News
Canada’s CHOGM boycott calls can leave it out in the cold
View(s):By Dinoo Kelleghan
Britain yesterday joined Australia in committing themselves to CHOGM in Sri Lanka but the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper signalled that he would be outside the CHOGM tent micturating inwards than inside the fold. Reporting that the Harper regime would not send a “full delegation” to Colombo in November, the US news website Huffington Post said on Friday that the decision was aimed at pleasing Sri Lankan Tamils in Canada, “a new community the Tories are going after”.
Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper: Hard-nosed, top-heavy attitude in foreign policy
Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade spokeswoman Emma Welford said it would be very difficult for the Canadian government to fully participate in the CHOGM summit. Mr Harper and his Foreign Minister, John Baird, have gone out on a limb in their sustained condemnation of Sri Lanka’s human rights record and now see a partial boycott as a natural and unavoidable extension of that stand.
It is the opposite of Australia’s policy, articulated by that country’s Foreign Minister, Bob Carr, that alienating a country is no way to effect good changes. “Any suggestion of a boycott would be counter-productive. It would simply isolate the country and render it defiant of international opinion,” Senator Carr said last week, pressed publicly on the issue.
Yesterday Australia’s visiting Immigration and Citizenship Minister Brendan O’ Connor reiterated this stand, saying “Australia will attend CHOGM and we support Sri Lanka as the host”, adding however that Sri Lanka needed to comply with commitments embodied in the LLRC report.
An Australian general election is due in September but the CHOGM stand is firmly bipartisan, with the Opposition Liberal Party saying it “we certainly should be present at CHOGM when it occurs there [in Colombo] later this year”. Downing Street officials yesterday said the British Prime Minister David Cameron had decided to come to Colombo and make a robust stand in person against Sri Lanka’s human rights record.
“We do not think that turning away from the problem is the best way to make progress in Sri Lanka. There’s nothing to suggest that not going will convince (President Mahinda) Rajapaksa he must do more,” an official said. Canada’s special envoy to the Commonwealth, Hugh Segal, hotly denied during a visit to Sri Lanka a few weeks ago that his party was pandering to the “Tamil vote bank” but the Canadian media noted at the time that the Tamils’ “concentration in certain urban ridings has made them an attractive electoral target to for both Liberal and Conservative politicians”.
Mr Harper has, in effect, challenged Sri Lanka with a series of generalised reform demands on human rights and reconciliation where benchmarks of perfection could remain forever unattained, with the threat of boycott if Canada decided its expectations were not being met.
The danger of these zero sum games is that one can end up playing alone. On Sri Lanka as well as other issues, Canada sees itself as the Lone Ranger. Its self-perception might be at fault because others see it as the lone renegade.
Canada’s largest daily, The Toronto Star, commented in late April: ” …[Just] last week, Foreign Minister John Baird declared that ‘our foreign relations record under the principled leadership of Prime Minister Harper has restored respect for Canadian principles and positions and given us a stronger role on the world stage’ . Nothing could be further from the truth. For years, our diplomats have been encountering incredulity from their foreign counterparts at the steps our policy is taking away from moderation and multilateralism. As former Canadian diplomat Dan Livermore writes, the rest of the world finds us baffling. ‘A befuddled diplomatic community, both in Canada and abroad, is asking when the real Canada will return.’ ”
This week, Mr Baird was patting himself on the back again on Canada’s “principled foreign policy” which was “not for sale for a (UN) Security Council seat”.
“We are aggressively working on humanitarian aid to the most vulnerable, including Syria; we are taking real leadership when it comes to standing up against the evil that is Iran; and no one is standing up stronger to the regime in Colombo, Sri Lanka, than this prime minister and this government,” Mr Baird said on Wednesday.
Note the language: “aggressively”, “stronger”.
The Canadian minister was explaining why his country would not run again for a Council seat, having lost out in 2010 – “the first time in the six-decade history of the UN that Canada had failed to win a seat for which it made a bid”, as the Canadian National Post reported. The loss was seen as a consequence of a rightwing evangelistic stance dictating support for Israel and discouragement of the Arab Spring reform movements.
Last month, Canada became the only non-member of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, saying it preferred to spend money on hard action instead of talkfests. Tough talk, and always intrinsically a laudable attitude in foreign policy, but one is judged by the company one is in, and being the odd one out is not generally a good way to be.
This kind of holier-than-thou attitude can well end up irritating others in CHOGM. But perhaps Harper doesn’t care any more. Canada’s current hard-nosed, top-heavy attitude in foreign policy has shifted it towards the domineering US and away from the nuanced and collegiate diplomacy of the Commonwealth.
Washington can carry off such an attitude by force majeure, but Canada might realise that, for a non-superpower or non-colonial power, you’ve got to get along to get along.
Follow @timesonlinelk
comments powered by Disqus