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The vicious interprovincial infighting over where to put the new financial institution reveals the darkest parts of the Canadian characterLast updated 1 day ago You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.Perhaps the ferocity of our infighting is reassuring to NATO, which is after all mainly a military alliance. Photo by KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP via Getty ImagesAfter Hannibal and his army marched across the Alps and crushed the Roman army at Cannae in 216 BC, reporters asked the Carthaginian leader what explained his victory. “Well,” he replied, “The elephants helped. They helped a lot. And so did the courage of my soldiers. But, to my mind, the key difference was the quality of our banking services.”Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Exclusive articles from Barbara Shecter, Joe O'Connor, Gabriel Friedman, and others.Daily content from Financial Times, the world's leading global business publication.Unlimited online access to read articles from Financial Post, National Post and 15 news sites across Canada with one account.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword.Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Exclusive articles from Barbara Shecter, Joe O'Connor, Gabriel Friedman and others.Daily content from Financial Times, the world's leading global business publication.Unlimited online access to read articles from Financial Post, National Post and 15 news sites across Canada with one account.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorGeorge S. Patton, a driving force in the Allied charge across Europe after the D-Day invasion, reflected toward the end of his life: “Yes, it’s very gratifying to be regarded as one of history’s greatest tank commanders. But what I always really wanted to be was a bank commander.”Russia’s Vladimir Putin reportedly is spending more and more of his time in isolation and even underground. Most reports attribute this to his fear of a decapitation attack by Ukrainian drones but sources inside the Kremlin confirm that what really has Putin rattled is news of NATO’s new Defence, Security and Resilience Bank, which is to be located in Canada.Get the latest headlines, breaking news and columns.By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.The next issue of Top Stories will soon be in your inbox.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againYes, in response to Donald Trump’s urging it to pick up more of the common defence burden, NATO is setting up … a bank. And for some reason it has decided to locate it in Canada. Perhaps to put it as far away from Putin as possible, so that if he does invade more of Europe, at least NATO’s money will be safe (as most of Britain’s gold was held safely in the Bank of Canada and Montreal’s Sun Life Building after being shipped across the Atlantic in 1939-40).If safety is a concern, does NATO not know that the frigid vastness of our North is almost entirely undefended? You can’t actually see Russia from our Arctic islands, as you can from Alaska, but you know it’s looming there, just across the increasingly traversable Arctic Ocean (America’s Ocean, as Donald Trump no doubt thinks of it).What’s the real reason NATO chose us? Did we offer the biggest subsidies (i.e., kickbacks)? Did the organization want to encourage one of its recently least enthusiastic contributors? Or maybe it has heard that Canada’s new government is turning basically everything into a bank, so who better to run a new bank than what Napoleon might have called a “nation of bank clerks?”Whatever the reason, we have been chosen. So now the hard part begins: deciding where to put the new bank. Five cities are bidding: Ottawa-Gatineau, Montreal, Toronto, Halifax and Vancouver. Vancouver is clearly an extreme safety play: if you calculated NATO’s geographic centre, Vancouver must be the farthest away from it of any city in the 32 member countries. Premier David Eby is making the best of his remoteness by playing up how Vancouver is midway between Canada’s Atlantic and Pacific allies. Antarctica could say the same.You just know Ottawa would prefer to dispense with the political burden of choice and impose the traditional Canadian compromise by giving a piece of the new bank to each of the five bidders. But NATO, familiar down to its DNA with politically-driven inefficiency, presumably will not allow that. So choose Ottawa must.Which is a signal to provincial and municipal politicians to mobilize, assume lobbying stations and do what they do best: rent-seek. A rent is a payment you don’t earn, it just falls on you. Which is not to say lots of time and expense aren’t put into lobbying to make that happen. Some has been on display in this newspaper as the different bidders make their cases.If you want to dredge the darkest depths of the Canadian character, announce that a big slab of pork is about to be deposited somewhere in the country, though exactly where remains to be decided, and then watch as the knives come out and the slashing begins.Ontario whispers that Montreal would be a bad choice because Quebec may separate from Canada (though presumably not from NATO). Quebec says that’s nonsense, though if the new bank is in Montreal, its head should be able to speak French, while if it isn’t, that would of course be further grounds for separating from Canada.Perhaps the ferocity of our infighting is reassuring to NATO, which is after all mainly a military alliance. Also the fact that hockey, which at this time of year gets almost as vicious as interprovincial jealousies, is our national sport.At its slimy bottom, the battle over the new bank reinforces the Canadian habit of treating national and collective defence as mainly an exercise in economic enrichment. But data on multiplier effects, regional economic improvement and all the high-paying jobs the bank supposedly will create won’t impress Putin. Only hardware, manpower and determination will.Forget about the bank. Let some other country have it. And let us start worrying about the real problem: what nuts, bolts, manpower and attitude do we need in order to restore our military capacity and therefore credibility?Or, if we must choose where to put a new NATO bank, we should do it the cost-minimizing way, via a lottery. Imitating the NHL’s draft lottery, we could decide by drawing ping-pong balls from a kind of air-pressured corn-popper.Of course, using the NHL model does mean all the balls will be labelled “Toronto.” Join the Conversation This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.