Dion perfect for the Old World
Ihope this doesn’t sound mean-spirited, but I can’t say I feel a great sense of security knowing Stéphane Dion will henceforth represent Canada in the salons of the European Union (oh, and Germany).
It’s not that Dion is unsuited for the job, or might have difficulty adapting to the gilded halls and spacious debating chambers of Brussels and the other EU capitals (including Germany). It’s the opposite: if anything, Dion is a perfect fit for the great talking shops of the Old World, where manners are proper, clothing is formal and a long plenary session followed by a firm statement of intent is considered a significant achievement, particularly if they worked right through lunch.
These are the people, after all, who’ve done such a great job of uniting Europe under one set of mutually agreed upon rules that Britain is quitting the club, Greece is bankrupt, Italy is in crisis and the very survival of the 28- member alliance is in question. Recent accomplishments include a total failure to deal intelligently with the flood of refugees fleeing Syria in search of safer shores. Hungary erected a barbedwire fence and fired tear gas to keep them out. The approach to the port of Calais is now bordered by a fourmetre concrete wall, even though a nearby “jungle” camp has been emptied of its 7,000 refugees. There are real fears that upcoming elections could see radical change to the governments of France and Germany, the two biggest economies in Europe once Britain is out.
To deal with this precarious set of problems, Ottawa is sending the former academic and expert in public administration, who earned a doctorate in sociology from the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, named his dog after the Kyoto accord, and became famous for blurting out that setting priorities is difficult work. As foreign minister — the post he was shuffled out of before being appeased with the EU job — he followed a busy schedule of international conferences, UN gatherings and global summits. From a ministerial session on peacekeeping one day it was off to seek warmer relations with Moscow the next, and then to the United Nations to curry support for the Liberals’ much- coveted seat on the Security Council. When Russia, China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia absurdly sought re-election to the UN’s human rights council, he refused to say how Canada had voted. It might upset some of the other diplomats, and queer the Security Council vote, you see.
His stint as Foreign Minister isn’t the best means by which to evaluate Dion’s career, though. That would be his term as Liberal leader, when he let his enthusiasm for environmental theology get the better of him and proposed upending the Canadian economy in favour of an untried and wholly theoretical “Green Shift” program, a $15 billion plan to impose a broad-base carbon tax across the economy and re-channel the money to Liberal priorities.
Not only did he conspicuously fail to sell Canadians on such a risky proposal, but he handed the Conservatives an easy slogan to bludgeon him with as they accused him of planning “a tax on everything.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may have felt naming Dion was Foreign Minister was harmless enough, and it certainly reflected Trudeau’s apparent belief that sweet reasoning and heavy doses of self-righteous moralizing would be plenty enough to swing the world around to Canada’s way of seeing things. But someone in the Trudeau camp must have realized that things had changed the day Donald Trump was elected president and chose the chief executive of the world’s largest publicly traded oil and gas company as his secretary of state. Dion came up through a Liberal party that still likes to boast about its abiding affection for the Kyoto pact, even if it did nothing to implement the agreement when it had the chance. Posturing on environmental sanctity with a man who negotiated some of the world’s most lucrative oil deals wasn’t likely to win Canada friends and influence in Washington, any more than Dion’s intellectual hauteur would impress Trump, possibly the most anti-intellectual president in the history of the union. If Trump had been a student in Dion’s classes on organizational analysis and theory at the Université de Montréal he’d almost certainly have earned a failing grade, and — if he’d ever granted Dion an audience — it’s entirely possible he’d have sensed as much.
So it’s probably a good thing to get Dion away from any role in Washington. Whether it’s smart to bundle him off to Europe is another question. It’s a bit like sending a diplomat to a bar fight: the last thing the EU needs is another academician with poor political instincts but strongly held views, committed to further rounds of rigorous discussion while France’s Marine Le Pen is busy arguing Trump’s ban on refugees is a great way to fight terrorism and Prime Minister Theresa May tries to find the quickest way to get Britain the hell out of there.