How Americans Are Screwing Us This Week

In which we carry on the proud Canadian tradition of complaining about our largest benefactor and protector.

Oh, Americans. We love to pick on them, and to tell ourselves how different we wonderful Canadians are, but deep down, we love 'em and know that without them, we'd probably be speaking Russian or something. Regardless, they do have a habit of irking us, even though they rarely know that they are, so let's take a look at how America is screwing us this week. First off, The Globe And Mail's editorialists take issue with U.S. President Barack Obama's American Jobs Act, which contains a Buy American provision that, as it stands, would bar Canadian companies from bidding on U.S. government contracts. Two years ago, a similar clause was included in the U.S. stimulus package, but was killed after much outcry from north of the border. The Globe sees the same thing happening this time around, but notes that “it is deplorable that Canada has to give its energies to repeating itself,” given the complexities already involved in border issues between the two countries. But with a Congress that grows more protectionist every day, this appears to be a battle that will continue to be waged for the foreseeable future.

Over on the west coast, the Vancouver Sun condemns the Internal Revenue Service's practice of hunting down Americans with dual citizenship and forcing them to file U.S. tax returns and to turn over bank account information. As the Sun notes, between 600,000 and a million Yanks live here, many of them with Canadian citizenship. If they fail to report their “foreign” bank accounts to the IRS, they can be slapped with “harsh, arbitrary and unjust” penalties. “The choice facing Canadians with dual citizenship is to remain as scofflaws or come forward and give up a significant portion of their life savings,” writes the Sun, even if they haven't lived or worked in the United States for decades. And the matter is only going to get worse once a law passed by Congress that requires all non-American financial institutions to hand over Americans' account records comes into effect in 2013. The Sun urges the federal government to stand up to the U.S. over the IRS' witchhunt. Yeah, we're not expecting that to happen any time soon, either.

And finally, Gar Pardy takes to the Ottawa Citizen to sound the alarm over the forthcoming border security deal between Canada and the U.S., which he says will lead to Canadians' privacy being sacrificed for increased trade across the broder. “The essence of the security measures in the Shared Vision declaration requires the transfer of information to the United States on, potentially, millions of people, most of whom would be Canadian citizens,” writes Pardy. While details of the deal have yet to be released, Pardy calls it a “trade-off by Canada in order to buy American co-operation on border issues,” owing in part to the persistent concern in the U.S. that the Canadian border poses a terror threat. We're all for opening the borders up to trade, but what we've heard so far on the security perimeter makes it sound like we'd be giving up far too much sovereignty over our privacy just to ease some congestion in Ontario. And given how well the U.S. has previously handled sensitive information on Canadian citizens (cough Maher Arar cough), there is no way we can trust them to not misuse or abuse the access they would have to it under this border deal.