Wall’s question during a Western Canadian & American meeting came in a direct address to President Obama. The question that he made was which president within history has ever had Canada’s interest at heart. My guess is that he would say Ronald Reagan. Since he's had a particular fascination with the former President Reagan, whose relationship with Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was a particular source of pride. In fact, some of Wall's closest political colleagues and advisers argue to this day that Reagan was America's greatest president because it was Reagan's emphasis on massive, debt-accumulating military spending that bankrupted the communist states and ended the biggest threat to the globe from potential nuclear war. The theory is interesting and has some validity, but it ignores the fact that the threat to world peace didn't exactly end as predicted, and that debt-plagued Reaganomics has had serious implications for the American and global economies ever since. For Canada and Saskatchewan, the outcome of Reaganomics included a recession that made our oil less profitable and increased U.S. protectionism in the 1980s that produced massive tariffs on softwood lumber exports, uranium, and potash. It is with this perspective that we should explore a remark Wall made in Saskatoon on Monday about President Barack Obama at the Pacific Northwest Economic Region Summit. People think in this country, perhaps they do, that the Obama administration is good for Canada... The facts say something else. Clearly, the premier could and should have been wiser with his words to reporters, especially since his tone can so easily be interpreted as injecting a personal bias into the democratic affairs of Canada's biggest trading partner. That said Wall’s slights hardly constitute an international etiquette.
There is no doubt that Wall was playing to his audience of right-wing American and Canadian political and business types at the conference held in Saskatoon. His actual PNWER speech was considerably more diplomatic and made the point that a premier should make. Yet I would surmise Ottawa, Canada's capital had Wall's phones and staff given a cordial Canadian kick in the behind. There are trade irritants between our countries. Canada-U.S. relations may not be the worst in decades. A claim by former Mulroney chief-of-staff and Canadian ambassador to the U.S., Derek Burney, which even Wall disputed Monday. However, it also would be nonsense to suggest, as current U.S. ambassador to Canada David Jacobson did, that relations have never been better. Which they have but in the recent years, there has been more progress between Prime Minister Harper and President Obama. Whether it's been trade challenges against the former Canadian Wheat Board, or the George W. Bush administration's mostly politically motivated response to the discovery of BSE in Canada, to the embarrassment of protectionist U.S. farm bills under every U.S. administration or those 1980s tariffs, Canadian politicians have spent decades struggling with protectionism by U.S. federal and state legislators.
The "Obama Protectionism" to which Wall refers seems more of the same. In that vein, the premier acknowledged that the Keystone XL pipeline delays are likely a temporary condition related to U.S. election year politics. This doesn't mean that Wall isn't legitimately frustrated by American environmentalists' misguided view of "Dirty Canadian Oil," or that Obama's “Buy American Rule” in the most recent U.S. stimulus package isn't unfair to Canadian suppliers. However, is this something unexpected or unusual? In addition, does it make Obama bad for Canada or worse than any other recent American president? It's at this point that Wall's argument lacks any historical perspective. Exactly what constitutes a good American president for Canada is unclear. However, one would think it would involve a U.S. leader making the world more peaceful, allowing trade and avoiding the kind of protectionism that makes commerce more difficult. Perhaps Obama's record is hit and misses on both fronts, but that puts him on par with most of his predecessors in the White House. It certainly doesn't prove that the Obama’s administration is any worse for Canada than any other U.S. administration that Wall might find more appealing politically.
Yet Brad Wall hardly handled it in a more diplomatic manner. He came out intentionally as the word is that he will be running for the next Prime Minister of Canada.
Interview by James Gormley with Brad Wall attached in mp3
