Canada Border Services Agency upholding Reagan's legacy

A Salvadoran judge personally invited by the government of Canada to a conference in Ottawa was detained for 24 hours at Pearson Airport by the Canada Border Services Agency because he is a member of the FMLN.

"They told me that because of my affiliation with the organization, they wouldn't let me into the country," Eugenio Chicas said from San Salvador.
"I told them that the war in El Salvador ended 17 years ago and the FMLN is now the governing party in El Salvador, but they told me that was the information they had available."

Eventually Chicas was permitted to attend the meeting of inter-American electoral bodies hosted by Elections Canada and the Organization of American States but :

Border officials kept his diplomatic passport and instructed him to promptly return to Toronto following the conference to get his flight home.

Chico said the CBSA "repeatedly pointed out his affiliation with the FMLN".

Ronald Reagan's 12 year war on the people of El Salvador ended in US disgrace a long time ago. The former revolutionary guerrilla organization FMLN has been sitting in the Salvadoran legislature as a registered political party since 1992. Earlier this month Hilary Clinton and Canadian minister of state Peter Kent attended the presidential inauguration of the FMLN leader.

Note to CBSA : Who exactly are you working for? Reagan is dead. Possibly it's time to update your security brief on that.
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The late great Great Lakes

Bob alerts us to this CBC headline : Canada, U.S. will renegotiate Great Lakes water treaty

"Canada and the United States will renegotiate the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Saturday in Niagara Falls, Ont.
Clinton, who was joined by Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon, crossed the border for celebrations marking 100 years of the Boundary Waters Treaty between the two countries.
"We have to update it to reflect new knowledge, new technologies and, unfortunately, new threats," Clinton said.
"The rivers, the lakes, the streams, the watersheds along our boundary do not belong to one nation, they belong to all of us," she said at celebrations overlooking the falls."

This sort of "all your water is belong to us" chat freaks us right out as we immediately imagine Canadian water being shipped south so that desert communities in the southern US can continue to hose down their driveways twice a day. And so it should.

But the US State Dept transcript, the DFAIT website, and tv news video have Clinton using the rather less alarming term "amend" rather than "renegotiate" to describe the new talks as needed to update bilateral action on "pollution, increased population and urbanization, land use practices, invasive species, new chemicals and the impacts of climate change."

Well it is the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement after all and certainly attention to these issues is long overdue. Obama has earmarked $475 million for Great Lakes rejuvenation, which is $475 million more than we have.
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But we would have been a lot happier if Lawrence Cannon had not had to stop himself today from referring to Van Loan as the Minister of Homeland Security in a toadying speech that included the comment : "Our country’s prosperity and security are inseparable from those of the United States".

We also would have been happier if both his and Clinton's remarks on water quality did not segue mid-sentence into Canadian complaints about "Buy American" provisions - as if one were dependent on the other, as if "amending" the Great Lakes agreement was being offered up by Canada in exchange for a US rollback on "Buy American".
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WATERLIFE - the NFB interactive site for an amazing film by Kevin McMahon
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