CAUGHT ON ITS SELF-MANUFACTURED DILEMMA, THE LIBERALS WILL LIKELY SEEK TO DO AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE ON THE SAUDI FRONT, WHILE PORTRAYING IT IN TERMS AS TOUGH AS POSSIBLE.
The Central Intelligence Agency has put Ottawa’s wishy-washy foreign affairs instincts in a difficult position. The CIA let it be known that, after looking carefully into the matter, it believes the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was ordered by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman. It reached its conclusion based on what limited evidence exists, including communications intercepts involving the Crown Prince, and its assessment that — given the way the Saudi government works — it wouldn’t have been possible to carry out the act without the prince’s knowledge. The agency’s finding leaves a smidgen of room for doubt, which will be exploited to its fullest by those who desperately want to avoid the consequences of a global oil giant and key Middle East player being run by a known killer. Vladimir Putin aside, most important powers strive to avoid having their leader identified as being soft on murder. Nonetheless, it increases pressure on right-thinking countries to respond appropriately. This is exactly what Turkey hoped for when it began spilling out details of Khashoggi’s treatment after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in pursuit of divorce documents. Turkey is at odds with Riyadh on a number of fronts and is pleased to see its standing undermined, especially in its close relations to Washington.
As is his habit, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded to the situation the way hockey players respond to mid-game interviews: his mouth opens and words come out, but nothing much gets said. Canadians expect “consequences” he proclaimed early in the affair, when details were still emerging. Now that the picture is clearer, he’s retreated deeper into robospeak.
“We will continue to work with our international partners to get to a clearer determination and hear answers from Saudi Arabia on their perspective and their participation, potentially, in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi,” he said after learning Thursday that Saudi prosecutors were seeking the death penalty for five members of the suspected kill team, and were highly suspicious of two other men close to the prince. MBS, as he is known, was conveniently left off he list.
Later, when the U.S. Treasury announced sanctions on 17 Saudi officials over their part in the assassination, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland announced that Ottawa “welcomes” the decision and will “actively considering” following suit someday soon.
Heaven forbid we should act on our own. As both Trudeau and Freeland made clear, Ottawa sees this as a time to wait and see how others respond, even if that means delaying until everyone gets their ducks in a row before doing anything concrete. Such is the result of the Liberal party’s traditional view of Canada as the world’s leading do-gooder nation, a country that avoids being pinned down to conclusions on what’s good and what’s bad, that seeks to avoid action that might upset its equilibrium as it clings firmly to its place on the fence.
Once it knows how everyone else is responding, it will be safe for Canada to do so as well.
In the Saudi case, much attention has focused on the sale of military vehicles to the Saudis. The sale was made under the Conservative government of Stephen Harper and much criticized by the Liberals in opposition, but after gaining power Trudeau’s team issued the export permits needed to make it happen.
The prime minister — who once sloughed off the sale as a bunch of “jeeps” — has indicated that suspending it now would cost “billions of dollars.” Given how freely the Liberals like to spend, that might not be painful enough in itself to justify delay. But cancellation would also cost jobs, which might upset voters, which the government is keen to avoid with an election on the horizon. Trudeau says he finds the situation “incredibly frustrating,” artfully signalling that while of course he wants to stand up to brutality and fight for fairness and justice, he’s hampered by the details of a situation he didn’t create. Except that, in many ways, he did create it. No, the Liberals didn’t negotiate the deal, but they perpetuated it, bobbing and weaving when questioned about their shift in position. Trudeau, in addition, has sought, probably more than any previous prime minister, to identify Canada as a global good guy, always primed to offer lectures and advice on proper behaviour to foreign powers.
This government heavily salts its international activities with sanctimonious spiels on feminism, LGBT and gender rights — without much success it must be said. It has undermined its own ambitions by preaching its social gospel to leaders of the world’s two biggest trading nations.
In China this resulted in an embarrassing snub by Premier Li Keqiang and a quick end to a hoped-for trade breakthrough. In the U.S. Freeland managed to get a mild paragraph on rights inserted into the new freeish trade agreement, but a group of 40 members of Congress is urging President Donald Trump not to sign the deal unless the language is removed. “A trade agreement is no place for the adoption of social policy. It is especially inappropriate and insulting to our sovereignty to needlessly submit to social policies which the United States Congress has so far explicitly refused to accept,” the group says. Caught on its self-manufactured dilemma, the Liberals will likely seek to do as little as possible on the Saudi front, while portraying it in terms as tough as possible. That should not include an interruption of the vehicle sale. The sale has no links to the actions of the Crown Prince, and cancelling it will achieve nothing. It’s too small to impact Riyadh in any substantive way. The Saudis can get the vehicles elsewhere, and, other than an opportunity for Liberals to posture at a press conference, the only impact for Canada would be to put some workers out of a job.
The proper response is to put the Saudis on the same list as countries like Russia, Iran or Syria: places that pursue policies so offensive to Canadians that we want nothing to do with them. Avoid doing new business that in any way benefits the regime, treat them with utmost caution, and stop pretending the Saudis represent values that are anything but repugnant. Perhaps when MBS is gone we can re-evaluate.
It would also be a good idea to build a pipeline to the east coast so we can stop paying top dollar for Saudi oil and use our own instead. But that’s probably too sensible to hope for.