Core Canadian values

Editorial

Fast on the heels of visits by U.S. President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry, Canada’s foreign minister is in the midst of an extended trip through the Middle East.

Emphasizing both diplomacy and trade, John Baird is to cut a swath across the region, from Iraq, to the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Cyprus and Israel, and he is scheduled to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

The tête-à-tête with Palestinian leaders should be interesting. Canadian relations with the Palestinian leadership are as frosty as relations with Israel are cozy. Before leaving on his trip, Baird warned that Canada would “review” its support for the Palestinian regime after the PA used the United Nations to circumvent the peace process with Israel, obtaining non-member observer status in a vote by the General Assembly last year.

Canada’s five-year, $300 million commitment to the Palestinian Authority is hardly a massive component of the PA’s revenue, but neither is it nothing, either symbolically or practically. Palestinians are the highest-per-capita foreign aid recipients in the world, but their government runs perpetually on the edge of a financial abyss.

The foreign minister didn’t try to put a cheery face on the issue.

“We have a fundamental difference of opinion with the Palestinian Authority,” Baird told media. “They know our views well.... But I think it’s tremendously important in my responsibilities to engage in dialogue and I look forward to several meetings in the West Bank during my time in the region.”

Canada has the potential to do great things in the Middle East – not in spite of this country’s emphatic support of the region’s only democracy, but because of it; not as a middle-of-the-road “honest broker,” but as a truly honest broker that openly demands progressive change in a region where repression is rampant.

There are times, in realpolitik diplomacy, when we are forced to subsume our principles for expediency. In the matter of Israel and Palestine, though, Baird represents a government that has been resolute. Whether our country’s reputation and influence are harmed by our demonstrated support for Israel, as some observers contend, may be seen during Baird’s travels, but whether Canada is seen as a Zionist dupe or as a principled player in the eyes of dictators and theocrats and their apologists should concern us very little.

At a time when people across the Middle East are chafing against oppression – and when their path forward diverges clearly at a fork offering democracy, on the one side, or Islamist theocracy, on the other – unequivocal statements by democratic leaders like Canada can have an impact.

Every regime – and every citizen – in the region should know that Canada will not reward violence and terror. Every country in the region, and every one of their citizens, should know that they will have our support when they embrace the core Canadian values of humanitarianism, democracy, empathy, openness, equality and basic respect for human life and dignity.

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