WikiLeaks: the Canadian Connection

Washington is spying on us and the ex-CSIS chief is a bit of a jerk.

Among the WikiLeaks documents released this week was a cable urging U.S. diplomats to spy on Canadian officials, a directive that has left Sun Media’s Warren Kinsella incredulous. “[S]py on us, their allies?” he asks, agog. “Us, their biggest trading partner — you know, the ones who recently acceded to their pleas we remain on the battlefields of Afghanistan for a few more years?” Kinsella says it’s no wonder the U.S. hasn’t tracked down Osama bin Laden given the fact they’re so focused on harassing Canada. While it will probably rankle many to know that the U.S. is spying on us, Kinsella sounds fairly naïve here. As WikiLeaks has revealed, international diplomacy isn’t a kid’s game, and if our own security agencies don’t have some kind of operation ongoing in Washington and other friendly capitals it would be pretty surprising, possibly even a little worrying.

Some of the WikiLeaks documents apparently depict American diplomats describing Canada’s "inferiority complex," but the Vancouver Sun’s Barbara Yaffe says our ties to the U.S. are too strong to be weakened by small insults like that. Given our mutually dependent economies and security, Yaffe’s analysis is right on the money, but she also says it wouldn’t be surprising if WikiLeaks revealed that U.S. soldiers killed Canadian troops and blamed it on the Taliban. It’s safe to say the reaction from the Canadian public would be considerably (and justifiably) less stoic, especially since we just agreed to re-up in Afghanistan at Washington’s request.

Former CSIS director Jim Judd is quoted in the WikiLeaks documents as saying Canadians have an “Alice in Wonderland” view of the world and don’t appreciate the reality of terrorist threats. The National Post’s Kelly McParland says he finds this frank assessment, along with the frank descriptions of dastardly foreign leaders contained in the leaks, rather comforting instead of incriminating. “If anything,” he writes, the WikiLeaks dump “suggests the State Department, and CSIS, have a realistic understanding of the world.”