U.S. consul speaks frankly about borderline issues
I’ve always found Canadian diplomats and top government officials tight-lipped and evasive, while U.S. diplomats and top government officials speak freely and frankly without fear of retribution from their administration.
Just watch President George W. Bush’s media spokesman Tony Snow on Fox News or CNN and he’s open in a way no media spokesman for a Canadian prime minister or cabinet minister would ever be.
During my years in Ottawa, I pondered why I had to squeeze and squeeze to get information out of Canadian government spokesmen, while in visits to the American Embassy across the street from Parliament Hill, U.S. officials would informally sit back in their chairs, casually cross their legs, and throw out all kinds of comments for the printed record on their administration’s policies.
This attitude came back a few days ago when U.S. Consul General Tom Huffaker gave his first speech “longer than three minutes” since being appointed earlier this summer.
Huffaker, speaking to the local chapter of the American Chamber of Commerce in Canada, went from energy to foreign affairs to trade to passport matters. It was all very refreshing.
For instance, Huffaker, a congenial and affable fellow by any measure, confessed it was only recently the bureaucratic elite in Washington realized Canada is key to U.S. energy security.
He recalled while at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa between 1999-2003, he and the ambassadors during his stint—Democrat-appointed Gordon Giffin and Republican-appointed Paul Cellucci—repeatedly tried to arouse Washington to the danger of reliance on unstable sources of energy from other parts of the world and highlighted the growing significance of Canada’s supplies.
Since both President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were oilmen, they understood the message, but it never seemed to get through to the bureaucracy.
With the world waking up to the Alberta oil sands huge resources—second-largest reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia—and the massive developments under way at Athabasca, bureaucratic Washington now knows which direction it should be looking: Canada. Canada. Canada.
As for new border-crossing regulations that will require all travellers by air to have a valid passport or other hi-tech ID security document come Jan. 8, 2007 and travellers overland by June, 2009, Huffaker echoed U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins’ words the new Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative ordained by a Congress is sacrosanct.
Yet, whether Canada decides to rely solely on the traditional passport or implement a simpler but high-tech security card as in the U.S., it will actually make cross-border travel easier and quicker than having to deal with dozens of different drivers’ licences from different provinces and states, or citizenship or birth certificates.
The debonair Huffaker covered a lot more ground—declaring the Canadian-U.S. relationship a “model to the world,” and pointing out despite the occasional caustic headline, some 999 out of every 1,000 disagreements we may have are quickly solved amicably.
My take is with Prime Minister Stephen Harper in power rather than Jean Chretien or Paul Martin, future disagreements will be solved even more amicably and quickly, too.
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