Maude Barlow (AP)

U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins smiles before his speech at the Canadian Club luncheon where he discussed the federal election campaign on Tuesday. (CP / Tom Hanson)

Ambassador's comments intrusive, says Barlow

Updated Fri. Dec. 16 2005 4:41 PM ET

Canadian Press

TORONTO -- When United States Ambassador David Wilkins warned the prime minister to stop chest-thumping, it was more than an off-the-cuff remark amplified in the heat of a federal election campaign, social activist Maude Barlow says.

It represented the latest example of American conservatism creeping into Canadian politics and posing a risk to our national values of tolerance and independence, the national chairwoman of the Council of Canadians says.

"Absolutely, and it's just this notion that you can make it public as ambassador . . . that you have a right to interfere in Canadian politics and bring this brand of conservatism north," Barlow said in a phone interview from Hong Kong, where she is attending the World Trade Organization meeting.

"An ambassador's role in the past has always been in the background, you work quietly in the background to influence policy and improve relations between your countries. You don't use that position to impose your brand of political conservatism or social conservatism on a democratic country."

In a poll given to The Canadian Press, 58 per cent of respondents indicated they are concerned that America's increasing conservatism is a threat to the Canadian way of life.

"It says to me that Canadians are worried about the influence of particularly the religious right, and that kind of fundamental social conservatism that we see in the Bush administration moving into Canada," Barlow said.

"This poll serves as a warning to all governments in this country that Canadians want to be good neighbours to the United States, we understand their fears about security, we want to put in sensible security measures at the border but we don't want to be America."

The phone survey of 1,141 people, conducted on Sept. 16 and Sept. 20, was done by Innovate Research Group and released in conjunction with Barlow's latest book, Too Close for Comfort: Canada's Future Within Fortress North America. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 per cent 19 times out of 20.

Barry Cooper, a senior fellow at the right-wing Fraser Institute think-tank, said Barlow's fears of an orchestrated attempt by American right-wingers to infiltrate the Canadian electorate are unfounded.

"It's a very deliberate bit of propaganda by the nationalist left," said Cooper, also a professor of political science at the University of Alberta.

"They hate the United States, it's just as simple that, and they'll use just about any way of getting that on to the political consciousness of most Canadians."

Whether or not it signified a rising conservative presence, University of Toronto history professor Michael Bliss said Wilkins's rebuke of Martin went against "the ABC's of diplomacy."

"It was in some ways the sharpest criticism of the Canadian government in many years, partly because of the timing," Bliss said. "He was really saying that the Americans are very annoyed with Paul Martin and have very little confidence in his judgment."

The last time Canadian-U.S. relations became such a focal point of a federal election was more than 40 years ago, Bliss said. The similarities between the 1963 vote and today's are striking, and they may offer a lesson in foreign relations to Martin, Bliss suggested. Then-prime minister John Diefenbaker and his Conservatives, like today's Liberals, had a minority government, and ran on "a very strongly nationalist/anti-American campaign" based on his refusal to have nuclear weapons as part of North America's continental defence shield, Bliss said.

"This, in fact, helped precipitate the defeat of his government," he said. "That more than any other election was the example of what you would call cross-border tussle during an election."

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