“I don’t want to come off sounding partisan,” Bob Rae begins. Then why are we having this conversation?
The problem with talking to the Liberal foreign affairs critic these days is that he has become so thoughtful.
Of course, Mr. Rae has always been a thoughtful man, but politically he has also been able to jab in the corners with the best of them.
Increasingly, however, Mr. Rae avoids sound bites and talking points, offering considered judgments instead. And so when he is asked how the Liberal Party responds to the revelation that Stephen Harper and Barack Obama are considering a trade-for-security swap of border agreements, the former Ontario premier, alarmingly, provides an honest answer.
First off, he acknowledges that the free trade agreements of the 1980s and 90s have benefited Canada. “There has been an increase of trade between the two countries,” he agreed.
Which is why “I am not root and branch opposed to engaging on this issue. I just want us to go in with our eyes wide open.”
The Canada-U.S. border has been getting steadily harder to cross since the Sept. 11 attacks, damaging the economy of both countries. The Prime Minister will sign an action plan Friday with the President that aims to open the door to removing some of those obstacles in exchange for much closer co-operation in policing the border.
But the negotiations leading up to the announcement have been kept so under wraps that we wouldn’t even know what Friday’s event was about, had The Globe and other media not gotten word of it from other sources. So “lack of transparency” is Mr. Rae’s first concern.
The second is that Canada might not have learned the lessons of history. The Americans, he correctly notes, are intensely determined to preserve their sovereignty. No other country in the developed world is so stiff-necked about protecting its right to act as it sees fit.
As a result, “what they yield on paper ends up getting overturned by process.” They’ll sign a trade agreement one day, then impose tariffs on softwood lumber the next.
So any swap that involves American economic concessions in exchange for Canadian security concessions could be illusory.
“The danger is what we gain on paper we don’t actually gain in reality, and that we will continue to face challenges on the border,” he says.
And as for those security concessions, the American demands could be draconian.
“The only form of integration that they will recognize is: ‘you do it the way we do it,’” Mr. Rae believes.
That said, Mr. Rae isn’t likely to take any firm stand in support of or opposition to the agreements that are supposed to flow out of Friday’s initiative until he’s had a chance to look at them.
Refusing to take make up your mind until you have the facts is, of course, entirely reasonable. But so disappointing.
