Home Washington Secretariat John Gormley interview

Interview

Colin Robertson
Minister (Advocacy) and Head, Washington Advocacy Secretariat

Program: John Gormley Live
Source: Regina Station: CJME-AM
Date: 03 August 2005
(transcript)

JOHN GORMLEY (CJME-AM): First though I want to welcome an interesting guy with Saskatchewan roots who is back in Saskatchewan, and he’s not just here for the Centennial Homecoming as of course so many of you are, he’s speaking at a conference that is going at Regina of Midwest Legislators. Now this is a group of a number of members of State Legislatures, Congressmen and others who normally meet in the Midwestern U.S. Well, they are meeting in Regina and they’ve heard from Colin Robertson. Colin is my guest. He works at American Embassy in Washington where he heads up a particular part of that embassy that deals with public advocacy and legislative work. When he spoke to the delegates at the Midwest Legislators Conference, he talked about Canada/U.S. relations. He talked Saskatchewan. He talked trade and now he joins us in the studio. Colin Robertson, great to have you here… Okay, sorry we are just working on getting Colin hooked up. My apologies, we’re just getting him into the studio. Okay. Let’s take a break. Colin Robertson returns and we’ll talk Canada/U.S. and Saskatchewan next on the Rawlco radio network. [COMMERCIAL BREAK]

JOHN GORMLEY (CJME-AM): I’m John Gormley, welcome back. Colin Robertson is with us. Colin is the guy who, as the Consul General in Los Angeles and now the head of what’s called the Washington Advocacy Secretariat is at our Canadian Embassy in Washington. Much of his work deals with the back and forth between Canada’s interest and individual American legislators and he has been speaking at this conference of Midwest Legislators going on in Regina. Colin, good to have you here.

COLIN ROBERTSON (Minister Advocacy): Great to be here.

JOHN GORMLEY (CJME-AM): I was interested in your comments to this group. You said that if there was one message you could leave them with, it was to keep the doors open for one another, between Canada and America. What do you mean when you talk about open doors?

COLIN ROBERTSON (Minister Advocacy): Well absolutely. The, the, there is currently legislation before the American Congress that would require Americans when they returned to the United States after visiting Canada, after January the first two thousand and eight, to present a passport. It would also require Canadians going to the United States to have a passport. Well, you think of all the Canadians that go back and forth, remember eight of ten of us live within two hundred miles of American shopping mart and, you know, it’s, it’s, this will just, first of all have a terrible effect on tourism in Canada, but it will also stop the, the interplay back and forth between Canadian and Americans, what I call the, the cement that binds us. It’s me as a kid going down to Minot and Fargo as a scout. It’s the guy coming up here for the weekend to go to the Casino. You know this, going up hunting for example, up to Lac La Ronge; a whole series of American Congressmen who come up here. If you had to present a passport, our fear is that will slow it down. If we’re, if the intention is to stop the bad guys, well first of all, you know bad guys can be homegrown as we’ve learned out of London, and tragedies in both of our countries. The trick is to push beyond our frontiers as we’re doing, I think quite successfully, by stopping the people before they get into through more effective screening and working in very close collaboration with the United States and a lot of it of course is simply raising the confidence of the United States to have confidence in, in how Canada treats our shared homeland. ‘Cause after all…

JOHN GORMLEY (CJME-AM): Not withstanding this kind of perverse Canadian penis envy that goes on with Americans and this kind of upperdiness that we get going, you know, I always get the sense, in my dealings with American Politicians over the years, that there is a special affection for Canada that isn’t like other countries.

COLIN ROBERTSON (Minister Advocacy): You’re absolutely correct. I mean they do look at us at, it was to me personified the other day at the, at the conference I’ve been at, where one of the Americans turned to me and said you know, you know…we’re kind of like twins, we’re kind of like fraternal twins except we’re big and you’re small and you know that’s, that’s in a sense it. We share so much in common. We often, too often we Canadians define ourselves by what we’re not. We say well we’re not American. Well you know, to the rest of the world we’re North American and to the rest of the world Canada, they know what Canada is. It’s the maple leaf and Canada stands for, we have a great brand internationally. It’s at home often we have to kind of deal with what we are, but we’ve a great story to tell and this is part of my challenge down in, I think this is my fourth year duty in the United States, as we’ve got a great story to tell about Canada, great story to tell about Saskatchewan, we’ve gotta get out and tell it. That’s probably where we’re not as good as, for example, the Americans.

JOHN GORMLEY (CJME-AM): Now that ability to tell the story and so much of it is rooted in trade and then you talk about tourism and other things, are there still big obstacles? I mean I know you were with Mark Wartman, the Provincial Minister here and others, you know, on the BSE file, I mean are there still American protectionists interest that say financially they have an interest and keeping borders closed and doors shut.

COLIN ROBERTSON (Minister Advocacy): Ha. Absolutely, and I think we’re talking about competition. There are always, and whether it takes place within a, within a city, within a province, within a state or whether between countries, the difference between countries is that they can usually put pressure on their Congressmen and that’s why, again, we’re putting much more emphasis now on dealing with Congress because so many of our problems start on Congress, although as I’m finding, Congress is responding to local concerns, and so one of my messages here to the conference and meeting with the Premier and opposition leader was to you, as legislators, and actually the, you know, the Premier and Regina should be very proud of what they’ve done in Saskatchewan. Extremely proud of what they’ve done these last couple days at this Midwest State Legislators Conference. The first time it’s ever been held in Canada. Full credit to speaker Kowalsky who four years ago had the foresight to join this conference, because there’s, the Americans are very welcoming. The Americans really do like to have Canadians come in, but this was the first time this conference of five hundred legislators had crossed the border and this is the exactly the kind of thing we gotta do because now they have a sense, well you know these Canadians, what they may see in what is not necessarily fair and balanced reportage in the United States, they say well you know the reality is a bit different. These Canadians, we have a lot in common and what we’ve got to remember is that these legislators are not only do they take steps at the state level and the county level, which can cause us problems across the border, but a lot of them are, in a sense, training to move to the next step to Congress.

JOHN GORMLEY (CJME-AM): So as you look at the congressional view of Canada and you’re right, I mean I guess Americans sort of see the Caroline Parrish depiction, they see, again, this definition of what we’re not, but how do you convince Americans on, for example, foreign policy, you know, where we often diverge on Iraq, for example, that Canada and America

COLIN ROBERTSON (Minister Advocacy): Yeah, good question. Look, and, and what you’re, what the root of the Iraq is, Iraq’s code word for security and in terms of security, what Canada’s doing in the global war against terrorism is actually pretty significant, but what we haven’t done, I think, as we need to is tell the story. So, for example, I talk about the fact that there are young men and women from Regina who left here and going through Edmonton last week on an airbus to head off to, to as part of the Princess Patricia Light Infantry to go to Kandahar where we are going to have and have had in the past the, after the Americans, the largest security force. We’re at the sharp end there as General Hillier says “We’re there to safeguard the process to freedom and democracy in Afghanistan” and after all Afghanistan was where the global war on terrorism begin. We were the first, after the Americans, to go in there in October two thousand and one, after nine eleven, and Americans don’t know that. They don’t know that we had, we’ve had all of our fleet, twenty odd frigates. I stood on the deck of HMCS Regina as it sailed out of Pearl Harbour a couple of years ago to do interdiction duty. There’s no Navy in the world that is, that can, we use this term interoperability, with the American Navy. The American Navy knows this so, in fact, I, I, I opened our new consulate in San Diego a couple of years ago on the deck of HMCS Regina and you know the Commodore Gerard, used his sword, he served in East Timor, he’d led the international fleet there and, and, and this, when, with this message, for me, the great message in San Diego was when I had the American Admiral get up and say “I gotta tell you there’s no other country in the world who’s a better ally than Canada.” Part of the objective is to have Americans tell our story and we have, again, we have a really good story to tell, we just have to get out and tell it and Canadians need to know what we’re doing because when they talk with their American cousins or American friends or American customers, they have to tell this story.

JOHN GORMLEY (CJME-AM): Colin Robertson is with us. He’s at the Canadian Embassy in Washington where his position is the Minister Advocacy and Head of the Washington Advocacy Secretariat; basically he is the guy who lobbies members of Congress and the Senate and in the Washington political sphere on behalf of Canada and our issues, I sense often that there’s an interesting disconnect. Most Canadians, particularly in this part of the country, talk like you and I do now about America, but at the political elite’s level in Canada, it is advantageous to be seen, to be just a little bit offish. Not just on Iraq and security, but other issues. I mean anti-Americanism sells in a number of Toronto ridings.

COLIN ROBERTSON (Minister Advocacy): Look, you, you served in the Federal Parliament, you know that situation better than I.

JOHN GORMLEY (CJME-AM): Okay, so you don’t, you don’t want to get into that sort of perceptions of anti-Americanism.

COLIN ROBERTSON (Minister Advocacy): There’s not doubt what you said……in the kind of reality and I think that one of my messages to our legislators, regardless of party, is that I was part of the team that negotiated the free-trade agreement in the NAFTA and something we did really successfully during that was to go out and tell the story of why Canadian prosperity depended on our access to markets and our principal market and our best customer, has always been the United States and Canadians, you know, we’ve moved from being a treaty nation to a nation of traitors and we, we’ve, we appreciate the importance of a customer. We are naturally polite. Well this is our biggest customer. This is our best friend and I think that story has to be told by our, at the political level and it, and the leadership has, it needs to come from, from our leadership again, regardless of party. I, I know that, you know in the 1988 election, sometimes people say well you know Quebec, they’re sort of anti-American, don’t ever forget in 1988 it was votes in Quebec that made the difference on the free-trade agreement. So I think every part of this country, there will be a response, after all, every part of this country people go south for their holidays.

JOHN GORMLEY (CJME-AM): That’s a good point. Colin Robertson here. Colin is with the Canadian Embassy in Washington. You had to mention the eighty-eight election, right, you had to mention free-trade. That’s of course when, when I lost my job, (laughs), but three, you know the percentage….

COLIN ROBERTSON (Minister Advocacy): Hey Canada’s done so well since that…

JOHN GORMLEY (CJME-AM): Exactly. Three hundred and twenty percent increase in trade, you know, between Canada and the U.S., I mean, with Saskatchewan alone, so do we see here the economic relationship between this province and America. COLIN ROBERTSON (Minister Advocacy): Well I’ve gotta tell you, through John Treleaven and STEP, they’ve done a superb job of, I think, raising the profile of how important trade is to Saskatchewan add, you know, the missions that there, there’s another planned mission I think off to China the next couple of days and in, in meeting with the STEP the last couple of days and John, they are fully committed. They’re working with the business community. Last night John hosted dinner for me with leading members of the business community here in Saskatchewan and Regina and, you know, this is vital to me, ‘cause I’ve got, they give me the contents so when I go back onto Capital Hill to lobby on behalf of Canada, I’ve got to have content. The content always comes to me from the provinces and through organizations like STEP.

JOHN GORMLEY (CJME-AM): So if you were to describe, you know, that sort of relationship today on Capital Hill, what are the issues Americans need the most help in in getting the relationship with Canada?

COLIN ROBERTSON (Minister Advocacy): Oh, without any question, America’s at war so it’s the security first. The first thing that we have to do is to make it clear to Americans that, that in the global war on terrorism, Canada is their ally, that Canada is, is making its commitment. Everything else then falls in place because from that they need to know is it, President Bush probably put it best in his state of union with remarks last year when he said to the world “you’re either with us or you’re not, neutrality’s not an option” and Canadians aren’t neutral. There’s no question. We are at war. Canadians have fought and died and we’re on the Al Qaeda hit list. We are doing, we are doing a lot and Americans need to hear that and once you make this clear, then the rest of the pieces fall into place because there is, there, this is the attitude that conditions how America looks at the world right now.

JOHN GORMLEY (CJME-AM): Now if I turn that question around and said from your vantage point in Washington, what do Canadians have to get the most about America? Is it also that security file and that security imperative?

COLIN ROBERTSON (Minister Advocacy): Yeah. Well I think that’s the first thing that when Canadians, when we, if I’m doing business, I’m trying to sell, inevitably this will come up in conversation because there’s very few American households now that have not been touched by having young men or young women go abroad, not just in Iraq, but in Afghanistan and around the world because of the call up on reserves and things and so, you know, point out what we are doing as well, that’s, you know, the biggest defense build up in the, since the second world and what we are doing is, is something then, then you establish the relationship and from that everything else will flow because there’s no other country in the world. No other people in the world that has the advantages that Canada has to understand Americans because after all we’re both North Americans. Although I do think that Canadians have a, a different sense in sensibility that we understand the rest of the world probably better in some ways than the Americans do and if you play that card well, that’s Canada’s great advantage is that if we understand Americans better than anybody else does, so we can use that interpretive role to the rest of the world, but at the same time we can interpret the rest of the world to America and, and that’s absolutely necessary right now and I’m going to tell you my new boss, Frank McKenna, gets this exactly. He’s someone who came from a province, spent ten years in the business community and is out there, as you’ve probably observed, we, he lets nothing pass. We get out there now, we’re telling the Canadian story. I’ll give you an, an anecdote. One thing that we sometimes get hit for is they say oh well some of the terrorists come in from Canada, and this is a myth that came out of the Boston Globe the first days after nine-eleven, completely untrue of course. Well the other day Newt Gingrich gets up and he is on a talkline because we want this stuff very closely and he says this same thing he’s on Sean Hannity on Fox, and said ‘well as you know some of the terrorists came from Canada’. Well that very same day we got a hold of him through Frank McKenna, Newt was off in Seattle selling his book and Frank says you know you can’t, this isn’t true, and great response from Newt, ‘well I think I heard it from Hillary or somebody like that.’ Well, I, but to his full credit Newt says ‘I understand, you know, this is bad news, so I’m going to get out and tell the story the other way now.’ And this is McKenna, he gets out there, we got him on Lou Dobbs the other day, ‘cause we’ve been taking a bit of hitting on Lou Dobbs, we’ve been taking a bit of a hit on some of the American media because they, there’s a bit of mythology out there. So what we have to do as Canadians, and our leadership starts with our Ambassador and our Consul Generals, is get out there in the same media cycle and tell the Canadian story because we have a really good story to tell and it’s not just diplomats who do this, it should be Canadians as well. One of our programs, one of the things we’re trying to do now is harness the, what we call, the Canadian/U.S. Spar or Jeff Simpson called, the Star-Spangled Canadians. There’s a whole lot of Canadians in the United States, so what we’re doing is encouraging them now to sign up so we can send them information, transcripts, in order to rebut the kind of mythology that’s out there in the United States because we know it will help us in trade and in so many other issues.

JOHN GORMLEY (CJME-AM): Good move. Colin Robertson is at Canada’s Embassy in Washington. He heads up the Advocacy Secretariat and he spent the last few minutes with us. Great spending time with you and I wanted to say, I guess you’re also back of course as a, as a Saskatchewan ex-pat. Your family’s been here since the…

COLIN ROBERTSON (Minister Advocacy): You got it.

JOHN GORMLEY (CJME-AM): …1890’s. You’ve had the reunion, the birthday, the anniversary?

COLIN ROBERTSON (Minister Advocacy): You got it, yup my parents’ fifty-fifth, and my dad’s eightieth and it’s a, it’s been a great homecoming the last couple of days.

JOHN GORMLEY (CJME-AM): Good stuff. You take care in your travels.

COLIN ROBERTSON (Minister Advocacy): Thanks so much.

JOHN GORMLEY (CJME-AM): Colin Robertson, in studio, interesting guy helping get Canada’s story into Congress, into those at Capital Hill in Washington. I’m John Gormley.