By Barry Stagg
May 1995
TITLE: Operation Winter Storm
Brian Tobin and his boss Prime Minister Chretien have set themselves up for either glorious banishment of the Spanish from the Grand Banks or for an ignominious descent into humiliation if the Spanish boats stay on the fishing grounds with only European inspectors. The negotiations between Canada and the European Union have taken on an ominous hue as the talks drag on and the Spanish wrangle for less and less enforcement and more and more polite "civilized' diplomatic gentility. This is the same pathway that other misguided and ultimately beaten Canadians floundered in back when Prime Minister Kim Campbell and her Newfoundland born fisheries minister,Ross Reid were dismissing military action in the dying days of the conservative"ancien regime".
The lofty tones of the so supremely civilized and clever Campbell resonated over St. John's harbour as the Tories destroyed themselves in 1993.She would have nothing to do with the primitive culture of military force as a tool of national security. Far better to "study" the problem and let the shirt and tie brigade wing its expense account over to Europe for negotiations and an accidental dose of "high" culture.
This is the dangerous ground that Tobin tramps upon day by day as the advisers and political philistines in the Liberal party seem to be dithering over whether "Gallup poll" victories can substitute for real honourable accomplishment on the offshore grounds. The prime minister has reached approval ratings near ninety per cent during the Turbot War and now the advisers seem to have the government on a course of appeasement of the thoroughly discredited Spanish. Day by day the European negotiators demand less and less enforcement and more and more genteel accommodation at the table while their compatriots go on scornfully and contemptuously fishing the final stocks of fish off the fishing grounds.
The high placed brain trust of the prime minister must look to the lesson of former President George Bush who took a ninety per cent approval rating on the Gulf War to the ramparts of Baghdad before he lost his military nerve and allowed the bellicose and beaten Saddam Hussein to survive. Americans endured two years of sneering from Saddam before firing Bush out on his ear in the 1992 American election.Doing half a job is no job at all and nobody in the United States could readily accept that Bush had finished the dirty but necessary task of eliminating the Iraqi despot from further action.
In Canada, the job at hand is to eliminate the Spanish from the Grand Banks. This can only be done by Canadian enforcement since European policing is an insulting salute to the dishonest poaching habits of the Spanish fleet. If Canada negotiates a pact with Spain and its European Union cronies that allows Spain to fish under European supervision then Canada has sold its citizens down the sewer in the same way that our dear departed "last living father of confederation" sold Churchill Falls to Quebec thirty years ago. Their will be no redemption in the "Gallup poll"for Brian Tobin and Jean Chretien if that nasty fiasco comes to pass. Tobin knows full well the vilification that is in store for him if the henchmen of external affairs minister Andre Ouellet carry the day and sacrifice fish for good manners one more time.
If the day comes when Canadian diplomats and greasy political hacks combine to sell Jean Chretien as the reasonable broker of peace on the Grand Banks in our time then I leave it to the historical memories of the responsible citizens of Canada to give him his richly deserved reward when the next vote comes about.In that ignominious situation Tobin must resign and take his military attitude to sanctuary away from the stench of appeasement.
Operation Desert Storm allowed George Bush to incredibly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in an absurdist variation on the classic tale of sporting success.He failed because he calculated too cunningly on a political level and avoided the hard decision to finish a rout of a hated dictator. Here in 1995 Canada the situation is the same as a popular will to vanquish foreigners from the fishing grounds is being swamped by contemptible political opportunism.
Unless Canada controls and polices the Grand Banks after the talks with Spain the whole exercise is a complete farce with the principal Canadian perpetrators of such a deal deserving every ounce of contempt and scorn that can be heaped upon them by a vengeful nation. In Newfoundland it will be treated as the economic treason that it surely is and the long suffering fishermen of the province will have one more reason to reject the asinine reasoning of a national government that changes political stripe but does not change in its disastrous impact on the maritime resources of its newest province.
Canada is talking while the last fish are being sucked off the bottom of the sea in plain view of powerless Canadian enforcement ships. That is a national disgrace.