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BLAME CANADA!

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There's one constant and recurring theme when it comes to the federal Liberals: When in doubt, blame the Yanks. Prime Minister Paul Martin was up to his usual cynical standards this week when American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice paid a brief visit to Ottawa.

Rice has circled the globe many times and visited 40 other countries before finding time for Martin and his government.

That should tell you exactly where Martin's Liberal regime fits in to the Bush administration's priority list.

Martin, obviously giving his spring election platform a test drive, has been ramping up his anti-American rhetoric for weeks. The most obvious example of this has been the ongoing softwood trade dispute over the abysmal lack of proper timber fees charged by Canadian provinces.

But the scourge of drive-by shootings, drug gang turf wars and other gun crimes that are plaguing Canada's major cities was also high on the agenda when Rice and Martin sat down to dinner Monday night. That was when the prime minister tried to pin the blame on the Americans for all the illegal handguns in circulation in Canada.

Rather than hang his head in shame and admit that the Liberals' firearms registry has been a dismal and extremely expensive failure in curbing gun crimes, Martin tried to pass the buck to U.S. President George W. Bush's top diplomat and his potential successor.

Nice try, Paul.

Fortunately, Rice's intellectual elevator goes a few storeys higher than does Martin's.

She told the hyperventilating Liberals to stop the "apocalyptic language" about a softwood lumber trade war and get back to the negotiating table.

And clearly that should also apply to fingering the Americans for the big-city gun murders - from the spate of shootings that have plagued Toronto in recent months to a record-high murder rate in the city of Edmonton, a statistic that grew this week with what appears to be the unprovoked fatal shooting of Sara Easton.

The Liberals spent untold billions of dollars registering duck guns and deer rifles, treating millions of peaceful Canadians as potential criminals in the process.

Surely it must be painfully obvious even to Martin that the criminals who partake in the city shooting sprees do not register their weapons of choice.

Don't blame the Americans for Canadian gun violence. Don't blame Canadian hunters or sport-shooting enthusiasts, either.

Instead, blame Paul Martin and his Liberals who squandered billions of dollars on their deeply flawed registry that could have been spent on effective law enforcement.