IMO, American politics do have a substancial impact on us, but it can't outright smother us. The softwood lumber deal is a bit of an iffy one, but it's better than getting nothing at all. I know it's not close to what we wanted, but then when is an international deal entirely what one side wants? The American's definately screwed us on this one, they generally have a policy of "we're bigger, so fuck you we'll do what we want". The courts did rule in our favour after all. Maybe though, this is the best compromise we could get, and the conservatives just wanted this thing fixed. The Liberals certainly couldn't get a better deal.

On drug policy, yes unfortunately the DEA is going to heavily influence our government's policy. Cannabis will never be legalized or decriminalized under the conservatives, and this primitive system of PUNISH THEM is probably going to take hold. But hey, at least Canadians won't put up with a full-scale American sized drug war, and the Conservatives know it. If they actually took it to the fanatical levels they do in the states, we'd vote their asses out of office so fast. Don't expect anything in the way of progress to appear though.


And I would like to say, in all fairness to the Conservative party, that they are not the "puppet of George Bush" the Liberals try to make them out to be. Right from day one the Liberals have tried to convince us we'd be vicariously voting in Bush by scaring us with the frightening word "Conservative". But the Canadian conservative is much different from the American one, and I think our current government is mostly only going so far as keep relations with our biggest trading partner healthy, not outright letting them rule us.
One of the areas of our armed forces being expanded by this government is the Navy, largely because they want to send Canadian forces into key transport areas in the arctic to maintain Canadian sovereignty, seeing as the Americans have suddenly decided they have a right to our arctic waters.

Point is, Canadian interests are going to come first. They may have some ideological similarities to our southern neighbores, but they're not the bloody Republican party. I've seen some pretty effective actions in the past couple years to improve our economy and increase independence. They've put more into environmental projects in 2 years than the liberals ever could in 13 years. They're massively increasing B.C. ports to increase trade with East Asia, and even went so far as to admit the plan with this is to divert that trade from America. That's not too American-interest friendly.
Alberta Farmers have recieved $2 billion dollars in new subsidies this budget to dig them out of their hole.

I wish I could remember more right now, but it's early and my memory is a bit rusty right now. Anywhoo, I think the important thing here is that we have to remember that America is our ally *gasp*. I know, I know, I'll catch flack for that. But it saddens me that so many Canadians don't base their identity on this nation's greatness, but just on the fact that we're not America. Maybe we should stop hating our biggest trading partner and ally so much, and start focusing on our similarities and work from there. I've been to washington many times when I was a kid, and it's not so easy to hate a group of people when you have to meet them face to face.