Canada At the Shamrock Summit

By Peter Stoler

It was clear from the start that the "Shamrock Summit" in Quebec City last week would be more show than substance: a piece of political theater staged not so much to solve international problems as to create an atmosphere conducive to seeking their solution. From the moment that President Reagan, sporting a bright green necktie in honor of St. Patrick's Day, stepped off Air Force One at Ancienne Lorette Airport to the final handshake that Reagan and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney exchanged on the gray stone battlements of the historic Citadel, the meeting was as carefully choreographed as a ballet. Indeed, the two leaders reveled in the spotlight when they and their wives left their flower-bedecked box at Quebec City's Grand Theater during a Sunday evening gala and joined entertainers in a rousing chorus of When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.

The summit was a 24-hour exercise in amiability. Replete with pageantry and sprinkled with humor, the meeting dominated television coverage throughout Canada and pushed almost all other news off the front pages. It also accomplished its purpose in giving Reagan and Mulroney an irresistible opportunity to engage in the kind of personal politicking at which both excel. (While the men negotiated, Nancy Reagan toured Quebec City with Mulroney's vivacious, Yugoslav-born wife Mila, visiting the Ursuline Convent and stopping at a downtown restaurant for tea.)

The President had a platform at the summit from which he could charge the Soviet Union with arms-accord violations while demonstrating to America's allies that Canada is a strong supporter of U.S. military leadership. For , Mulroney, the summit provided an indication that his pro-American policies could pay off for Canada in everything from improved trade and investment to pollution control.

Despite all the blarney, Reagan and Mulroney managed to get some business done. They signed a Pacific Salmon Treaty, ending a 15-year dispute over the harvesting of the valuable food fish on the U.S. and Canadian west coasts. They initialed a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, linking their two countries in law enforcement. They also noted that Canada will participate in the $8 billion manned space-station program planned by the U.S. for the mid-1990s. Canada is no stranger to space technology, since Ontario-based Spar Aerospace Ltd. built the mechanical arm used in the U.S. space shuttle.

The summit also tackled more controversial matters. Mulroney pleased the President--and the Pentagon--by committing Canada to pay 40% of the cost of a $1.3 billion program to improve and upgrade the aging Distant Early Warning line, a network of radar stations strung across the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic. Built in the 1950s, the DEW line radars are now virtual museum pieces. In their place, the U.S. and Canada will install 13 manned long-range radar stations and 39 automated short-range radars capable of detecting and tracking a new generation of low-flying Soviet bombers and even newer Soviet cruise missiles. The project, known as the North Warning System, is part of a more than $5 billion U.S. plan to modernize northern air defenses and safeguard the continent against attacks launched over the North Pole.

The new defense accord upset some Canadians, who fear that it could involve their country in Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, the space-based antimissile defense system better known as Star Wars. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger added to Canadian distress when he suggested in a television interview that American missiles could be stationed in Canada.

The President agreed with Mulroney on the need to eliminate barriers to U.S.-Canadian trade. The two men joined in a pledge to fight protectionism and to take steps to ease the flow of both goods and investment across the border. Both countries asked special representatives to have their first recommendations ready in six months.

Reagan repaid Mulroney's hospitality in another way by offering the Prime Minister a sop on acid-rain pollution, which has long been a sore spot in U.S.-Canadian relations. Canadians charge that at least half the acid rain currently damaging their forests and destroying aquatic life in their lakes is caused by sulfur and nitrogen oxides released into the atmosphere by fossil- fuel-burning plants and smelters in the U.S. The Reagan Administration has maintained that the evidence against U.S. industry is incomplete.

Knowing that Mulroney could not go back to Ottawa without at least some concession on acid rain, Administration officials came up with a plan to appoint a joint U.S.-Canadian team to examine the issue. The President and the Prime Minister announced that former Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis and former Ontario Premier William Davis would be named special envoys to seek ways of combating the problem. Said Mulroney: "We have broken a three-year deadlock by agreeing to our common and shared responsibility to preserve our common environment." Added Reagan: "I couldn't be happier about getting this under way and off dead center." The agreement, however, did not actually commit the Reagan Administration to take any action on acid rain.

For Reagan, the meeting was a triumph, and he returned to Washington satisfied that his time in Quebec had been well spent. "You can laugh and smirk," a senior Administration official told U.S. reporters after the summit ended, "but in my view this will go down as the most productive meeting in U.S.-Canadian history." What particularly delighted Reagan was that after years of often strained relations, Canada and the U.S. were once again getting along and working together on mutual defense. Washington has made no secret of its concern about the "nuclear allergy" that recently led New Zealand to bar from its harbors nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed U.S. Navy vessels. Administration officials believe that Reagan's achievements in Quebec City will strengthen his hand in dealing with other U.S. allies and in disarmament talks currently under way with the Soviet Union in Geneva.

Mulroney, who said that the meeting marked the beginning of "a new era in relations between Canada and the U.S.," professed to be similarly satisfied with the summit. But hardly had the Prime Minister, who was swept into power last September when his Progressive Conservative Party ousted the Liberals in a landslide that gave the Tories 211 of the 282 seats in Canada's House of Commons, returned to Ottawa when his opponents began panning his summit performance. Edward Broadbent, the leader of the socialist New Democratic Party, dismissed the Quebec City meeting as the "Shamrock Shuffle." Said he: "We've had President Reagan, regrettably, I think, calling the tune."

Other Canadians criticized Mulroney for what they perceived as his eagerness to embrace Reagan and the U.S. Though the Prime Minister said he was pleased with the agreement on acid rain, several papers took issue with his insistence that he had not come away from the negotiating table empty-handed. "The choreographed cheer in Quebec City cannot disguise the fact that the Mulroney government suffered an abject defeat on acid rain," said Montreal's English- language Gazette. "All the agreement means is that action on reducing acid rain of U.S. origin is at least a year further off. How many more lakes will be dead by then?"

Nor did all Canadians endorse Mulroney's commitment to the mutual defense of the two countries. Canadian defense experts concede that the DEW line is outdated and that low-flying aircraft and cruise missiles can penetrate it with impunity. Many Canadians also agree that the Otta- wa government, which now spends only 2.1% of its gross domestic product on defense, should do more to safeguard security. It was only last year that Canada phased out U.S. nuclear-armed air-to-air missiles from its armory, and the country is leery of any agreements that might embroil it in the Star Wars program. Thus there was a political outcry when Weinberger told the television interviewer that missile launchers could be placed in Canada to defend against Soviet bombers or cruise missiles. "Some might be here (in Canada)," said Weinberger. "It just depends on where is the most effective technical place to put them."

Weinberger's remarks were quickly clarified by the White House, which insisted that the U.S. had no plans to install an anti-cruise-missile system in Canada. But the damage was done. In a bitter exchange in the House of Commons, John Turner, leader of the opposition Liberals, dismissed the summit as "cosmetic politics" and accused Mulroney of displaying an urge to be loved rather than a willingness to make tough decisions. Other M.P.s charged that the Prime Minister was so eager to please the President that he ignored Canadian interests. "Why," asked Broadbent, "did the Canadian government do all the giving and the American government all the taking?"

Broadbent capped his question with a call for a vote of confidence, which the government easily survived by a vote of 157 to 56. The call for such a vote, however, was a reminder to Mulroney that he faces a formidable task in delivering on his campaign promises and turning around the Canadian economy, currently saddled with a $26.5 billion budget deficit. This year's gross national product is expected to increase by 3%, a decrease from last year's growth of 4.7%. Mulroney must also protect the value of the Canadian dollar, which has held its own against other currencies but which fell against the U.S. dollar to 73 cents last week from 77 cents last September. Most important, he must create new jobs to ease a national unemployment rate of more than 11%.

To deal with these problems, Mulroney has made it clear that Canada must improve political and economic relations with its neighbor to the south. He and other members of his government see it as an inescapable fact of Canadian life that while the U.S., which sends the country 20% of its exports, needs Canada, Canada, which ships to the U.S. 76% of its exports, needs the U.S. even more. Canada must have assured access to U.S. markets and U.S. investment capital. "Canada," Mulroney has said, "simply does not have the capital to create the jobs it needs."

Mulroney is aware that improved relations with the U.S. carry political risk. Canadians are ambivalent about U.S. power: they complain that when America is not pushing them around, it is ignoring them. But the Prime Minister has indicated that the risk is one he is willing to take. In economic terms, certainly, improved relations could pay off handsomely for both countries.

With reporting by Alessandra Stanley with the President