Thanks to all of you, especially Muffin, for your thoughtful responses. I guess I have to agree that the US-Canada border will have to be opened entirely, paradoxical as that may seem under the circumstances, with integration of customs and immigration services, among other things. If that implies some loss of sovereignty, which would of course affect Canada by the usual 10:1 ratio based on population, that’s a pity - but protection of national identity is another debate.
I desperately hope the problem can be isolated to clearing up a few cells of a few fanatics, and that neither of us has to forever repudiate our self-images and our heritages as nations of immigrants.
featherlou, I have indeed been to most regions of Canada, some of them frequently, and I’m aware of its size. But the terrorist-nest issue seems to have been concentrated in the Montreal metro area (which I’m familiar with more than any other place in Canada). Surely one city, or one river island, can be dealt with by the means at hand.
LaurAnge, what I meant by that was, as I was working, and most other citizens of voting age are too, we did not have enough time to find out what the different points being debated on were. The only thing I remember is Day wanting referendums that the people could vote on, so we would have some hand in the laws and acts passed. I don’t recall Chretien saying he was going to change a single thing. I have asked people if they think he is a good prime minister, and why, and the only response anyone has given me that is positive and not neutral is that they liked him because he ‘stood up for himself’ when that guy got too close to him in the crowd (the chokehold moment). That’s fight or flight reflex, that doesn’t make him a good PM.
Is it possible people simply voted for him because the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t? This is what I mean by ‘PM by default’.
You very definately have the right to disagree with me, but IMNSHO I think he is content to maintain the status quo and grab as much cash as he can before he leaves office. Any opinions telling me why my opinions are not valid will be welcomed. I’d really like to feel better about our country’s leadership.
I’m a Montrealer and I have been thinking about this situation. What I will say is a WAG but it makes sense to me. Montréal is a prime location for Middle-Eastern terrorists because it is a bilingual city. We have a large Muslim population that comes from the former French North Africa (Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco), another large segment from Lebanon (where French was largely spoken) and we have also many refugees from other Muslim states. The francophone Muslims can integrate easily with the local population without having to learn another language. The other Muslims usually have a smathering of English. All of them have Arabic in common. Therefore I figure that it is possible that we are a main recruiting ground for various organizations that would normally never be in contact if they would have remained in their original localtion.
Given that most of the hijackers appear to have spent considerable time in the US, given that the pilots appear to have trained here, given that they travelled freely in the US and were ignored by the apparently lax intelligence gathering agencies of the US, and given that we have the singularly most porous border in the world, resulting in illegally present populations that are large enough to populate some countries, I find the notion of getting on Canada’s case for the presence of some few of the terrorists during some time prior to the hijackings.
Not that use of logic or a sense of proportion are necessary when posting thinly disguised attacks on our neighbor to the north by those who appear to have some unclear grudge… :rolleyes:
DS, I’ve made my views clear enough in multiple posts, and you have not bothered to accurately describe them. There is no grudge at all toward Canada here, just an effort to understand the problem, and a number of Canadians have responded agreeing with that.