PM ran superficial UN campaign, ex-envoy says

Trudeau blames late start for failed bid, diplomat dismisses it as ‘nonsense’

OTTAWA—The Trudeau government’s superficial foreign policy hamstrung its diplomats and caused Canada’s defeat in the first round of voting for a seat on the United Nations Security Council, says the former Canadian ambassador who helped battle South African apartheid at the UN.

Stephen Lewis also dismissed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s day-after assessment on Thursday that Canada’s late start in campaigning for the temporary council seat was pivotal in its loss to Norway and Ireland on Wednesday.

Norway and Ireland declared their candidacies for the council several years before the Liberals were elected in 2015, after which Trudeau announced Canada’s intention to run.

The defeat of the Liberal government led by Trudeau followed a failed bid for a Security Council seat by the former Conservative government under Stephen Harper in 2010. Trudeau was highly critical of Harper’s foreign policy throughout the 2015 federal election campaign and declared “Canada is back” the day after he won.

“It shows that through the Trudeau years, Canada’s superficiality and insouciance in foreign affairs got through to the rest of the world, and the world decided we were too flimsy, unfocused, ad hoc and chaotic to merit support,” said Lewis, a lifelong New Democrat who was appointed by then-Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney to be his UN ambassador in the 1980s. Lewis and Mulroney worked together to lead Canada’s participation in the broader fight at the UN to bring down the racist anti-Black apartheid regime in South Africa.

On Thursday, Trudeau’s office marked the 30th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s visit to Ottawa and his address to the joint session of Parliament. At a media briefing on Thursday, Trudeau was asked about Canada’s foreign-policy failure of the previous day. “Obviously, we would have hoped for a different result yesterday,” he said.

“But the reality was, coming in five years later than (Norway and Ireland) gave us a delay that we unfortunately weren’t able to overcome. I was hoping we would, and we certainly worked hard to do it.”

Lewis, who was also a fierce critic of Harper’s foreign policy, dismissed Trudeau’s assessment as “nonsense.”

“Four years should be more than enough to secure the seat. If commitments to Norway and Ireland were earlier made, they would readily have been changed if we had something to offer,” said Lewis, adding that the government’s campaign platform hamstrung the current ambassador, Marc-André Blanchard.

“Blanchard was excellent, but he had nothing to work with,” Lewis said. “The prime minister is just fine with rhetorical flourishes. But when it comes to concrete policy, there just isn’t any,” he added.

Trudeau said he has called the leaders of Norway and Ireland “to congratulate them for a well-run campaign and commit to them that we were going to continue to work with them on all our shared values on the world stage.”