Canada not quite ‘back’
Trudeau, Freeland chasing seat at UN’s big table
“Canada is back,” Justin Trudeau loves to proclaim, whatever the hell that means beyond some ego-driven self-congratulatory jingoism.
The prime minister has never supplied a definition for what “back” actually means, of course, other than to suggest the former Conservative government of Stephen Harper his party had defeated had lost the country and that he had somehow found it lying moribund in a ditch, and in the nick of time no less.
Hence, the flared nostrils and brown-nosing at the United Nations in New York City.
What the Trudeau Liberals want, desperately, is to reclaim one of the temporary seats in the UN Security Council, a feather in the cap that Canada hasn’t had for 18 years.
This, to the Liberals, would put them on elevated turf.
It is also where Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland picture themselves.
Above the fray, looking down at lesser mortals.
The all-powerful UN Security Council has 15 members, 10 of them non-permanent and chosen for two-year terms in rotating elections.
The five permanent members — the United States, Russia, China, Great Britain and France — have the unassailable clout of a veto vote.
The next election for non-permanent members is not until 2020, with Norway and Ireland both in the competition.
Bet the farm on Norway, with a significant wager on Ireland to grab the second opening.
Canada is only nominally in the mix.
While Trudeau yet has to win the 2019 federal election if he wants to lead the government with a Security Council strut in its walk, he will also have to overcome the fact that Canada is a piker when it comes to UN support.
This will be no easy task in light of Trudeau’s domestic bragging that Canada is leading the way among G7 countries, despite the contrarianism of having a total “market debt” that has breached the trillion-dollar mark, and a free-ranging debt and deficit in the multi-billions.
He will have to explain why Canada dishes out only 0.26% of its Gross Domestic Product to foreign aid while Norway is the most-generous UN donor, giving more than 1% of its GDP to developing countries.
And let’s not get into peacekeeping.
Canada, after years of tap-dancing on the periphery of international actions and conflicts, is just now in Mali, unquestionably an unpredictable and dangerous African country, but Ireland has not been out of the peacekeeping game since 1958, its blue-helmeted troops currently on missions in Syria, Western Sahara, Congo-Kinshasa, Kosovo, as well as Mali.
Combine the populations of Norway and Ireland, however, and it’s significantly less than the entire province of Ontario.
Despite the fact Trudeau spent Monday addressing the UN’s Nelson Mandela peace summit, and Freeland, and not the PM, is slated to later address the General Assembly, Global Affairs Canada recently told The Canadian Press that Canada has yet to go all-in in its bid for the Security Council seat.
Lobbying and campaign grease costs money, of course, especially in a club with a worldly share of despots, tyrants and ne’er-do-wells.
When it won its last twoyear term at the big table back in 1999-2000, Canada spent $1.9 million in campaigning over four years.
Thus far it has spent just a little over half-a-mil, and that’s in 2018 dollars.
Perhaps it has seen Norway’s writing on the wall, as well as the fact that it and Ireland never went away in order to claim they were back.
Instead, they paid their way and stood their ground.
Canada cannot lay stake to a similar piece of high ground.
So, it’s not “back” yet— even if the PMO thinks it is.