Diplomatic feud ruins Saudi vacation plans

Dear Editor:

Well, there goes our summer vacation to Saudi Arabia.

With the diplomatic spat between our two countries, my wife and I have decided to forego a trip to the land of misogyny. She was looking forward to the experience of honing her subservience skills lest she is ever cast in a Harvey Weinstein movie.

I was hoping to hire a male-only travel planning service to come up with something like the following itinerary:

Day 1 Morning — The Royal Palace, Riyadh. Watch male autocratic bullies devise ridiculously over-the-top responses to requests from foreign governments to respect basic human rights. Join a personalized tour from Prince Mohammed bin Salman as he explains plans to renovate his newly-acquired $300 million Versailles palace (the world’s most expensive home). Then he would take us to the Opulence Room to reveal his $450 million da Vinci painting and a photo montage of his $500 million yacht.

Day 1 Afternoon — Riyadh slum. After the morning’s ostentatious display, witness Àrsthand the fact that 35 per cent of Saudi citizens earn less than $17 per day and that youth unemployment is running at 30 per cent.

Day 2 Morning — Riyadh city scenes. Watch as non-violent human rights activists are arrested on the street and thrown in jail to begin months-long incarceration with no prospect of a fair trial.

Day 2 Afternoon — Fly to Mecca to see if there will be another public crucifixion. If not, perhaps observe a public all-male stoning of an adulteress sentenced by an all-male judicial system.

Day 3 Morning — Back to Riyadh. Visit a theatre to watch propaganda Àlms explaining how bombing civilians in Yemen is an effective way of eroding the enemy’s morale.

Day 3 Afternoon — Beachtime. Experience a swim in one of the many moral cesspools that litter the Saudi landscape.

Putting satire aside, some might question why Canada chose to meddle in the affairs of a country just because of its horriÀc human rights record.

I don’t question Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland’s actions. Wasn’t the global community correct in expressing its horror after the infamous Kristallnacht in Germany in 1938? Or for supporting economic and sporting sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa 30 years ago?

I know the people-in-glass-houses argument and the fact that Canada has not always acted in lily-white fashion with respect to human rights. But putting things in perspective, in its 2017 Human Freedom Index Report the Cato Institute ranked Canada in 11th place out of 159 countries. Saudi Arabia? A ghastly 149th-place ranking.

One last note. The environmental movement talks about clean and dirty crude oil. In my view there are also clean and dirty barrels from a human rights perspective.

What is the next step for Canada as it boldly tries to inÁuence the Saudi despots? Block our daily import of 120,000 barrels per day of dirty human rights crude oil from the Kingdom at a cost of $3.6 billion per year. Buy cleaner Canadian barrels instead. Tim Simard, West Kelowna