The leader the world needs

The following in an excerpt from a column by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times.

After the Canadian foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, tweeted concern about Saudi Arabia’s imprisoning of a women’s rights activist, the crown prince there seemed to go nuts.

Saudi Arabia announced that it was expelling Canada’s ambassador, halting flights to Canada, ending purchases of Canadian wheat, recalling students from Canada and selling off Canadian assets. Yet Canada stuck to its principles. When a young Saudi woman, Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun, fled to Bangkok last month and warned that she would be killed by her family if she was forced home, it was Canada that again braved Saudi fury by accepting her.

Canada may be one of the world’s more boring countries, but it’s also emerging as a moral leader of the free world. During the worst of the Syrian refugee crisis, President Barack Obama admitted just 12,000 Syrians. Canada accepted 40,000. When Canada recognized the opposition leader Juan Guaidó as interim president, he won credibility because nobody sees Ottawa as an imperialist conspirator.

Canada has spoken up about the mass detention of about 1 million Muslims in the Xinjiang region of China even as Muslim countries have mostly kept mum.

For aid programs in the developing world, countries usually try to finance projects that will get lots of attention. Instead, Canada champions programs that are extremely cost-effective but so deathly boring that they will never be discussed on TV.

Today there’s a vacuum of constructive global leadership. Canada may be the leader the world needs.