Funding Planned Parenthood, but not abortion

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, September 22, 2011 at 1:14 PM - 18 Comments

A few months ago, Conservative MP Brad Trost was boasting that the government had “defunded” Planned Parenthood. But after more than a year of public waffling, the CBC reports that the government is about to approve funding for the group.

International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda has decided to approve a proposal by the International Planned Parenthood Federation to provide sex education and contraception in five developing countries…

The proposal gets around the thorny issue of abortion by asking for money for sex education and contraception services, and does not include abortion services. The funding is worth $6 million over three years for Planned Parenthood to work in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Mali, Sudan and Tanzania, where abortions are illegal except in cases where the mother’s life is at risk.

Jaw-jaw v. War-war

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 6, 2011 at 11:55 AM - 26 Comments

Roland Paris considers the Prime Minister’s comments on soldiers and arguments.

Turning back to Libya, it is true that Gaddafi needed to be confronted, because he had paid little heed to international demands that he stop attacking Libyan citizens. But Harper’s remarks yesterday went further. Indeed, he came close to lampooning the idea of diplomacy itself. Who needs a “mouthful of arguments” if you can land a good punch? It doesn’t take much imagination to hear the snickering behind that quotation.

Nor does it take much imagination to think of alternative quotations Harper could have used in his speech. Here’s one, for example, from a man who certainly knew how to land a punch, and whom the prime minister himself has described as “incomparable”: Winston Churchill.  The incomparable Churchill famously said this: “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.” That comes from someone who understood the terrible price of war.

See previously: Handful of soldiers v. mouthful of arguments and Soldiers, arguments and revolution

What about the whole Communist thing?

By Paul Wells - Friday, July 22, 2011 at 9:30 AM - 36 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

So John Baird went to China and everybody wrung their hands. What about human rights, minister? What about the Chinese people under the Communist jackboot?

“No more Stephen Harper vowing not to sell out human rights for ‘the almighty dollar,’ ” Rod Mickleburgh wrote in the Globe and Mail. “No more Jason Kenney lavishing praise on the Dalai Lama and private meetings between His Holiness and Mr. Harper.”

No indeed. Baird, Harper’s new foreign minister, tipped his hand in a Toronto speech before his three-day trip to China. “China is incredibly important to our future prosperity,” he said. “My government gets it and as Canada’s new minister of foreign affairs, I get it.”

Ah. And what about the whole Communist thing? “Even the best of friends can have legitimate differences of opinion,” the minister said.

Continue…

Playing footsie with Beijing

By Charlie Gillis - Friday, July 22, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 31 Comments

Andy Wong/AP

Birthday greetings are nice, but when you’re the governing party of a Western country that has styled itself as a defender of human rights, you might think twice about firing off happy returns to the authoritarian rulers of 1.3 billion people. The message is liable to get used in ways you never intended.

That’s what happened a couple of weeks back with a congratulatory letter the federal Conservatives sent the Communist Party of China, marking the organization’s 90th anniversary. State news agencies in China seized on the note, which was signed by Tory party president John Walsh and looked ahead optimistically to “future relations between the two parties,” as proof that political movements around the world are celebrating the birth of Chinese Communism.

Conservative party officials did not return calls for comment, but if they thought the gesture might slide by unnoticed, they were wrong. Dermod Travis, executive director of the Canada Tibet Committee (CTC), demanded that the party retract “the flattering, backslapping words,” and wondered aloud why the idea failed to set off alarms at Conservative headquarters. “Someone should be wise enough to appreciate that the [Communist] regime only maintains power through military oppression,” he said in a statement. “It doesn’t deserve congratulations, but rebuke.”

Continue…

Why Harper wants to take on the world

By Paul Wells - Friday, July 15, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 234 Comments

SEAN KILPATRICK/CP

“When I have something to say, I’ll tell you,” Stephen Harper said at one of his first news conferences as Prime Minister in 2006. Very well then. What has he been telling us since he won a majority on May 2?

In two important speeches and an interview with my boss at this magazine, Harper has given important hints, and left open important questions, about his plans for the country. A surprising amount of what he’s said has to do with foreign policy.

I don’t want to overstate this. In two speeches to Conservative partisans, at the party’s Ottawa convention on June 10, and again at the Calgary Stampede on July 9, Harper spoke first about more familiar subjects: his party’s electoral success and the economy. But Canada’s place in the world has grown as a theme until these days foreign policy is one of Harper’s big applause lines. He clearly sees it as a way to sharpen the contrast between his party and its opponents, to Conservatives’ advantage.

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Don’t call it a doctrine (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 5:08 PM - 19 Comments

John Baird dismisses a Palestinian bid to have statehood recognized by the United Nations.

“We think it’s distinctly unhelpful to seek a public-relations declaration within the UN General Assembly. Obviously, it would be without any meaning,” Baird said Monday … “We believe that statehood should be the product of a negotiated permanent peace with security for both the Palestinian and Israeli people.”

He said he’d be thrilled to welcome a new Palestinian state, but only after peaceful negotiations with Israel. Baird also affirmed the Harper government’s unwavering support for the Jewish state, which has sparked criticism in the past. ”Canada has taken strong, principled stands with respect to supporting liberal democracies, and with respect to this issue,” he said. ”There has been certainly a change under the leadership of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and I certainly wouldn’t see us changing on that regard.”

Don’t call it a doctrine

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 3:57 PM - 11 Comments

John Baird proudly announces a boycott of the UN conference on disarmament on account of North Korea’s chairmanship.

“Our government has consistently taken a principled approach to dealing with North Korea’s nuclear aspirations. As a result, today we are suspending our participation in the UN Conference on Disarmament.

“North Korea is simply not a credible chair of this UN body. The regime is a major proliferator of nuclear weapons and its non-compliance with its disarmament obligations goes against the fundamental principles of this committee. This undermines the integrity of both the disarmament framework and the UN. Canada will not be party to that.”

Liberal foreign affairs critic Dominic LeBlanc is unimpressed. Continue…

Meanwhile, in Libya

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 26, 2011 at 1:28 PM - 15 Comments

While the NATO mission grinds on, officials confirm that Canadian jets have dropped 240 laser-guided bombs on Libyan targets so far. David Pugliese reported last week that each bomb costs approximately $100,000 and that the Defence Department has ordered another 1,300.

In other news, Foreign Affairs confirms that Canada has been in contact with the Libyan Transitional National Council.

Lawrence Cannon says goodbye

By macleans.ca - Monday, May 9, 2011 at 4:20 PM - 11 Comments

Outgoing Foreign Affairs minister Lawrence Cannon bid farewell to his post in Ottawa on Monday. He was defeated on the May 2nd election by an NDP candidate in his Western Quebec riding of Pontiac. Mr. Cannon entered the cabinet post with no international experience in 2008. In a speech at his department’s headquarters, he argued he would not have changed “one iota” in Canada’s failed campaign for a seat on the United Nations Security Council.  “The force of the instinct for democracy can sometimes surprise us, as has been the case in Tunisia, in Egypt, in Libya, and Syria – and I’m almost tempted to add, in Pontiac,” Mr. Cannon said. “But I don’t think anybody ever thought of me as Maniwaki Gadhafi.” Mr. Cannon was the longest-serving foreign minister since Lloyd Axworthy in the 1990s.

Globe and Mail

Foreign aid accountability: Poland vs. Canada

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 12:59 PM - 18 Comments

Researching this story on Polish support for the democratic opposition in Belarus, I called up a contact at the Polish embassy in Ottawa. Within a couple of hours, he sent me personal cell phone numbers for the relevant deputy ministers working on the file. The Polish ambassador invited me to come by for a chat. Did I want to interview Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski? No problem.

You might find this unremarkable. Surely most ministries want to publicize the work they do. You would be wrong — at least if we’re talking about Canada and its current government. In the past five years, I’ve spoken on the record with precisely one person at Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs who wasn’t a spokesperson reciting usually banal and evasive talking points that someone else had written.

As it happens, Canada also says it is supporting democracy in Belarus. It pledged $400,000 to the cause in February. Of this, $100,000 was pegged to support Belsat, a Belarusian language television station based in Warsaw and broadcasting into Belarus. I contacted Belsat in March and was told they hadn’t received the money. Continue…

Edge and muscle

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 11:48 AM - 40 Comments

Bob Rae considers the events in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and Iran.

We need to develop a more effective strategy to deal with this brutality and repression.  The promotion of human rights and democracy needs some edge and some muscle.  More help to those willing to fight the fight, more consequences for regimes unwilling to change.  It is not easy to craft such a strategy, because democracy can never be seen as a foreign import, but the reality of real engagement by a courageous people can’t be met with only goodwill, let alone indifference.

Flying into trouble

By Chris Sorensen and Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 at 10:10 AM - 62 Comments

Using its Airbus A380s, Emirates wants to offer daily flights to Toronto; Rovinescu accuses Emirates of being a foreign predator | Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg/Getty Images; Darryl Dyck/CP

In early October, Canada’s armed forces learned they had just one month to pack up and move a key Mideast military base used to support the war in Afghanistan. Located in the United Arab Emirates, Camp Mirage has been used primarily as a transfer point for Canadian Forces flying to and from Kandahar. For the past eight years, it had provided the Forces with a safe place to land and refuel hulking Hercules transport planes while weary soldiers relaxed at a makeshift camp, complete with a ball-hockey rink.

But the desert oasis, a short drive from Dubai’s beaches and air-conditioned shopping malls, ceased to be part of the military’s operations as of Nov. 3, following a high-level spat between Ottawa and the U.A.E. over commercial airline flights between the two countries.

It was an abrupt end to a long-standing strategic relationship between the countries, and it sent the military scrambling. “It’s a pain in the ass for all these guys who are supposed to be doing other things,” says Douglas Bland, the chair of defence management studies at the School of Policy Studies at Queen’s University. “Now they have to stop, pack up and move all of this equipment.” At no small cost: by some estimates $300 million.

Continue…

Dress warmly, and watch out for the mice

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, November 18, 2010 at 12:20 PM - 0 Comments

Getty Images

It seems that if you can make it at the Canadian Consulate General in New York City, you can make it anywhere. Richard Kurland, a Vancouver-based immigration lawyer and policy analyst, has uncovered—thanks to an access-to-information request—troubling details about the working conditions at the Consulate General’s visa office in the Big Apple.

According to the annual report, staff working in the basement office at 1251 Avenue of the Americas are often forced to wear their winter jackets and scarves to deal with temperatures dipping as low as 15° C. Air quality is “uncertain,” the report states: “Studies conducted several years ago were inconclusive.” Employees there have complained about a lack of natural light, which affects morale. Sanitation is also questionable; a fleet of mice has invaded the dank quarters, and are often seen scurrying about, leaving droppings on peoples’ desks. Extermination attempts have “proven unsuccessful.” A spokesperson from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade told Maclean’s that they are “aware of the issues” and have “consulted with the landlord and taken steps to correct the situation.”

Still, Kurland is “shocked” by his findings, and that the complaints have not been fully addressed. “I’d expect to see this in a Canadian operation in the Third World, but not in New York,” he says. Kurland hopes his discovery will shed light on the challenges that can arise in Canada’s embassies. “Enforcement of Canadian standards regarding workplace issues stops at the Canadian border,” he says. “People think that it’s all champagne and fancy dinners overseas, but sometimes you’re relegated to the basement and dining on ‘rats-a-roni.’ ”

Who is the real Omar Khadr?

By Michael Friscolanti - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 71 Comments

Michelle Shephard/Toronto Star

In exchange for another eight years in prison—and the chance to be a free man in Canada long before that—Omar Khadr consented to a long list of strict conditions. He cannot sue the U.S. government for damages, regardless of how many torture sessions he may (or may not) have endured inside the barbed-wire walls of Guantánamo Bay. He will never step foot on American soil for as long as he lives. And he is not allowed to profit one penny from public speaking tours or movie deals or anything else that would involve selling his saga to the highest bidder. Any such proceeds, the agreement says, will go straight “to the Government of Canada.”

Khadr has read a lot of books during his stint behind bars (from steamy Danielle Steele novels to Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom), and his pen pals include an English professor at an Edmonton university. But when he signed his name to that seven-page plea deal on Oct. 13, he received a first-hand lesson in the meaning of irony: the same government that spent many years and millions of dollars fighting to keep him out of Canada now owns the exclusive rights to his life story.

Continue…

'It is time to earn back our place in the world'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 2, 2010 at 1:55 PM - 0 Comments

Michael Ignatieff lays out his foreign policy vision to an audience in Montreal.

But none of this will be possible without the talents of every Canadian. Foreign policy is no longer reserved for diplomats, development workers, and soldiers. We used to talk about a “whole-of-government” approach. Our Global Networks Strategy requires a “whole-of-Canada” approach instead.

The next generation of Canadians will be the most international ever. Young people studying and working abroad will be Canada’s best ambassadors, and their experiences will shape the future of our country. We must rebuild our leadership in the world so that our young people can be proud again to live in a country that helps to improve our world.

And we must always support the youth of this country, when they go abroad to serve Canada. They are our finest representatives.

In the centre of our engagement with the world, we must restore our finest Canadian traditions, inspired by peace, justice, and mutual aid. We must show the world – and ourselves – that Canada can inspire us again.

A holy man with an eye for connections

By John Geddes - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Cole Garside/ Mike Cassese/Reuters

Of two notable speeches from very different Muslim leaders scheduled this month for influential audiences in Canada, only one was delivered. In Ottawa, Zijad Delic, executive director of the Canadian Islamic Congress, had been asked to speak at National Defence headquarters, but that invitation was revoked by Defence Minister Peter MacKay over charges that the congress’s leaders have taken extremist positions in the past (even though Delic is widely seen as a moderate). There was never any doubt, however, that the second speech would go off without a hitch. The Aga Khan, hereditary leader of the world’s 15 million Ismaili Muslims, gave the Institute for Canadian Citizenship’s annual LaFontaine-Baldwin lecture in Toronto with his customary cosmopolitan suavity.

The contrast in the tale of the two speeches is not one that the diplomatic Aga Khan, or his expanding network in Canada, might want to highlight. Yet his ability to present himself, and Ismailis in general, as a constructive, non-threatening face of Islam is a striking achievement in an era when other Muslim groups often struggle even to be heard. It’s nothing new. For five decades, His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan has championed pluralism, and Ismailis have earned a reputation as quick adapters in societies that welcome diversity, including Canada. “I am impressed by the fact that some 44 per cent of Canadians today are of neither French nor British descent,” he said in Toronto, praising the Canadian example as “an asset of enormous global value.”

Continue…

Coyne v. Wells: Canada's place in the world

By Paul Wells and Andrew Coyne - Friday, October 22, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Brian Howell

Last week, Maclean’s hosted a round-table discussion titled “Canada’s Conservative Government: Radical Change or Drift?” at Vancouver’s Norman Rothstein Theatre. The panel included Keith Martin, a Liberal MP, Deborah Grey, the Reform party’s first elected member of Parliament, Monte Solberg, a former Conservative party cabinet minister, and Michael Byers, a professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of British Columbia. The debate, which focused on the Harper government’s record on the economy, social policy and foreign affairs, was moderated by CPAC’s Peter Van Dusen and included Maclean’s Paul Wells and Andrew Coyne. What follows is an excerpt of that evening’s discussion.

Andrew Coyne: I’m not frankly weeping in my beer that we didn’t get a seat on the Security Council, but it does suggest there’s not exactly a very strong, clear foreign policy agenda with this country, with this government. They do seem to be kind of all over the map on this, so the fact that they went for this Security Council seat, even though everyone knows Harper’s not particularly fond of the UN, seems to me to suggest a certain incoherence. I guess they thought they could pick it up easily, but they wind up with this complete egg all over their face.

And on Afghanistan, in the early years of this government, they were very firm in saying, “We’re not going to cut and run, we’re not going to have artificial agendas, we’re going to stay and finish the job.” And in the middle of the 2008 election, at a breakfast for reporters, I think it was, [Harper] completely turns over the policy and adopts the policy of the Bloc Québécois.

Continue…

Who loves Iran?

By Michael Petrou - Friday, August 27, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images

Canadian invitees to conferences hosted by the Iranian government this spring and summer, aimed at burnishing the country’s image, included a former candidate for the Green Party of Canada and Ontario, as well as a University of Alberta professor.

On Aug. 2 and 3, more than 1,000 Iranian expatriates were welcomed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the “Grand Conference of Iranians Living Abroad” in Tehran. Successful and well-placed Iranians were identified by Iranian embassies, and then offered an all-expenses-paid trip to the conference, with a side trip to a tourist destination. Organizer Mohammad Sharif Malekzadeh said expats are exposed to negative images about Iran because of “lying media organizations outside the country.” The conference would correct this misconception. But according to Potkin Azarmehr, an Iranian blogger based in London, its purpose was to demoralize Iranians “by hiring and bribing a mish-mash of sycophants and turncoats, to say to the Iranian people, despite all their suffering and sacrifices, Ahmadinejad’s administration and not them enjoy widespread support outside Iran.”

Continue…

Fanfare for the Commonwealth

By Patricia Treble - Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

Getty Images

When Kamalesh Sharma, the Commonwealth’s secretary-general, met Sen. Hugh Segal during a June visit to Ottawa, the Canadian politician thought it was for a chat about the 54-nation group, of which he’s an outspoken proponent. Instead, it was a discreet job interview. Last week, Sharma announced Segal was one of 10 members of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group (EPG), tasked with setting out “decisive recommendations on how to strengthen the Commonwealth” and ensure it “remains relevant to its times.”

Continue…

Take their word for it

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, July 5, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

Two new allegations of detainee abuse come to light in British court proceedings.

Canadian officials say the abuse allegations, from last summer, were promptly investigated and found groundless: An internal probe by Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security exonerated the NDS interrogator involved. They contend the handling of the allegations demonstrates that Canadian safeguards in detecting claims of abuse and demanding investigations are working…

In a series of exchanges with The Globe and Mail, both the Canadian Forces and the Foreign Affairs Department declined to provide any substantiation or documents, from either the initial follow-up visit that produced the allegations of abuse or the subsequent NDS investigation that dismissed them, to buttress the conclusion that the Afghan detainees had lied about being beaten and that the interrogators had been properly investigated and cleared.

Tehran's Toronto front: The Canadian government responds

By Michael Petrou - Wednesday, April 21, 2010 at 3:05 PM - 3 Comments

The Iranian chargé d’affaires was called in by Foreign Affairs today to discuss the “Center for Iranian Studies,” an institution in Toronto that describes itself as a non-governmental organization promoting Iranian culture and scholarship.

As reported here last week, the centre was founded by a former Iranian diplomat and is still funded by the Iranian embassy. According to a letter signed by eight Iranian academics at Toronto universities, the institution has been contacting Iranian students in Toronto to offer Farsi classes and funding for cultural activities. Continue…

Meanwhile, at committee…

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 4:46 PM - 7 Comments

A Foreign Affairs official directs blame at the military leadership.

Cory Anderson, a diplomat with three years’ experience on the Afghan file, told a Commons committee today the May, 2007, revamp of Canada’s detainee transfer agreement with Afghanistan was instrumental in improving the ability to track and monitor detainees transferred by Canadian soldiers.

But he went on to criticize the military for repeatedly declining to use close connections to Afghanistan’s intelligence service to make it easier for diplomats to conduct inspections that ensure transferred prisoners aren’t tortured. Mr. Anderson said the revamped May, 2007, agreement resulted in a two-tier system that left Foreign Affairs to fend for itself in monitoring.

More from Canadian Press.

What might have been (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, March 12, 2010 at 2:08 PM - 10 Comments

The Globe looks at the concerns within NATO in late 2006.

A memo obtained by The Globe and Mail shows that in 2006 the federal government was briefed on a lobbying campaign by NATO allies aimed at getting the Kabul government to create stronger safeguards for detainees after prisoner abuses elsewhere. “London, The Hague and Canberra [Australia] are deeply concerned about the absence of solid legal protections for detainees, which – in the age of Gitmo and Abu Ghraib – imperils domestic support for the Afghanistan mission,” said the memo of Dec. 4, 2006, written by diplomat Richard Colvin.

The memo was written after consultation with Catherine Bloodworth, a Foreign Affairs colleague, as well as the military attaché in Canada’s Kabul embassy. It was approved by David Sproule – then Canada’s ambassador to Afghanistan – and was e-mailed to dozens of officials at Foreign Affairs, the Privy Council Office and National Defence.

How to give

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 12:45 PM - 1 Comment

The Department of Foreign Affairs has an online guide to giving, including a list of reputable organizations. Those inside the Queensway can rally around the newly formed Hill Helps Haiti group. CIDA has announced that the federal government will match all donations and explains here how that will work.