POT LAW MEDDLING IS JUST TIP OF THE ICEBERG

Editor:

Re: "your editorial, Who Makes Canada's Laws? (18 May).

The possibility that Canada might decriminalize the possession of small
amounts of marijuana is not the crux of Ottawa's problems with Washington
this season.

The Bush administration is imposing a new doctrine on the world which
places severe constraints on national sovereignty and redefines sovereignty
explicitly as a function of Washington's wishes and convenience.

During World War II, Canada and the United States were intimate partners.
The Bush administration now prefers dictating policy to Ottawa with
outright coercion and threat, wielding the big stick of the U.S. economic
engine and Canada's entwined dependence on access to the U.S. market.

That the United States is the world's mightiest military and economic power
is not the issue. How the 408-kilogram gorilla behaves toward its rain
forest neighbours is.

As the evolution of international conventions has outlawed many of the more
terrifying historical perquisites of national sovereignty, those that
remain come under increasing illumination and challenge. The proposed
changes in Canada's marijuana laws ought exclusively to be Canada's
domestic business alone, dealing as they do with Canada's right to define
its own criminal offences, in ways which may significantly differ from
Washington's preferred way. (Several communities within the United States
have decriminalized small-quantity marijuana possession for decades, and
many U.S. states have recently passed medical marijuana laws.)

On this rare occasion when the Bush administration must find Canada on a
map, Washington's emissaries have been surprisingly public but very clear:
Do our bidding, or prepare to suffer. The pretexts are U.S. "homeland
security" and the dubious argument that decrim north of the border will
flood the south with B.C. bud.

Washington's specific threat is the unilateral constriction of the world's
longest, most peaceful, friendly border, and its prompt transformation into
a suspicious and hostile iron curtain.

How Canada deals with Washington's radical rejection of neighbourly
diplomacy and negotiation will be its greatest challenge in this decade.
Reform of the marijuana laws may seem a small issue, like giving one's
pocket change to the schoolyard bully.

But it is an illusion to think this is just about pot. More demands will
follow; if the Bush administration has its way, the days when Canada could
choose to opt out of Washington's grand designs, like the Vietnam War, will
end. The continent will henceforth march in unison, and Washington will fax
the direction to Ottawa.

Robert Merkin

Northampton, Massachusetts U.S.A.