Apparently, the Conservative government hasn’t really recovered from Canada’s humiliating defeat in last year’s campaign for a seat on the UN Security Council. Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird announced this week that Canada isn’t planning to run for a seat on the prestigious seat. Not this year. Not any time soon.
Last year Portugal beat Canada for the powerful temporary two-year, non-veto-wielding seat on the UN’s top body. A clear rebuke for our most recent foreign policy mistakes, including:
- The Conservative government’s recent slashing of development assistance to needy developing countries
- Guantanamo and the thorny Omar Khadr issue
- The evolving joint Canada-US cross-border security deal, a shameless surrender of Canadian sovereignty to the Americans
And that was the first time in the 60-year life of the UN that Canada failed to win a seat for which it contested.
But the Tories’ decision isn’t just about the that self-inflicted loss. It’s a deliberate. Another step away from the UN helps Prime Minister Stephen Harper‘s Conservative government to abandon Canada’s respected role as an honest broker of global conflicts. A peacekeeper. A builder of broken nations. Now Harper can nourish his militaristic foreign policy. Now he can move close to Israel – and further away from Africa – without having to worry upsetting Canada’s traditional friends in the developing world.
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