Canada's New (Conservative) Foreign Policy

[Edward Campbell]

The problem, my Caledonian friend, is that the "hate and fear China" lobby is based on filthy lucre: specifically the Pentagon and the defence industrial base. There are a lot of good paying jobs at stake. And yes, I recognize that the Americans were selling oil to the Japanese until mid 1941.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the National Post, is a column by Lorne Gunter that makes a good point about the qualifications of the Nobel laureates about whom I complained yesterday:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/09/29/lorne-gunter-a-peace-prize-doesn%E2%80%99t-make-you-an-expert/

Lorne Gunter: A Peace Prize doesn’t make you an expert

Lorne Gunter

Sep 29, 2011

When I read Wednesday that the Nobel Women’s Initiative had managed to round up eight winners of the Peace Prize to condemn attempts by a Canadian company to build a pipeline from Alberta’s oil sands to refineries on the Gulf coast in Texas, my first thought was, “I hope for their sake they haven’t resurrected Rigoberta Menchu.”

But they had.

Menchu is a Mayan who was active in the resistance by her people against the violence and repression they suffered at the hands of Guatemala’s junta in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. She won the 1992 Nobel Peace prize for her 1983 memoir I, Rigoberta Menchu, a harrowing expose of the brutality apparently inflicted upon her and her family by Guatemalan death squads. Menchu allegedly dictated the book to a journalist because she had been denied schooling and was illiterate.

Except that rather than being a poor peasant, Menchu actually came from a fairly well-to-do family and instead of being illiterate, had attended a fairly expensive elementary school and junior high. Much of the rest of her story was made up, too.

When the long list of erroneous claims came to light, Menchu’s response was to dismiss her critics as racists and insist they were motivated to undermine efforts by indigenous people around the world to defend their human rights.

But even if Menchu’s Nobel had been awarded for bona fide reasons, what does a Central American resistance fighter know about Canada’s oil sands or the ecological merits of a pipeline?

The eight laureates signing Wednesday’s letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper include no scientists, even though they make such quasi-scientific claims as “further exploitation of the tar sands will dramatically increase the amount of greenhouse gas emissions being produced in North America.”

Really? Man-made carbon emissions account for somewhere around 5% of total annual carbon emissions. The rest (95%) come mostly from the oceans and decaying plants. Just 2% of man-made emissions come from Canada and just 5% of that 2% comes from oil sands. In other words, just .1% of man-made emissions worldwide come from the oil sands — and total man-made emissions are a tiny fraction of the total! The oil sands’ total emissions globally? Zero point zero zero five percent. Even a doubling of that amount would hardly be “dramatic.”

In addition to the storyteller Menchu, the signatories include an Argentine sculptor, architect and self-described pacifist, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who did great work on behalf of victims of Argentina’s “Dirty War,” but who has no special expertise on pipelines and the environment.

There is also Desmond Tutu, the South African clergyman and anti-apartheid activist, Jose Ramos-Horta, the president of East Timor who won a Nobel for speaking out against Indonesia’s oppression of his country, Jody Williams, an anti-land mines activist, Shirin Edabi, a Iranian lawyer and brave critic of her country’s fanatical Muslim oligarchy and Mairead Maguire and Betty Williams, a pair of Irish peace activists who helped end the Troubles in their homeland. (Maguire has since become active in the Palestinian resistance against Israel and was on board a ship in the Gaza flotilla that sought to break the Israeli blockade last June.)

None of this disqualifies any of the signatories from having an opinion about the Keystone XL pipeline. Still, it is curious that whenever physicists or mathematicians or geologists who are not climatologists have dissenting opinions about global warming and climate change, we are instructed by the climate-science community to disregard their opinions because they are not experts. Yet when non-climatologists who agree with the current dogma on climate change — like David Suzuki the geneticist or Al Gore the career politician or Jody Williams, the English-as-a-second-language teacher — governments are to bow down before their wisdom and turn over the formation of public policy to environmentalists.

National Post

Of course, everyone, even Nobel laureates, is entitled to an opinion but the Government of Canada is also entitled, indeed duty bound to "consider the source," including, in this case, the scientific credentials of Rigoberta Menchu, Desmond Tutu and Jody Williams.

There are some fights that these good, well intentioned people might have fought, this one, for example. ("International pressure is growing on Iran to overturn a death sentence imposed on a Christian pastor for apostasy ... [who] faces death by hanging for refusing to abandon his Christian faith ... [he] was born a Muslim but became a Christian after his 19th birthday. Under Iran’s version of sharia law that makes him an apostate ..." Apostasy is a capital crime.) But opposing the oil sands is easier.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Following on in the same vein here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the National Post is a rather snarly editorial about some Canadians' self depreciation:

http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/Tales+reputation+demise/5480476/story.html

Tales of our reputation's demise ...

National Post

Sept. 30, 2011

f you ever want to be reminded of what Canada's foreign-policy consensus was back during the Liberal era, Paul Heinbecker is your man. Mr. Heinbecker served as Canada's UN ambassador under Jean Chrétien. And since then, he's made a career of telling his successors what they're doing wrong - primarily in the pages of The Globe and Mail.

Mr. Heinbecker's big message has been that Canada needs to engage with the world and stop being so picky about who's on the other side of the negotiating table: Getting Back in the Game (the title of his 2009 book) should be our foreign-policy goal, not supporting Israel or the United States, or advancing other "ideological" (his word) objectives.

In 2006, for instance, when Stephen Harper's government properly sided with Israel after its soldiers had been attacked and kidnapped by the terrorist group Hezbollah, Mr. Heinbecker scolded the Conservatives for "staking out a one-sided position," ignoring Israel's "disproportionate response" and thereby endangering our "reputation" on the world stage.

"Canada has a well-earned reputation precisely for being fair-minded and principled, because we have brought a constructive attitude to international problem-solving," he argued. "That reputation is why Canadians (and not only Canadians) sew the Maple Leaf on their backpacks."

The only solution, Mr. Heinbecker concluded was for Mr. Harper to "criticize intransigence on both sides" - Israel and Hezbollah alike. "Otherwise, [our] government's decisions will be neither popular nor meritorious, just ideological."

In 2009, when Canada voted down a UN Human Rights Council resolution singling out Israel, the Globe cited Mr. Heinbecker's views as evidence that Canada had isolated itself "in a small club of key Israel allies, along with the United States and a few South Pacific nations." Separately, Mr. Heinbecker also fretted about "the cumulative effect of change in Canadian policies, including Middle East votes, our climate change policy, and the policy of aid concentration, which lessens the connections with Canada of a large number of countries."

And Mr. Heinbecker is not alone: The idea that Canada has somehow lost its global "reputation" thanks to Mr. Harper's more "ideological" (i.e. principled) foreign policy was seized on by Michael Ignatieff when Canada's UN Security Council bid was about to be defeated by a cynical EU seat grab. ("This is a government that for four years has basically ignored the United Nations and now is suddenly showing up saying, 'Hey, put us on the council,'" the then-Liberal leader declared in September.) NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar added that the defeat was "devastating for our country's reputation. We've lost our credibility." (True to form, Mr. Heinbecker himself blamed the defeat on our Middle East policies: "We followed policies that are frankly and strongly in support of the government of Israel.... There are 57 votes in the Arab and Islamic community.")

You see the theme here, right? Canada, once a bastion of the multilaterally virtuous, now has become an international pariah because of a government driven by pro-American, Zionist, unilateralist, anti-UN "ideology." Our reputation? It's in the septic tank, out behind the Israeli embassy.

And we're kind of curious what Mr. Heinbecker et al. thinks of a new global survey, conducted by a New York-based reputation-management firm, of international perceptions of Canada and 49 other countries. Our spot? #1.

"Canada has earned the highest reputation ranking in Reputation Institute's 2011 Country RepTrak," says the press release. "The study measures the overall Trust, Esteem, Admiration and Good Feelings the public holds towards these countries, as well as their perceptions across 16 different attributes, including a good quality of life, a safe place to live and a strong attention to their environment. Results from over 42,000 respondents worldwide showed that Canada scored well in all of these elements.... Canada was followed by Sweden, Australia, Switzerland and New Zealand, all showing stability in their high scores throughout the three years of this annual study. Their strong reputations are attributed to their steady democracies, high GDP per capita, focus on active lifestyles, well developed political systems and perceived neutrality to international political upheavals."

Interestingly, Canada ranked only fourth on self-perception (behind New Zealand, Australia and Finland). Apparently, we don't think of ourselves as being quite as great as others do. Maybe that's because of politicians and pundits who assure us - wrongly, it turns out - that the principled foreign policy of Stephen Harper's government is wrecking our international image.

Now, I am no fan of Paul Heinbecker; I thought he was a second rate public servant who gave the government poor advice and represented Canada poorly. But we need to understand him in his time. Heinbecker is a creature of the 1970s, when our foreign ministry, then the Department of External Affairs, was undergoing great change: the Heeney/Pearson/Wrong generation was gone, along with their attitudes which included a "commitment" to Western values and, therefore, to Israel.

L. to r.: (seated) Dwight D. Eisenhower, Louis St. Laurent; (standing)
H. Hume Wrong, L.B. Pearson, John Foster Dulles during the Prime Minister's visit
to Washington in May, 1953.
Source: http://www.international.gc.ca/department/history-histoire/dcer/1953/illustrations-en.asp

Inside External the Arabists were on the rise, led, intellectually, by e.g. Edward Said, in the USA, and Peyton Lyon in Canada. The Arabists or Orienmtalists were not, necessarily, anti-Semitic but many found it hard to hide their distaste for Jews, in general. Most Arabists concluded that the Balfour Declaration was, fundamentally, wrong - and act of policy vandalism, at best, a payoff (with someone else's money (land)) to the Rothschilds, at worst - and that Israel itself, its very existence, was and still is  wrong. In my view Heinbecker simply adapted, in the '70s and '80s, as he rose up through the ranks, to the new climate, in his department and, broadly, in government, which was pro-Arab and, quietly, vaguely anti-Semitic.

But:

  :boring:

 

[ballz]

About those oil sands...

A couple days ago when they had those protests at Parliament Hill over this pipeline to Texas, the World Health Organization ironically published a report on clean air in the world.... http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2011/09/26/air-pollution-who-ahvaz.html

Canada is tied for 3rd place with Australia. The two countries that rank ahead of them have a combined population of less than 2 million.

Fort McMurray (9*) has better-than-the-Canadian average (13*) air quality. In fact, it has better air quality than the top 2 countries as well (both at 11* and 12*)

* - annual average micrograms per cubic metre

 

[Edward Campbell]

But just to show that pettiness is never in short supply in our foreign ministry, I offer this this, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/baird-demands-gold-drops-canada-from-foreign-affairs-business-card/article2185969/

Baird demands gold, drops 'Canada' from Foreign Affairs business card

DEAN BEEBY
Ottawa— The Canadian Press

Published Friday, Sep. 30, 2011

John Baird has set a new gold standard for business cards.

The Conservative Foreign Affairs Minister demanded – and got – gold embossing on his business cards shortly after being shuffled into the portfolio last May, contrary to government rules.

Mr. Baird then ordered the word “Canada” dropped from the standard design, also against federal policy.

And he insisted that “Lester B. Pearson Building” be removed from the standard street address for Foreign Affairs’ headquarters in Ottawa, thereby erasing the name of a former Liberal prime minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner.

The controversial changes initially provoked resistance from the senior Foreign Affairs bureaucrats who are responsible for implementing policies on government branding.

But in the end, Mr. Baird won a temporary exemption from the rules – and got his way.

A gold-embossed Canadian coat of arms now glistens from his unilingual English business cards, which lack the wordmark “Canada,” a federal branding design that features a small Canadian flag above the last letter.

With the disappearance of the large “Canada,” the biggest type on the card now is “The Honourable John Baird, P.C., M.P.”

E-mails, invoices, memos, letters and other documents detailing the gold-card caper were obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.

The minister “is requesting to have his business cards in English only, as they have always been in the past,” says a June e-mail from Annik Lapratte-Goulet, personal assistant to Mr. Baird.

“Also, the coats of arms should be embossed, with the gold ink, also at the Minister’s request.”

Mr. Baird’s insistence on removing “Lester B. Pearson” was quietly accepted, but his further request to remove “Canada” raised alarms.

“We are ... concerned about the removal of the Canada wordmark,” said one official. “As mentioned before, this is a Treasury Board requirement.”

Said another: “The (gold) coloured coat of arms and the removal of the Canada wordmark is not a good practice.”

And another: “None of these additional requests follow the TBS (Treasury Board Secretariat) rules. ... Although we can certainly continue to advise and express our concerns, we will not be able to hold off on these for long.”

Nervous public servants went so far as to draw up a “disclaimer” sheet to be signed by Mr. Baird’s chief of staff that would formally acknowledge the minister’s office was advised against the measures.

The disclaimer noted that Treasury Board over the years has revised standards, dropping some expensive practices: “Among the casualties were the costly and difficult practices of using gold foil or full colour reproductions of the Arms of Canada on ministerial stationery.”

It added: “The wordmark (Canada) is a requirement for ministers, parliamentary secretaries and their offices. ... It is worth noting that the prime minister and his office follow these standards.”

After applying pressure, however, Mr. Baird’s office was eventually granted a temporary exemption from federal identification rules, allowing him to use the non-standard business cards.

Foreign Affairs soon printed two types, one without gold embossing, with English on one side and French on the verso, for $197.75.

The other has gold embossing on a mostly unilingual English card, with the reverse blank, for $424.88. Quantities are blacked out in the released documents to protect commercial confidences.

Both versions lack the large “Canada” wordmark or any reference to the Pearson building, though “Canada” appears in small type in the street address.

The Canada wordmark was adopted by the federal government in 1980 as an official logo, and is mandated on most government communications.

Mr. Baird ruffled feathers at Foreign Affairs in June when he ordered a pair of historic paintings by Quebec modern master Alfred Pellan removed from the lobby of the Pearson building. They were replaced with a photo of the Queen in time for the summer visit of newlyweds Prince William and Kate.

The paintings had hung in the lobby since 1973, when the Queen herself opened the building. Mr. Baird later ordered Foreign Affairs missions around the world to prominently display portraits of the Queen.

Earlier this month, Mr. Baird proudly named the modern building just to the east of Foreign Affairs headquarters after former Conservative prime minister John Diefenbaker. A plaque and portrait of the western firebrand now adorn the old city hall structure, which houses some Foreign Affairs staff.

The exemption from the rules for Mr. Baird’s business cards is at least the second time the Tory government has muscled aside existing standards for government branding.

The Economic Action Plan website, which drew criticism for its partisan look when it was launched in 2009, was given an exemption from the rules by then Treasury Board president Vic Toews.

I'm not sure what's funnier: Baird's business cards or the fact that it merits comment in a major newspaper.

 

[RangerRay]

Personally, I find the "Canada" word mark logo to be an ugly corporate logo.  In my humble opinion, governments should be using their original logos, their coats of arms.

My :2c:

 

[Edward Campbell]

vs

 

[Edward Campbell]

I, personally, prefer the lower one, the Coat of Arms, but ...

I also prefer

to the current, one leaf, version.

People know I am not a fervent monarchist but I feel that so long as we are a monarchy we should not be ashamed to show our royal symbols. If we want republican symbols then let's become a republic ...

 

[a_majoor]

Isn't the "Three leaf" design the initial version of our current "Maple Leaf" flag (i.e. there were supposed to be three leaves in the middle rather than the current one)?

 

[RangerRay]

I, personally, prefer the lower one, the Coat of Arms, but ...

I also prefer

to the current, one leaf, version.

With the re-introduction of the Canadian Army, wait for it?  :stirpot: :worms:

People know I am not a fervent monarchist but I feel that so long as we are a monarchy we should not be ashamed to show our royal symbols. If we want republican symbols then let's become a republic ...

I agree.  Leave the traditional symbols alone.  If (BIG if) we become a republic, go nuts.

 

[larry Strong]

Isn't the "Three leaf" design the initial version of our current "Maple Leaf" flag (i.e. there were supposed to be three leaves in the middle rather than the current one)?

Pearson's pennant.

Pearson had enlisted the help of John Matheson, Liberal MP for Leeds, Colonel Fortescue Duguid, and Commander Alan Beddoe to research the proper heraldry and colours for a distinctive Canadian flag. On a Saturday morning visit to 24 Sussex Drive, Alan Beddoe brought out a design with three red maple leaves on a white background, with blue bars on either side representing "From sea to sea."

Matheson was horrified - he thought the design "amateurish," "dreadful" and without heraldic principles. Pearson, however, was enchanted. Copies of Beddoe's design were made up immediately and publicly displayed

The design quickly came to be known as "Pearson's Pennant" and unquestionably became the forcus of much of the anger over the flag issue. Aside from the aesthetics, many criticized Pearson's tactics in immediately favouring one design and branded him a tyrant and his methods dictatorial; feeling one personn's choice would be forced upon them, many Canadians echoed Diefenbaker's call for a national referendum on the flag issue.

 

[Kalatzi]

Quote from E.R. Campbell
"Now, I am no fan of Paul Heinbecker; I thought he was a second rate public servant who gave the government poor advice and represented Canada poorly. But we need to understand him in his time. Heinbecker is a creature of the 1970s, when our foreign ministry, then the Department of External Affairs, was undergoing great change: the Heeney/Pearson/Wrong generation was gone, along with their attitudes which included a "commitment" to Western values and, therefore, to Israel.
"
An excellent comment, truly appreciated.

It occurs to me that in a perfect world that the Arabs would be Negro. Why? The white Rhodesians shared Western Values with us, as did the white South Africans, both have been consigned to the dust bin of history, and rightly so.  To continue the analogy ...

Whenever i hear someone venting about Radical Islam or extremists, they seem to be ignoring, the whole crux of the matter, the Arab Isreali conflict

 

[The Bread Guy]

I'm not sure what's funnier: Baird's business cards or the fact that it merits comment in a major newspaper.

I don't know if it rates that much ink, but I think it's fair to ask:  who must follow the TB's rules?  I'm guessing I know the answer if other gov't folks asked for one-sided biz cards that would be handy for writing things on the back of, and not bearing the Common Look & Feel elements.  Just sayin'....

 

[Edward Campbell]

I don't know if it rates that much ink, but I think it's fair to ask:  who must follow the TB's rules?  I'm guessing I know the answer if other gov't folks asked for one-sided biz cards that would be handy for writing things on the back of, and not bearing the Common Look & Feel elements.  Just sayin'....

Relatively low level civil servants?

 

[The Bread Guy]

Relatively low level civil servants?

Got it in one!  At least we know who what part of government can't bend the government's rules.

- fixed that for me -

 

[cupper]

My question is WTF does the Minister need business cards for anyway? If the people he is meeting with do not know who he is, or how to get a hold of him, not sure that he should be meeting with them in the first place.

 

[Infanteer]

It's so he can drop it in the box at Subway for a chance to win a free party sub.

 

[Edward Campbell]

More on Foreign Affairs Minister Baird's cards, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/dewar-joins-ndp-fray-baird-puts-business-cards-to-good-use/article2188641/

Bidding on Baird’s business cards

Pilloried for ordering gold-embossed business cards that erased the word Canada, John Baird turned all that negativity into a tidy profit – $5,000 worth.

At a fundraiser on the other side of the Ottawa River from Parliament Hill Saturday night, the Foreign Affairs Minister unexpectedly offered up his business cards for auction.

It’s the sign of a good politician who can laugh at himself. And his actions brought down the house – in a good way, compared to the antics in the Commons Friday when opposition MPs were all over him for his seeming arrogance in contravening government policy in modifying his new business cards.

The auctioneer was CBC anchor Peter Mansbridge, the successful buyer was Air Canada’s Duncan Dee and the money went to a very good cause.

It was a night of non-partisan fun, attended by politicians of all stripes, lobbyists and journalists, in which more than $120,000 was raised to support a parliamentary internship in Jaimie Anderson’s memory.

Jaimie was 23 when she died last year of cancer. She was a political junkie, as are her parents – Rick Anderson and Michelle Williams, who have been involved in all sorts of political causes and parties over the years.

This was the second year for the fundraiser. Already, two young women have benefited – one served as an intern in the office of Liberal MP Justin Trudeau and the other with Chris Alexander, a rookie Conservative MP and parliamentary secretary to the Defence Minister.

Good for Baird!

 

[OldSolduer]

My question is WTF does the Minister need business cards for anyway? If the people he is meeting with do not know who he is, or how to get a hold of him, not sure that he should be meeting with them in the first place.

A business card much more than an ego stroker - it has contact info and cards can be saved for future reference.

 

[cupper]

A business card much more than an ego stroker - it has contact info and cards can be saved for future reference.

That's my point. It's not like me going to a meeting with other engineers, contractors or DOT employees, where they may not have my contact info, but have need to get in touch with me over various projects. This man is Canada's representative to the rest of the world. Any meeting with other foreign ministers or secretaries of state, ambassadors, etc. would have been arranged months in advance, and the principles would have been fully briefed by aides and so forth.

Why would he need a business card?