Harper trumpets trade at the UN,
Pledges $100-million for poor children
NEW YORK • International free trade and capitalism offer a path to world peace, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Thursday in his first address to the United Nation’s General Assembly since 2010.
Sidestepping the issues of terrorism, Ebola and climate change, which have dominated discussion at the UN, Mr. Harper charted a uniquely commercial course in his examination of the problems of poverty, disparity, terrorism and war that plague the world.
Instead, he asked the UN to look beyond the crises of terrorism and Ebola and proposed a broader, long-term solution to these problems, calling on wealthy countries to open free-trade agreements with developing countries, giving them access to expanded markets; and to support investment funds that help destitute mothers and their children.
The prime minister’s speech was more dovish than that of U.S. President Barack Obama, who spoke about Islamist rebels as a network of death.
This was on a day that America, and its financial markets, were made jittery by warnings by the Iraqi government that foreign fighters might be planning to strike the West — perhaps even New York.
But Mr. Harper stuck to his plan, and spoke of places and issues less likely to grab the daily headlines.
“Today, there are many embattled parts of the world where the suffering of local populations and the threats to global security deserve our urgent attention, and I could easily use my entire time here on any one of them,” he said. “There are, however, other areas of service to humanity.”
While “extreme situations” confront the world in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and many parts of Africa, “there is more to peace than the absence of war,” he said.
“For this reason, the growth of trade between nations, and the delivery of effective development assistance to ordinary people — simple, practical aid — these are the things that have become the signatures of our government’s outreach in the world,” Mr. Harper said. “Trade means jobs, growth and opportunities.”
Trade has made “great nations out of small ones,” he said, using Canada as an example.
Canada free trade agreements have linked together a network of countries that possess more than a quarter of the world’s people and nearly half the world’s business.
“Our free trade network will grow larger yet,” he promised.
Trade alone, however, will not initially help the poor, who “for some time to come will need a helping hand.”
To this end, he said, “saving the lives of the world’s most vulnerable mothers, infants and children must remain a top global priority.”
The Harper government is a major supporter of the UN’s Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Initiative and the Every Woman Every Child initiative, which he calls a “top global priority” in laying the path to prosperity.
He said millions of lives have already been saved through these programs and urged the General Assembly “to ensure that in the evolving, post-2015 development agenda, maternal, newborn and child health remain a clear and top priority.”
He announced $100-million for the World Bank’s Global Financing Facility for Every Woman, Every Child.
While he said there are many problems and issues facing individual countries that require urgent attention, he urged the UN “not forget to also look beyond those, at the long-term opportunities and efforts that can truly transform our world.”
“We have it in our power to create a better kind of world for our children than we have today,” he said.
“It was never the intention of the founders of the United Nations, Canada being one of them, that ours would be a world where terrorists could get the resources necessary to sow death and destruction, but where workers and families could not get jobs and opportunities, or where mothers and children could not obtain those necessities required to live and to thrive,” he concluded.
After the speech, an aide to the prime minister said in an interview that Mr. Harper’s positions are well known on such issues as the ISIS threat. The prime minister, he said, wanted to use the occasion to draw attention to other issues dear to him.