Blame Canada!

Oh Canada, how could you?

To me, you were always a byword for decency, for niceness. For reason in a world torn apart by madness. You were Colin Mochrie and Mounties and caring about the Queen (except for the Quebecois, who were so rude to poor Prince Charles recently). You managed to combine diversity and tolerance with a love of ice hockey. Michael Moore showed us how you could keep lots of guns and not use them to shoot each other, unlike your dumb redneck cousins south of the border, eh.

And now I discover that in fact, in the words of George Monbiot, you’re a “thuggish petro-state” run by a minority right-wing government that hardly represents the views of voters. Monbiot documents how Canada is the only country to have ratified the Kyoto Protocol and then withdrawn from it, how local communities are seeing a spike in cancers, that the tar sands operation is the world’s biggest single source of carbon emissions. Photographs of the tar sands bring to mind images of coal mining in Eastern Bloc countries — surely the closest thing we have to hell on earth. (Interestingly, many South Africans work on the Alberta tar sands, attracted by high salaries.)

I was surprised — really, really surprised. Though I knew of the tar sands from what I’d read in Fortune, I know little to nothing about Canadian politics. Let’s face it, apart from severed feet washing up on the British Columbia shore, nothing ever really happens in Canada.

So these revelations have fundamentally impacted on my perception of the country I had long idealised as a model for the rest of the world. Apparently, it has become embarrassing to be Canadian — and I don’t blame them.

What effect will the attack by Monbiot have on Canada’s country brand? Though some may dismiss him as a typical hysterical leftist — and Climategate has given the climate-change denialists plenty of fuel for their fire, no pun intended — he is certainly influential. Canada’s brand image, which has always resonated most with the liberals and leftists of this world, must surely take a knock now.

Canada just isn’t as squeaky-clean as it was, and I’m really sad about that. Altogether now, sing Blame Canada, the signature tune from the South Park movie. Only it’s not as funny now as it was back then.