Too Close For Comfort

After almost four years of building and $40 million, America's newest outpost is almost finished, right in the heart of the Canadian capital of Ottawa.

But as CBS News Correspondent Jeffrey Kofman reports, America may not be such a welcome neighbor.
Richard Robinson, who owns a store right across the street says, "When Americans do things I think they always do it big."

So big and so close in fact, that it's making Robinson and his neighbors a little nervous. He has just spent thousands of dollars on a shatterproof coating for his shop windows. "When you hear of all those bombs everywhere," he says, "You know it's...it's scary."

It is the memories of bombings at American outposts in places like Beirut in 1983 and Nairobi 1998 that make the embassy's neighbors uneasy. Terrorist bombs at U.S. embassies have killed hundreds and this new one in Ottawa breaks a prime State Department rule: it's next to a busy road in the city's popular market district.

Canada's majestic National Gallery of Art, with its 5,000 glass windows, also sits right across the street. Curator Karen Spierkel says they've decided that the threat doesn't justify spending more than a million dollars to coat all that glass. "It would be quite expensive to sheet all the glass in this building. You know, Ottawa ain't Nairobi and it ain't Beirut," she says.

But that doesn't mean Canada is immune to anti-American violence. Just last spring, Serb protesters firebombed the U.S. consulate in Toronto.

All this insecurity about security exasperates the U.S. ambassador, who is quick to note that the current embassy, elegant but much too small, has been right across the street from Canada's parliament for 70 years. "We've been here for a generation or so, and there've been no incidents," says Ambassador Gordon Giffen. "There's been no cause for concern."
The new embassy is being heralded as a symbol of the closeness of the two countries. Its neighbors can only hope it s not too close for comfort.