John McCain remembered as ‘friend of Canada’

John McCain, an avowed free-trader and longtime supporter of expanding the North American Free Trade Agreement, was remembered by Canadian politicians as a friend to Canada who reached across political boundaries to do what he felt was right.

The Arizona senator died of brain cancer on Saturday, a day after announcing he would not be seeking further treatment. He was 81. “Senator McCain was a great friend to Canada and a true statesman whose intelligence, tenacity and courage were unmatched,” Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland wrote on Twitter.

Former prime minister Brian Mulroney echoed the sentiment in a written statement Sunday.

“John McCain was always a committed friend of Canada,” he said. “On any issue, John would always come down on the side of his deep friendship with us.”

As recently as June, McCain tweeted his support for Canada after U.S. President Donald Trump accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of being “very dishonest and weak” following a dispute over tariffs at the G7 Summit in Charlevoix, Que.

“To our allies: bipartisan majorities of Americans remain pro-free trade, pro-globalization & supportive of alliances based on 70 years of shared values,” he wrote. “Americans stand with you, even if our president doesn’t.”

The issue of free trade was a constant theme over McCain’s decades-long career.

The former presidential hopeful had long supported renegotiating NAFTA, going so far as to make an unprecedented trip to Ottawa in the midst of his 2008 campaign for president to deliver a speech that called for expanding the trilateral agreement.

Speaking to the Economic Club of Canada months ahead of the election he would lose to Barack Obama, McCain lauded the pact for doubling cross-border trade, creating 25 million jobs in the U.S. and four million in Canada.

“Even now, for all the successes of NAFTA, we have to defend it without equivocation in political debate, because it is critical to the future of so many Canadian and American workers and businesses,” he said.

“Demanding unilateral changes and threatening to abrogate an agreement that has increased trade and prosperity is nothing more than retreating behind protectionist walls.”

Everything that can be said about Senator John McCain has already been said.

The longtime politician and American war hero succumbed to brain cancer on Saturday. He was 81.

It’s worth offering an opinion on this international story because it’s timely with the upcoming municipal elections and next year’s federal election.

McCain was indeed a kind man, a great American, and someone who did politics the way politics should be done. He never fought dirty. A video has resurfaced from the 2008 campaign (which he lost to Barack Obama) where two speakers at a rally describe his opponent as “someone who cohorts with domestic terrorists.”

“He is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of having as president of the United States,” he told the first man.

There was a follow-up question which McCain replied, “He’s (Obama) a decent, family man and a citizen who I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.”

Compare this with the current presidency.

Trump’s attacks on McCain during the 2016 election were repugnant. (“He’s a war hero because he was captured.”) This was coming from someone who didn’t serve in Vietnam because of heel spurs.

At McCain’s request, two of the eulogies will be given by former opponents — George W. Bush, who he lost to in the 2000 Republican primaries and Obama, who he lost to in the 2008 election.

Municipal elections are now less than two months away. There’s a chance things could get heated — probably not here in Kelowna, but perhaps in other centres across the Okanagan.

With the federal election about a year away, it’s soon time for the long string of attack ads.

If we, as Canadians, can learn anything from John McCain, it’s how politics should be done.