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Repairing North America: Countering a Liberal blitz of anti-U.S. insults, the Canadian right rallies for continental unity.

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BY KEVIN STEEL

As the first bombs fell on Iraq in late March, Norman Spector was among the billions of viewers transfixed by televised plumes of smoke rising over Baghdad. "This is a major watershed," remarked the former Canadian ambassador to Israel and chief of staff in Brian Mulroney's government. "Canadians have never been this estranged from our British and American allies at the same time." Initially, public opinion appeared to support the federal government's decision not to help oust the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. But Mr. Spector predicted at the time that Canadians' attitudes would shift within a few days.

He was right. In a February poll conducted by Ekos, only 23% of Canadians supported a U.S.-led attack on Iraq without the approval of the United Nations. War broke out on March 20. Five days later, a Pollara poll revealed a more complex public mood: while a majority still favoured going the UN route, six out of 10 Canadians wanted the government to commit troops to the war effort regardless. By April 7, a Compas poll indicated 72% believed Canada should have supported the U.S. from the beginning.

Polling results can be disputed, but an overall trend appeared unmistakable. Quebeckers remained overwhelmingly opposed to fighting in an "Anglo-Saxon" adventure. Once the battle of Iraq began, and especially after it had been won, a solid majority of English Canadians wished their troops, like Australia's, had pulled Canada's weight within the American-led coalition.

Ontario and Quebec have both run true to historical form in their reactions to the U.S.-led Iraqi Freedom campaign, as has the West.

Quebec, for instance, has adopted a strongly pacifist position, especially when it comes to anglophone wars, for at least one hundred years. The province's impassioned opposition toward conscription in the Second World War verged on breaking up Confederation. Rallies against the Iraqi campaign drew as many as 100,000 people in Montreal, by far the largest anti-coalition demonstration in Canada.

A characteristic odour of money and appeasement also prompted speculation about the motives driving Jean Chretien. The prime minister's daughter, France, is married to Andre Desmarais, whose father, Paul, runs Power Corp. This corporation owns the largest stake in the French petroleum firm TotalFinaElf, which in turn held contracts worth tens of billions from the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein.*

Another plausible influence upon Mr. Chretien was the Quebec election held on April 14. Gordon Gibson, a Canadian studies specialist with the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute, notes that keeping Quebec within Confederation is a lifetime goal of the prime minister. By opposing the U.S. in Iraq, the federal leader may have helped boost the fortunes of provincial Liberal counterpart Jean Charest. If so, the ploy worked. The Quebec Liberals surged ahead in the last phase of the provincial campaign, ousting the Parti Quebecois regime of the separatist...