McLeod Group Blog, Sept. 26, 2014
After several years of pointedly snubbing important UN General Assembly gatherings, Prime Minister Harper deigned to appear this year. His speech was full of his familiar platitudes about maternal and child health care, but without any reference – as always – to the reproductive health issues that kill so many young women and mothers. This deadly oversight notwithstanding, Mr. Harper has developed a proprietorial attitude towards maternal and child health, as though it is a Canadian invention – a kind of Dyson vacuum cleaner that – with enough advertising – everyone will buy. The issue has been with us for generations, however. It is integral to the Millennium Development Goals that were established in 2000. Many other countries spend much more money on maternal and child health than Canada does. On this subject we are essentially telling grandmothers how to suck eggs.
But Mr. Harper is no Johnny One Note. He also had things to say about the menace of Islamic State fundamentalism. There Canada is playing an important role sending dozens (count them, dozens) of military advisers. We are deeply concerned about Ukraine as well, sending that country vital military assistance, possibly taken from museum-class Hercules aircraft.
Where global threats are concerned, the Prime Minister has said repeatedly that Canada will not stand idly by. A good example is the threat of global warming. Canada is certainly not standing idly by. It isn’t even there. One hundred and twenty heads of state attended the landmark summit on global warming in New York this week. But (except for the dinner afterwards) not Mr. Harper. Because if he had attended, he would have been standing idly by, as Canada has on this issue since his election. Mr. Harper has famously said in relation to global warming that “no country” – e.g. Canada – “is going to take actions that are going to deliberately destroy jobs and growth in their country.” It’s not clear who proposed that jobs and growth should be deliberately destroyed, but it’s clear enough that they will be if major polluting countries like Canada stand idly by.
And what about Ebola? President Obama has called the Ebola epidemic a human tragedy and a “potential threat to global security.” Canada chairs the UN Peacebuilding Commission’s “country specific configuration” for Sierra Leone. But apart from platitudes and tiny tokens of support, Canada waited until the Prime Minister was at the United Nations to make an announcement of any significance on the matter.
It’s sad, really, that we want so badly to play with the big kids on issues where we won’t make the slightest difference, and yet on issues where we could, we are miserly, slow or absent. This must have been obvious to those who bothered to listen to what Mr. Harper said at the United Nations. It’s very obvious to those who once knew they could count on Canada for real support in places where it mattered. Today, they cannot. Our leaders are like vacuum cleaner salesmen with attitude, an embarrassment to all but themselves.