Penny wise

By M.D. | OTTAWA

POLITICIANS have always dressed up their failures to make them look like successes. But few have done so more transparently than Peter Mackay, Canada's defence minister, when he announced a new security partnership between Canada and Kuwait last week. Mr Mackay spoke of Kuwait's powerful influence in the Middle East; its strong and steadfast ties with Canada; and his satisfaction with a memorandum of understanding that will allow Canada to use a Kuwaiti airport and seaport to move equipment and personnel to and from Afghanistan. Left unsaid, however, was the reason Canada was looking for a new military base in the region to begin with: the United Arab Emirates (UAE) booted the country out of its old base in Dubai last year.

Ever since 2001, when Canada sent warships to the Persian Gulf following the September 11th attacks, the UAE had given Canada rent-free access to a not-so-secret base called Camp Mirage, at the Minhad air force base in the desert south of Dubai. In exchange for agreeing to renew this deal, the UAE demanded last year that Canada give more landing slots for civilian flights to its government-owned airlines, Air Emirates and Eithad Airways. Upon learning of the request, Air Canada, which has struggled since its privatisation in 1988, lobbied against expanding the Emirati companies' access to its home market. Air Canada won the support of Stephen Harper, the prime minister, who said he would not let a publicly subsidised foreign firm put Canadian airlines' interests and workers at risk. (The Canadian government lent C$250m ($262m) to Air Canada in 2009 and recently threatened to pass a law forcing its striking employees back to work, but apparently such aid does not meet Mr Harper's definition of government support).

A series of diplomatic missteps exacerbated these commercial tensions. Canada's minister of foreign affairs had refused several requests for a meeting from the UAE's ambassador in Ottawa. Last October the UAE denied a plane carrying the Canadian defence minister and chief of defence staff permission to land at Camp Mirage. And in November the UAE announced it would impose new visa requirements on visiting Canadians, who must now pay C$250 for a 30-day stay and C$500 for a three-month visit. With so much bad blood, it was no surprise that the UAE informed Canada in early October that it would need to leave by the end of the month.

The spat has not come cheaply. Switching operations to Kuwait will cost the Canadian government hundreds of millions of dollars in moving expenses and rent payments. A souring of relations could also hurt Canada's business dealings with its biggest trading partner in the Middle East. And Canadian travellers will be stuck paying higher fares: a round-trip from Toronto to Dubai last week cost C$1,000 more on Air Canada than on Air Emirates.

The Canadian government seems to have realised belatedly that it had little to gain from squabbling with the UAE: John Baird, who became its minister of foreign affairs following a national election on May 2nd, met the Emirati ambassador at last on July 5th. Had his predecessor done so earlier, Canadian soldiers might still be based in Dubai today.