Prime Minister Paul Martin’s address to the UN’s 60th anniversary summit in New York would have been more fitting for its anniversary gathering of a decade ago.
His speech (available at http://pm.gc.ca), though full of good intent and a meek endorsement of the UN reform agenda tabled by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, could not hide the essential dilemma of Canada’s foreign policy, which has been adrift ever since Pierre Trudeau.
There was no mention of the terrorism that plagues the world, nor of the Oil-for Food scandal that has exposed the terrible rot inside the world body.
It was as if Martin arrived from another planet, and his office failed to consult on the compelling issues of our time with his counterparts in Britain and Australia, with whom Canada share the familial ties of the Commonwealth.
Britain’s Tony Blair spoke about the urgency for the UN to “give leadership on terrorism.” He observed, “There is not and never can be any justification, any excuse, any cause that accepts the random slaughter of the innocent.”
John Howard of Australia remarked: “It is a grim but inescapable fact that our world lives under the shadow of global terrorism.” Others, such as Junichiro Koizumi of Japan and Vladimir Putin of Russia, also spoke about terrorism and how it is impeding progress on poverty and human rights.
Jalal Talabani, the veteran Iraqi-Kurdish politician newly elected president of a free, post-Saddam Iraq, urged for UN resolve against terrorism and support for his country’s struggle against “the forces of darkness.”
Martin, however, skirted the issue, and revealed how thread-bare Canada’s foreign policy has become as a result of continually downloading our responsibility in the pursuit of the lowest common denominator of UN multilateralism, held hostage to Third-World despots.
At home, Canada’s foreign policy has been denuded by a mindlessly petty anti-Americanism stoked by lib-left partisans in search of an elusive Canadian identity. Liberals in turn have ridden its surge into a foreign policy orbit where Canada’s place in world affairs has been increasingly diminished in substance.
Those Canadians who have not forgotten him might only imagine how Lester “Mike” Pearson would meet today’s pressing issues with the mettle Liberals once possessed, and which won Canada the world’s respect.
The former PM and Nobel-Prize-winning diplomat would surely have told the UN that Canada, as a founding member, found intolerable the stain on the organization’s reputation due to the corruption, ineptness, nepotism and mismanagement revealed by Paul Volcker’s commission of inquiry into the Iraqi Oil-for-Food scandal.
Pearson would surely have reminded the UN of his role in calling for global “partnership for development,” and the necessary provision of assistance by rich countries to the poor. But he would also insist the UN cannot be trusted with increased funds unless full reform of its management practices occurred, and the UN secretariat became accountable and transparent.
His idealism was framed by realism, since he knew full well the perennial nature of evil. He would not have shirked taking responsibility for UN failure in Rwanda and the Balkans, and then in scolding member-states for their appalling disregard for the tragedy unfolding in Darfur.
Pearson would also, in my view, have made sure Canada stood firmly together with Britain and Australia as members of a great Commonwealth affirming U.S. President George Bush’s message in New York on this same 60th anniversary occasion: “If member countries want the United Nations to be respected—respected and effective—they should begin by making sure it is worthy of respect.”
He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Islamic Pluralism based in Washington, D.C., a Senior Fellow with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, and an academic-consultant with the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. He has been a consultant with CIDA on development issues and has published widely in academic journals on foreign policy matters and area studies of the Middle East and South Asia.
Mansur is featured on the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West produced by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He also unsuccessfully ran for the Canadian Alliance party in 2000.
Mansur has been accused by Canadian Islamic Congress of using "provocative, self-serving rhetoric", and for "promoting an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim agenda".
He is an Ismaili Muslim.
At a press conference on October 2, 2008, Mansur stated that "Islam is my private life, my conscience...[but] my faith does not take precedence over my duties...to Canada and its constitution, which I embrace freely;" "I am first and most importantly a Canadian;" "only in a free society will you find Islam as a faith and not a political religion." Mansur also criticized New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton, whom Mansur said "has gone to bed with Islamists", because he is running candidates in Ontario and Quebec who are closely identified with the push for Sharia law.
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