Blame Canada has played well in the United States, where we were initially fingered as the source of the 9/11 hijackers, more recently cited as the origin of "dangerous" drugs that Americans buy from Canadian Internet pharmacies, and, however briefly, thought to be the cause of the August power blackout.
But that's not the Americans' game in the mad cow crisis. This time the Americans are making nice with us. They have to.
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In the popular imagination, on both sides of the border, a Canadian point of origin for the tainted cow would be America's surest means of convincing Japan and the other three dozen countries that have imposed bans on what amounts to more than 90 per cent of U.S. beef exports that the prohibition can be safely lifted.
"If somebody's lax enforcement of feed rules was the culprit, please Lord, let it be Canada's," wrote Holman Jenkins Jr., a Wall Street Journal columnist last week. link:
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