Company’s coming
Cats: Canada, Uncategorized, politics|Today, Canada’s opening up the front room, puffing up the sofa and dusting off the side tables. Tea’s on and special biscuits are baking in the oven.
Obama’s coming to town today. For six hours. But that’s an important six hours.
Our old-school NeoCon prime minister Stephen Harper is in an awkward place. Canada’s late-blooming NeoCon movement was just in its ascendency when the world moved on. No more W to justify Harper’s dirty-oil conservative politics.
But more importantly, Harper has to battle the protectionism rising in the US Rust Belt and the Democratic Party. He also has to quell similar shoot-yourself-in-the-foot tendencies emerging in the Canadian trade union movement here.
And then there’s Canada’s dirty oil problem.
Protectionism will hurt this country, and hurt it bad. We don’t have the numbers here. American is our market. If we lose access, our economy will suffer.
Add that to a recession, an aging population and Canada’s can’t-be-bothered attitude towards innovation, and you have a big problem.
We’re still very much in the thrall of Obama. He’s the inspirational leader that we don’t have in Canada. Not yet, anyway.
So this little drop-in by Obama will be interesting.
February 19th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
If Harper handles him like the Canadian Parliment, we will be at war by the end of the day.
February 19th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Please surprise me, Harper…please!
February 19th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Just be careful when you shake hands with him dear. You wouldn’t want to knock open your wounded finger.
Doc
February 19th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Cormac, dear god, no. We like Obama. Can we trade? With you guys. You can have Harp-ster and we’ll take Obama. Pleeeeze?
Dick, don’t hold your breath, mate.
Doc, aww, sweet of you to think of it.
I don’t know if they’d authorize a nine-finger handshake with your man Obama.
February 19th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
Be careful what you wish for. Our US markets aren’t very happy with BO’s stimulus plan or anything else the pseudo-messiah has had to say since the election. Smoke & mirrors go a long way to making somthing look waaay better than it really is.
February 19th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
I’m hoping that Obama is playing semantics. It’s the “buy American” stipulation, right?
Well, Canada is part of North America.
A chick can dream……
February 20th, 2009 at 3:06 am
“Cormac, dear god, no. We like Obama. Can we trade? With you guys. You can have Harp-ster and we’ll take Obama. Pleeeeze?”
Oh, like you would’ve taken Dubya off of our hands when he was in office ; )
Well, according to Yahoo, Obama didn’t bring up the sore subjects vexing our interborder relations and Harpie…er, Harper managed not to say something noxious. I believe he had something put on his vocal chords similar to the lathroscopic band.
February 20th, 2009 at 3:21 am
Obama’s trip to Ottawa reminded me of when Gorbechov visited Berlin and the crowds were all like “Gorby! Gorby!” Dude’s a rock star! Even Helmet-head seemed a little smitten with him.