Baird called ‘hypocrite’ for Saudi TV attack on PM
Ex-minister was often vocal about rights abuses
As Canada’s relationship with Saudi Arabia remains on the rocks, ex-foreign affairs minister John Baird appeared on Saudi state TV over the weekend to denounce the Trudeau government for its “gratuitous attack” on the Saudi regime.
“For Canada to treat a friend and ally this way has been incredibly unhelpful,” Baird told the English-language arm of Al Arabiya, the Saudi-owned equivalent of Al Jazeera.
Baird added that the best way to resolve the crisis would be for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to fly to Riyadh to apologize in person to the Saudi royal family.
“I think the Canadian government is only beginning to understand how offensive their conduct has been to the Saudi government,” he said. “This is giving Canada a bad reputation.”
On Aug. 5, Saudi Arabia abruptly suspended diplomatic relations with Canada in reaction to a tweet by Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, in which she called for the release of imprisoned Saudi blogger Raif Badawi.
The kingdom has also suspended scholarships for 16,000 Saudi students in Canada, and has instructed its state-owned pension funds to immediately sell Canadian assets, “no matter the cost.”
Baird now works at a series of consultancy roles, including a position on the advisory board for Barrick, a major mining firm with interests in Saudi Arabia. The company owns a 50-per-cent stake of Jabal Sayid, a copper mine that began production in 2016.
When Baird was foreign affairs minister under then prime minister Stephen Harper, he was known as a frequent and sometimes aggressive supporter of human rights abroad.
“It’s completely hypocritical; this was a guy who was extremely vocal on human rights,” said Thomas Juneau, a Middle East analyst at the University of Ottawa.
It was Baird who suspended diplomatic relations with Iran in 2012, calling it “among the world’s worst violators of human rights.” He also helped orchestrate a 2010 meeting in which Harper directly confronted Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni over a bill that would have mandated lifelong prison sentences for homosexuals.
Baird had even issued tweets calling for the release of Badawi. “Deeply concerned that Raif Badawi will be publicly flogged again this week. Canada continues to urge authorities for clemency in this case,” he tweeted in January 2015.
Soon after that tweet, Baird personally raised Badawi’s case with Prince Turki Al Faisal, a member of the House of Saud.
In his few public statements on the Saudi Arabia issue last week, Baird maintained that his defences of human rights were always accompanied by in-person diplomacy, rather than “hectoring” tweets.
“I think the Saudis respect when you take these conversations direct, face-to-face, and you do it in a respectful manner and not like a Trump-style tweet, which has obviously caused great damage to Canadian interests,” Baird told BNN last week.
Based in Dubai, Al Arabiya is owned by members of the Saudi royal family. Although the network never directly opposes Saudi state policy, it would be incorrect to call it a mouthpiece of the Saudi government. Nevertheless, it is the network that spent the previous week broadcasting a series of outlandish claims about Canada, including that Ottawa has incarcerated University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson as a political prisoner.
“Saudi-controlled media are going nuts with (Baird’s) statements, they’re taking it as proof that Canada is wrong and that Saudi Arabia is right,” said Iyad el-baghdadi, an Oslo-based Arab affairs observer and president of the pro-democracy Kawaakibi Center.
He added: “I have no idea what he was thinking.”
In a six-minute segment excerpted on the network’s website, Baird (incorrectly identified as “John Byrd”) also praises Saudi Arabia for its opposition to Iran and ISIL, calling them “likeminded allies.
“This relationship is too important to have it deteriorated,” he said.
Baird also expressed his support for a series of recent Saudi reforms that have included allowing women to drive and exit their homes without a face-covering veil.