Canada needs to stop being America’s doormat |
Know what I’m getting really sick of as a Canadian? Harmful deferentiality towards the US that persists despite all the “elbows up” rhetoric.
In the latest example, an Air France fight took off from Paris, heading for Detroit. Do you see anything Canadian in that at all? Canada does!
The airline had royally messed up and let a passenger board from the Congo, the current global headquarters of Ebola. American authorities refused to let the plane land in their territory since they had recently banned all passengers from the Congo, specifically due to the viral outbreak. So, Canadian authorities let the plane land in Montreal. Then they let everyone off and put the passenger in question on the next flight back to Paris.
Why couldn’t they have done all that in Detroit? Is a plane considered to be inside a country the moment it decides it has feelings about the flight? No passenger is technically inside any country until they go through customs anyway. Why did they have to dump it all on Canada? I’ll tell you why. Because they had a choice, and Canada is far too nice.
The answer should have just been “no.” Not “no, but let us convene an interagency working group to explore the emotional implications of saying no.” Just “no.” No getting into the intricacies of Ebola infection risk or whose fault it all is, either. Or whether the guy is actually infected or not. Forget dedicating any bandwidth to any of that.
Perhaps........