That Exclusive Club

"We're increasingly denying ourselves a place at the table.
"We walk out of meetings because North Korea is in the chair. The reason you go to these meetings is so that you can engage all 193 (UN member states). You don't pick your friends and your enemies. They're all there. You go, you play the game ... if you're not at the table, you don't have a voice."
Carolyn McAskie, senior fellow, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa

Just as well she's only an academic, a critic of the Government of Canada. She concerns herself with the administrative minutiae of United Nations issues, she is not elected to lead Canada in its affairs with the outside world. Among the Canadian electorate there are many who have become less than entranced with the performance of the United Nations, led by the nose by influential blocs of countries whose mission is to prolong their own agendas, not support universal rights.

She does have ample support in her contention of UN involvement where Canada should abase its own values and positions in the face of being seen to "go along to get along". Not only among other academics who feel their opinion is one of value in urging the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper to heed their urgings, but the official opposition as well. Both the New Democratic Party and the Liberal Party of Canada state their unhappiness at Canada's lack of UN 'involvement'.

So, yes, when North Korea chairs meetings of the United Nations, Canada's official representative at the United Nations sees no merit in remaining, for his presence is an indication that Canada recognizes the right of the repressively dangerous-to-the-world regime to hold its standards up for recognition by the rest of the world. It is not, as Ms. McAskie characterizes it, a moment to recognize "friend" or "enemy", but a rejection of the psychically skewed mal-performance of the United Nations.

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird is telling the United Nations General Assembly not to be taken in by any Iranian charm offensives. (CP) | CP

The object of her criticism was in reference to Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird's 2011 decision for Canada's UN delegates to vacate themselves from being presence during an odious charade when the role of chair of a UN disarmament conference became that of the dynastic cult of North Korea. One of the two countries of the world that the United Nations has tried repeatedly to lead away from nuclear proliferation, ending in dismal failure of defiance by North Korea.

North Korea's entitlement to ownership of nuclear weapons and the ongoing development of intercontinental ballistic missiles increasingly more powerful enabling it to choose between sending a nuclear-tipped missile to Saturn, or toward the western coastline of North America somehow seems to grate against the sensibilities of Canadians. And nor is it the sole country whose presence on an important peace-keeping committee is recognized as a vile betrayal of the values held by the West.

Here is the Islamic Republic of Iran which just yesterday as head of the largest bloc within the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement, was elected by UN member-states to serve as the rapporteur of the UN First Committee on Disarmament and International Security. Iran, whose bellicose threats against another UN member of its intention to destroy it and remove it from the map of the Middle East, whose nose-thumbing at the IAEA over its nuclear program still entitles it to mock peace and international security on the international scene.

These assaults upon the sane sensibilities of reasonable governments whose focus is authentically upon avoiding war, and upon sensibly doing their utmost toward taming the nuclear ambitions of rogue totalitarian governments does not generate trust in the United Nations or its various committees. The sham of remaining in place while murderous tyrants lecture UN member-states who know how to spell and practise human rights is simply a demeaning spectacle that Canada wants no part of.

At the General Assembly of the United Nations to which the Canadian government's critics insist it to be in Canada's best interests to attend, and to have Prime Minister Stephen Harper respectfully address the motley collection of the world's most notorious mass murderers, rapists, oppressors and war criminals represents in itself a crime against humanity. That a liberal, democratic nation lends itself gamely to the ongoing farce of the United Nations is anathema to the principled mind.

There is nothing isolationist or grandstanding about Canada's position with respect to the United Nations. Canada does have a high-ranking elected official who will address the General Assembly in lieu of the Prime Minister who attends to more important issues. And Foreign Minister John Baird does not engage, when addressing the United Nations, in the usual foppish flattery, but instead insists the world body has an obligation to address itself to the true issues requiring solution.

The Millennium Development Goals for maternal health and infant mortality, as an example, which Canada led through the 2010 G8 Summit "Muskoka Initiative".  Mr. Baird spoke to excoriate the lack of attention of the world delegates to the travesty unravelling in Syria, adding massively to the number of the world's threatened refugees. He spoke of the need to stop the sexual abuse of children by the 'cultural-religious' practise of promoting 'child marriage'.

Canada's position is principled and clear when it addresses topics that should be of primary concern to all present within the UN. But the world body just happens now not to reflect the purpose for which it was established. It has become ferociously dysfunctional, fastidiously sanctimonious. Within that culture and that environment there is no need for Canada to submit itself and its citizens to giving homage where none is due.

Should we become masochists among the repulsive sadists who abound within its chambers? Our "disengagement" criticized by many does not extend to Canada's withholding of its fees to ensure that the institution remain operational. In the now-faint hope that the United Nations in time may manage to rescue itself from its moribund lack of real purpose, Canada pays its $100-million annual dues diligently, and another $216-million for the costs of UN "peacekeeping" missions.

The Muskoka Initiative has seen Canada contributing almost $3-billion and another $300-million in support of the UN's costs relating to its catastrophic failures in persuading Syria's death-delivering tyrant to cease  his bloody onslaught against his civilian population. Canadians pay $5.5-billion yearly to the UN's World Food Program, the UN High Commission on Refugees and other needed services to keep civilization from utter collapse.

This is a country dedicated to providing aid and assistance to further the international public weal. It does not exist within the United Nations to help polish the credentials of failed states which threaten world peace and the existence of neighbours toward whom malign intentions are harboured. Canada maintains its dignity precisely through its setting aside the mantra of : "You go, you play the game".

We do not, and we will not, play that game.