“You’re from Canada, you say?” customs officers will ask us at Heathrow with the caution they before reserved for … I won’t say because I’m a traditional Canadian and don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, OK, Uzbekistan. Or Alabama.
After a visit from us, other countries count the spoons.
Here are Canada’s latest steps on the international walk of shame:
1. We once led the world on banning landmines but five years after an Oslo agreement, we still have not signed a ban on cluster bombs, the ones that send out bouncing little bomblets that lie unexploded until an innocent, often a child, happens upon them. As CBC.ca reports, Bill C-6, which would implement the Convention on Cluster Munitions, still sits in committee. One clause would still allow Canada to co-operate militarily with the U.S. (which won’t sign the ban), which partially negates the agreement.
2. The world is enthusiastic about a deal negotiated with Iran over its nuclear program. We’re not. Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird says he’s “deeply skeptical” about the deal, signed by the apparently credulous Russia, China, the U.S., Germany and France. Plucky little Canada stands alone on a deal that will calm fears of a terrible war that might erupt in the Middle East.
3. Canada has yet to sign a global treaty putting rather tentative restrictions on the arms trade. It limits the cross-border shipment of illicit weapons to human rights violators. Called the Arms Trade Treaty, it has been signed by the U.S. and more than 100 UN member states, but not us. Who objects to it? The NRA says the treaty might hamper Americans’ ability to buy personal guns.
Cut to our own NRA types. The Harper Conservatives love guns, base weapons for the base. Ottawa even harassed the RCMP in Alberta in the middle of the 2012 flooding for having gathered unsecured guns in empty homes in High River, as CBC.ca has reported.
The RCMP was angered by the political interference in a basic public safety measure. But taking this local stupidity and petulance to an international level? It beggars belief.
4. The latest news is the Harper government’s decision to transform diplomacy into something that is not diplomacy. From now on, Canada’s diplomats will be sales staff, putting economic interests over every other consideration.
Trade comes first. “All Government of Canada assets are harnessed to support the pursuit of commercial success by Canadian companies and investors in key foreign markets,” reads the Global Markets Action Plan, subtitled “The Blueprint for Creating Jobs and Opportunities for Canadians through Trade.” This old advertising trick means that anyone opposing the plan will have to declare themselves against “creating jobs and opportunities for Canadians.”
Equally, it matches those crass Canada’s Economic Action Plan ads that are shovelled into our faces — at our expense — as we watch TV. Here’s a new slogan: My Canada is Cheesy.
Canada once had soft power in that the world liked us. We were peacekeepers, we aimed for climate cleanliness, we were famously nice. I now read on Twitter that I Hate Canada signs are popping up in demonstrations. I don’t know if it’s true but it’s not implausible.
London Mayor Boris Johnson, in the middle of a weird speech that seemed to advocate population clearing by IQ, recently paraded the U.K.’s soft power, which refers to its leadership in intellect, design, literature, inventiveness and, to a certain extent, popularity.
Hard power is one thing, he said. But soft power is golden. For example, when Edward Snowden wanted to leak news that Canada let the U.S. spy during G8 and G20 summits held here in 2010, he turned to the CBC.
Why? It is internationally known and admired, it is soft power incarnate. Naturally the CBC is being chopped off at the knees, year by year, another way we are becoming raggedy and low-rent, a rogue nation indeed.
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