In small towns and cities, from Atlantic Canada through the prairies to the Pacific coast, many Canadians have been saying what Washington would like to hear, if it could hear them.
Give the Americans what they need to make North America safer, they say, even if that means a loss of Canadian sovereignty and tougher immigration and asylum laws. That is the message from merchants up and down Queen Street in this suburb with a small-town feel near Canada's largest city, Toronto. It is the finding of national opinion polls. It is the talk in homes and bars and workplaces and the subject of letters to publications across the country.
It is not the message that Canadians and or US officials have been hearing from Prime Minister Jean Chretien, however, since the attacks in the US on Sept. 11.
The US ambassador in Ottawa, Paul Cellucci, has called for a "security perimeter" around the region that would mean aligning Canada's more generous immigration, visa, asylum and anti-terrorism policies with those of the US. Chretien has responded by saying repeatedly that his country is not going to be a fortress against the world.
Even in Chretien's own Liberal Party, however, there are dissenting voices. Premier Gordon Campbell of British Columbia said in a speech on Thursday that Canada should "work arm in arm with America to create an airtight North American border. We have no better friend in Canada than the United States of America."
The prime minister and leaders of opposition parties, some of whom have excoriated Chretien in Parliament for his low-key reaction to the US crisis, went to New York this past weekend to see the devastation at the World Trade Center site.
In Streetsville, Todd Ladner of Ladner's Clothiers and a member of the local Business Improvement Association, thought this gesture was about as meager as it was overdue. "Our government should have been there -- in person, at the site, within a few days," he said, "and I think our security has to be reassessed and upgraded in accordance with American wishes. They are the dominant players and the leaders, and we have to respect that, because we rely on them for so much of our own security."
Down the street a bit, Gaylene Wakeman was attending to business at a toy store, Once Upon a Time. On the counter was a tiny teddy bear in an American flag outfit, sitting by a can for donations. Take a red, white and blue ribbon, and give something for relief, customers were asked. Wakeman made the ribbons as her way of "doing something."
"I sat in front of the television watching what was happening, and I made these," she said. "I made 36 of them, because I felt like I had to do something. I tried to donate blood, but they were so filled up that appointments were two or three weeks down the road. So I made up my little ribbons and we've got almost C$60 in donations in the last two weeks."
At a memorial to the dead from World War I and World War II just across the street, a wreath and several candles have been added to honor the victims of the attacks.
John Davies stopped by to look. He said of the US, "It's almost as if we're cut from the same cloth, really."
At Pita Nutsy, a Middle Eastern cafe, Feris Ahmed, an Iraqi by birth, said, "We're all here because of the problems over there," he said. He suggested that all North Americans should share in meeting this new threat.
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