Great piece in today's WSJ by Mark Steyn

I won't repeat the whole piece, just a couple of what I regarded were amazing statements about Canada:

In April 2002, the Pentagon wished to confer the Bronze Star on five snipers from the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry in Afghanistan for their service in . . . killing the enemy. Ottawa put the request on hold, relenting grudgingly only after the matter was made public. It seems the Canadian government's main objection was a reluctance to let it be known that our military still, er, shoots people, and extremely accurately. . . .

At the Washington state/British Columbia border this week, two guys on the lam were hightailing it through Blaine heading for the 49th parallel with the cops in hot pursuit. Alerted to what was coming their way, Canada's (unarmed) border guards walked off the job. For a country whose national anthem lyrics are mostly endless reprises of the line "we stand on guard for thee," we could at least stand on guard. . . .

UPDATE: A friend of mine who is an economics professor in Canada, Doug Allen, wrote me:

"The border incident happened just 4 miles south of my house, so I knew about that one. What you probably didn't hear was that a union rep for the guards claimed that if they were armed, they still would be required - according to their union contract - to not stand in harms way! What I also found classic about the case was that after the incident was over (which I understand was quite quickly), the border remained closed for like 5 hours. No doubt there had to be some serious counselling over the stress."