The American Spectator

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Campaign Crawlers

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Even some right-wing Canadians may be uncomfortable electing a government that would have plunged more eagerly into Iraq. But they are also frustrated with a regime that has balanced the budget on the back of the Canadian Forces while protecting dirigiste economic-development programs, generous pork for culture and multiculture, and expensive regulation of all sorts. The basic foreign-policy question in the election is whether our "Kyoto commitments" are more important than our NATO commitments.

The active complement of the Canadian Forces is hovering near 50,000, Canadian sovereignty over its northern borders is violated with impunity, and the soldiers we do have are fighting with embarrassingly outdated equipment. For his part, Mr. Martin pledges to reinvest in "peacekeeping," which is to say he intends to keep letting the Canadian military degrade into a lightly armed mobile police department in the employ of the UN.

PRIME MINISTER STEPHEN HARPER wouldn't be able to reverse this trend right away. Nor would there be too many other radical changes, from a southern perspective. American military planners would find that they had gained a continental partner comfortable with the concept of joint missile defense. America's flak-vested drug warriors would be pleased at Harper's dislike for Canada's immense marijuana industry, and his willingness to keep it illegal under federal law, for all the effect it would have. Canada's cruel federal monopoly on the export of Western wheat, which jails farmers for "smuggling" their own grain across the 49th parallel, might be abandoned or relaxed, as American wheat growers have long desired.

Mostly, what you'll notice -- if things go Harper's way in the end -- is that Canada will have gained a leader who talks the shared Anglo-Saxon language of trade, individual liberty, and military might. You will, I think, find him to be someone who "gets it." His election would bring Canada back from the fringes of the "Anglosphere" to somewhere near its heart.

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Foreign Policy, Trade, Economics, Abortion, Constitution, Law, Military, Iraq, NATO, Conservatism, Immigration