hestar.com > NewsOct. 31, 2002. 07:03 PM

NEW YORK (CP) - Outspoken U.S. TV host Pat Buchanan is calling Canada a "Soviet Canuckistan" for its criticism of a U.S. law demanding photos and fingerprints from Canadian Middle East visitors to the country.

"It's the blame America first crowd," Buchanan said today during his two-hour show Buchanan and Press on the cable network MSNBC. "The Canadians . . . have been defended by the United States, they pay nothing for defence.

"That place is a complete haven for international terrorists," he told co-host Bill Press. "Even their own retired security guys say it's a complete haven. We . . . need lectures from some people, not from Soviet Canuckistan."

MSNBC spokeswoman Alana Russo said from New York the network has not received any calls of complaint.

Buchanan was not immediately available to comment, she said.

But Maude Barlow, of the group Council of Canadians, said from Ottawa that the TV commentator's comments were "disgraceful."

"It's a disgusting and disgraceful statement based in ignorance," she said.

"The Sept. 11 terrorists came from within the U.S. There's no evidence to support the statement that Canada is a haven. We don't have snipers running around with guns . . . that's not our culture."

On Tuesday, Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham issued a warning to Canadians born in Iraq, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Syria in light of the U.S. law that targets foreign visitors originally from those countries.

Graham said Thursday that U.S. ambassador Paul Cellucci "informed me that in the future Canadians carrying Canadian passports will not be treated any differently depending on where they were born or for any reason whatsoever."

Buchanan used the case of Maher Arar, a Montrealer with dual Canadian-Syrian citizenship detained in New York last month and deported to Syria, as a launching pad for his Canuckistan comment.

The Canadian warning suggests those citizens "consider carefully" whether they should go to the United States "for any reason."

It's not the first time that the failed Republican presidential candidate has given Canada a verbal lashing.

In 1990, Buchanan wrote that if Canada shattered following the failure of the Meech Lake constitutional accord "America would pick up the pieces."

Two years later, he said "for most Americans, Canada is sort of like a case of latent arthritis. We really don't think about it, unless it acts up."

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2002