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By PAUL JACKSON -- Calgary Sun
"Obviously, I would have been happier if Canada had not been conquered in the past by the English, if this part of North America had remained French, but you can't rewrite history." -- Jean Chretien Le Monde, Dec. 1, 1994
But, as we look at how Chretien has snubbed our American neighbours at a time when they need our support most, maybe Chretien is trying to rewrite history.
Perhaps he's pretending he really is a man of some consequence in the world, and part of his gameplan to show that is to stick Americans in the eyes.
For, in another part of that incredible interview he gave to the prestigious Paris newspaper Le Monde, Chretien talked about how French-Canadians had been "humiliated" by the English and how today they see themselves as "martyrs."
Then he boasted about how he was getting his own back on the supposed English establishment and power base.
"For example, I have just appointed an Acadian to the office of governor general. So the governor general is a francophone. The same thing is true, among others, of the prime minister, the Speaker of the House of Commons, the Speaker of the Senate, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the Minister of Finance."
Do you sense in all this talk about humiliation and martyrdom both how the shoe is now on the other foot and also signs of an inferiority complex and of an appetite for revenge?
Chretien is something of a little man but, by God, the Americans aren't going to tell him what to do. He's running this country and he's going to do exactly what he wants to do.
That's even if, by undermining our largest trading partner and they decide to retaliate, he has to take this country with him.
He's standing with his partner in perfidy, one Jacques Chirac, president of France, who just may turn out to be a bigger villain than most of us already think he is.
Now, I first wrote about Chretien's interview with Le Monde in "Our PM's secret regrets" (May 11, 1997), but had forgotten all about it until a reader dug it up in French on the much fabled-Google search engine. In this day and age of the Internet, nothing disappears forever!
Anyway, the reader suggested that, as well as showing an astonishing antipathy for English-Canadians in his Le Monde interview -- quite something for a prime minister who is supposed to represent all the men and women in his nation -- Chretien opened up the inner workings of his mind.
His people have been humiliated, they are really martyrs for their cause -- and now they are going to throw their weight around. The big boy on the block, no matter how decent and kind he may have been, isn't going to be spared, either.
In the column "Off-balance,"(March 23.), I wrote that the reckless actions of Chretien suggested he had become unhinged -- mentally and emotionally unstable. That, in jeopardizing the goodwill of the nation that takes some 83% of our exports and on which 50% of our jobs depend either directly or indirectly, and in allowing his staff and MPs to hurl insults at President George W. Bush and the American people, Chretien was no longer acting in a rational manner.
Looking at the Le Monde chatter in retrospect, we get an inkling not only of Chretien's inferiority complex, but of illusions of grandeur. This is surely getting to be quite dangerous.
There may be yet another aspect to Chretien's strange behaviour. National Post columnist Diane Francis, who, in another era was one of the Calgary Sun 's most popular columnists, recently wrote Chretien had become a "dupe" of Jacques Chirac, and that Chirac was in the pocket of Saddam Hussein because France's largest corporation, TotalFinaElf has huge interests in Iraq's oilfields. Interests that will be blown apart if Saddam is toppled, and U.S. and British oil companies given concessions by a grateful people.
Now for more intrigue: Francis says Total's biggest single shareholder is Montreal's Paul Desmarais, whose youngest son is married to Chretien's daughter. Desmarais Sr., is also a director of Total, along with other ranking members of France's establishment. It's hard to believe the Desmarais/Chretien families haven't discussed their nvestments in Total, and Total's investments in Saddam's Iraq.
All above board, of course.
Yet to suspicious minds, the plot thickens -- and gets scarier by the day.
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Jackson, associate editor of the Sun, can be reached at paul.jackson@calgarysun.com.