By Alastair Gordon, President
Canadian Coalition for Democracies
Presented at the Civitas Conference
Ottawa, May 6, 2006

Introduction

Canada’s foreign policy has been a sick puppy for at least the past 12 years. Since late 2003, the Canadian Coalition for Democracies has been working hard trying to restore a little health to the patient. Today, I would like to stretch this medical metaphor far beyond its breaking point, and possibly beyond your patience, as a way of talking about what medicine is needed to restore this country’s foreign policy to health and vitality. Canada was not always so weak and sickly on the international stage.

What is interesting to note is that a few of the medications that CCD has been trying to force-feed the Chrétien and Martin governments are being willingly administered to Foreign Affairs by the present Harper government, with results that exceed even the doctor’s expectations.

I would like to take a few minutes to look at what our Rx for Foreign Policy has consisted of, what treatments are now in place, and what remains to be done. So let me get specific about the initiatives that CCD has been promoting.

Finally, Tamil Tigers are terrorists

CCD has been consistent in calling for the designation of the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist organization, in line with the US, UK, India and now the EU. The acrobatic evasions of the Martin government on that file were pure circus. In January 2005, Former Justice Minister Irwin Cotler clumsily blurted out the ugly truth when he said, “Toronto I think has the largest number of Tamils in the Tamil diaspora than anywhere else outside of Sri Lanka, so we’ve got to be very careful just in terms of our own relationships”. In other words, bombing a school bus can only be judged right or wrong based on the number of Liberal Tamil voters in Toronto, not on its own merit. A week later, former Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew contradicted Cotler, saying that “Most of the people we’ve been consulting, including the United States State Department … are demanding that we do not do it at this time.”. A spokesperson for the US State Department dismissed that assertion, saying that the US had designated the Tigers as a terrorist organization in 1997, and would never micromanage the foreign policy of another nation.

But that’s the past. On April 10, Foreign Minster Peter MacKay designated the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist organization, just as he promised during the election, and as Stockwell Day consistently called for as Foreign Affairs Critic in the Official Opposition. But what’s policy without enforcement? Already there have been 3 police raids that seized documents purportedly relating to now-illegal Tamil Tiger fundraising in Canada. Pandering and lies have been replaced by policy and execution.

Canada’s new policy on UN Israel-bashing

Another medicine that CCD has been peddling was intended to treat “the annual ritual of politicized anti-Israel resolutions [at the United Nations]”. Surprisingly, that phrase was coined by former Prime Minister Paul Martin before the General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities (UJC) in Toronto last October. Did recognition lead to recovery? Sadly, Martin stopped at “I am a votaholic” and did not take the remaining eleven steps to recovery. In 2005, while the UN had the Jewish state on the ground beating the life out of the only democracy in the Middle East, Canada, dancing about the periphery ever eager to impress the thugs, delivered only 11 jackboot kicks to Israel, one fewer than the 12 of 2004.

CCD’s prescribed medicine was that Canada must vote ‘no’ on all anti-Israel resolutions at the UN until such time as resolutions are applied even-handedly to all players in the Middle East, not just as a weapon for bullying the very best. In March, on the first of this year’s many anti-Israel resolutions tabled at various UN forums, Peter MacKay shifted Canada’s vote at the UN Economic and Social Council from ‘abstain’ to ‘no’, standing against a tide of 41 out of 43 representatives on that forum and against his own bureaucrats. Such moral leadership must not waiver in return for group acceptance at the UN.

Get the terrorists out of Canada

CCD also prescribed the stripping of falsely obtained citizenship from those linked to terror, followed by their prompt deportation. Algerian-born Montreal resident Fateh Kamel returned to Montreal in 2005 after being released from prison in France for supplying false passports to Islamic terrorists. According to CSIS, Kamel had ties to Osama bin Laden and was the ringleader of a Montreal-based Algerian Jihadi cell, which intended to blow up Los Angeles International Airport in 1999. Also according to CSIS, Kamel “played a central role in the wave of terrorist attacks that erupted in France toward the middle of the 1990s, notably the plot to commit bomb attacks in Paris Metro stations and a series of attacks in the city of Roubaix”. At the time, opposition national security critic Peter MacKay who is now Minister of Foreign Affairs called for stripping Kamel of his Canadian citizenship. The Martin government predictably declined to act, but according to Montreal’s La Presse, the Harper government has launched a procedure to strip Fateh Kamel of his Canadian citizenship.

Our tax dollars should not fund terrorism

Perhaps most gratifying was to see the Harper government reach for the right medicine as soon as Hamas won the election and dominated the Palestinian Authority. Canada cut off funding to the openly terrorist government of Hamas (as opposed the dishonestly terrorist government of Fatah). For once Canada led the world, and may have help stiffen the spine of the European Union who followed suit.

Air India What went wrong?

With the Sikh community as well as the Tamil community, the Liberals practiced the racism of low expectations, assuming that those who share the ethnicity or religion of terrorists must also share their savagery. Based on this racist assumption, the Martin government refused to call an inquiry into the air India tragedy for fear of offending Sikh voters.

Stephen Harper and his government showed no such weakness. Following the election, Prime Minister Harper moved forward to set the terms of an inquiry into the tragedy. This past Monday, he appointed retired Supreme Court Justice John Major to head the Judicial Inquiry into the failure of our system that lead to the murder of 329 innocent people, most of them Canadians, by Sikh Terrorists and the failure of our law enforcement and judiciary to convict even one person of the murders. The only sentence handed down was a token conviction of manslaughter, a charge more appropriate for a fatal barroom brawl than the biggest premeditated mass murder in Canadian history.

What remains to be done?

So these are some of the profound improvements that we have seen since the election –improvements that will make Canada a leader on the world stage simply by doing the right thing voting the right way at the right time, denying foreign aid to terrorists, outlawing terrorist fronts in Canada, deporting terrorists and their supporters. Long before we have upgraded our military or expanded our foreign aid, these cost-free initiatives will help restore Canada’s once-ethical foreign policy. This is the stuff of global leadership, and others will follow suit.

And as the doctor says to the trembling patient once the needle is withdrawn, “There, that wasn’t so bad, now was it?”

But there is a lot that remains to be done.

Fixing a broken bureaucracy

The best policies will be derailed if there is a government bureaucracy determined to push forward its own agenda. One of the top priorities for this government must be to fix the systemic rot within the Department of Foreign Affairs and the RCMP, rot that was put in place, likely for its own electoral reasons, by the previous Martin government and that must be excised by the current government.

A few weeks ago, an internal Administrative Notice was leaked from Foreign Affairs describing the upgrading of a group within Foreign Affairs to “full operational status”. Incredibly, the name of this group is the Muslim Communities Working Group Operational Unit, or FMCG in bureaucratese. From the notice: “The group has had ever-increasing demands for operational work producing speeches for MINA [Ministry of Foreign Affairs], writing briefing notes, providing general advice, organizing consultations, and managing emerging issues such as the recent Prophet Muhammad caricatures issue Therefore, I am pleased to announce that, following consultations with USS [Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs], the Muslim Communities Working Group will now have a full operational capability.” It’s reach is described in the Administrative Notice as, “a clearing house and focal point within the Department for issues concerning relations with the Muslim world; build the Department’s policy capacity on this subject; and take the lead in providing timely, strategic advice on relations with the Muslim world, and the lead in creating a policy framework for our overall approach to this subject.” In other words, all responses and policies on any issue touching the Muslim world will be controlled by this group.

The Administrative Notice goes on to discuss “Crystal Procyshen who serves as both a policy and operations officer.” To give some flavour of the tilt this group may take, we need only to look at Ms. Procyshen’s published article entitled “Travel and Truth: A Volunteers’ Experience in Palestine”. She writes, among other anti-Israel commentary, “Since the Israelis illegaly [sic] occupied the autonomous regions of the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, they routinely torture, kill and deprive Palestinians of their rights. Under Israeli control the Palestinians have no freedom of movement, no freedom of speech or press, no jury of peers, no trials, imprisonment without just cause, no right to education, no right to an attorney, no right to property, no right to trade or profit from good [sic] crossing borders.” She attacks the people of Israel: “Israelis, in order to fulfil their political prophecies of a Zionist state… are propagating a recurring cycle of hatred towards the Palestinians as they struggle to expand the state of Israel.”

And this is a federal “policy and operations officer” for all matters that touch on the Muslim world, which surely includes Israel. And we pay her salary.

Why is there a Muslim Communities Working Group within Foreign Affairs? Is it because (1) Muslims alone are entitled to a level of influence within Foreign Affairs that is denied to all other religions, (2) Foreign Affairs believes that Islam poses such unique foreign policy challenges to Canada that a dedicated operational unit is required, or (3) It is a leftover of the last government’s pandering to any group that would help keep them in power? The answer may lie in the announcement and mandate of this group. The announcement to form such a group was made by former Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew before the National Council on Canada-Arab Relations in August 2005 following the Islamist bombing of the London transit system. In Mr. Pettigrew’s own words, this group will be charged with ” creating a course on Muslim civilization for Canadian diplomats the emphasis will be on Muslim civilization rather than on contemporary political issues”. Sorry, but we are not threatened by “Muslim civilization”. We are threatened by “contemporary political issues” within Islam. Based on such a mandate and the choice of staffing, one could conclude that pandering, not the security of Canadians, was a major factor in creating this group.

The right medicine must be the removal of this metastasized tumour from the body politic so that taxpayer-funded civil servants will again execute the will of the democratically-elected government, not their own political agendas.

China and Taiwan

Another area where Canada needs to adopt a more pro-democracy foreign policy is toward Taiwan and China. On his visit to China last year, then Prime Minister Paul Martin signed an agreement on behalf of all Canadians that “…Taiwan is an inseparable part of Chinese territory. Canada reaffirms its adherence to its One China policy.” Where does a Canadian Prime Minister get the right to determine the fate of Taiwan, a modern, prosperous democracy of 23 million people, a nation that has never, not for a week or a day or even a minute, been part of the Peoples’ Republic of China?

What changes are needed to create a Canadian foreign policy that stands for democracy over tyranny in the Far East?
- We could start by revoking our endorsement of the One China policy, an action comparable to China and the US signing an agreement ending Canada’s independence within North America.
- We could allow elected representatives from Taiwan to visit Canada.
Canada could reverse its policy of offering preferential, developing-nation tariffs to a manufacturing giant like China, while charging full rate for Taiwanese imports.
- Canada could support Taiwan’s entry into the World Health Organization, against the bullying of China.
- And finally, Canada could end its approximately $60 million per year in foreign aid to China, a country with the world’s largest army, a GDP over $7 trillion, and 700 missiles aimed at peaceful, democratic Taiwan.

The last government has never, to my knowledge, explained to Canadians who benefits from our China policy. With the balance of trade overwhelmingly in China’s favour, it isn’t Canadian workers. And it certainly isn’t the advance of democracy and national sovereignty in the Far East. We can all speculate on what motivated Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien to be so accommodating of China to the point of selling out a democratic ally. And we can all hope that those reasons no longer motivate the present government to continue this practice.

End funding to UNRWA

Now back to the Middle East. Canada has poured one third of a billion dollars into the Palestinian territories. Yet today, there is more violence, hatred, incitement and dependency than ever. When a medicine produces such deadly adverse effects and no demonstrable benefit, a competent doctor will consider a strategy other than continually increasing the dosage as demanded by the addicted patient and his friends.

On this subject, Peter MacKay once again showed global leadership, when he led the world in cutting funding to the Hamas-dominated Palestinian Authority.

But the PA is not the only problem. Canada’s decision to continue funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) at a level of $10 million per year is little different from funding Hamas directly. There is a mountain of evidence, including an admission by UNRWA’s former secretary general, that UNRWA employs Hamas members, that UNRWA assets including ambulances are used for terrorist attacks against Israel, and that incitement and hatred at the daily staple at schools in UNRWA camps. After 60 years, the status of refugees under UNRWA is worse than ever. In short, UNRWA’s actions have been not to solve the Palestinian refugee problem, but to perpetuate and inflame it as part of the Arab strategy to destroy Israel.

Canada must end funding to UNRWA until such time as UNRWA’s mandate is aligned with that of UNHCR, the agency responsible for all the world’s refugees except Palestinians, and until the hiring criteria for UNRWA matches the hiring criteria for UNHCR. In other words, no terrorists on the payroll. Even better, as head of the Refugee Working Group of nations, Canada is in an ideal position to pressure the other nations bankrolling UNRWA to make these demands, or to collapse UNRWA and place the Palestinians under UNHCR who will hopefully, as they have done in most other situations, peacefully resettle those under their charge.

Bring more democracy to the United Nations

Canada has rightly called for reform of the United Nations, a forum that has become dominated by non-democratic nations. Yet Canada has failed to promote India’s entry as a permanent member of the security Council, just as Canada joins with undemocratic China in opposing Taiwan’s entry as a member of the General Assembly. Could there be better role models for aspiring democracies than India, a nation with 23 official languages united under the world’s largest democracy, and Taiwan, a nation that has moved on its own from civil war through military dictatorship to full parliamentary democracy? Let us hope that this government sees the value in giving these democratic success stories a voice at the United Nations.

The end (finally)

We have entered a new era in foreign relations, one in which someone finally realized that the old medicine was killing, not curing, the patient. There is work left to do, but we have witnessed one hell of a start! We look forward to more of the same.

Thank you.
Alastair Gordon

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