ROBERT RUSSO, "2 CANADIAN MPS INJECT LEVITY INTO DOUR CUBA BILL DEBATE," EDMONTON JOURNAL  (FEBRUARY 12, 1997).

Copyright Edmonton Journal 1997

Oh those kooky Canadian MPs.

A pair of MPs straight from the Liberal backbenches -- not known as a hothouse of Canadian humor -- sent titters and guffaws through a congressional conference room with an attack on the Helms-Burton bill laced with irony.

Peter Milliken and John Godfrey have penned their own private members' bill that holds up a mocking mirror to the U.S. law, which seeks to punish companies that use property confiscated by communist Cuba after the 1959 revolution.

Wearing poker faces that could not hide tongues planted firmly in cheeks, they came to explain their bill to a conference on the Helms-Burton law.

The MPs immodestly admitted they, as the descendants of former United Empire Loyalists who left the United States during the American revolution, would be among their bill's beneficiaries.

``We are the Canadian equivalent of Cuban exiles,'' Godfrey told the conference as he peered over reading glasses.

``Admittedly it's been a bit longer. It's been 200 years.''

With the timing of a seasoned straight man, Milliken jumped in to provide the context:

``The fact that one revolution was 30 years ago and the other 200 is only a twinkling of an eye in historical time.''

Helms-Burton allows U.S. citizens to ask for compensation for property seized in Cuba after the revolution.

The Godrey-Milliken bill does likewise for loyalists. Godfrey said he already had his prize picked out -- the stately Carter's Grove mansion on the James River near colonial Williamsburg, Virginia.

``It's a swell house. I've been there. I think I'd like it back.''

Their patter was a departure from the dour talk of doomed efforts to repeal the Helms-Burton law; the liability of the European Union under Helms-Burton and who might be exempted from Helms-Burton.

The bill is named for its congressional co-sponsors, Senator Jesse Helms and Congressman Dan Burton.

Godfrey and Milliken said they decided to highlight the law's shortcomings by producing its equal in Canada.

Their bill -- unlikely to pass Parliament -- has a section parallel to one in Helms-Burton that bars some Canadian businessmen from the United States because their companies use property confiscated by Cuba after the revolution.

The section in the Canadian bill could keep President Bill Clinton and his family from vacationing on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls because a loyalist has made a claim on the land under the White House.

``The chief executive officer of the confiscating organization, in this case the president of the United States, his wife and his dependent daughter, would all be banned from entering Canada,'' said Godfrey.

Not all at the conference found the comedy routine a knee-slapper.

``I started to feel personally upset that you were mocking people who were kicked out of their homes,'' said a Cuban-American woman whose family fled after the Communists came to power.