In defence of Canada
From Mr Alan Whiteley Sir: The attitude of the British press to Canada is usually one of neglect and condescension. The few articles that do appear are usually headed 'Great White Bore' and consist of baseless opinions about how dull, staid and uninteresting we are. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I came across Paul Robinson's article ('Land of the free', 31 May), a reasoned essay that touched on some of the many virtues of this country.
Unfortunately, the Robinson article did not mark a sea change. In the very next edition of The Spectator, Mark Steyn, expert on everything, described Robinson's article as 'pretty feeble maple-boosterism', while in his letter in the same edition Jeremy Stocker of Durham took Canada to task for not maintaining armed forces on the scale of our neighbour to the south. What Steyn and Stocker should both realise is that Canada does not consider the use of armed force as diplomacy by other means. There is an arguable case that our armed forces as presently constituted are not sufficient to protect the interests of Canada, but as the greatest threats to those interests come from the military, trade, energy and fishing policies of the United States and the European Community, most people would recognise the wisdom of our policy of maintaining weapons of mass destruction at levels comparable to those found in Iraq to date.
Alan Whiteley Picton, Ontario, Canada
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