John McCain is visiting the scene of the crime tomorrow, coming north to Canada to vaunt our free trade relationship with the United States, and maybe, just maybe, remind journalists about the manufactured controversy over Barack Obama's stance on the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Mr. McCain picked Ottawa and the Economic Club of Canada to deliver his speech. Tables, costing between $2,000 and $5,000, sold out in less than an hour when it was announced that he was on his way.
For Canada's governing Conservative Party, holding power with a slim minority in Parliament and steadily losing steam in recent polling, McCain's visit comes at a ticklish moment. It highlights this rookie government's unprecedented interference in the American electoral process and its unseemly alliance with the Republican Party of George W. Bush.
As the Globe and Mail noted...
The controversy over the Canadian leak of a diplomatic note damaging to Democrat Barack Obama has been receding with time. This can only be pleasing to the Harper team. But the appearance in Ottawa of Mr. McCain, set for Friday, is a good bet to reignite the whole business, putting Ottawa's ignoble deed again in the mix in the race for the White House.
That's bad for the Harper government, bad for bilateral relations. As interesting as it is to have the Republican candidate for the presidency here, better that he stay away.
The Prime Minister didn't invite the Arizona senator. It was the idea of the McCain team, encouraged by U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins with no apparent dissent from the Prime Minister's Office.
Just two weeks ago, Ian Brodie, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Chief of Staff, quietly resigned. Recall that it was Brodie who tipped off reporters to a conversation between Hillary Clinton's campaign and Canadian diplomats intended to ease fears over her threats to trash NAFTA. As it happened, this devolved into a leaked memo from the Canadian consulate in Chicago, a memo that purported to describe a meeting it sought with local Obama economic advisor Austan Goulsbee.
While the leak had a huge, if temporary, impact on the primary contest between Clinton and Obama, it has turned into a durable scandal that has severely eroded the credibility of the Harper government, which compensates its fringe wingnuttery with claims to competence. The follow-up to the affair hasn't helped at all.
As columnist James Travers commented in the Toronto Star this week:
With the help of private eyes, Kevin Lynch, the country's top civil servant and the Prime Minister's deputy, spent three months and some $140,000 only to scratch his head. "The investigation has been unable to determine who leaked the report, to whom it was leaked or whether there was only one leak."
Rarely has an unsolved puzzle been so politically useful. Conservatives who only plug leaks that aren't their own are using the report's ambiguity to claim the problem is fixed, the case closed.
Out of little bits of truth the Big Lie is formed. Yes, the report wags a finger at civil servants for circulating a memo too freely – something it says won't happen again. And yes again it clears Brodie and Michael Wilson, Canada's ambassador in Washington, of whispering secrets.
The visit also helps to refocus attention on the presence in the Canadian embassy in Washington of one Frank Sensenbrenner, the 27-year-old son of Jim Sensenbrenner, the chair of the powerful House Judiciary Committee before Democrats took control of Congress in 2006. Despite objections from diplomatic staff, the Harper Conservatives insisted he be hired by the embassy. According to Travers, Sensebrenner was the conduit for the leak from Ian Brodie.
According to an unnamed diplomat speaking in the Star,
"It's typical on the part of that far-right cabal of Tories and Republicans who have put together a network, trying to work below the radar, because they think only they can solve the problems of the two countries together," said one former diplomat.
McCain will bring a message intended to strike fear into Canadians over Obama's stance on NAFTA. Indeed, many news outlets here repeatedly broadcast statements that Obama intends to junk the trade deal, ignoring the nuance that the Illinois senator targets labour and environmental protections to enhance the deal -- a stance that is far more popular in Canada than our media lets on.