On June 17, both Norway and Ireland pipped Canada to a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) seat, in what is a huge setback to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s goals of positioning his country as a viable option for permanent membership in the Council. Under Trudeau’s and indeed his predecessors’ tutelage, Canada has emerged as an arbiter and protector of human rights and international law, and has often taken a much more benevolent and considerate approach to international affairs than its southern neighbor. It has offered refuge and asylum to those escaping persecution and violence, and imposed sanctions against human rights violators. Much of the goodwill afforded to Canada was eroded under Trudeau’s predecessor, the Conservative Party’s Stephen Harper. Trudeau has publicly sought to claw back Canada’s reputation as a friendly power by sending his PR team into overdrive to reingratiate Canada to the world. However, it now appears that international actors have taken note of Trudeau’s contrived and carefully crafted “liberal” persona, which masks an opportunistic and duplicitous underbelly.
Trudeau’s inconsistencies are most glaring in his penchant for excusing some acts of terror and human rights abuses, while simultaneously lashing out against others.
Under his leadership, Canada has pledged over $200 million to the humanitarian crisis in Yemen since 2015, and is one of the top ten donors of aid to the embattled nation. Yet, Canada continues to sell arms to Saudi Arabia, the country leading the brutal coalition against the Houthi rebels, and has thus indirectly contributed to the deaths of thousands of Yemeni civilians. In fact, earlier this month, it surfaced that Canada doubled its weapons sales to Saudi Arabia in 2019, to almost $2.2 billion, which includes the sale of light armored vehicles, artillery systems, and machine guns.
Likewise, like every other leader, Trudeau condemns terrorism. Yet, his office invited Jaspal Atwal, a convicted Khalistani terrorist, to two separate events in India while Trudeau was on a visit here. While it has since been brushed off as a mistake, it is telling that Canada’s “2018 Public Report on the Terrorism Threat to Canada” removed all mentions of Sikh and Khalistani extremism amid public backlash from Canada’s large Sikh community.
The most apparent form of his hypocritical leadership is perhaps seen in Canada’s policy on Israel. In 2019, Trudeau stood alongside 165 other nations and put his weight behind a UN resolution that urges the establishment of a separate Palestinian state. In May 2020, Trudeau reiterated his position in two separate phone calls with both Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz, wherein he refused to recognize Israel’s unilateral annexation of the West Bank, and repeated his commitment to a two-state solution. However, although it was reported that Trudeau supported Palestinian self-determination on the phone, it must be noted that the words “West Bank”, “annexation”, and “occupied territories” are conspicuously absent from government statements about the content of his conversations with Netanyahu and Gantz. Canada’s support for a separate Palestinian state has drawn attention, as the North American nation has traditionally taken a pro-Israel stance under both Liberal and Conservative leadership. While it may appear at first glance that Trudeau is piloting a drastic shift in Canada’s foreign policy on Israel, in reality, he is simply hedging his bets and playing both sides. Withholding recognition of Israel’s actions is not equivalent to opposition.
In fact, Trudeau has repeatedly condemned the boycott, divest, and sanction (BDS) movement, calling it anti-Semitic and in contravention of “Canadian values”, by highlighting “three Ds: the demonization of Israel, a double standard around Israel, and a delegitimization of the State of Israel”. He has leveled similar criticisms against organizers of the Israeli Apartheid Week on Canadian college campuses. Yet, he curiously maintains that opposing BDS or the Israeli Apartheid Week “doesn’t mean that you can’t criticize decisions by the State of Israel”. During the 2014 Israel-Gaza Conflict, otherwise known as Operation Protective Edge, at least 500,000 Palestinians were displaced, and at least 2,000 Palestinian civilians died. Yet, Trudeau described the actions of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) as “justifiable self-defense”. Regardless of the fact that the UN has recognized that war crimes were committed by both Israel and Hamas, it is clear that Israel overstepped the boundaries of justifiability. Trudeau also refused to comment when US President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem and Israel’s capital in 2017, making Canada the only G-7 state to remain silent on the issue. In fact, since 2000, Canada has voted “no” on 166 different UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolutions pertaining to Palestine. Out of the 87 times that Canada has voted “yes” on resolutions on Palestine, 85 of these were between 2000 and 2010, when Trudeau was not even in power. Under Trudeau, Canada has supported just one pro-Palestine resolution at the UNGA.
While Canada continues to excuse and indeed facilitate human rights abuses by Saudi Arabia and Israel, it has placed sanctions on the following countries: The Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Myanmar, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela, Yemen, and Zimbabwe.
Yet, when these abuses come from countries that Canada cannot bully, Trudeau wilts under pressure. Admittedly, he has stood strong in the face of Chinese pressure to conduct a prisoner swap between two Canadian citizens who China has charged with espionage, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, and Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, who is detained in Canada. He has even attacked China’s judicial system, by implying that it “functions [with] interference or override by politicians”. Yet, when push comes to shove, he backs off. Over 550 days after Spavor and Kovrig were detained by China in retaliation to Canada’s 2018 arrest of the Huawei chief, Trudeau said that he was merely “disappointed” by China's decision to “formally charge” them with espionage. Similarly, he has been reticent to denounce China’s coronavirus response, dodging questions on the matter, even as allies such as the US, the UK, France, Germany, and Australia have become increasingly vocal in taking China to task over its complicity in a global pandemic. In fact, his reluctance to meaningfully stand up to China has been a long-running theme of his leadership. When Canada first arrested Meng, who is accused by the US of “fraudulently representing [Huawei] to skirt U.S. and EU sanctions on Iran”, China not only responded by arresting the two aforementioned Canadian citizens, but also by closing Chinese ports to Canadian canola, soybeans, beef, and pork exports. Yet, in response, Trudeau simply sought to accelerate NAFTA negotiations to reduce Canada’s dependence on China, rather than calling it out for economic coercion.
Nevertheless, while the Trudeau administration has sought to avoid directly antagonizing China, it has simultaneously supported the US in its goals of challenging Chinese power. For example, Canada arrested the Huawei chief at the US’ request. His administration has also pledged to increase military spending by more than 70% by 2026, and has concurrently increased Canada’s military presence in the Asia-Pacific, including in the South China Sea (SCS). Beijing claims nearly all of the sea’s 1.3 million square miles as its own, to the consternation of regional actors such as Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Indeed, Canada has participated in naval exercises in the SCS that are aimed at containing Chinese influence in the region. The Canadian military has also pushed for upgrades to the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD)—a combined aerospace warning, air sovereignty, and protection system with the US—to protect against China’s “antagonistic actions”, “malign activities in cyberspace”, and “coercive economic and diplomatic actions”. Therefore, although he has been reluctant to take a strong public stand against China, in the background, Trudeau's Canada has sought to buttress the US’ efforts to challenge China’s growing military and strategic influence in the maritime sphere.
Thus, Canada is constantly in a tug-of-war between its first and its second-largest trading partners. Its dependency on the US has informed its policies on Israel and Saudi Arabia and its decision to participate in just about every US-led war across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Central Asia over the past three decades. Simultaneously, its economic dependency on China and the presence of close to two million Chinese Canadians within its own borders may have contributed to its unwillingness to rock the boat too hard in its fragile relationship with the burgeoning superpower. The clout of ethnic minorities in Canada cannot be understated. In fact, the Federal government’s decision to remove all mentions of Sikh and Khalistani extremism came just one day before Trudeau Trudeau visited a Vaisakhi Parade at a gurudwara in Vancouver.
Being adaptable is a necessary trait for national governance, but adaptability cannot be conflated with inconsistency and an absence of guiding principles. Leaders must seek to balance their dealings with conflicting partners, but not at the expense of sacrificing one’s values. This seesawing form of leadership engenders suspicion among other states, as they cannot accurately ascertain where the Trudeau-led Canada stands at any given time or on any given issue. By trying to appease all sides rather than sticking to a core set of beliefs, Trudeau has squandered a crucial opportunity to present Canada as a responsible and meditative middle-power.
The Canadian public is all too familiar with Trudeau’s deceitful and almost parasitic form of leadership, wherein he leeches onto social movements—such as: Indigenous, minority, and immigrant rights; environmentalism; systemic racism; feminism; anti-corruption—without showing any interest in facilitating the systemic and structural changes required to realize the goals of these movements.
The Prime Minister has promised to “establish meaningful nation-to-nation reconciliation” with Indigenous communities, yet has reneged on his promises to provide them with the right to veto pipeline projects that run through their territory, while the RCMP have previously been empowered to use snipers and “as much violence as [they] wanted” against the Indigenous communities who protest against such projects. He professes to be a champion of environmentalism, yet he approved the Enbridge and Trans Mountain pipelines, approved tar sands mines projects, failed to effectively punish the country’s biggest polluters, and is far off the greenhouse gas emissions levels required to meet the Paris Agreement targets. He claims to be leading a fight against systemic racism, yet has been caught in blackface twice already. He proudly proclaims that he is a ‘feminist’, yet Canada has consistently slipped on the international gender equality index, based on parameters such as women’s safety, financial independence, labor force participation, and political representation. He has made significant public overtures to root out corruption, yet he sacked Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould, and kicked her out of the Liberal caucus, simply for bringing to light the political pressure Trudeau put on her to approve a deal with energy company SNC-Lavalin.
Canadians have long acknowledged Trudeau’s deceitful leadership, but with international actors like Trump noting his “two-faced” nature and pro-Israel groups denouncing Trudeau’s “betrayal” and decision to “join the jackals”, are we now beginning to see diplomatic costs for this form of vacillating and arguably spineless leadership?
Is Trudeau’s “Two-Faced” Leadership Eroding Canada’s Diplomatic Capital?
It appears that Trudeau’s seesawing form of leadership has cost Canada a UNSC seat.
June 27, 2020
IMAGE SOURCE: JEWEL SAMAD / AFP / GETTY IMAGESCanadian PM Justin Trudeau