FINALLY, CANADA MAKES HEADLINES

Canada, our semi-anonymous neighbor to the north, finally made world headlines yesterday. Well, not exactly world headlines, but it was featured fairly prominently on the BBC News internet edition when you click on the AMERICAS box. When you're Canada, you take what you can get. Anyway, it seems that Canadian Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier was forced to resign when he admitted leaving classified documents in an non-secure location. That's very surprising. Who knew Canada had state secrets?

This Bernier guy also made some news recently when he tried to get the Governor of Kandahar province in Afghanistan fired and also urged NATO to intervene with Pakistan to "pacify" that nation and get them to stop harboring Taliban fighters. For his trouble and candor he was called a traitor by some of his fellow Canadians who were mortified that a Canadian would make such a public error in interfering with the domestic concerns of a sovereign nation. They figure it's best to leave those embarrassing gaffes to the American President, Bush The Younger.

Maxime Bernier was touring Afghanistan to oversee the efforts of the 5,000 Canadian NATO troops stationed there. The Canadian commander figures that 5,000 more Canadian troops ought to do the trick over there. What that trick might be is anyone's guess, but it would be nice if they could sort of try to track down Osama bin Laden. Perhaps they should send some of those red-coated Mounties over there. The credo of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is "We Always Get Our Man." Maybe Bernier should have thought of that before he decided to leave classified papers at his girlfriend's house and had to resign.

And speaking of his former model girlfriend Julie Couillard, she's also been the subject of controversy in Canada since she's a former biker chick and an ex-girlfriend of a Canadian organized crime kingpin. Canadian politicians feel this is yet another potential security risk. How exactly biker gangs would use sensitive Canadian government documents is unclear, but this Bernier guy is getting pretty interesting. He also racked up sky-high travel expenses as he toured foreign lands in his capacity as Foreign Minister, exhibiting a decidedly un-Canadian taste for the flashy life.

Clearly this guy had to go. Flashy, opinionated jet-setters with ex-model girlfriends with a past are definitely not Canada's style. Years ago they had a cool guy as their leader, Pierre Trudeau, who dated celebrities, used obscenities and spoke his mind openly on controversial issues. Canada is still traumatized by the memory of Trudeau and in the years since he held power has made sure that their leaders registered in no one's memory. They've done a damned good job of it, too. Outside of a small speed bump named Maxime Bernier nobody knows or cares much about what's going on in Canada. Except maybe Canadians, but who even can be sure about that? All the interesting ones have moved to America to work as entertainers or newscasters.The rest of them sure aren't saying much.