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Those shocked at a petition calling for Canada to leave the UN should look at its record instead
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The Justin Trudeau Liberals and some in the Canadian media appear worried that Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis doesn’t hold the United Nations in high regard. Given their recent track record on several fronts, no one should hold them in high regard.
Lewis has long been a critic of the UN, and at times a harsh one, but it is her sponsoring of a petition from a private citizen that has the Liberals trying to sell a story. Petition E-4623 was started by a private citizen, Doug Porter of Burnaby, B.C., but like any online petition on the parliamentary website it needed an MP to sponsor it.
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Enter Lewis, who has also been promoting the petition, which had just over 67,000 signatures on Thursday evening and called on Canada to leave the UN. The Globe and Mail cited Mohammad Hussain, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as saying Lewis supporting the petition raises questions.
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“Make no mistake, when someone posts a petition it’s because they agree with it. What is it about the UN that Conservatives don’t like?” Hussain said in a statement quoted by The Globe.
“Is it the work they do for children around the world, is it their programs to support women’s rights and human rights?”
What might be better to ask is whether the Trudeau government, with their strong support of the UN, backs terrorist organizations like Hamas?
Since Oct. 7, the already questionable UN has utterly embarrassed itself as revelations about UN agencies being complicit in supporting Hamas have come forward. Groups like the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) knew full well that Hamas was using hospitals as a front for their tunnel system and to hide weapons and hostages in, but they did nothing.
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The UN General Assembly has been quick to condemn Israel, will not condemn Hamas and isn’t nearly as vocal about Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as it is about Israel’s response to the Hamas attacks.
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It’s not just the UN’s one-sided response to Israel and Gaza that should have Canadians thinking about leaving the organization, it’s the rest of its efforts. While the UN may have been founded on a righteous idea with strong principles, it is no longer the organization most Canadians think it is.
The UN’s Human Rights Council includes serial rights abusers like China, Cuba, Algeria, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, to name just a few. In November, Iran chaired a special UN Human Rights Council Social Forum at the same time as the regime was continuing to crack down on its citizens.
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In 2022, North Korea took over the leadership of the Council on Disarmament, even as North Korea was actively pursuing nuclear weapons and longer-range missiles.
Those are all reasons to reconsider whether the UN is fulfilling its role and whether Canada should continue supporting the organization. Interestingly, those reasons haven’t even touched on why those supporting the petition want Canada to walk away.
The petition says that the UN and its subsidiary organizations like the World Health Organization impose “negative consequences on the people of Canada, far outweighing any benefits.” It also singles out sustainable development goals, the UN Judicial Review and Agenda 2030 as undermining “national sovereignty and personal autonomy.”
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Those are real concerns, though overblown by many, and still not as compelling on the reasons-to-leave front as the overall disfunction of the UN.
There are many ways for Canada to engage in a multilateral fashion on the world stage, some of which the Stephen Harper government did while it was in office. Harper leveraged Canada’s middle-power status at organizations like the G7, G20, NATO, OECD, ASEAN and others to see Canada punch above its weight.
Trudeau decided the focus should be on the UN, but hasn’t raised Canada’s voice in a meaningful way. It’s doubtful that Canada would leave the UN under Trudeau or even under a future Conservative government, but we should put our efforts into organizations where we are working alongside democracies and free societies rather than the dictatorships that hold sway at the UN.
The Liberals and many in the media may think Lewis is crazy for advocating that Canada should leave. I think they are crazy for believing the UN still has a useful role to play in the world.
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