Land of the free

Paul Robinson says we can learn a lot about decency and independence from plucky Canada you've probably heard that story about the Inuit having 50 words for snow? Well, the sign of a genuine Canadian is that he has

50 words for doughnut. When a glacial wind is howling through Moose Jaw and Medicine Hat and it has been dark for five months in Tuktoyaktuk. Canadians head for Tim Horton's, Dunkin' Donuts. Robin's Donuts, Country Style, Coffee Time, Baker's Dozen, and all the rest of them. When it comes to the perfect doughnut. Canada is the unquestioned world leader.

In the less important matters of world politics and military strateg, Canada is rarely seen as a leader. Indeed. Canada-bashing is now very much in vogue, especially in right-wing circles in Britain and America. Canadians themselves tend to be self-deprecating. But insist enough, and you will find that under the chuckles about not knowing the words to the national anthem there are fierce patriots who will tell you that Canada is the best country in the world, and mean it.

Indeed, Britons should look to Canada for

an example of civilised 21st-century living. There they will find a state which is unafraid of preserving its sovereignty in the face of enormous pressure to integrate with its gigantic neighbour, a state which is prepared to fight when fighting is needed, but which also knows how to make peace when peace is called for; a society which combines prosperity and opportunity for the individual with socialised medicine, a successful system of public education, and far-sighted subsidies to the arts and cultural groups. Canada really is the best place in the world; a fact repeatedly endorsed by that bete noire of the American Right, the United Nations.

But this is far from the prevalent view in the Anglosphere. Canada represents all that the Mark Stems of the world abhor: peace-loving, half-French, welfare statist — what Pat Buchanan so aptly calls `Canuckistari. The latest outrage was Canada's refusal to endorse the Anglo–American invasion of Iraq. Prime Minister Jean Chretien has never been invited to the ranch in Texas and almost certainly never will be now, unlike his more subservient

British and Australian counterparts. 'Wimps!' shouted the front cover of the US National Review, recommending that America bomb Canada at once. (They forget, of course, that the last time it came to a fight Canada burned down the White House.)

More seriously, there seems to be a widespread delusion that because Canadians are Nice, the sort of people who invent UN peacekeeping, promote multilateral institutions and gentle notions such as 'human security' and 'soft power', and advocate international disarmament and the rule of law, they are necessarily lacking in moral fibre.

The fact is that while others sat out the first few years of both world wars, the Canadians were in there with Britain from the word go. It was a Canadian unit that took the surrender of the Boers at Paardeburg, a Canadian corps that routed the Germans at Vimy Ridge and Amiens, Canadian warships which convoyed half of all maritime traffic across the Atlantic during the second world war, Canadian infantrymen who held the line at Kapyong in Korea, Canadian aeroplanes which dropped one third of all the Nato bombs on Yugoslavia in 1999, and Canadian soldiers who died in Afghanistan fighting the War on Terror last year.

When the going got tough at Srebrenica, the Dutch packed up and left. Not many miles away, when the Croatian army had moved in to massacre the population of the Meclak pocket, the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry met them head-on. Outnumbered, outgunned, under intense and prolonged fire from machine-guns, mortars, and artillery, the PPCLI held their ground and forced back the murderers, saving the lives of hundreds of defenceless civilians.

Canadians have shown the same ruthless cool on their home ground. When Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau — the epitome of nattily dressed, French-speaking surrender monkeys — was asked how far he would go to defeat the terrorists of the Front de liberation du Quebec. he replied, 'Just watch me!' One day later, he declared martial law, deployed tanks in the streets of Montreal, arrested and detained hundreds without trial, and crushed the FLO in short order. 'There's a lot of bleeding hearts around who just don't like to see people with helmets and guns,' he commented. A111 can say is, go bleed.'

Canadians know how to fight, and when it is needed they catch the torch and take up the quarrel with the foe. But they also have the common sense to know when fighting is not needed. According to the National Post newspaper, the Canadian government reviewed the so-called 'dossiers' on Iraq and dismissed the hype about weapons of mass destruction as unjustified by the facts. In retrospect, we can see that they were right, and that Canadian abstention from the invasion was based on the most sensible assessment of the actual threat.

Canada's commitment to worldwide peace and disarmament is no less fervent than Tony Blair's; merely more effective. Ottawa almost singlehandedly, in the face of massive international resistance and through the force of its moral influence alone, persuaded the rest of the world to ban those most deadly and indiscriminate of weapons, landmines. Everybody may remember the fashionplate princess and her Angolan photo-op, but the agreement was called the Ottawa Treaty long before she sailed up to pose with it.

Mirroring American claims that one is 'either with us or against us'. a British government minister recently told me that Europeans must choose whether to be allies of or rivals to the United States. Canada's example proves that it is possible to find a 'third way'. The Canadians partner their colossal neighbour when it is right to do so, but stand up to it when they disagree with its plans. Imagine if Britain had a similarly independent foreign policy! Next time, instead of allowing the EU to destroy British livelihoods and resources through the Common Fisheries Policy, Mr Blair could follow the Canadian example: Ottawa seized a Spanish fishing vessel by force, then displayed its illegal nets in front of the United Nations building in New York. Equally, why should Britain feel so pressured to adopt the euro? Canada maintains a separate currency very happily, despite the huge American market right next door.

On a more emotional level as well, Canada offers many parallels for Britons. Canadians are far closer to us than their American cousins. Research shows that American and Canadian values have been diverging significantly in recent years. Thus, while 50 per cent

of Americans attend church regularly, only 20 per cent of Canadians claim to. Like Britain, Canada has become a decidedly secular country. It is also a model of multicultural integration. The critics who complain that it is too European only in economic terms — high-tax, low-growth, and stifled by socialist regulation — are simply uninformed. True, there is great regional variety. but Alberta has almost the lowest taxes in North America, and no provincial sales tax whatsoever. Federal and provincial governments across the country have balanced their budgets for years, and in some cases have reduced their state debts to levels inconceivable in Europe or the debt-ridden United States.

Even Canadian culture is surreptitiously conquering the market. From Celine Dion, Shania Twain, Alanis Morissette, and Avril Lavigne to the endless collection of exported comedians who dominate the American television and movie market, from Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje and Robert Lepage to the Cirque du Soled, from the delightfully un-PC humour of the late-lamented Mordecai Richler, now enjoying a booming posthumous success in Italy, to the grand old man of Canadian letters, Robertson Davies (who doubled as Master of the wonderful Massey College at the University of Toronto), Canada is surprisingly over-represented. Three of the four finalists for this year's Booker Prize were Canadian.

Canada-bashing should be left to Mark Steyn and the denizens of South Park. A printable excerpt from the lyrics of the latter's theme song runs: 'Blame Canada,/Shame on Canada.,,We must blame them and cause a fuss/Before someone thinks of blaming us.' The real Canada stands on guard for North American modernity combined with European social enlightenment — and better doughnuts.

Paid Robinson is assistant director of the Centre for Secillity Studies at the University of Hull He has also semed as an intelligence officer in the British and Canadian armies.