FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1998 All Rights Reserved.
| VIEWPOINT Dear Lloyd Axworthy, Foreign Affairs Minister: You must be pretty full of beans these days. Your Liberal-style backroom politics have put Canada back on the UN Security Council. Your efforts to create a world war crimes court will raise your pre-Liberal leadership campaign profile, but it won't get you a Nobel prize. That's pretty good work for a red Liberal who looked like he was put out to pasture after daring to change Canada's social security programs. Unfortunately, your money-first-people-second foreign policy has put the venerable institutions of the RCMP and the prime minister in some difficulty. You sold the military down the river after Somalia so I know you politicos are not worried about the RCMP. It just isn't good form to make the prime minister look bad. As some of the self-proclaimed wits here in Red Deer like to say, Jean Chretien may be prime but you can't carve him up when he is done. J.C. hasn't helped his cause with those downright unfunny remarks about pepper and baseball bats, but that isn't what this is about. This APEC thing is simply the latest failure of a foreign policy that puts trade ahead of taking care of people. We have butted heads on many issues. I don't agree with your government-can-do-it-all attitude, but I hoped you might turn around Canada's foreign policy and make it something more than the real-politik hog-droppings we have dealt with for the last 10 years. Instead you have left it in the hands of the prime minister and gone gallivanting off in search of a Nobel prize. It won't do, and APEC is Canadians finally telling you they are tired of deals and dollars taking priority over helping hands and guiding lights. Outside of always towing the U.S. line in a manner that suits our sidekick status, Canada's foreign policy used to stand for something. Now we are just out there hawking our resources, industry and people to any dictator with a hundred bucks in his pocket. As for following the U.S., we threw that out the window when we went for the big cash grab in Cuba, the funny bone of U.S. international relations. It was only a matter of time before Canada's politicians became tainted with the blood of oppressed people around the globe. The only surprise is that it splashed all the way to the prime minister the first time Canadians' rights were trampled on in the name of international economic policy. Now maybe you set up Chretien to take the fall on this. As a humble farm-implement dealer from Western Canada, I wouldn't want to comment on the machinations of a political professional. It just seems to me that if Chretien can be felled by the moral rot that comes from dealing with dictators, then his successor will probably end up in the same grain auger. If you don't want that to be you, it's time you did a little work to straighten out our mixed-up dealings with the world. Me and the boys put our heads together, but we didn't come up with any exciting or innovative ideas. We realized that this is not a complicated issue, and the answers aren't either. You can start by refusing to invite dictators and international miscreants to our country. There was no need for Canada to even host APEC, let alone roll over like an old dog begging for a bone to get Suharto and cronies to come to the conference. I'm not keen on an all-out embargo - people have to eat and it would be bad for the farm business - but some kind of control on our economic and social relations with oppressive governments is needed. Out here we have mayors handing out white hats to killers and companies spending millions on bribes to get business and exploit other countries' resources and people. I didn't get to be the successful businessman I am without knowing that money rules the hearts of men. You can ask Mitzy, I'm no flower child. I just thought there was a time when you could sacrifice a few dollars here and there for a human life. Canada may be a global pipsqueak, but it can at least take a stand in its foreign dealings. Yours in a new international order, |