Canada's International Reputation Takes Another Beating

And again on the environment. Was our stalling and the daily condemnations being rained down upon us at Bali not enough? Apparently we needed a replay in Poland. Not only is every Western nation taking action on the economy while we are not, they all seem to be much more serious about tackling climate change while we have our heads in the sand. The economy may be top of mind for most people these days but that doesn't mean what we decide NOW on the environment won't have dramatic consequences for the economy and our way of life in the future. Good economic policy is good environmental policy and this is yet another area the Harper government should change if it is to prove itself worthy of survival in January. And it seems Jim Prentice has serious trouble taking hints from international leaders that he's failing at his job. Jim when you are told that Canada has "historically" played a strong role in international affairs and human rights, that's not exactly a complement of what you're doing right now. Meanwhile, Chuck Strahl is being blasted by Native groups for his government's stance in Poland that fails to adequately to take into account the rights of Aboriginal groups. It seems we won't be going back to our historically strong roles unless we have a change of a government.

Galling Senate appointments, obstruction on a fundamental issue on the world stage, neglect of Native rights, stalling on economic stimulus, all of this since the poroguing of Parliament. The onus is on Stephen Harper to prove why he deserves to survive in January and so far his actions are really not a good sign.

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Prentice defends Tory position at climate talks

Despite facing heated criticism from international delegates trying to negotiate a pact to deal with global warming at the UN climate conference in Poland, Canada's environment minister insists Ottawa is being "constructive" at the talks.

Environmental groups have called Canada's position at the talks "shameful," saying the Canadian delegates are acting like spoilers at a time when other world leaders are trying to cope with a serious problem.

During a short telephone interview from the conference, Environment Minister Jim Prentice thrice said Canada wants to be "constructive."

"We very much want the world community to arrive at a final binding agreement in Copenhagen in 2009," he told CTV's Canada AM on Friday.

Prentice went on to note how UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told him that Canada has played an important role "historically" in international affairs.

However, international leaders have said the current Canadian government appears to be thwarting negotiations, with one world leader going so far as to say Canada is "blocking progress."

"I think they're definitely disappointed," Megan McKeen, a 17-year-old youth delegate at the conference, told Canada AM on Friday about the international community's reaction to Canada's unpopular stand.

"Canada should be in a position where we are stepping up and showing leadership. That's what developed nations are expected to do in a situation like this."

European countries are calling for a 20 per cent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020. While the Canadians have said they would go along with the target, they won't set target levels to 1990 figures, which many developed nations say are needed for an effective agreement to curb global warming.

Even here at home, Harper's Conservative government is facing a backlash from the native community. Canada was only one of four countries in the world not to include language recognizing the rights of native peoples in a conference plan to deal with deforestation.

Prentice said his government is concerned about the "drafting of the text" as it relates to aboriginal issues. He said Canada "fully expressed the ability of aboriginal peoples to be consulted in these issues."

McKeen said Prentice needs to do less talking and provide effective action.

"I can't say we're pleased with the talks," McKeen said, noting Prentice acknowledged the importance of the youth delegates at the conference.

"The best way for him to acknowledge us is to commit to the targets and help us," she said.

The conference in Poznan, Poland, is expected to wrap up Friday with an aid package for poor countries to adapt to the effects of climate change.

The international community is trying to come up with a binding comprehensive environmental deal by next year to replace the Kyoto Accord.

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We Need an Independent Foreign Policy Again

Canada proudly punched above its weight on the world stage for decades under Liberal and Conservative governments. On foreign aid, apartheid, peace-keeping, banning use of landmines (the Ottawa Treaty), we were admired for strong principled and independent stands. We made a difference and we were respected across the world. Stephen Harper has broken that proud tradition. He has embraced an ideology far to the right of where we once stood. If anyone had any doubts about that, revelations that Harper delivered an addresss which plagiarized huge portions of John Howard's speech on going into Iraq should make it crystal clear. For those who say it was five years ago, well candidates have been dismissed in this campaign for offensive things they did or wrote more than five years ago and Conservatives called for their dismissals. They may have apologized for what they did but what was done was still not acceptable. Unless we think plagiarism is acceptable (and it certainly isn’t for students or journalists who can be expelled or fired for these things) then we can’t dismiss this act of plagiarism on the part of our current Prime Minister either. Nor did past politicians get away with it. Joe Biden had to abandon his Presidential aspirations in 1988 because he plagiarized a speech from a British politician and it took him years to recover politically from that and he still apologizes to this day for it and says how unbelievably stupid it was. Barack Obama was given quite a hard time by Conservatives (probably blogging Tories too) for using a section of Deval Patrick’s stump speech (“just words”) in his own and had to atone for that. But in the latter case he was told to do so by Patrick who was working on his campaign team and Obama fully admitted who he stole the lines from. Did John Howard directly tell Harper to use the same speech in this case? If so, it just proves the main point here.

Because the real story here and is that Canada simply does not have an independent foreign policy under a Harper administration and we have even more clear evidence of that today. We see no evidence that Harper has moderated his views on foreign policy since 2003. Harper gets his cues from elsewhere and Canada deserves a real leader, not a follower. You would think that on an issue as important as going to war Harper could articulate his own views. If he throws the blame on a staffer (UPDATE: as appears to be what he has done) the fact remains Harper couldn’t come up with an original rationale himself and put very similiar material in numerous op-eds which he signed. Not to mention he would be refusing to take responsibility for words he was proud to take credit for before.

Our past Prime Ministers led on the world stage and this one has failed to the point where our world standing has NEVER been lower. Stéphane Dion would restore our standing on the world stage and make us a real world player again.

People can say the economy is the main issue in this campaign and that’s fine, but it would be a tragedy not to have a real debate on foreign policy as well. Canadians pride themselves on our international reputation and how we comport ourselves across the globe so we need to make sure Canadians know what kind of foreign policy a Liberal versus Conservative government would undertake and what inspires those kinds of policies.

If Conservatives say we should just stick to the economy (where they’ve shown incompetent management anyway) it’s simply because they desperately want to avoid Canadians discussing their foreign policy and how far we’ve veered from our proud international record over the past 2.5 years.





Here is Bob Rae's speech today on foreign policy following up on yesterday's solid speech by Ignatieff on the economy.

UPDATE: Wonderful international press for our country, courtesy of our current PM

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Canada’s Reputation Cannot Afford Another Year of Harper at the Helm

This week was another black eye for Canada on the world stage. On foreign aid, the environment and human rights it’s clear that Stephen Harper is charting a path even more right-wing than the current Republican Presidential candidate, who as I’ve said before, is extremely Conservative himself. As Harper continues to isolate Canada further from the rest of the world on the key issues of the 21st century, and as he follows in the mold of a President despised everywhere except in the Conservative Party caucus, I’m sure this is just one more week where more Canadians have to come to realize that Harper is far off-side from our values and is taking Canada down a path we don’t want it to go.

Harper’s had many chances to redeem himself, to chart a better course, to realize that it’s time to stop being one of the lone voices against 2020 emissions targets, time to stop being the ONLY Western country supporting Guantanamo Bay at a time when each Presidential candidate says they’ll close it, and time to realize Africa needs our help more than ever and that it’s not time to walk away as we have been. However, each time an opportunity comes to change his ways Harper has failed, each time he ventures overseas it’s a new disappointment and a new round of global condemnations. Is it any wonder now Harper believes that Portugal will beat us for a Security Council seat that just 3 years ago Canada seemed most likely to get? Is this what we really want in a Prime Minister? A Prime Minister who’s seen as part of the problem rather than part of the solution? Canada can do much better.

Only one party is going to restore Canada’s image on human rights, be a world leader on the environment and work to meet the commitment of 0.7% of GDP going to foreign aid. The other has taken us backward on all 3 fronts and give them another term neither we, nor the rest of the world, will likely recognize the Canada we’ve taken for granted for generations. That’s the choice in the next election and the stakes perhaps have never been higher. It’s a message I hope all progressives get loud and clear - we need a new government more than ever and Stephane Dion happens to be the kind of authentic leader that will bring us the change we so desperately need.

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For Those Who Thought Canada's Image on the World Stage Would Improve with Bernier Gone....

Well Stephen Harper and his office have faithfully carried on where Bernier left off:

PMO retracts message about Italian troop commitment

The Prime Minister's Office had to quickly backtrack on Thursday, after incorrectly telling reporters that Italy was loosening the restrictions imposed on its troops in Afghanistan. Officials made the erroneous comments to Canadian reporters as they took their seats on a plane in Italy in the morning, ready to fly with Prime Minister Stephen Harper to London for the British leg of his three-day European tour.

Officials told the group that Harper had met with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on the previous night, and Berlusconi had told Harper he was removing the conditions imposed on his country's soldiers. Italy, like some other countries in the NATO-led force in Afghanistan, has come under fire for imposing restrictions that keep its troops out of many battles and other dangerous activities.

About 40 minutes later, the Prime Minister's Office backtracked. Berlusconi hadn't removed the conditions and was only considering it, they said.

"The PMO's staff … said, 'Oops, sorry, not true,' and then a parade of journalists went up to the front of the plane where the only secure and operating telephone exists, to correct those stories," the CBC's chief political correspondent Keith Boag said. "This could have had a very damaging and embarrassing effect in terms of a diplomatic gaffe," he added.

Deputy Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff said the prime minister and his staff should have had their facts straight after a two-hour meeting with Berlusconi. "That is not competent, that is more than embarrassing. That's really stupid," said Ignatieff. "I don't want a prime minister who goes in to talk to an Italian prime minister and doesn't understand what the Italian prime minister tells him on an important matter of state."

Just how many times is Stephen Harper and his government going to embarass us on the world stage this summer? Remember when Maxime Bernier mused publicly about removing an Afghan governor Canada might want to be quietly removed? Well as a result of Bernier's blunder it never happened.

We would like Italy to remove its combat restrictions to help carry a bigger burden in Afghanistan but because of this public blunder I would guess now it won't be happen. This is yet another Afghan blunder and all the while our soldiers are the ones that get affected.

After two years of bumbling overseas and making us a pariah on human rights and environment, Harper sure isn't off to a good start in repairing the damage.

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For Those Who Thought the Bernier Affair Wouldn't Affect Canada's Reputation with Our Allies

Well it seems we have some cause for concern:

Left-behind papers could harm Canada's reputation
MICHAEL VALPY

TORONTO — Ottawa's former top public servant Wednesday called the Bernier left-behind papers incident a significant international embarrassment for Canada that should leave the government concerned about how British and U.S. intelligence officials are assessing what goes on in the country.

Mel Cappe, clerk of the Privy Council from 1999 to 2002 and later high commissioner to Britain, said that if the briefing book that Maxime Bernier left for five weeks in his former lover's Montreal home had contained top-secret documents, “he should be drawn and quartered as well as fired.”

He cautioned that there are intelligence officials in allied governments who will form an opinion of Canada as a result of the Bernier affair.

“What we should be [asking] is what is the cabinet Co-ordinator of Security and Intelligence in the U.K. thinking about it? He's the guy who speaks to [British Prime Minister Gordon] Brown every day. The chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee in the U.K. will have a Canadian intelligence liaison officer attend part of his meetings. That was a tough day for that guy.”

Similarly, said Mr. Cappe, the Canadian government should be concerned about what the new director of security in the White House is telling the U.S. President.

“So it's what's going on in the executive office building in Washington and what's going on in 70 Whitehall [the cabinet office] in London that matters. Because those are the people who are looking at this” – people, said Mr. Cappe, who assess security risks and are going to ask if Canada “has dropped down the scale of trustworthiness."

Shouldn't something so serious be worthy of a wide ranging investigation to assure our allies that we are taking this seriously, we want to know how wide-ranging any breach was, and that we are taking measures to ensure it never happens again?

Well you'd think so if you weren't a government so secretive as this one where Conservative party interests always come before the national interest.

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Bernier Wiser Than Stephen Harper and Conservative Caucus in the End

"The caucus is behind him 100%. We Think He's a Doing a Marvellous Job."
- Conservative MP Deepak Obhrai today (May 26, 2008) just after 5 PM on Don Newman's Politics

Well I suppose Maxime Bernier would be comforted to know that Stephen Harper and his caucus were so confident in (at the same time so blind about) his handling of Foreign Affairs. What does it say though when all the Conservatives are so confident in Bernier's ability, refusing to countenance the idea he could be fired, that it's Bernier in the end who had to break the news that he's not up to the job.

Bernier was put into a file everyone knew he was ill-prepared for and uninterested in. From the very beginning he's bungled it so badly with unforgivable error after unforgivable error. He didn't know who the President of Haiti (a country who we have had a long relationship with) was. He made brazen comments about removing an Afghan governor that in turn embarrassed Canada and Afghan President Karzai and forced an embarrassing retraction that no Canada wasn't publicly trying in interfere in Afghan affairs. More recently he promised a Canada C-17 that didn't exist to be provided embarrassing Canada again. In Bernier's defence though when I was a child my father said I could have any car I would like, so I said I would like a Ferrari and so my father obliged. The Ferrari now sits on my bedroom dresser, so perhaps Bernier was really referring to a model C-17 that he would offer as a symbolic gesture. Unfortunately for Bernier the rest of the world didn't take it that way so it was terrible error for him to make for such a serious national disaster so, once more, Canada was seen as having one of the most incompetent foreign ministers in the western world.

Now we learn he also had zero regard for confidential documents which is what many Liberals were afraid of. Even then Stephen Harper didn't fire Maxime Bernier. Bernier instead resigned. What does it say about Stephen Harper's judgment that he put Bernier in this portfolio and even after so many mistakes he refused to fire him in the end?

I think it says that as bad as Bernier's judgment is, Stephen Harper's is worse.

UPDATE: This story has now made the main page of CNN.com, something that happens probably about once or twice a year in Canadian politics. Last line of the story: Stephen Harper quoted as saying "I don't take this subject seriously." Once again great optics for Canada on the world stage with Harper in charge.

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