The cost of Trudeau’s feel-good posturing is out of hand.

SANCTIMONY AND HYPOCRISY ARE UNEASY BEDFELLOWS. — JOE OLIVER

The Liberal government’s self-indulgent international posturing is exacting a mounting economic and reputational cost on the country.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland smugly exhort other countries to live up to Canada’s progressive standards. Yet based on an unblemished record of failure, they must know by now they are irritating everyone and risk disproportionate retaliation.

This unsuccessful attempt to impose selective righteousness on trading partners is naïve idealism crashing against the shoal of realpolitik. So Trudeau is consciously hurting Canada’s national interest for no gain other than to burnish his selfimage and cater to a diminishing base of fellow travellers.

China’s ambassador to Canada rejected outright the Liberal effort to inject what he characterized as “socalled” progressive issues into a hoped for free-trade agreement. One can only imagine the dismissive reaction of Xi Jinping, supreme leader of 1.4 billion people, to Canada’s patronizing request that he change his communist country’s governance and labour laws to comply with ours.

Trudeau stiffed members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership when, without warning, he failed to show up for a signing ceremony. Relations with India took a serious dive when his cozying up to Khalistan Sikh separatists angered Narendra Modi, who snubbed Trudeau during his cloying costume trip to the sub-continent. The most current instances of ham-handed miscommunication coming to grief are the brutal confrontation with Saudi Arabia and Canada’s humiliating exclusion from crucial NAFTA negotiations.

We can agree that the desert kingdom has an appalling record on human rights, of which the imprisonment and lashing of blogger Raif Badawi, and recent arrest of his sister Samar, are only the latest examples. Nevertheless, Freeland and her department’s twitter barrage, translated into Arabic, was totally counter-productive. It may have condemned Badawi to a longer and harsher imprisonment. It will cost our universities $350 million in lost tuition and hospitals millions as Saudi patients are transferred out of country and Saudi doctors abandon their patients. Our milling wheat and feed barley were blacklisted. Saudi central bank and pension fund assets here will be sold and trade and investment has been suspended. Meanwhile, our two closest allies, the British and the Americans, as well as the European Union, have left Canada to its fate, with nary a word of support. Commercial advantage and, for the U.S., a common front against Iran and ISIL take precedence over a concern about political repression.

Then there is our parlous relationship with the U.S., which buys 76 per cent of our exports. Freeland pontificated about America’s withdrawal from world leadership. The PM remained quiet during the G7 Summit in Charlevoix and apparently promised not to include his favourite progressive items in the joint communiqué. Then, when President Donald Trump flew off for his historic meeting with Kim Jong Un, Trudeau reneged on the promise and boasted that Canada would not be pushed around. You might think Godzilla wouldn’t care about taunts from Bambi. But with so much at stake, it was unforgivably irresponsible to take a chance.

In spite of the asymmetrical economic relationship with the U.S., our NAFTA negotiators insisted on pushing progressive obsessions and defending indefensible dairy protectionism. Furthermore, the foreign affairs establishment inexplicably believed we had to stick with Mexico, even though Canada does not pose comparable trading challenges for the Americans. Now we are reduced to watching our two erstwhile partners cut a deal that may force us to make significant concessions to stay engaged.

Sanctimony and hypocrisy are uneasy bedfellows, which brings up the stark contradictions between virtue signalling and actual behaviour. Until its surprising support for a Conservative motion in June, the government had tried to normalize relations with Iran, a supporter of international terrorism, the murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and the destruction of Israel. Trudeau praised the late Fidel Castro and expressed admiration for the Chinese dictatorship, all of which conflicts with the values of most Canadians.

We are selling heavy assault armoured vehicles to the Saudis, combat helicopters to Philippine dictator Rodrigo Duterte and recently provided $100 million in aid to Bombardier to finance the purchase of its passenger airplanes by Iran’s Qeshm Free Zone Organization. There may be an economic justification for these military and civilian sales, but they strongly imply Trudeau should get off his high horse.

Of more immediate concern is that Trudeau’s words and actions are undermining Canada’s economy on the altar of progressive narcissism. With polls showing the Liberals and Conservatives roughly tied in public support, ostentatious preening may eventually give way to policies that actually help Canadians. Given our economic and fiscal challenges, many self-imposed, the government needs to immediately stop the self-congratulatory hectoring of foreign countries and get on with the coldblooded task of protecting Canada’s national interest. In that regard, nothing is more important than salvaging what we can from NAFTA.