Sandro Contenta's Notebook:

A hundred days later, in Canada

Swine flu spreading in Canada — 13 cases have so far been confirmed — bumped U.S. President Barack Obama’s 100 day-report card off the front pages.

Still, the commentary was largely positive.

Most noted that despite enormous challenges, particularly with the economy, Obama has managed to convince Americans the U.S. is back on the right track.

“At least for now, there is a symbiosis between the president and the American public. Mr. Obama's cool charm, his obvious high intelligence and quiet confidence, make people feel good about their leader, and better about themselves,” writes John Ibbitson, Washington correspondent for the Globe and Mail newspaper.

“To the extent he can sustain this new consensus, Mr. Obama's presidency could be the most transformative since Ronald Reagan's,” he adds.

In an editorial, the Toronto Star newspaper argued that, “Few American presidents have reached as high as Barack Obama in their first 100 days in office.” His activism on a range of issues, including the stimulus package, the environment, and the war in Afghanistan, is leaving Canada’s Conservative Party government panting to catch up, the paper said.

Canada's Harper joins chorus for US to lift Cuban embargo

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has called on the United States to end its trade embargo against Cuba.

Speaking at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago — a gathering received with a big yawn in Canada — Harper suggested the decades-old embargo has had the unintended effect of propping up the Communist state.

“If one wants to break down a state-socialist economic nationalist model with walls, I don't think a trade embargo's the way to do that. So we would obviously urge a different course of action,” Harper said.

“That said … we don't turn a blind eye to the fact that Cuba is a communist dictatorship and that we want to see progress on freedom, democracy and human rights as well as on economic matters,” he added.

Unlike the U.S., Canada has long maintained diplomatic and economic relations with Cuba. U.S. President Barack Obama recently lifted some travel and telecommunications restrictions on Cuba in the first steps to thawing relations.

Harper has made free trade in the Americas his main message at the summit, one that hasn’t gone down well with all 34 leaders.

“There are some countries that want to keep fighting the Cold War and frankly wars that go a lot farther back than that,” Harper said at a brief press conference.

Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua have been especially vocal in denouncing western-dominated global capitalism.

Harper is pushing an issue that caused heated debates at the summit four years ago, when leaders voted down the proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas.

At this weekend’s summit, Harper also pledged $4 billion to the Inter-American Development Bank, which lends money to developing countries in the Americas.

The summit has received little media attention in Canada. Most news organizations didn’t send reporters to cover the summit.
 

Billy Bob Thornton's complex relationship with Canada

Actor and musician Billy Bob Thornton has hightailed it out of Canada. Some would say he was run out of the country, but Thornton insists it isn’t so.

What’s clear is that Thornton and his band the Boxmasters dropped their two remaining shows as the opening act for Willie Nelson after being booed in Toronto for comparing Canadian audiences to “mashed potatoes with no gravy.”

The cancellations and boos came after a now infamous non-interview Thornton gave CBC radio on Wednesday. It went sour from the moment host Jian Gomeshi referred to Thornton’s Oscar-winning film career in the introduction. Thornton rolled his eyes, looked up at the ceiling and the interview went downhill from there. Here’s a sample:

Ghomeshi: Billy Bob, You guys formed only in the last couple of years, right?

Thornton: I don't know what you're talking about.

Ghomeshi: How so?

Thornton: I don't know what you mean by that.

Ghomeshi: Well, when did the band form?

Thornton: I'm not sure what that means.

Ghomeshi: Oh. When did you guys start playing together? (A band member with an understanding of the word “formed,” then answers the question for Thornton.)

After several more minutes of petulance, Thornton described Canadian audiences as people who “just sort of sit there” and compared them to “mashed potatoes with no gravy.”

He then refused to sing with his band, which awkwardly proceeded to play an instrumental in the CBC studio while Thornton looked on. By late Friday night, about 1.2 million viewers had watched the YouTube video of the CBC interview.

Between songs at his Toronto concert Thursday, Thornton called Gomeshi an “asshole,” claiming Gomeshi had broken a deal not to bring up his acting career during the interview. “If you look someone in the eyes and promise them something, and you don’t do it, you don’t get the interview,” Thornton said.

The audience jeered and responded with shouts of, "Here comes the gravy!”

Thornton then cancelled the show last night in Montreal and the one tonight in London, Ontario. Thornton’s publicist, Arnold Robinson, insisted it had nothing to do with the CBC interview.

“One of the band members and several of the crew have the flu and need a couple of days off to recuperate,” Robinson told the Toronto Star.

“As Billy said before and during the show last night, he loves Canada,” Robinson added.

If Thornton loves Canada, he certainly has a funny way of showing it.

And in case Thornton is interested in contacting globalpost.com for an interview, we state categorically that any reference to his acting career in this dispatch is purely unintentional.



Gorgeous George

I recently wrote about George Galloway being barred from entering Canada, and about one Canadian's travails:

TORONTO — By now, many around the world have heard that provocative British politician George Galloway has been banned from entering Canada.

Practically no one, by comparison, has heard of Abousfian Abdelrazik. Yet most of those who have would argue that Abdelrazik's case is far more outrageous.

Galloway, dubbed “Gorgeous George” for his fashion flair, is the sole member in the British parliament of the anti-war group, Respect. An uncompromising left-winger, he was thrown out of the Labour Party in 2003 for emphatically opposing the invasion of Iraq. Last week, he was designated a threat to national security and barred from entering Canada for a speaking tour.

A spokesperson for Canada’s immigration minister accused Galloway of raising funds for the Palestinian group Hamas, which the Canadian government considers a terrorist organization, and of being “a popinjay for those Taliban fighters who are trying to kill Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.”

To read the rest of my column, click here.

Battle for the Arctic

I recently wrote about countries scrambling for control of the Arctic. Here's the beginning of my column:

TORONTO — For Canadians, the Arctic has long been a place of imagination. It’s where Inuit shamans fly and explorers disappear without a trace. Vast and forbidding, it has helped imprint in the national psyche an almost debilitating sense of isolation.

Canada’s sovereignty over its portion of this mythical place is now being challenged, most notably by the United States and Russia. It’s part of a bigger rush for the Arctic, the setting for what the conservative Heritage Foundation recently predicted will be a new Cold War.

In short, the scramble for diminishing energy resources has reached one of the most sensitive ecosystems on Earth.

The most dramatic example occurred Feb. 18, the day before U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Canada, when two Russia bomber planes provocatively flew to the edge of Canada’s northern airspace. F-18 fighter planes were scrambled to intercept them. Canadian pilots sent the Russians “a strong signal that they should back off,” according to Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay. 

Click here to read the rest. 

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