Mismanagement

There hasn’t been a formal announcement yet, but with each passing day, it grows more likely that Canada will bow under the pressure and choose not to apply for a seat at the U.N. Security Council. With Germany and …Portugal as sole competitors for two available seats, our government seems poised to decide that the odds of placing third in an election that Canada has never lost are too high to make it worth the political risk.

Why? Two words: Maxime Bernier.

It’s not that all it’s his fault, but Maxime Bernier is a symbol, a prime piece of living evidence showing how little we seem to care about foreign affairs and how insignificant our country has resultantly become.

This man was out of his depth right from the swearing-in ceremony. He has been as much of a flop as could have been predicted. Just last week, after committing the horrendous diplomatic faux-pas of asking for the governor of Kandahar’s head, he confused Haitian President René Préval for his predecessor Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Haiti, by the way, is one of the largest recipients of Canadian foreign aid.

But before Bernier, it was just as bad: Peter MacKay. His experience in Foreign Affairs was serving as a Crown Attorney in Nova-Scotia and having his drivers licence suspended for speeding in 2005.

Foreign policy, today, matters only to the government if it can help win votes. That’s why, for example, Harper was so unrelenting in his praise of Israel: he’s after the Jewish vote. That’s also why a colossal proportion of foreign aid goes to Afghanistan: it’s necessary for selling the mission to Canadians.

But when it comes to getting real international recognition, such as a seat at the Security Council, we discover that all this inaction and policy mismanagement is costing us. We’ve dramatically reduced foreign aid to most African countries, but guess what, there are an awful lot of African countries and they each have a vote. We’ve been so strong in praising Israel that we’ve angered many Arab countries and lost our reputation as a moderate broker that could help link the U.S. and Europe. But guess what, there are an awful lot of Arab countries and states that used to vote for Canada because it was perceived as being balanced.

This is all very sad, but all very true: we’ve lost most of our stature in the world. Sure the change is mostly due to demographics, but it’s also mismanagement, total mismanagement.