by President Bush in a telephone call.
But Chretien was tardy, compared to British, Japanese and other leaders, in paying his respects by going down to Ground Zero.

The next diplomatic incident occurred when President Bush made a speech to Congress that listed his country’s allies but failed to mention Canada. This caused an outcry in Canadian media outlets and airwaves. “The failure to mention Canada triggered a wave of indignation; many Canadians believed that Canada had been deliberately snubbed by President Bush. In fact, there was no deliberate snub,” wrote Ambassador Cellucci. “Yes, Canada should have been mentioned. But the President’s failure to do so was testimony of the unique relationship between our two countries – perhaps too easily taken for granted – rather than any kind of intended slight.”

“I personally briefed the President about the effect of his failure to mention Canada in his speech; it was Chretien who somehow inherited the crisis on that one. The President did his best, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Prime Minister in front of the press, and tried to set the record straight: `Somebody said to me there were some that took affront in Canada because I didn’t mention the name. I didn’t think it was important to praise a brother; after all, we’re talking about family. There should be no doubt in anybody’s mind about how honored we are to have the support of the Canadians, and how strong the Canadian prime minister has been. There’s somebody playing politics with you Mr. Prime Minister. But I suggest those who try to play politics with my words and drive wedges between Canada and me understand that…. Now is not the time for politics’.”

The American administration busied itself with the terrorist threat at hand, passing legislation and targeting Osama bin Laden, his Al Qaeda and the repressive, fundamentalist regime in Afghanistan which harbored them. Canada joined forces with the U.S. and other allies to get the United Nations Security Council to demand the surrender of bin Laden. Within weeks, the Americans and British began bombing terrorist targets in Afghanistan. Support in Canada was 76% in favor of these actions and eventually Canada deployed 2,500 troops as part of the United Nations’ effort to stabilize that country.

Canadian public support for Afghanistan didn’t waver, and in fact increased, even after a “friendly fire” incident on April 17, 2002 when an American pilot accidentally killed four Canadian soldiers and wounded eight in Afghanistan.

“The U.S. was not saying the right things immediately after this happened and it took Bush days to call Chretien to offer his sympathy,” said Michael Marzolini, former Liberal Party pollster who did private polling for the party and Prime Minister until March 2003. “But polling in Canada showed an increase in commitment after the incident. Some 76% had been in favor of participating in the invasion of Afghanistan, even in Quebec where a majority was saying go. The increase following the friendly fire incident was sort of based on the fact we’ve-paid-for-our-support-in-blood too so let’s stay the course and do even more. The Prime Minister was aware that the body bag sensitivity was about 12 people. That was all.”

Canada’s military support in Afghanistan belied poor relations with British Prime Minister Tony Blair as well as George bush. The Chretien entourage believed that Blair came on too strong, ran off with Canadian ideas and sold them as his own. They believed he was a “brown-noser” toward President Bush. Underlying their differences, was that Chretien also disdained Blair for granting a peerage to Canadian newspaper magnate Conrad Black whose newspaper chain fiercely opposed Chretien and the Liberals. Chretien denied Conrad Black the right to keep his Canadian citizenship if he took the Peerage despite the fact two other Canadian newspaper magnates had become British Lords without having to forfeit their Canadian citizenships – Lord Thomson of Fleet and Lord Beaverbrook. Mr. Black sued to keep his citizenship in court but lost.

Chretien and Blair also had clashing styles. Blair, slick and private-school educated, stood in stark contrast with the down-to-earth Chretien. The two squared off at a Commonwealth summit in Australia in 2002 over the issue of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s violent re-election. Mr. Blair wanted Zimbabwe suspended from the Commonwealth while Chretien sided with many African states who wanted proof the elections were not free or fair. Chretien also was about to host the G-8 summit in Canada in June 2002 and wanted to make enhanced economic and Aids help to Africa his foreign policy initiative and centerpiece.


Another Unfortunate Incident

In June 2002, President Bush publicly introduced a new defense doctrine of pre-emption in a speech at West Point. Sometimes, he said, the U.S. must strike first against another state to prevent a potential threat from growing into an actual one. Saddam Hussein was the thinly-disguised target. He had been subjected to economic sanctions by the United Nations which drove him out of Kuwait in 1991, and intelligence reports, now discredited, claimed he was engaged in terrorist activities with Al Qaeda and in possession of weapons of mass destruction. On September 12, 2002, President Bush took his case against Hussein to the United Nations and challenged the body to enforce its own resolutions against Iraq. If not, Bush made it clear that the U.S. would act on its own.

Congress authorized an attack on Iraq and on November 8, the UN Security Council unanimously approved Resolution 1441 imposing tough new arms inspections on Iraq and threatening “serious consequences” if Saddam Hussein did not disarm. That same day, Prime Minister Chretien issued a press release endorsing the resolution. Hussein allowed UN weapons inspectors to return to Iraq, after kicking them out four years before in non-compliance with previous UN resolutions.

As the Americans and British girded for battle and lobbied for a coalition of support, as President Bush’s father had successfully done in 1991, the acrimony felt in the Chretien camp toward Washington spilled over into print. The Bush camp lobbied vigorously at the November 2002 NATO meeting in Prague and a journalist reported that a Chretien official had called President Bush “a moron”. The official was the Prime Minister’s communications director, Francoise Ducros.

The world press picked up her remark, but Chretien refused her resignation two days later and even defended her. Then he made matters worse by embarrassing Bush once again. "He [Bush] is a friend of mine. He is not a moron at all. I had a good time with [Mr. Bush] today. You know we discussed many things at the lunch and you saw perhaps him talking to me at the time of the photography [leaders' photo opportunity] ... You know, my personal relations with the President are extremely good."

A similar incident had occurred when a German cabinet minister compared President Bush to Adolf Hitler during the German election campaigns. In that case, the minister was fired by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder immediately, but Bush still froze out Schroeder, refusing to meet with him for weeks. Mr. Schroeder exchanged pleasantries with Mr. Bush at the same NATO meeting in Prague, but reports were the President was irked.

The “moron” remark was published in Iraq’s Ath-Thawra, the official newspaper of Saddam Hussein’s ruling Ba’ath Party. “He [Bush] has become the most hated person in the world and who is given all sorts of bad names, especially in the west like the Canadian prime minister's spokeswoman...who said he is a moron,” the Iraqis reported. Once they weighed in, Ms. Ducros quickly resigned, realizing the controversy was not going to subside quickly.

The New York Times blamed the incident on frustrations by Canadians over trade irritants while the Liberal newspaper, The Toronto Star, blamed the Bush White House. “Canada is viewed inside the Bush White House as a minor irritation; a nation with little credibility on major issues such as the war on terrorism that nonetheless still ‘cries out’ occasionally like a child angered with its parents.”

“In Bush's view, Canada doesn't contribute enough militarily to warrant being a major player. It can be part of the team for symbolic reasons, but when it wants to have a say on the play calling, the coach - Bush - smirks and sends it off to the sidelines. When Prime Minister Jean Chretien called Bush a ‘cowboy’ several months ago in a closed-door Liberal caucus meeting this newspaper's story was circulated around the White House via e-mail. One White House staffer told the Canadian newspaper: ‘Look, as far as this White House is concerned the U.S.-Canada relationship is defined by Canada. If they want to trade with us, fine. If they want to co-operate on bilateral security issues, fine. If they want to bitch and complain, fine. We're doing our thing’,” wrote the Toronto Star.


Countdown to Shock and Awe

In early 2003, Canada’s military was involved in planning stages, with the approval of the Prime Minister’s Office, and cabinet ministers were hinting at solidarity. Suddenly, on February 28, 2003, another embarrassing incident occurred when a Liberal backbencher, coming out of a closed-door caucus meeting, said to journalists outside Parliament: “Damn Americans. Hate those bastards.”

Again there was no apology and no punishment meted out by the Prime Minister. The MP said she was just carried away “in the heat of the moment”. But her outburst was not an isolated occurrence inside the caucus where many Members of Parliament made anti-American comments as the Prime Minister looked on in silence without criticism. “This developed an unhealthy and insufferable air of moral superiority regarding Americans in that caucus.”

“The caucus was split except for the Quebec members who felt screw the Americans,” said a Liberal insider. “They were saying the hell with America, never mind the greatest trading relationship in the world and Canada’s huge trade surplus. Never mind our positive current account because of the U.S. Never all the good things. We’re going to take a narrow political position.”

On March 3, 2003 the first of several anti-war protests were organized around the world, but the biggest crowds in North America were in Montreal where 150,000 marched. Quebec’s separatist Premier at the time, an academic named Bernard Landry, began to don a white anti-war ribbon in public. The separatists’ were preparing for an election and joined the anti-war cause in part to get votes in Montreal’s large Arab and Muslim immigrant communities which had staged riots in the fall of 2002, preventing hard-line Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu from speaking at a local university.

Quebec’s separatists had control over the province, both provincially and in terms of federal seats. Since the terrorist crisis in October 1970, Ottawa had made huge concessions to French-speaking Quebecers. The result is that the province has become a semi-autonomous region within Canada. Unlike other provinces, only Quebec flags fly from public buildings. Canadian flags are banned. Its provincial premier is called Prime Minister. Quebec has many of its own embassies abroad and has obtained special power over tax collection, old age pensions and immigration. Quebec’s immigration strategy has been to attract newcomers from former French colonies, resulting in a concentration of Arabs in Montreal which have become both politically active and influential critics of Israel and of the United States.

On March 10, 2003, French President Jacques Chirac announced that France would veto any UN resolution authorizing military action, putting an end to efforts by the Americans and others at the Security Council. Then on March 12, 2003, the separatists decided to capitalize on the growing anti-war sentiment in the French-speaking world by calling an election to take place on April 14, 2003. The press in Quebec was against the war and polls showed that his federal counterpart, the Bloc Quebecois, had increased its support by 4% in February and March due to its anti-war platform and rhetoric.
On March 15, a gigantic anti-war rally was staged in Montreal attracting 250,000 demonstrators, the largest in North America. That day, 400,000 protesters marched in Milan and 300,000 in Barcelona but only 55,000 in Paris and 10,000 in Marseille.
On March 17, the British deadline for Saddam Hussein to disarm or face being deposed, Prime Minister Chretien stood up in the House of Commons and read his statement. Canada would not be part of the Coalition of the Willing. His Liberal caucus cheered and gave him a standing ovation. Everyone was shocked inside Canada and outside the country. That same day, Iraq rejected the coalition ultimatum and on March 19, 2003 President Bush announced on television that the coalition had opened the battle to remove Saddam Hussein from power. A spokesman in the Prime Minister's Office said after Bush's speech that evening, that there would be no comment from Prime Minister Jean Chretien.
Diplomats in both countries were mortified at Chretien’s surprise announcement. Normal protocol dictated that Britain and the United States be given a heads-up to prepare their responses or to offer alternative actions or compromises. Some Americans were angry.

“It’s not only the decisions you make but how you implement them,” said Ambassador Cellucci. “There should have been a phone call to the President of the United States and also to Prime Minister Tony Blair. There should have been something supportive in the statement of the U.S. and of the President as was promised by officials the day we were informed, then ignored by Chretien and his Liberals. This was very unsophisticated. This was the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.”

“The Department of Foreign Affairs met with us after Chretien’s announcement and said we are not supporting the coalition but we will keep our ships in the Persian Gulf. They said also that any troops assigned to British or American units will remain in place and good things will be said about the President and bad things about Saddam Hussein. Then the very next day the Prime Minister said outside the House of Commons that the war wasn’t justified. When asked about this, he said the remark was in French and it was a bad translation. That was an excuse.”

Insult was added to injury when Canadian Natural Resources Minister Herb Dhaliwal said President Bush “was not a statesman” and had handled the Iraq crisis badly. Canada’s Foreign Minister Bill Graham distanced himself from the remark and Prime Minister Chretien said Canada was working closely with the international community to start reconstructing Iraq post-war.

On April 14, 2003, the Liberal Party won the Quebec election, throwing out the separatists after many years in power. The next day, April 15, Canadian MikeWeir won the Masters Golf Tournament. Interviewed in Dominican Republic, avid golfer Prime Minister Chretien gave a double thumbs-up for the victory in Quebec and for the golf victory in Augusta.


The Political Fallout

In the weeks that followed, Chretien’s government announced a number of humanitarian and reconstruction initiatives in Iraq. It also retained command of the Persian Gulf, as part of the UN’s Iraq sanctions initiative. This begged the question as to whether this made Canadians combatants, which it did in the view of some diplomats. This also led to questions by the press as to whether fleeing Iraqis apprehended by this fleet would be turned over to the U.S.-led coalition. When asked, the Canadian commander in the Gulf said that any Iraqis apprehended by any of the allied fleet under the command of Canada would not be turned over to the coalition but to an international court. This would even apply to Saddam Hussein, his sons or inner circle.
“Washington was infuriated. The White House was already unhappy enough with the Canadian government’s sniping about the war being unjustified, its insistence that multilateralism and the UN were the only legitimate channels for dealing with Iraq or any outlaw regime and the personal attacks directed at the president. The matter of the Canadian government not being willing to turn over fugitive Iraqis was the final straw,” wrote Ambassador Cellucci.

After this, President Bush declined to make a planned, and first, official visit to Canada on May 5, 2002. The White House informed the Canadian government that the President would not go to Canada, then turned down three alternative dates that were offered. The message was clear. Bush had no time for Jean Chretien anymore and would wait out his departure.

“There is no doubt that the visit would have gone ahead as planned if Canada had joined the coalition in Iraq. It might even had gone ahead if the government had delivered on its assurances that when the war began it would refrain from criticizing my government. But that’s not what happened. Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard visited the President at his ranch in Crawford on the day George Bush was supposed to have met with Jean Chretien in Canada,” wrote Ambassador Cellucci.
In the weeks that followed this high-profile snub, Chretien also faced bad press at home. He was on the verge of being ousted as party leader by his Liberal arch-rival, ex-Finance Minister Paul Martin, who had been forced to resign by Chretien in 2002. In August 2003, Chretien announced he would not run for an additional term but that he would stay on until February 2004. But his plans for a lengthy swansong were derailed in November when he was deposed by Martin.



II. THE ROLE OF THE POLLS

Measuring public opinion through polling is an important leadership tool. During the weeks before his Iraq decision, Prime Minister Jean Chretien was advised by his party’s pollster but kept his own counsel. For years, he had worked closely with the federal Liberal Party’s pollster, Michael Marzolini, who is Chairman and CEO of Pollara Inc., the country’s largest Canadian-owned market research company. The two men fell out after Marzolini vehemently disagreed with Chretien’s decision to stay out of the Iraq coalition. He said there was polling support and that it was in the national interest to help the Americans.

“We didn’t talk much after that,” said Mr. Marzolini. “Support was not great for Iraq but it was there. He knew the numbers were there to support participation but felt that Quebec was more important. A small majority of people outside Quebec were in favor of joining the coalition even though a lot didn’t like the war. We asked if they would support a government decision to participate and 46% said yes. About 48% said they would support the government if it decided to stay out. This meant we could have sold either position. Both were moveable to 53% with selling.”

At the same time as support was divided, giving the Prime Minister an option, there was enormous support for improving relations with the United States. A majority of Canadians also expected Canada to join the US-led coalition against Saddam, most believed the Americans should have gotten backing from the UN and six out of 10 wanted Canada to commit troops to the conflict.

But Quebec polls began showing an anti-American mood shift. A March 8, 2003 poll carried in the Ottawa Citizen and Montreal Gazette showed that some 54% of Quebecers held an unfavorable opinion toward the United States, representing a 20% overall drop in approval since August 2002 and a 30% drop among French-speaking Quebecers. Commentators blamed a combination of the separatists, who were anti-war, the local press as well as the fact that many got their news and views directly from the media in anti-war France.

Some polling results showed a glaring difference in attitudes. Global Television released polling results from March 6 to 8, 2003 by a western pollster which showed that 54.8% of Canadians outside Quebec were favorable toward the U.S. in the context of Iraq while only 22.4% of Quebecers were. This poll also said that 50% of Quebecers were opposed to Canada joining a war in Iraq under any circumstances.

“It is these attitudes that most distinguished Quebecers from other Canadians. In every other region of the country, a larger percentage of the population supports going to war alongside the US without UN approval than those who are opposed to Canada joining a war under any circumstances,” concluded the poll.

On March 9, 2003, a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation poll showed that 52% of Canadians felt the UN should authorize action against Iraq to disarm, and only 45% in Quebec. A majority of Canadians supported assistance if the UN approved action, but support for military assistance without UN approval fell to 10% in Quebec and 25% in the rest of the country. Polling differences were confusing, based on the questions asked, but the fact that Quebecers disapproved came across loud and clear.

“To Chretien, a provincial Liberal victory in Quebec was everything,” said Mr. Marzolini. “The separatists were ahead at that point and the separatists would have said the feds are taking us into this war and why would we want to be part of a government that would do this? But I think the Liberals would have beaten the separatists anyway because the public was waiting to be sold either way. Another factor was the tension with the White House which was Canada’s fault and started with Chretien’s nephew preferring Al Gore to George Bush in 2000. How can you repair remarks like that? It was incredible. If Clinton had been President it would have been a different story and Chretien would have sold participation.”

Two post-war polls showed that Marzolini was correct about the fact that the government’s decision would result in an increase in support. Polls in both Quebec and pro-American Alberta taken after March 17 showed increased support for staying out.


The English-French Divide on Military Preparedness

After 9/11, Canadians believed that the world was a more dangerous place than it had been 10 years before. Polls showed they were very concerned about terrorism, far more so than global warming and climate change, crime or illegal drugs. Their greatest fear was terrorists with nuclear weapons, and indeed, 63% of Canadians believed there would be a terrorist attack in the future with such devices, although not in Canada. Nine out of ten expected further suicide attacks in the United States, and a small majority said it could be likely in Canada too.
Marzolini’s Pollara had tracked support for public spending in all areas for 20 years and had found that support for increased military spending peaked in 2003, with 56% of Canadians saying the government should spend more on the Armed Forces. This dropped in 2004 to 50%, likely as a result of controversial military purchases made in the previous year, with some additional pressure from the unpopularity of the war in Iraq.
Another poll said 63% of Canadians believed the Canadian military to be underfunded. This number was greater than 70% outside Quebec but only 41% in Quebec, where a slight plurality believed the military had enough funding. However, Canadians have never considered this an issue of national priority and have seemingly agreed to disagree.



III. THE ROLE OF THE PRESS

The Canadian media is highly concentrated in terms of ownership but also reflects the country’s disparate regions. A review of the editorial positions of five influential outlets in early 2003 – the National Post, Toronto Star, Globe & Mail and French-language Le Devoir and La Presse-- shows that editorial stances fell within the usual political fault lines. Their positions appear to have mostly reflected, rather than led, public opinion. In 2003, the Quebec press and the Toronto Star were the only newspapers that opposed the Iraq Coalition.

English Canada’s media is dominated by Canwest Mediaworks which owns the Global Television network and roughly half the daily newspapers in Canada which include the Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen, Vancouver Sun, Vancouver Province, Victoria Times-Colonist, Windsor Star, Saskatoon StarPhoenix, Regina Leader-Post, Calgary Herald and Edmonton Journal. Its flagship is the National Post which is a Conservative newspaper with a sizeable business audience -- a constituency shared by the only other national newspaper, the Globe & Mail, which is owned by Bell Canada. The Toronto Star is Canada’s largest English daily and has historically been pro-Liberal and anti-American. Quebecor owns a chain of Conservative tabloids in English in six cities as well as Quebec’s largest circulation paper, the Journal du Montreal, which does not take political positions or publish editorials.


The French Factor

Le Devoir is a separatist, small-circulation, highbrow daily. That paper and the Journal du Montreal are the only two French-language daily newspapers that are not owned by Power Corporation of Canada. This organization was, and is, controlled by the family of Prime Minister Chretien’s son-in-law, Andre Desmarais. In addition, Power’s top executives, John Rae, helped chair all three election campaigns for Prime Minister Chretien. Power Corporation’s media company is Gesca Ltee and its flagship is La Presse, the largest circulation daily in Montreal and the province. It also owns dailies in Quebec’s other urban centers and all were opposed to war in Iraq.


The Desmarais family also has links to France and Iraq. Chretien’s son-in-law is Power’s President and Co-CEO with his brother Paul Desmarais Jr. The corporation’s assets include European holding companies that control German publishing giant, Bertelsmann AG as well as the largest single stake, an indirect participation of 5.02%, in the shares of France’s largest corporation, Total Fina, an oil giant. Total had traditionally done business in Iraq and had just landed exploration concessions in Saddam’s Iraq. Paul Desmarais Jr. is on the French oil giant’s board of directors.

Another connection to Iraq is Power Corporation’s first CEO, Maurice Strong, who resigned in 2005 as Under-Secretary of the United Nations because his family company received nearly $1 million from a Korean businessman who has been implicated in the Iraqi Oil-for-Food scandal. Mr. Strong, in turn, was mentor and an advisor to the federal Liberals, to Jean Chretien and to the current Prime Minister of Canada Paul Martin. Strong hired Martin out of law school to work with him at Power Corporation.

Quebec’s most influential print outlets, La Presse and Le Devoir, agreed that the war was not justified and that the UN would be harmed if circumvented. They also felt that the UN debate was non-existent or all about national self interest of the U.S. and France, not about the war itself.

“La Presse has categorically opposed, on several occasions, as you know, an offensive against Iraq without the endorsement of the United Nations, and not before all diplomatic means and UN inspection have been explored. We have also highlighted the danger for the U.S. itself of creating an image of an “arrogant empire’.”

On March 31, 2003 La Press Editor in Chief, Andre Pratte, waded in to distance the paper from accusations that it was anti-American: “You have reason to be concerned about the increased anti Americanism. This current is strong in Canada, in particular in Quebec, following that all that the U.S. does is bad. No one has yet to protest against Saddam in
downtown Montreal.”

“Even so, you will not find a trace of this prejudice in the editorials of La Presse. Must I remind you that one member of our team, Mario Roy, writes regularly on international questions, and a few years ago published an essay titled, ‘To finish with anti americanism.’ The editorial team of La Presse took/supported the anti-terrorist struggle brought by the Bush Administration, notably, the ‘cleaning’ of Afghanistan. We never expressed tolerance of any sort for the crimes of Saddam Hussein.”

“Only, we reckon that, this war…had more efficient options and less harsh means to deal with the situation in Iraq. This opinion is certainly up for debate, and this is why we invite out readers to continue to exchange with us on this question, no matter their opinion.”

Both papers supported the anti-war protesters in the weeks leading up to Chretien’s March 17 decision and praised the prime minister for his handling of the situation.


English Canada

Outside Quebec, the only sizeable newspaper that opposed the war was the Liberal-leaning Toronto Star. Its editorials speculated, as did some Democrats, that the war was only about the acquisition and control of oil resources and that it was also about Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld settling old scores. It praised Chretien all along for opposing the rush to war and trying to find a compromise. It suggested that Saddam had “blinked”,could be disarmed peacefully and that only UN authorization was appropriate.

The Star also criticized Chretien’s detractors including the Premier of the Province of Ontario who wrote a letter in support of the American initiative. It labeled him a “toadying premier”. Once the war began, it called “shock and awe” a “gruesome exercise of firepower live on television” said “it’s with loathing and contempt that most of the world’s people viewed this war”.

Canada’s two national dailies, National Post and the Globe & Mail supported joining the Coalition, as did the Canwest and Toronto Sun newspaper chains. Both national papers supported Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech in the United Nations outlining “evidence” of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. A National Post editorial said “Powell makes the case” while the Globe’s editorial called it “Powell’s strong case”. The National Post labeled Germany and France as the “axis of obstruction” and the United Nations as “Kofi’s dithering shop”. It also espoused the theory that the war would help transform the Arab Middle East and that UN was sliding into “irrelevance”.

The Post said the decision to not join the Coalition “damaged Canada’s international reputation” and did not speak for everyone in Chretien’s own government. It criticized Chretien’s decision as having nothing to do with principles but was about political expedience. It outlined the mixed signals he had sent out in early 2003. “The most charitable explanation for this mishmash is that Mr. Chretien sought to endear himself to both U.S.-led hawks and French-led doves in hopes of brokering a compromise. But indecision and vulgar anti-American epithets merely alienated Washington.”

Canwest columnist, Ian Macdonald knows all the players intimately and described Chretien’s equivocation: “Chretien hoped that the UN would pass a second resolution authorizing force. But by the time the UN process failed, he had become a prisoner of his own position and had no choice but to declare Canada would not take part. He went even further and said the war was ‘not justified’, and spoke out against ‘regime change’ in Iraq, asking what country would be next. Then he said he respected what the Americans were doing and warned his caucus to curb their anti-American comments.”

The more centrist Globe & Mail criticized Chretien’s decision to stay out as “the wrong choice” and suggested that “in rejecting US unilateralism, Canada has acquiesced to French unilateralism.” It also suggested that Canada should have “finessed” its participation as Japan did by sending soldiers to do postwar peacekeeping and reconstruction.

Canada’s press plays a minimal role because it’s reluctant to generate controversy, divided along predictable lines and too reliant on outside sources for information and ideas.

“The mediocrity of journalism in Canada has allowed the Liberals’ hypocrisy to work for decades,” said Professor Winn. “There is a largely predictable and passive journalism in Canada. Quebec is increasingly dependent upon the media from France which was fiercely anti-American and anti-Iraq. And the liberal press in Canada just carries what the liberal American mainstream media do. They are basically subsidiaries of the American mainstream. There is rarely analysis as to what’s in Canada’s best interests, policy-wise.”



IV. THE ROLE OF POLICY

The role of public opinion and the press is irrelevant in Canada when it comes to foreign or defense policies. Likewise, the role of policy itself has also become marginalized. This is because the policy prescriptions that resonate in Quebec and the rest of the country cannot be squared. And Quebec-born prime ministers believe that beating the separatists trumps everything else. In their minds, this makes discussion of any alternatives to Quebec’s group-think a “nation-threatening” exercise. The result is a virtual absence of debate and few academics or think tanks concerned with foreign and defense policies.

Iraq in 2003 was a case in point. There was little discussion in the press or among policy wonks in Canada about the country’s military preparedness or commitment, no debate about the policies of pre-emption, regime change, nuclear proliferation or changing the dynamics in the region. Canada then, as always, deferred policy-making to others and the political decision became simply about whether to follow the lead of the Americans or the United Nations Security Council. In the end, the Prime Minister followed the lead of the separatists in Quebec.


Absolute Parliamentary and Policy Power

Also unique in Canadian public policy matters is the country’s version of the Parliamentary system which gives the prime minister ultimate policy control. Unlike Britain’s and Australia’s systems, Canada’s Liberal prime ministers don’t allow caucus members to vote anything other than the official Party line. The result is total control, says Professor Winn. “A Canadian prime minister can do anything he wants and has done anything they want. Polling is irrelevant. Canada is a mid-Atlantic country midway between the populist strain in the United States which welcomes public advocacy and the European strain which suppresses it. Canada’s mid-Atlantic because it invites public advocacy on domestic issues and devotes as much power as it can to suppress it on foreign policy issues.”

“The suppression of public advocacy on foreign policy issues is viewed consciously or unconsciously as essential for the regime. Canada’s history is one of separatism where the vast majority of triggers for potential civil strife between English and French Canada involve foreign policy.You can best understand the regime’s requirement to suppress foreign policy discussions by looking at history instead of polls. The suppression of foreign policy debate gives the prime minister total discretion.”

“So it was not very surprising that a weak prime minister [with little support in Quebec electorally], threatened by an unusually strong Sword of Damocles from Quebec, would make a rational calculus of national unity. The rational calculus would lead him to betray the Americans. Another calculus is that it’s easier to betray friends than to inflame opponents. In that respect, I think that Chretien is a fantastic tactician.”

Canadian prime ministers like Chretien have also honed an aptitude for purposeful equivocation, a method of playing to the English-French polarity and also buying time, added Professor Winn. The master of this technique was wartime Prime Minister Mackenzie King who weathered the Quebec conscription storm and consolidated power to the Prime Minister’s Office. He coined the famous “conscription if necessary but not necessarily conscription.”

“It’s a well established Canadian tradition to have a two-track foreign policy where we say one thing and do another. This is because of Quebec. During the Vietnam War, we were formally neutral but manufactured most of the napalm and the Canadians who were on the International Control Commission were US. Intelligence agents. In the Cuban Missile Crisis, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker insisted that Canada would be only member of NATO not to mobilize. He instructed the military to not mobilize, and not be involved publicly but our military was fully mobilized.”


The Incredible Shrinking Military

Canada’s withdrawal from international military commitments has been continuous since the Second World War. As small as Canada is, population-wise, in 1946 Canada had the world’s third largest navy, its fourth largest air force and had more than one million in uniform despite a population of only 12 million. After the Korean War, defense and military spending has declined dramatically due to historical and deep opposition in Quebec.

“It has been 250 years of history since the conquest [of the French by the English]. In Quebec, there is a sense that English Canada will force them to participate in wars against their wishes,” said Jack Granatstein. “That’s a large part of it. History’s taught very differently in Quebec. Brutalization during periods of Anglo conscription is part of the past that French Canadians carry with them. Then there’s anti-Americanism which is part of it. Quebec voted for free trade in 1988, but Quebec has become the most anti-American province in Canada under George Bush Two. They do not trust him.”

“Defense has been a tough sell in Canada but became tougher since 1968 with Trudeau, Mulroney, Chretien and now with Martin. This is because of the string of Quebec prime ministers and the long-standing attitudes in Quebec against spending for defence. Blue beret peacekeeping is only thing they support. And with the independence movement growing in Quebec, no one wanted to do anything to upset this. The coincidence of timing, coalition building and a Quebec election, forced the hand of the Prime Minister.”

Figures show a steady decline in support for the military in Canada. In 2001, The U.S. spent about $320 billion on defense, Britain spent about $75 billion and Canada, with nearly twice the population of The Netherland’s, spent the same as the Dutch or about $11 billion. There is also outright disdain for military spending among many Liberals and Chretien’s principle advisor, lawyer Eddy Goldenberg, wrote him a memo in 1975 questioning the need for Armed Forces of any kind.
Weakening the military has also been a key, long-term strategy of the separatists. This is because a small, ineffective armed forces cannot impede an attempt at secession, even if illegal. From one of the world’s largest military presences in the Second World War, Canada now has half as many combat-ready troops, or 18,500, as New York City has police.

Critics of this decline are quickly brought to heel. Premier Ernie Eves of Ontario at a rally in Toronto in March 2003 spoke frankly of this hypocrisy: “To be frank, Americans have really been responsible for defending this country, in large part, over these many decades. We have not seen clear to devote the resources that are necessary to have armed forces of our own that are able to entirely defend, on their own strength, this country in the event of war.”

British Columbia’s Premier, Gordon Campbell, echoed the same sentiments when he accused Canadians of “sitting at the safety of the doorstep of the United States” without pulling their weight. Both Premiers were publicly and privately rebuked by the federal government for their comments. And they did not speak on behalf of public opinion either. There is no groundswell of public opinion in favor of added military presence. When asked to choose between enhanced military or health care spending, Canadians opt for health care.


The Defense Policy Debacle

Documents obtained in 2004 showed that Canada’s military was demoralized by the decision to pull the plug because planning for a Canadian contribution to the conflict in Iraq was well advanced. In fall 2002, the U.S. Central Command was tentatively offered up to 1,500 infantry by Canada for the Iraq mission. These troops were to be part of Britain’s 1st UK Division or part of the “Commonwealth Brigade” with Australian and New Zealand forces.

On February 13, 2003, Major General Campbell Ross announced a premature retirement. He had been deeply involved with the Americans in planning Iraq in the fall of 2002. His job in Ottawa also involved keeping a pulse on all manpower needs, international requests for assistance and deployments to other countries. Every December, he briefed the Minister of Defense about present and future needs.

“We had impressed upon government that you need was to have your options open. In December 2002, my job was Director General of International Security Policy which was to prepare us to get ready for whatever might be happening. Every year, I briefed the Minister of Defense on what we viewed was going to be the global situation 18 to 24 months ahead. We briefed the Minister that December and had agreement in principle to draw down [troops] in former Yugoslavia, the Golan Heights, add some to Afghanistan and keep some available for the withdrawal from Gaza and also for deployment in Iraq,” he said.

“Then on February 12, 2003, there was an announcement in Parliament that Canada would send 2,000 troops to Afghanistan. It had caught us all completely off-side. We found out about an hour before. This was not in our briefings or our plans and such a surprise announcment is never done in these types of critical decisions. These are political decisions, but ministers always give the military the heads up or ask for comments. In fact, when we got a copy of the draft announcement, 45 minutes ahead of its delivery in Parliament, we scrambled to correct some factual mistakes which were in the speech,” he said.

“If you had come into the Department of National Defense headquarters after that speech, most of us looked like deer caught in headlights. We wondered where did this come from? I personally don’t know. My speculation is that the Prime Minister made the final decision. We were shocked because we had other projects and this would tap us out. It made Iraq impossible. I resigned not because I was eager to go to Baghdad or because I was not eager to go to Kabul. It was because this was just unacceptable. I resigned because we were too stretched. It came out of the blue without consultation and without discussion. The minister said in a statement that I was in charge of planning for this deployment in Afghanistan. He was wrong. It was Iraq I was planning for.”

“Iraq was not for certain either,” he added. “But we explained to the government that if wanted to go we needed to be inside the tent to start to shape the options. It was an excellent relationship. Every two weeks I was in Washington and worked closely with the Americans. We discussed options with the Americans from providing staff officers, ships, planes or non-combat personnel to deploying 800 to 1,500 troops. The Canadian government knew all this was being discussed. And at least the Canadian flag would have been there,” he said. “We could’ve said yes and what was most frustrating was Canada was leading the charge at the UN to get authorization. The allies were within two weeks of getting a UN Security Council approval on another resolution.”

The Americans were also shocked, he said. “What caught the Americans by surprise was the delivery of the speech which was accompanied by backslaps and childish hollering in the Parliament. We had a very good and sound relationship with the Americans. Had the tables been reversed, I’m not sure the Canadians would have shown the same patience the Americans did with us.”

The Afghanistan announcement put Canada in a leadership role in Kabul over international forces which the country could not handle. “The day after the announcement, we said who’s going to lead us? It was a kneejerk, reactionary decision, not thought out very well. We had no embassy in the country, and a prime minister who couldn’t get on the phone to others leaders to get partners to help run the operation. We went to six countries in Europe and finally convinced NATO to take over the command because we simply couldn’t.”


Butter not Guns

Not surprisingly, differing defense and foreign policies have been the source of tensions between the two countries. At the same time, the countries continue to easily coordinate economic policies such as taxes, standards, extradition and trade. By 2005, the two countries were more economically integrated than any two countries in the world, including nations in Europe.

But this is again attributable to Quebec politics and the separatists’ overriding support for the successful Free Trade Agreement in 1989 with the U.S., followed by NAFTA in 1993. The deal was backed by Jacques Parizeau, a guru and founder of the separatist movement. Parizeau saw the trade deal as a way to reduce Quebec’s economic dependence on the rest of Canada by getting greater access to the American marketplace.

Since 1989, trade between the two countries has soared but there has been a constant undercurrent of criticism in Washington about Canada’s shrinking military. Immediatelyn after Ambassador Paul Cellucci was appointed he put pressure on Canada.

“The only specific instruction Secretary of State Colin Powell had given me before I came to Canada was about defense spending. He told me bluntly to try to get the Canadian government to spend much more on defense, and that was what I tried to do on virtually every platform to which I was invited. It was a long and difficult campaign. Canada had fallen to 35th place in the world in the number of troops it had committed to peacekeeping missions. Powell also wanted Canada’s help diplomatically with its pipelines into countries that were hostile to the United States or vice versa.”

“Canadians like to be anti-American when it pleases them, but they still expect to cash in on trade,” said Professor Granatstein.


The United Nations Foreign Policy Battle

Paul Heinbecker was Canada’s Ambassador at the UN from 2000 to 2004 and tried to hammer out a compromise in spring 2003, to no avail. The Americans and British were pushing hard for a second resolution authorizing force against Iraq. The Canadians were trying to extend the deadline to give inspectors more time to comb the country and make a definitive report before more serious actions were contemplated.

“The Americans had no prospect of getting that second resolution passed. This was part of their delusion. It was also a delusion of the British. Our Prime Minister was told by Blair the resolution would pass. He asked me and I said there was no support here for that,” said Mr. Heinbecker now retired. ‘The Americans wanted war and the others didn’t. You can’t have half a war.”

“We proposed setting a deadline for the inspectors, by the beginning of April, to describe what they found or not and whether there was cooperation or not. The Americans thought it was a trap. They thought inspectors might not find anything and everyone would be stuck. The French and the Germans and the Russians thought it was a trap in the other direction if things were found. They didn’t want to sign onto a war under any circumstances,” he said.

Mr. Heinbecker said there were serious doubts as to whether nuclear weapons existed but Saddam’s lack of cooperation was worrisome.

“It’s a real fallacy that everybody believed there were weapons of mass destruction. The UN inspectors’ reports were pretty clear there was nothing there. But it’s hard to prove a negative. What was difficult to reconcile was Saddam’s lack of cooperation if he didn’t have them. Why would he do that? He later said he didn’t want inspectors running around his palaces. Or maybe it was a game to let other Arabs think he was a bigger shot than he was.”

“As a Canadian, I said about Powell’s speech at the UN this is the Secretary of State of the US and he wouldn’t be bullshitting us, but it’s not making any sense. Either they know something we don’t know or they’re off the deep end. They turned out to be off the deep end. I think it was a deception. Vice President Cheney went on Meet the Press on March 13, 2003 and said we know they’ve reconstituted their nuclear weapons,” he said. “On September 7, 2003 he corrected his statement on the same show.”

“They wanted to go to war. They wanted the war. They wanted the UN to endorse the war and American public opinion to be persuaded the war was necessary,” he said. “The Americans were bullies. There is evidence of that. Ambassador Negroponte and his people were professionals. But the US tried to remove a Mexican ambassador by asking his government to recall him as well as the Chilean and Costa Rican Ambassadors. This was because they had the temerity to make speeches at the Security Council questioning the need to rush to war. The Americans succeeded in having the Mauritius ambassador recalled. They also complained to our government about my trying to negotiate a compromise. They demanded the removal of the German ambassador and were also upset with the Pakistani ambassador. These were people on the Security Council they considered to be obstacles to their purposes.”

Then Chretien’s nephew struck again, according to a Liberal insider. Raymond Chretien was dispatched to meet with Mexico’s President Fox, which had a seat on the Security Council, to suggest he stand up to American pressure and support the Canadian deadline extension. This was seen as treacherous by Washington.

“Chretien was blowing in the wind and Colin Powell and others were led to believe that Canada would be with them. Chretien’s impulse was to support the Quebec side but he was not sure he could do that to the Americans. So he hid behind the UN to buy time and then he did something he should not have done. He sent his nephew to talk to President Fox in Mexico to persuade him to stay out. All that got back to the United States and pissed off Bush even more. It’s one thing not to join and it’s another to persuade others not to join.”
Clearly, Canada’s proposed decline extension into April suited Chretien because it would have postponed Canada’s decision until after the Quebec April 14 election, thus removing participation as an election issue. But the Pentagon was pushing for an immediate invasion to avoid the heat of summer in Iraq and the Bush administration had given up on the Security Council. This was unfortunate, said Mr. Heinbecker, who believes that waiting until April would have brought about a different, more positive outcome for the Americans.

“It would have made the Americans appear reasonable enough which might have brought a lot of people on their side. They would not have gone into war as isolated as they were. The Coalition of the Willing was not like 1991. It was a Coalition of the Billing and the Calculating and the Fearful,” he said.

“For Chretien it was about Quebec. But also on Chretien’s mind was to avoid getting involved in a foreign policy train wreck and he had enough savvy people like me telling him so,” he said. “U.S. foreign policy has given us a lot of good reasons for separation ourselves. What’s so irritating about this current American policy is that you see the rise of China and India which will be bigger than the US and Europe one day. This is not the time to ignore the UN, and throw away the rules of the road. America may not be in the driver’s seat forever. But they have done as they damn well please and that policy has run aground in the sands of Iraq.”






























V. AFTERMATH

The Americans and British removed Saddam from power in a matter of weeks. But three years later, they have failed to improve Iraqi lifestyles, governance or living conditions due to the fact they are mired in a widening urban guerrilla war with many factions. George Bush and his cabinet who feverishly tried up whip up domestic and international support for this intervention have since lost credibility and popularity at home and abroad. His group’s bully-boy tactics with allies, as characterized by the ongoing personality clash with Chretien and others, left America isolated in its attempt to remove a truly monstrous dictator. Perhaps a charm offensive, a la Reagan or Clinton, would have won over Canada and other allies, thus placing a multinational stamp of approval on the Iraq invasion and insuring more input as to how to more successfully undertake the mission.

There was praise and criticism about Prime Minister Chretien’s decision both at home and abroad. The public had given him a choice in polling and he spent weeks weighing the odds. In the end, he feared the separatist threat, and his poor relationship with President Bush made it easier to ignore America’s call for solidarity. As a result, there has been little, if any, backlash in English Canada or in the United States. However, the decision has appeared to have caused some damage.

“There was a dip in tourism that summer,” said Ambassador Cellucci. “And there has been a loss of leverage in Washington with the Bush administration.”

Such “loss of leverage” is of concern to a country like Canada. Trading partners have traditionally relied on good relations with a friendly executive branch to protect their interests from the protectionist Congress. Presidents and their officials intervene, when it has suited them, on behalf of a close ally and this has benefited Canada in the past. But the Bush administration has not been inclined to lobby on Canada’s behalf, despite its free trade rhetoric, when it comes to serious trade disputes such as cattle and softwood lumber exports.

“The Americans would not punish us because it would hurt them too. But we have traditionally relied on the executive to be our lobbyist in Congress to get our way and we have no leverage with Bush as a result of Iraq, period,” said Professor Granatstein.

There is little reason to expect otherwise. Disagreements occur all the time between nations, but the sniping and baiting by Prime Minister Chretien and his Liberals had alienated the Republicans. So did sending mixed signals, name-calling and failing to staunch a growing culture in the Liberal caucus of anti-Americanism. To top it off, Chretien also embarrassed his traditional allies by ignoring diplomatic protocol with his last-minute, unexpected announcement.

There are few polls measuring American attitudes toward Canada, but some show a slight downward trend. A Harris Poll in September 1982 showed that 63% of Americans regarded Canada as a “friendly” nation and by September 2005 this had fallen to 48%. However, America’s staunchest ally, Australia (Iraq and Vietnam) was lower than Canada at 44%. The same Harris polling also showed that those who considered Canada as unfriendly (but not an enemy) went from 2% in 1994 to 12% in 2005. A February 7, 2005 Gallup poll showed the disparity in attitude between Democrats and Republicans toward Canada. Of those who were very or mostly favorable, 82% were Republicans and 91% were Democrats.

Chretien’s departure did not fix the problem either. After winning re-election, President Bush accepted Paul Martin’s invitation to visit Canada. His visit, on December 1, 2004, was designed to restore normal relations and also to lobby Canada gently to agree to participate in Washington’s proposed ballistic missile defense shield. On his visit, Bush joked about the acrimony of the past and took a final shot at Chretien, casting back to his nephew’s endorsement of Al Gore in 2000: “I told Paul that I really have only one regard about this visit. There’s a prominent citizen who endorsed me in the 2000 election and I wanted a chance to finally thank him for that endorsement. I was hoping to meet Jean Poutine.”

Once again, Canada sent out mixed signals that it would be part of the shield, then turned it down in a surprising and embarrassing manner. The reasons were the same: lack of diplomatic savvy and a federal election where the separatists in Quebec threatened to sweep the province.

“It was another clumsy situation,” said Ambassador Cellucci. “Canadian Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew told Condi Rice at the NATO summit in Brussels just when the President was in Europe trying to show some unity with NATO allies after the rift that had opened over Iraq. Here was our close ally and next-door neighbor choosing that moment to signal its rejection of something that we considered to be crucial to our future security. Then there was the fact that the PM did not tell the President himself, although the two men were both at the NATO meeting and at several points were standing side by side. But not a word was said and the task was handed down to a subordinate. All in all, it was another inept ending to a frustrating process.”

In Spring 2005, Martin limped into power with a minority government and was still drubbed in the Quebec polls. And relations with the United States worsened. The U.S. administration refused to acknowledge a decision about softwood lumber that was favorable to Canada. Weeks of angry threats and negative publicity erupted in Canada. In October 2005, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice came to visit Ottawa. The National Post noted that she had already logged 280,000 miles and visited 39 other countries since becoming Secretary of State. And once in Canada, her message was polite but pointed: Liberals tone down the rhetoric.






VI. CONCLUSION

There was no love lost between President George Bush and Prime Minister Jean Chretien and their various handlers. Both exchanged cheap shots and snubs which did not serve the best interests of either Canadians or Americans.

The Bush regime pushed too hard and was insensitive toward the internal politics facing allies like Canada who wanted to help but wanted to go more slowly. Washington’s impatience played into the hands of anti-American elements in Canada and elsewhere, thus putting their leaders into more difficult political situations at home. The Bush government should have taken a page out of the Clinton administration by building good relationships and romancing the world’s leaders, or his father’s administration who acted only after building diplomatic consensus. When both strategies were deployed in the past, Canada’s prime ministers willingly participated in proposed U.S. military interventions.

The Chretien regime was also guilty of insensitivity, diplomatic ineptness and insularity. He was not at all like his predecessor, Brian Mulroney, who was a Clintonesque international networker. Chretien remained a local Quebec politician who put Quebec politics, and his dislike for George Bush, before other considerations. His decision may have been in the national interest inasmuch as he may have helped defeat the separatists in the 2003 election. It also kept Canadians out of a deteriorating post-invasion situation. However, the failure to adhere to normal diplomatic protocol and the acceptance, even encouragement, of anti-American attitudes within his government has not been in the national interest. Less vicious back-biting, and a more nuanced policy of non-combat Coalition participation, may have accomplished a great deal and repaired a frayed friendship.