Canada's Middle East Interests

Canada has international obligations which it must meet. Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird, dropping by Jordan on another quick visit to discuss the ongoing deterioration of the crisis in Syria that is bringing up to two thousand refugees daily into Jordan, has announced an additional $13-million in humanitarian aid for the struggling treasury.

Minister Baird's travels in the Middle East will also take him to the Palestinian Territories to speak with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. There, they will discuss whether Canada - or how much - will continue funding the Palestinians.

It is questionable whether Canada should continue sending hundreds of millions of tax dollars to help shore up the Palestinian Authority -- with, needless to say, funding trickling through the PA to also benefit Hamas-run Gaza, even though Hamas is on Canada's terrorist list. $500-million over the past five years.

If the West Bank and Gaza were intelligently and properly managed the infrastructure would be in place for managed agriculture and manufacturing, scientific innovation allied with their universities, and advancement toward a future of self-sustaining enterprise. It is no secret in the aid world that the more aid is given to applicants, the less the perceived need to become independent and self-reliant.

There is no excuse whatever for any population governed by responsible politicians not to have advanced in the period of sixty years to a sustainable relationship of independent capabilities. It appears a well-acknowledged fact that Palestinians are better educated than Arabs of other countries in the Middle East; where is their entrepreuneurship, their bold innovation, their proud enterprise?

They should be creating employment for those lacking the creative ability but having working skills. Israel's West Bank settlements have been a source of employment for building trade workers in the West Bank, workers unable to find jobs elsewhere within their territory. A responsible government should be looking to advance employment opportunities for its people.

As long as the president of the West Bank continues to refuse coming to the bargaining table to choose peace over confrontation and violence, he does not represent a responsible government. Mahmoud Abbas uses the pretext of offence over West Bank settlements to continue refusing to speak to Israel over the future of the two countries.

He seems to wish to settle not for a sovereign Palestine next to a secure Israel, but to wait out the possibility that Israel will decamp, leaving the territory in its entirety for the Palestinians, fulfilling his expectation of the Nakba tragedy being resolved with the kind of justice that the Palestinians envision. Two sovereign countries side by side could create trade and investment opportunities, advance full employment and a prosperous future.

Continuing to hand over funding to the PA, which its own population accuses of being endemically corrupt is wasteful of Canadian tax dollars that could be used elsewhere to better avail, either externally or internally within Canada itself.  Palestinians will continue to be dependent, to view themselves as victims of misfortune until they have to pull themselves up because the international community finally comes to its senses.

Minister Baird's intention is to invest a new Canadian embassy in Iraq. To take advantage of the pending trade and investment opportunities there in reflection of the natural resources abundant in the geography. That decision seems bold, but imprudent, given the instability that continues to wrack the country, with the Shia majority relinquishing the U.S.-encouraged unity government, leaving the Sunnis in the cold.

Suicide attacks are still common in Iraq, with atrocities committed by Sunni Islamists against Shia civilians and against the government. The one stable portion of the country is the third where Iraqi Kurds have established themselves as a quasi, semi-independent government, administering their territory in a far better manner than their Shia counterparts who claim to represent the interests of the entire country.

That Iraq has moved closer to Iran under this Shia government is yet another problem. That Iraq has enabled shipments of arms to pass through its territory from Iran, re-supplying the butchering Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad does not speak to their credit, and certainly runs averse to Canada's interests. Canada appears naive in its Middle East relationships.

If trade alone and the financial prospects that compel its interest represent the only reason Canada is involved in the Middle East, it is an inadequate reason. The free trade agreements that Canada has signed with Israel and with Jordan are well and good enough; as for expanding such agreements elsewhere, more scrutiny and prudence is clearly needed.