ICAO shift won’t fly

Canada has hosted the United Nations aviation agency in Montreal since it was created in 1946. Its headquarters now helps anchor a high-tech aerospace industry that includes 10 leading research centres and 40,000 specialized workers. Key groups representing global business, airlines and airports have all colocated there, creating a hugely dynamic hub that supports the world’s air industry.

So why on earth would anyone suddenly want to uproot the International Civil Aviation Organization and bundle it off to Qatar, a tiny Middle Eastern emirate run by an autocratic family dynasty that’s known mostly for its oil wealth? With all respect for Qatari aspirations, the bid to move the agency there just doesn’t make sense. Especially given that the ICAO council just two months ago approved keeping it in Montreal for another 20 years.

In a rare show of unanimity, Parliament has passed a motion backing Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s “tooth and nail” campaign to retain the agency.

Qatar faces an uphill battle to persuade 115 of the agency’s 191 member states to back its bid when it comes to a vote in the fall. The Qataris’ major arguments seem to be that Montreal is cold in the winter, too far from Europe and Asia, and has high taxes. They are also waving a bundle of cash by way of a tax exemption for agency personnel to sweeten their bid.

None of that amounts to a compelling argument to shift the ICAO from one of the world’s great cities, close to UN headquarters in New York, to a volatile corner of the world. Apart from setting international standards for civil aviation, the ICAO is designated as an emergency UN headquarters in case of disaster or attack. If some catastrophe were to strike, do the world’s diplomats want to reconvene in Doha of all places?

Afew years ago, a Canadian government might have laughed off Qatar’s bid. But a few years ago, Canada’s UN credentials were sounder. Harper’s lack of engagement at the UN is legendary. So is his government’s lopsided support for Israel, its vocal campaign against Palestinians getting upgraded UN status, and its insensitivity to the occupation. It was on Harper’s provocative watch that Canada failed to marshal enough support to win a Security Council seat. It’s hard not to see Qatar’s move as mischievous payback.

Qatar is lobbying the 22 Arab states to back its bid, and no doubt the wider bloc of 57 Islamic states. That could be a problem, given the Harper government’s dismissive view of the UN generally and its Mideast policy. Apart from losing the ICAO, the only UN agency based here, Canada’s international image will suffer if the vote doesn’t go our way.

It isn’t likely to come to that. But the Harper government’s scramble to hang on to the ICAO is a sad sign of how far our star has fallen on his watch.