PM’s mushy foreign policy hinders UN ambitions
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is lobbying hard for Canada to win a temporary seat on the United Nations Security Council. He might do better if his Liberal government had a more coherent foreign policy.
Trudeau was in Africa this week making his pitch. Next week, he is scheduled to travel to the Caribbean to do the same.
At stake is a two-year gig on the UN’s 15-member top deliberative body. Two seats are coming up for election this summer. Three countries — Canada, Ireland and Norway — are vying to be chosen.
The final decision will be made by the 193-member UN General Assembly.
Trudeau says Canada should be on the Security Council because that’s where the world’s most pressing issues are discussed.
“Having a Canadian voice at that table is important for Canadians but also for countries around the world who share our values,” he said earlier this week in a speech aimed at members of the African Union meeting in Ethiopia.
Trudeau didn’t mention that some of those he was lobbying — including Egyptian President Abdel Fattah elSisi, who came to power seven years ago in a bloody coup — are not exactly exemplars of Canadian values.
But that’s just the normal hypocrisy of diplomacy.
The government’s real problem in this contest is that its foreign policy has been inconsistent and, at times, difficult to divine.
Indeed, the only constant has been Ottawa’s desire not to offend the prickly U.S. president, Donald Trump.
Thus, Canada’s response to Trump’s deeply flawed Middle East peace plan was, in effect, a Delphic no comment.
Canada will “carefully examine” the plan, Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said.
Similarly, Ottawa’s unusual support for regime change in Venezuela can best be explained as an attempt to curry favour with Washington.
The Trudeau government says it wants to get rid of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro because he is an anti-democratic dictator. Yet, it is quite happy to deal with other anti-democratic dictatorships, including Cuba’s. The reason? Canada has business interests in Cuba. It has next to none in Venezuela. Supporting the U.S. demand for Maduro’s ouster is, for Canada, relatively costless.
Otherwise, Canadian foreign policy under Trudeau remains a puzzle.
The government promised to devote more resources to UN peacekeeping. But in the end it delivered little in either manpower or money. Its eventual contribution to the UN mission in Mali can best be described as grudging.
The government promised to make human rights a priority. And at one point, former foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland did publicly chide Saudi Arabia for its treatment of women.
But Ottawa was taken aback when the Saudis retaliated. Plans to take Saudi Arabia to task for its human rights violations — which eventually included the murder of prominent dissident Jamal Khashoggi — quietly disappeared into the maw of Ottawa’s bureaucracy.
And then there is China. That’s where Ottawa’s desire to please the Americans by holding prominent Chinese business woman Meng Wanzhou for extradition to the U.S. ran into a buzz-saw.
The Liberal government insists that its top priority in China is the release of two Canadians jailed there in retaliation for Meng’s arrest.
But Dominic Barton, the businessman turned ambassador chosen by Trudeau to lead this effort, appears badly informed about the plight of other Canadians imprisoned in China.
Speaking to a Commons committee last week, Barton said that Huseyin Celil, a Uighur activist, who has been in a Chinese jail for 14 years, is not a Canadian citizen. In fact, he is.
Even if Canada’s foreign policy were more coherent, it is not at all clear that a temporary seat on the Security Council would be much of a prize. Current members include Belgium and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. As far as I can tell, their brief stint on the UN’s top body has not made either country more influential.
The government’s real problem in this contest is that its foreign policy has been inconsistent and, at times, difficult to divine