Rep. Wilkins would face tough issues in Canada

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Disputes over the Iraq war and lumber and beef imports would confront the speaker of the South Carolina House of Representatives, who is President Bush's choice to represent this country in Ottawa.

Wilkins has to first win approval from the 18-member Senate Foreign Relations Committee and then the full 100-member Senate, a process that could take months.

The next ambassador would take over from departing Ambassador Paul Cellucci as more and more Canadians consider the United States a bully intent on telling its northern neighbor what to do, scholars say.

However, a U.S.-Canadian expert panel assembled by a group called The American Assembly said in a February report that the two nations have common political values, which is why the friendship remains strong despite recent disputes.

Whether Wilkins is the right man for the job is unclear, said Robert Pastor, who heads the Center for North American Studies at American University in Washington.

Wilkins is a close friend of Bush, which would benefit both nations, but the ambassador should also be seasoned in foreign and trade policy, Pastor said.

"I don't know if Mr. Wilkins has that experience. He's spent 20 years in the South Carolina House of Representatives. That's not exactly the best place to learn about Canadian affairs. But we'll see," he said.

Joseph Jockel, a Canada expert at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., said U.S.-Canada relationship disputes are getting more visible and things are worse than they have been in a long time.

"Canadians can get a little bit touchy about what an ambassador should do. It's the role of an ambassador to explain his country's policies even when they disagree with the policies of the host country. When the U.S. ambassador does that, it summons up the images of the imperial U.S. proconsul pushing the Canadians around," Jockel said.

The two countries conduct more than $1 billion worth of business daily, making Canada this country's biggest trading partner, according to the U.S. State Department.

Canada is also the leading export market for 39 of the 50 U.S. states, and the two countries had robust ties in defense, energy and agriculture even before the North American Free Trade Agreement, which linked the economies of the two countries and Mexico 11 years ago.

The countries began to bicker at the start of the Iraq war in March 2003.

Canada publicly refused to send ground troops to support the U.S. military in Iraq.

In February, Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin refused to sign on to a U.S. ballistic missile defense program because of concerns that it might lead to nuclear weapons in space, though Bush asked for Martin's approval during a fence-mending visit after the November election.

A long-simmering dispute over the softwood lumber trade erupted in 2001 after the Bush administration ruled that export hurt the U.S. timber industry. Though international trade-law organizations have ruled against the United States, Washington continues to collect billions in "anti-dumping" duties, the Canadian government said.

The 2003 discovery of an animal in the Canadian province of Alberta with mad cow disease caused the United States to limit Canadian beef imports. Last month, a U.S. judge temporarily blocked the United States from reopening its border to Canadian cattle, leaving the matter in legal and political limbo.

Robert Johnstone, a former Canadian deputy minister of international trade, said the United States and Canada are ironing out disputes but the tensions remain high on trade matters.

"What we have been faced with for many, many years is a rather blatant example of protectionism," said Johnstone, who's now at the Canadian Institute for International Affairs in Toronto.

Anti-American feeling runs high in Canada and anti-Canadian sentiment is growing among U.S. conservatives, according to a report by 70 U.S. and Canadian experts assembled by The American Assembly.

Canadians consider themselves a lot more liberal than mainstream Americans on issues such as same-sex marriage and gun control.

This perceived values gap "is affecting the tone and tenor of relations, especially when the high-blown rhetoric sounds like assertions of moral superiority on both sides of the border," the report said. "The belief that there is a chasm between the most cherished convictions of two such interdependent neighbors can have repercussions that travel beyond hurt feelings."