This is how Vincent Marissal, a top columnist for the Montreal-based La Presse, summarized the recent visit by the U.S. president to Canada. Marissal’s opinion column—headlined “The Antimissile Boomerang”—in the December 3 issue of the French-language daily was one of many such comments in the Canadian press.

Bush came to Canada for two days, from November 30 to December 1. It was his first official trip abroad since his re-election in November. The visit was touted in the media here as “fence-mending.”

The previous Liberal government headed by Jean Chrétien refused to send Canadian troops to participate in the U.S. war against Iraq on the grounds that the assault hadn’t received the blessing of the United Nations. In response, Washington punished Ottawa. It imposed trade sanctions against Canadian products, especially softwood lumber and cattle beef.

The resulting blows were deeply felt by capitalists here, since 85 percent of all Canadian exports go to the United States. Canada’s rulers hoped that Bush’s visit would be an opening to at least soften the impact of some of these blows. Many in ruling circles also aimed to promote their usefulness for the imperialist system as international “peacekeepers” and “democracy brokers.”

These hopes didn’t pan out.  
 
No wiggle room for Canada’s rulers
Despite all the smiling, witty jokes, and backslapping between Bush and Canadian prime minister Paul Martin, no headway was made toward resolving the trade disputes over lumber and beef.

In May 2002 the U.S. Department of Commerce imposed a 29 percent duty on softwood lumber from Canada, charging that the Canadian government was unfairly subsidizing logging operations. A year later, Washington banned imports of all Canadian beef cattle after one Alberta cow tested positive for “mad cow” disease. The latter step was part of Washington’s response to Ottawa’s refusal to send troops to Iraq as part of the U.S.-led “coalition of the willing.”

These knockdowns have cost Canadian capitalists billions of dollars. Big business has made sure workers bear the brunt of the crisis. Workers in the wood and meatpacking industries have been hit by tens of thousands of layoffs across the country. Thousands of farmers have also been badly affected.

At the end of the first day of his visit, Bush announced that proposals to lift the ban on live cattle will continue to be “examined” by U.S. authorities, a process that could go to late April or early May.

In a nationally televised speech in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on December 1, Bush caught the Canadian rulers off-guard with Washington’s demand that Canada come under the U.S. umbrella of so-called ballistic missile defense. After praising existing military cooperation between the two governments, Bush said: “I hope we’ll also move forward on ballistic missile defense cooperation to protect the next generation of Canadians and Americans from the threats we know will arise.” Washington is building a land-, air-, and sea-based system designed to shoot down incoming missiles. It already has components in Alaska. Its eventual deployment would give Washington nuclear first strike capacity.

This was a surprise to the Martin government. In the days leading up to the visit, Canadian officials had said they had assurances from their U.S. counterparts that Bush would make no such request, since this is a controversial issue in Canadian politics. For the U.S. rulers, however, the antiballistic missile shield is a key component of the current transformation of their world military machine. It is aimed, above all, at restoring Washington’s ability to use its massive nuclear arsenal to blackmail governments such as Iran and north Korea in the semicolonial world.

Canada’s rulers are divided over the issue.

On the one hand, they feel they have no choice but to join the Anti-Ballistic Missile System. As Defense Minister William Graham recently put it, “On continental defense matters, we should be really accommodating of the Americans and work with them as closely as we possibly can… Given the potential for negative consequences…I think we should do it.”

On the other, they know that such a move would ultimately put the Canadian military under U.S. command and undermine Ottawa’s aspirations at playing some seemingly “independent” role as a minor imperialist power in the world.

A vocal minority of Liberal Party members in parliament oppose the U.S. project. In addition, the Liberals were forced to form a minority government after getting barely 37 percent in the last federal elections in June. For these reasons, the Martin government has avoided up to now taking a clear stance on backing the missile shield, while moving in that direction.

Last August, Ottawa signed an agreement with Washington expanding the decades-long North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) military pact between the two countries from air surveillance to detection of incoming missiles. Both governments have signed agreements increasing the militarization of the U.S.-Canada border. These include the “Smart Borders” initiative allowing U.S. customs officers to inspect trucks on the Canadian side of the border.

The Conservative Party, the official opposition in the national parliament, supports joining missile defense. The social-democratic New Democratic Party and the pro-Quebec sovereignty Bloc Quebecois oppose it. Opinion polls indicate that a majority of the population currently rejects the U.S. initiative.

In this context, Bush publicly urging the Canadian government to join the Anti-Ballistic Missile System came as a warning that Ottawa should get its act together and lead the necessary political battle around the issue.  
 
Towards a new ‘Canadian doctrine’?
“Canada’s leadership is helping to build a better world,” Bush said in Halifax. It was a theme that ran through his speech. He praised Ottawa’s military participation over the last decade in imperialist interventions in Bosnia, Kosova, Haiti, Afghanistan, the Middle East, Cyprus, Sudan, and the Congo.

“Just two weeks ago,” Bush continued, “NATO countries showed their esteem for your military by electing General Ray Henault as Chairman of NATO’s Military Committee.”

Over the last several months, and especially in recent weeks, the Martin government has taken several initiatives and issued statements aimed at defining what some observers have dubbed a new “Canadian doctrine.” Like a number of other imperialist powers, Canadian rulers have come to accept that the only future for their military is as a specialized partner of the transformed U.S. war machine.

Under this “new doctrine,” Ottawa aims to play a more aggressive role in rebuilding so-called democratic institutions in what imperialists call “failed nations” and give more open support to imperialist interventions to “stabilize” these countries. As Martin put it May 10 in a speech in Montreal, “Failed states more often than not require military intervention in order to ensure stability.”

This represents a marked shift from Ottawa’s previous specialty as imperialist “peacekeeper” under the banner of the United Nations for over half a century.

In the two weeks leading up to Bush’s visit, Martin promoted his new doctrine in widely publicized trips to Haiti, Chile, Brazil, Burkina Faso, and Sudan.

In the same period, government officials repeatedly offered Canada’s “expertise” in monitoring elections in Palestine, Ukraine, and Iraq.  
 
Anti-Bush, pro-Canada protests
A number of demonstrations were organized to coincide with the visit by Bush. The largest one took place in Ottawa, drawing 6,000 to 10,000 people, according to estimates by the police and organizers. An action in Halifax drew 4,000. Smaller protests took place in various other cities. The turn out was much smaller than what organizers had anticipated.

While the actions opposed what organizers called the “Bush Agenda”—the war in Iraq and Anti-Ballistic Missile System—protesters remained silent about Ottawa’s imperialist interventions abroad and the rulers’ offensive at home against workers and farmers.  
 
 
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