Fighting for a seat at the UN table
Canada using cash, diplomacy to help win vote
OTTAWA • Like many of us, Canada’s permanent representative at the UN Marc-andré Blanchard is working from home during COVID-19.
“You should see my living room, it doesn’t look like the living room of the official residence of Canada. It looks more like a war room for a general election campaign,” he said in a phone call from his residence in Manhattan, now the centre of Canada’s push for a UN Security Council seat.
The Security Council has regularly been at the centre of world history. It’s where western nations decided to enter the Korean War. Where U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson stared down the Soviet ambassador, declaring he would wait until “hell freezes over” to get an answer during the Cuban missile crisis. And where former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell made his case that weapons of mass destruction were present in Iraq.
Canada has had a seat six times since the UN’S founding in 1945, roughly once per decade, but as a country, we have been absent for 20 years.
Ordinarily, the vote for a Security Council seat is held in the UN’S massive General Assembly, with competing countries scurrying between the tables of all 193 members, trying to whip up support between the multiple ballots usually required to declare a winner.
But COVID-19 means the vote this time will look different.
Next Wednesday, UN ambassadors will come to the General Assembly in small groups, cast ballots and leave. If there is a need for a second or third ballot, to secure the required two-thirds support, the ambassadors will come back, likely on subsequent days.
Blanchard, a lawyer and former political organizer, said he will draw on his experience as a member of Trudeau’s transition team in 2015 to secure victory.
“We will phone member states to ensure they got out to vote, a lot like a usual election,” he said. “We’ll want to make sure that the voters that we’ve identified as supporting Canada go out and express their vote.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made plain that securing a seat is among his top foreign policy priorities. It was high on the list in Foreign Affairs Minister François-philippe Champagne’s mandate letter. And Trudeau has spoken with dozens of world leaders in the last few weeks as the vote ticked closer, from major powers like the U.K. and France, to tiny nations like Saint Lucia and Vanuatu.
He has hosted several summits of world leaders as well, including on Thursday when he held a “virtual dialogue” with Prince Charles and members of the Commonwealth.
Trudeau said Canada has to have a strong voice in the world.
“We know that engaging around the world is important both for Canadians’ health and well-being, but also for the good of our economy,” he said earlier this month. “Even as some of our allies, including the United States, seem to withdraw from the world, Canada is engaging.”
But Trudeau’s push has not come without a price. The government has spent about $2 million directly on the bid, plus the prime minister’s January trip to Africa was widely seen as part of the effort.
Not all of the costs have been financial however. Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, accused the Trudeau government of striking a deal with the devil by supporting an anti-israel motion at the UN last year.
Conservative MP Leona Alleslev agrees a UN Security Council seat can be valuable, but only for a country with a clear vision, which she said the Liberal government hasn’t shown.
“Them looking at the UN Security Council seat without looking at Canada’s foreign policy, and understanding where we are in the world, and what our relationship with our allies and our adversaries alike should be, means that they didn’t know what they were going after.”
She said Trudeau has failed repeatedly on the world stage and aggravated our allies, with items like the India trip or the Trans-pacific Partnership trade talks where he was accused of stalling negotiations and missing meetings. She worries the government is making deals with countries that aren’t our usual allies.
“Justin Trudeau has made some really damaging actions to our relationships and eroded our reputation on the world stage,” she said. “We don’t know what they’re willing to trade away to get the seat.”
She said the effort is also taking up Trudeau’s time during a global crisis, when his focus should be on how to protect Canadians from COVID-19.
Canada is up against Ireland and Norway for two available seats on the 15-member Security Council. The council has five permanent members, the U.S., Russia, France, U.K, and China, along with 10 non-permanent seats that rotate every two years.
Blanchard said the government’s pitch to the UN is a focus on economic security that will become central if Canada wins.
In addition to a vote at the table, every Security Council member gets to set the agenda and decide what is discussed during part of their two-year term.
He said too often the UN thinks only of the short term security needs and not the longterm economic ones that play into the violence and chaos.
He points to the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti, as one example, where peacekeepers stayed for more than a decade, but by the end 10 per cent of Haitians were still malnourished and 40 per cent dependent on humanitarian assistance.
“Haiti had a peacekeeping mission from 2004 to 2020 and it was focused on security and on human rights, but very little focus on development,” he said.
In poor countries going through conflict, people without jobs are recruited into militias and terrorist groups and simply sending in the UN’S blue helmet peacekeepers to stop the fighting doesn’t address the core issues, he said.
“In Sub Saharan Africa, you have 70 per cent of the population that is below 30 years old.
Half of that population is without an occupation even before the pandemic. This is a big security issue.”
At home, Blanchard said Canada will benefit from a Security Council seat because it puts us at the centre of multilateral decision making, decisions made by coalitions of countries instead of just the biggest and strongest ones.
“If that multilateral world doesn’t exist, then you’re in a situation where only the strongest will prevail. And we know where it leads, because we’re only a middle power.”
He said being at the Security Council table gives Canada leverage.
“When you’re around that table, you are more influential. If you’re more influential, you’re more relevant and if you’re more relevant, that will represent opportunities for Canada.”
The very notion of multilateralism has been under attack recently. U.S. President Donald Trump has made America first a part of his brand and has attacked global institutions like the UN and most recently the
World Health Organization.
Britain looked inward in its decision to pull out of the European Union and countries all around the world are focusing more on their own interests and less on global rules. Blanchard concedes the UN needs some reforms, but said without it the world is a tougher and meaner place.
“The UN is not perfect. There was a secretary general who said the UN was not created to bring the world to heaven, it was created to prevent us from going to hell.”
Blanchard said Canada has a long history of working through international institutions and points to our membership in groups like the G20, G7, Commonwealth, la Francophonie and many other global bodies.
Countries recognize Canada as small enough to listen, but big enough to have an impact, he said.
“They know that because we’re around all of these tables. We can be a voice for them and leverage their preoccupations and concerns.”
Stephen Lewis, who was former prime minister Brian Mulroney’s
emissary to the UN, said he believes there is a lot lacking in Canada’s pitch, but thinks we will garner the seat.
“There’s this ongoing reputation for Canada, this lustre that surrounds the country, even when we are cautious about human rights because we don’t want to offend a country,” he said. “We live on our reputation, which may or may not be merited, but we live on our reputation.”
Lewis said the reputation has been earned through past actions like being the initial champion of peacekeeping and Mulroney’s international push to end apartheid in South Africa.
Among the weaknesses Lewis sees in the campaign are Canada’s contribution to peacekeeping, which is lower than Ireland’s, and our foreign assistance, which is lower as a percentage of GDP than Norway
The last major operation Canada took part in was in Mali, where we provided helicopters and medical support. But Canada left last September, even after being asked to extend our commitment.
Blanchard said Canada may not have the thousands of troops in the field it once did, but it can provide assets, like helicopters, that few other nations can provide.
Lewis said the strategic assets are important, but the UN also still needs boots on the ground and Canada should be stepping up to the plate.
Adam Chapnick, a professor at the Royal Military College and author of a book on Canada and the UN, said he believes Canada’s chances are a coin toss right now, but he doesn’t believe peacekeeping contributions or foreign assistance will be major strikes.
“This is 193 separate elections, every country is voting based on what you are doing for them, not what you are doing for the world.”
When it comes down to voting, all of the experts agree the secret ballot makes the entire process unpredictable. Not only will countries pledge to vote one way and then cast a ballot for someone else, but there could be disconnects between world leaders and their ambassadors.
“The ambassadors in New York do not always follow the instructions they have received from their capitals. Everyone knows it. No one likes to talk about it. People will easily deny it, but it’s simply a fact of life,” said Lewis.
EVERY COUNTRY IS VOTING BASED ON WHAT YOU ARE DOING FOR THEM.