On your knees where you belong, Canada

If you don't pay for access to the online version of the Globe and Mail, you're not missing much with John Ibbitson's column today which is just another iteration of his, 'the Canadian government should never say or do anything mean to the U.S. because then they might do something really mean to us in retaliation and then wouldn't be sorry' theme.

I mention it only because of the following passage which I had to read a couple of times to make sure I had read it right:

"For any Canadian government to offer a warning, however veiled, that it might favour other countries over the United States in the awarding of gas and oil contracts is, as Big Daddy might say, mendacity, sheer mendacity.

Such favouritism would be impossible, unless the Canadian government were to formally withdraw from NAFTA, and then adopt an energy policy that favoured petroleum exports to other nations while imposing restrictions on exports to the United States. At which point, U.S. officials would either complain to the World Trade Organization or simply invade. In either case, who could blame them?"

Apologists for U.S. economic domination of Canada don't get much more point blank than this: if Canada were to charge the U.S. a higher rate for oil than they charge some other countries, the U.S. would be justified in dropping bombs on the city you live on, potentially killing you and you family in your sleep. So says John Ibbitson, Globe columnist. Presumably, he came out in support of Pat Robertson's recent call to assassinate Hugo Chavez, since the U.S. would clearly (by the Ibbitson doctrine) be justified in invading Venezuela.

Now, given the poor construction of the sentence, it's possible he simply meant that U.S. officials should invade, but I'm not sure that really helps his case.

OK, maybe he just went a little further than he meant to and I'm picking on a careless phrasing, but I think the fact that someone could write that sentence at all speaks to their view on the proper relationship between Canada and the U.S., one where we do what they want, or else.