Canada should forget UN seat bid

By Letter to the Editor on May 14, 2020.

Canada should withdraw its candidacy for one of the two seats in the June 2020 election of the UN Security Council for 2021-22.

Ordinarily candidates are nominated well in advance so that no election is needed. For the 2020 vacancies Ireland announced in 2005, Norway in 2007. Belatedly, in 2016 Canada launched a hurried, expensive campaign forcing an election. Its case is weak.

Recently a CBC News anchor was stunned by the comments of his guest, a well-known global filmmaker, journalist, author and commentator. Alexandre Trudeau reported that Canada’s international reputation has been in freefall for more than two decades. Once a strong, positive influence for international security and human rights, Canada is now seen as a “confused follower.”

Step by step over the last three decades Canada has purposely been realigning itself from an independent sovereign nation into a compliant economic, political and military U.S. satellite. Its economic policy is subordinate to the U.S. continental juggernaut. Its foreign policy is directed by the White House; its military policy by the Pentagon; its once-renowned UN peacekeeping missions replaced by military support for illegal U.S. colonization wars in the Middle East and North Africa.

Canada used to be an even-handed broker in the toxic Israel-Palestinian conflict. Now it routinely votes with the U.S. against UN resolutions supporting Palestinian self-determination and sovereignty over land and resources, and condemning Israel’s chronic illegal military occupation, human rights violation and seizure of land of the Palestinian people. One vote was 160 for, three against – U.S., Costa Rica and Canada.

Canada has not adopted the full UN Convention for the Crime of Genocide. It remains the site of suppression and genocide against its own Indigenous peoples. It imprisons them for defending their inherent rights to their cultures and lands as prescribed by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

When asked about Canada’s sudden Security Council lurch, respected veteran Canadian diplomat Jeremy Kinsman suggested that Canada support Ireland and Norway, reliable independent nations with untarnished recent records in pursuit of the UN’s mission of international security and human rights.

We should attend to our own wicket.

Owen Holmes

Lethbridge