Why we want a UN Security Council seat

Canada can serve this sorry world well, writes former diplomat Chris Westdal.

Thirty-two years ago, responsible in our foreign ministry for relations with international organizations, I managed Canada’s campaign for a 1989-90 seat on the UN Security Council. We won with 84 per cent of the vote, the largest margin ever recorded, beating Finland and Greece.

We did very well a decade later, too, with 74 per cent, beating the Netherlands and, again, Greece.

Then, in 2010, against Germany and Portugal, we blew it so badly we quit the race to save face before the final ballot.

Now, we are in the home stretch of what looks like a tight race with Norway and Ireland. The vote takes place in the UN General Assembly on Wednesday.

Those past races took place in different worlds, none so unruly as today’s, and were run under quite different Canadian leaders with quite different personal and prevailing national reputations.

I ran a campaign at the

height of post-cold War hope for the UN with a leader, Brian Mulroney, who, as Pierre Trudeau before him, was a significant international player, widely respected and materially influential.

A decade later, in a world already much less hopeful, we ran under Jean Chrétien, who had earned comparable global recognition and respect.

In 2010, we had no such luck.

Stephen Harper’s pose as the West’s Last Cold Warrior Standing, his bizarrely bellicose rhetoric, unaccompanied by any serious defence effort, and his open disdain for the UN, didn’t play well in the General Assembly, where we got our clock cleaned.

That was all then. This is now.

The world’s awash with crises. It’s a perfect storm out there. COVID -19’s raging. Economies are derailed. Major powers, problematically led, are arms racing. Cyber’s scary. Technologies are getting out of hand. Habitats

and species are dying. The climate’s changing, fast. The list of defiant challenges, some existential, is long — much more so than the list of leaders we might reasonably hope will prove up to coping with them.

And this race we’re in is tough. We chose a bad year to run and started years later than Ireland and Norway. We’ve not been nearly as generous with aid as they have been, proportionally, or as active or constructive as peacekeepers.

What’s more, we’re on the hit lists of some heavyweight players and can be portrayed as a vassal state, liking it or not, of Donald Trump’s rogue America.

It’s not over yet, though — and there is no point now in doubting the prize, wondering why and how we got here. It’s a race. Run. Hard. To the end.

It’s not as though we don’t have assets. We are among the most fortunate people on Earth, ever, and we have built a society of which, despite all its flaws, we can be proud. We are Canada — the word alone is magic in much of the world.

We are well-led.

Though his critics wouldn’t have you believe it, our prime minister is known and respected in the world for more than colourful socks and zany costumes.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and Foreign Minister Françoisphilippe Champagne command comparable respect among their peers.

By all accounts, our UN ambassador, Marc-andré Blanchard, has earned credibility and influence among his colleagues, those who will actually cast the secret votes.

Whatever our prospects, though, this is not the time for second thoughts, or for the rehearsal of the standard laundry list of the UN’S faults, or for cheap shots at Trudeau.

Canada is the candidate; the race is all of ours to own, with national consequences, win or lose.

I hope we win. I believe we can serve this sorry world well — and if the likes of us don’t try to save it, just who are we thinking might?