
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s failure to secure a temporary seat on the United Nations Security Council presents a golden opportunity for Canada to reassesses its relationship with the UN.
In the past decade, the UN has rejected Canadian bids for a two-year appointment to the Security Council by two federal governments that could not have been more different — Trudeau’s Liberals in 2020 and Stephen Harper’s Conservatives in 2010.
But the real question is, why covet these UN trinkets at all?
Why not leave the UN, as part of a global effort to create a league of democratic nations, to oppose what has become a corrupt international organization that refuses to stand up to tyrants because it is tyrants whose views now dominate the UN?
Or, if that’s a step too far, then retain Canada’s UN membership, but focus our international alliances on democracies that share our values, instead of trying to please dictators.
As the Toronto Sun’s late, great founding editor Peter Worthington wrote in 2012 in a column as relevant today as it was then, the UN is “useless … kissing the butts of every dictator who violates human rights, making speeches that are mere rhetoric and sanctioning any nonsense that is critical of the state of Israel.”
“Maybe it’s time we stopped trying to please everyone and stood up for what we believe. If the UN is miffed … perhaps it’s also time for the UN to change — to develop a little backbone when confronting tyrants.”
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See Also:
(1) Canada’s failed Security Council bid marks the death of our traditional foreign policy