When it comes to the Middle East, Ottawa sits on its hands to keep Trump happy

A good op-ed piece on Canada abstaining from voting, on Jerusalem being recognized as the capital of Israel, in the UN General Assembly. As the piece says that this abstention was against Canadian official foreign policy on Israel & Palestine but when push came to shove, when it was time to stand for your principles, when it was time to show the so-called "bully" of the world that the world will not meekly follow whatever Mr. Trump will say, then Canada quietly, feebly, meekly, ran away from the fight with its tail between its legs.

That's Canada for you, ladies & gentlemen !!! That's the so-called "leadership" Canada is trying to show to the world !!!

If you may recall that there were dozens of Justin Trudeau's pictures circulating on the web, after his election win, showing him sitting for Iftars with Muslims & fasting for a day with Muslims, & several other pictures of him mingling with Muslim voters. Him & his party officials "opened the gates" to Canada to refugees running away from US, to Canada.

People all over the world, & esp. Muslims, were proudly saying that Canada is the best country to live in & Justin Trudeau & his party support Islam & Muslims. However, when it came to show how much skin you have in the game, principles & all that verbal support for Muslims evaporated in the thin air, & Canada acted like an Ostrich; bury your head in the sand & hope for the problem to go away. All those pictures & oral support was just for electoral show, because, actions speak louder than words, & such an important vote, regardless of it being not legally binding, was still politically important, & needed Canada to show where it really stands in foreign policy circles. Couple this decision with Liberals not backing away from selling armored vehicles to Saudi Arabia, amounting in the billions, even though, the whole world knows that Saudi Arabia openly violates human rights, & we can see how much Liberals, & Justin Trudeau, support Muslims.

This vote was the time for Canada to show if it can make decisive decisions. A leader makes decisive decisions, rightly or wrongly, & then stands firm on those decisions. Donald Trump's actions might be horrendous, & pretty much, every American leader before him, but, US is still considered a world leader in foreign policy matters, even after making horrible mistakes with even more horrendous consequences several times, from World War 2 (dropping atomic bombs on innocent Japanese) to invading Vietnam to putting through Iraqis, Afghanis, Libyans, & now Yemenis, from unforgettable nightmarish life-long moments, but still, what America says, goes.

Yes, certainly, desperate times like these need leaders, who, despite heavy odds against them, take a strong & decisive stand for their principles they believe in. If you don't stand for your principles, then you don't have any principles. You are merely going along wherever the wind takes you. Nobody will ever take you seriously & you will never be considered as a leader in anyone's eyes. That's Canada for you.

Regardless of how much Canada wants to become the darling of the world, & be considered for leadership roles in the international fora, Canadian leaders are too afraid of making ripple effects. But that's what makes you a leader. It's too easy to be a nice person when everything is going great. Tough & testing times separate the men from the boys, & separate the followers from the leaders. This vote in the UNGA was the time when Canada should've stood up for its principles, regardless of its ongoing trade negotiations, & voted with other G7 countries, because, at the author says near the end of the piece, those trade negotiations still might not work out in favour of Canada, because, hey, after all, who listens to a follower!!!

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https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2017/12/21/on-the-middle-east-ottawa-sits-on-its-hands-to-keep-trump-happy.html

And so the year draws to a close just as it dawned — with Canada walking on eggshells around Donald Trump.

Thursday at the United Nations, the Liberal government had two choices. It could poke Trump but stand on principle, or continue a pattern of voting with the U.S. on the Middle East.

With the world watching, it did neither.

It abstained.

It moved to the sidelines and let the rest of the world take a position.

Mostly, it didn’t want to rattle Trump’s cage with the future of NAFTA very much in doubt.

A vote to declare Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel “null and void,’’ passed 128 to nine with 35 abstentions.

The U.S. won the support of key allies like Togo, Palau, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Honduras, Guatemala and, of course, Israel.

Take Israel out of the equation and the entire population of those backing the U.S. is less than the population of Canada.

Canada, on the other hand, was the only G7 nation beside the United States that did not vote to condemn the move by Trump.

An abstention, at first glance, does seem to be a craven move, especially in light of the crass threats and bullying delivered by the American ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley.

Haley was defending Trump’s right to make an unnecessary, provocative move in the Middle East for strictly domestic political reasons.

Oh, she was going to take names. She wasn’t going to forget this vote.

She was going to remember when nations come calling for America’s financial help or its global influence.

It was an appalling performance, coming on the heels of Trump’s flat-out threat to cut off aid to anyone who voted against him.

Don’t disrespect us, Haley warned.

The Americans were going to take their ball and go home if others were mean to them.

In short, it was the type of speech that should have sent nations on the fence into the “screw you’’ camp against Washington.

Canada stayed quiet.

In Canada’s case, an abstention does send a message, because the Trudeau government, like the Stephen Harper government before it, has slavishly backed the U.S. in voting against UN resolutions perceived to be anti-Israel.

But overwhelmingly the message sent by an abstention was that Ottawa didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to take a stand, wished that this would just go away.

It was in keeping with Ottawa’s initial non-reaction reaction to the Trump move, a statement that did not mention the U.S. or the president, but merely affirmed Canada’s support of a two-state solution that includes agreement on the status of Jerusalem.

By abstaining, we did not support Trump, nor did we poke him, but, of course, Washington immediately spun the results to indicate those who had abstained had backed them.

It’s been a long year for a government dealing with Trump as a neighbour and with NAFTA talks resuming next month, 2018 could be tougher.

We have been “disappointed” by his decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, and have “disagreed vehemently” with ridiculous tariffs his commerce department slapped on Bombardier.

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland skilfully vowed Canada would take on a greater global leadership role as the U.S. turns inward (without mentioning Trump) and, with U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer at her side, she delivered the message that a “winner-take-all” mindset cannot lead to a satisfactory renegotiation of NAFTA.

In Ottawa’s defence, no one sitting at the General Assembly Thursday, with the exception of Mexico, was living cheek-by-jowl with a president whose next move might jolt this country. Mexico also abstained Thursday.

Canada has bilateral interests with the U.S. that compel it to be careful, certainly more careful in condemnation of Washington than countries separated from the U.S. by an ocean.

In its most important bilateral relationship, the Liberal government has been dealing with a man in the White House who stands against virtually everything this country stands for.

And it is doing it with its most important trilateral trade relationship hanging in the balance.

This country has lost its voice on the Middle East so as not to upset the U.S. president.

Thursday, Canada could not even vote for a resolution that reflected its official policy.

Ottawa sat on its hands to appease a leader who has toyed with us during NAFTA negotiations.

They could find that tiptoeing on eggshells and losing our international voice may make no difference because if Trump wants to walk away from NAFTA, he will.

A year of playing nice and biting our tongue could still count for nothing.

Welcome to British Columbia, where you ‘pay to play’

If we remove all mentions of Canada, its provinces, & any other identifying names & such, then nobody would know that this is a story coming out of a G8 country; a country that is considered transparent, honest & fair. British Columbia (BC) is run by provincial Liberal party; having pretty much the same political agenda / platform as the federal Liberal party (the same party whose head is the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau).

As the article below explores that "vast sums flooding the system" & businesses are essentially buying & paying their way through the government. Isn't that considered bribery? Isn't bribery essentially paying another party to influence their decision in your favour? Canadian foreign departments, missions, & businesses are urged to not bribe any foreign government to get their way but apparently, the affairs in Canada's interior is telling a different story.

Heck, the article even compares BC pay-to-get-your-way scheme against some of the world's most corrupt countries in Middle East & Africa. In some cases, heck, even they have better rules than BC. And, Canada thumbs its nose, in matters of fairness & transparency, towards the rest of the world.

This leads to my second point: corruption in government. In developing countries, a government is considered corrupt when its government officials & wealthy citizens / private businesses are into each other to the point where there's a clear sense of collusion. It is considered corruption when the wealthy elites can buy off their politicians with money, or, as I said above, bribe.

The law & order clearly seems to be non-existent when lobbyists can shower anyone, except an MLA, with any amount of money & gifts, to get whatever they want, to the point, that those lobbyists can easily lie in lawsuits to win them. Government officials can easily become lobbyists themselves quite easily & readily, & use the connections they have built up in the government to wield influence. Isn't that corruption in the government? Please keep in mind that we are still talking about the provincial government of British Columbia in Canada, & not Zimbabwe, Uganda, Algeria, Pakistan, India, or Vietnam etc.

Then, the question of my favourite topic comes to the fore: democracy. Is this democracy when companies like Kinder Morgan can pay almost $700,000 to get their controversial pipeline approved, when there's a sizable group of citizens who are against that approval? Is this democracy when ordinary citizens are being asked, or perhaps, forced, to fork out more money than they should / could, in the form of taxes, insurance, healthcare, & housing costs, when almost 3,000 lobbyists are telling their clients in BC that you can get anything done in BC, as long as you are willing to pay up big fees; the bigger the fees, the better your chances of getting what you want.

So, unlimited funds can be funneled towards a provincial government, by wealthy citizens / private businesses to get what they want, & collude with government to influence its policies, & all the while, railroading ordinary citizens in the process, who are not being heard at all. Does it look like that should be happening in Canada or Nigeria, for instance? How many people around the world knew or even thought that something like this happens in Canada? But this is happening in Canada. These developed countries of the Global North & West talk big, & thumb their noses at developing countries, when it comes to corruption & democracy, all the while, the same things are taking place in their own backyards.

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http://www.macleans.ca/politics/in-british-columbia-big-money-means-big-problems/

Last year, the British Columbia Liberal Party raised more money than any ruling party in any other province in the country. It pulled in 13 times more than the Quebec Liberal Party, six times more than the Alberta NDP, twice what the Liberals did in Ontario. That’s a province with three times B.C.’s population, an economy triple the size, and a head-office count quadruple that of the Western province. And all this was before Ontario brought in sweeping reforms ending corporate and union donations, dropping the ceiling on annual individual donations and banning cash-for-access fundraisers.

Bananas, right? Now consider that in the three years since Christy Clark’s majority win, the Liberals have added some $32.5 million to their war chest. In the first 12 days of January alone, they took in almost half a million dollars in contributions, approaching what Manitoba’s ruling NDP did in all of 2015 in the run-up to that province’s last election. And consider that in the 10 years leading up to 2015, the B.C. Liberal Party took in $3.1 million from Alberta oil and gas firms, almost twice as much money as that province’s governing party at the time, the Progressive Conservatives.

British Columbians’ faith in democracy is being undermined by the vast sums flooding the system, and there’s a growing concern that their government is essentially being bought and paid for by a wealthy clique. And with figures like those above, it’s getting hard to argue against the idea that democracy in B.C. has devolved to which party can amass the biggest pile of dough.

B.C. political fundraising is a free-for-all. Parties can accept any amount of money, property or services from any corporation, union or person living anywhere in the world. The single limit to this frenzied giving: charities are barred from donating.

This puts B.C. in a unique position. Most of the developed world, and some of the planet’s most corrupt nations, including Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kenya and Russia, set ceilings on party donations, according to data compiled by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, based in Stockholm, Sweden. All of North America, all of Eastern Europe and the entire Arab world except Lebanon and Iraq bar donations like the $30,000-to-$50,000 ones the B.C. Liberal party has received in recent years from foreign donors.

It’s so bad that the New York Times last month went to B.C. to write a scathing piece on the Clark government’s “unabashedly cozy relationship between private interests and government officials.” Deputy Premier Rich Coleman said he found the reporting “laughable.” Outside Liberal ranks, few found it funny.

It is not known how much the B.C. Liberal Party has pulled in from outside Canada. But Dermod Travis of IntegrityBC has compiled a list that he calls the “$100,000 club.” It has 177 members, including developers, mining companies and energy firms that have fed the party some $55.7 million in the past decade.

Critics have pointed out that B.C.’s conflict of interest commissioner Paul Fraser—whose son is a long-time friend of Clark’s and sits on her executive council, as a deputy minister—has never, in 9 years, found the Clark government in violation of B.C.’s conflict of interest legislation. ...

Critics similarly point to contributions by large companies like Ecotex Healthcare Linen Service ($115,000 donated to the Liberal party since 2005), Emil Anderson Construction ($50,000), Kinder Morgan and its industry supporters ($719,000) and Imperial Metals and its subsidiaries ($195,000). Those same companies have, respectively, received a 20-year government laundry contract, a $36-million six-lane highway expansion contract, Clark’s approval for a controversial pipeline and a permit to open a new mine. In the case of the mine approval, it came one year after Imperial Metal’s controlling shareholder, N. Murray Edwards, hosted a $1-million fundraiser for Clark in Calgary. There is no suggestion of nefarious activity in any of these cases. But critics say the mere appearance of conflict is worrisome.

None of it is up to the public to litigate. It is, however, up to government to adopt regulations, legislation and practices that prevent even the whiff of conflict of interest from sullying B.C.’s global reputation.

“The only people not embarrassed by any of this are Christy Clark and the ruling Liberals,” B.C. NDP Leader John Horgan told Maclean’s. “There is nothing funny about giving donors and loyalists a billion-dollar tax cut while making regular people pay for it with higher bills for car insurance, electricity and health care. There’s nothing funny about a ruling party raking in millions from developers while watching housing prices soar out of reach, without lifting a finger to help. Politics is about trying to make things better. This is embarrassing. I’m certainly not laughing.”
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The mudslinging shows how badly rules are needed, regardless of which party is in power.

B.C.’s financing free-for-all is perfectly mirrored by its ballooning lobbying industry. Few rules or regulations govern it, either. Competition is tight: 3,014 lobbyists and organizations fought for access in B.C. this year, 1,195 more than even Ontario.

Unlike Ontario, however, lobbyists in B.C. can shower almost anyone except an MLA with gifts and benefits of any value, as often as they want. They can use false and misleading information in pleading their case. They don’t have to declare when they’re lobbying: the sales jobs can be couched as a friendly chat between old pals. And all but ministers, who are subject to a 12-month cooling-off period, can do it the second they quit their job as a public office holder. B.C.’s lobbying watchdog has urged the Clark government to adopt regulations that would limit all of the above. Last summer, when Elizabeth Denham stepped down from the role, she made it her “parting wish.”

At this point, “there is no daylight between government relations roles at B.C.’s biggest companies and the premier’s office,” one lobbyist based outside the province told Maclean’s, speaking anonymously, given concerns of professional retribution. “That line has been completely erased. That is literally their social network. They go to each other’s cottages. They take trips together,” he adds, describing raucous dinners he has attended with Clark’s staff and a group of select lobbyists. The mix of warmth and competitiveness has fostered an unusual and deeply unhealthy intimacy. “No one is breaking any rules or laws or doing anything criminal,” the lobbyist is quick to add. “B.C. has no rules, so everything goes. It’s like the Wild West: only the fittest survive.”

Infinite leniency and infinite money make for a toxic mix. “I have to tell my bosses, ‘In B.C., you have to pay to play.’ ” If your client doesn’t donate, it puts you at a competitive disadvantage, he adds. It’s a small province, after all; the Liberals know exactly who is funding them, the lobbyist notes, magnifying the role donors play and the access they receive in return.

This gets to the root of the problem: the huge amount of money soaking the system, he says . “The only way to fix it is by taking money out.” If changes don’t come soon, he adds, “British Columbians will lose all faith in their politicians.”

In response to increasingly loud concerns over political financing, the Liberals often point to “real-time disclosure,” which the party deemed a radical new approach to financing when it was launched last March. Ever since, the party has disclosed new contributions on its website within 10 days of receipt. That is, the party is now doing what B.C.’s Election Act forces it to do annually, just faster. The problem is, no one wanted speedier transparency. 86% of British Columbians do, however, want corporate and union donations banned.
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Nevertheless, on Jan. 23, Clark dined with Kelowna’s elite at a $5,000-a-plate event at the Mission Hill Winery, which has pumped $200,000 into B.C. Liberal coffers since 2005. (The next day, the premier refused to name her guests, who were shuttled into the winery in dark vehicles, cloaked in secrecy.)

Clark, perhaps the best retail politician to ever emerge from B.C., is widely expected to cruise to a second majority in B.C. in the coming May election, giving the Liberals a record fifth term. Still, she’d do well to consider the main take-away from Donald Trump’s stunning, unforeseen win last November. Pitchforks come out when people get angry over the influence wielded by political donors, when a cozy system appears to benefit only the ruling class, when regular folk feel ignored and defeated, and politicians don’t notice.