Canada's UAE Relationship

How significant is it in terms of overall international relations that Canada's dispute with the United Arab Emirates has not been settled? Well, the immediate effects of Canada's unwillingness to assent to all of the UAE's 'requested' changes in the relationship were fairly dramatic and without doubt delivered harm to Canada's interests.

For one thing, the UAE base, Camp Mirage, which had been used as a take-off point for Canadian troops in Afghanistan was yanked out from under. Necessitating that Canada have to look elsewhere to establish a base handy to operations. Apart from the fact entirely, that Canada was sharp-slapped with an insult when our Minister of Defence and our top General were refused landing rights while in the air and their flight had to be diverted.

The coup de grace must surely have been the United Arab Emirates mustering their resources for solidarity among the Muslim/Middle East/Arab bloc together with lobbying their friends dependent on Middle East oil resources, to boycott Canada for its traditional seat on the United Nations' revolving Security Council, in favour of a minor European country when Europe was already well represented.

The issues of denial to the UAE were fairly straightforward. In a sense the same issues that Canada is facing in attempting to reach an agreement with the European Union on a free trade agreement; the EU resists on the basis of Canada's intervention in the free marketplace through its government subsidies in certain areas like dairy, grain and poultry. There is some similarity, but not completely.

For one thing, every country should take steps to ensure its primary fundamentals are in good health. When it comes to agricultural matters every country that prides itself on good husbandry should go out of its way to ensure that those industries like farming and ranching are in good health, competitive and able to supply internal needs.

The issue with the UAE versus Canada was one of landing rights. The UAE is concerned to expand its flight capabilities and insisted it needed additional landing rights in key Canadian cities upgraded to three times weekly from the current one-time-a-week. Canada's national carrier cried foul, because the UAE's two major commercial airlines are government-subsidized, offering cheaper fares on that basis.

Unfair competition, in other words. But that's not all; the UAE lobbied Canada to lift the need for visitor visas. Open, unimpeded borders between the UAE and Canada? Whose interest does that serve? Moreover, the UAE's overtures to Canada to grant it a level of authority over Canadian troops who were operating out of the country seems incredibly out of whack with reality, and both DND and Foreign Affairs refused.

Under NATO, there is that kind of reciprocity of authority, but it makes good common sense that this be so, since within missions there is an appointed head representing one allied country or another, in an exchange of authority over mixed-nation troops. Canada and the United States, close geographically, politically, socially, have that kind of arrangement: Canada and the UAE? Hardly.

The UAE seems to feel that its (mostly one-way) trade with Canada where it spends just over $1.5-billion annually should render it some kind of special status. Seems that Canada, in protecting its autonomy in the face of unreasonable demands for special entitlements by the UAE is responding just as it should.