Canada takes proud stand
Leadership on Durban conference an inspiration
Calgary Herald
February 26, 2008
Original Source: http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/theeditorialpage/story.html?id=dca28c2c-2590-4d93-bd13-075455c68260
The swiftness with which the federal government has moved to announce a boycott of the United Nations' Durban II conference on anti-racism is light years away from Canada's performance on the international stage when the UN conference was last held in 2001.
Jean Chretien was prime minister at the time and when the gathering degenerated into disgraceful anti-Semitism and blatant Israel-bashing, he deemed it to be not a useful conference at all, but refused to back out of it, as the U.S. and Israel did, because he felt Canada could moderate the results.
Moderation, however, is never an effective response to extremism.
Hate is not conquered by niceness and reasonableness, but by stamping down hard in no uncertain terms upon the hate-mongers themselves. Contrast Chretien's weak and unprincipled position with that of Jason Kenney, secretary of state for multiculturalism, who has announced that Canada won't be attending Durban because it looks to be as anti-Semitic and anti-West as the first Durban conference.
Canada is not about to repeat its mealy-mouthed performance of 2001 when making nice with the bigots -- tolerating the intolerant in the name of tolerance -- was the order of the day.
But then, the Conservative government has taken a solid, principled stand on Israel since the very beginning of the administration and has never wavered in its unyielding support for the survival of the only democracy in the Middle East.
Again, this must be contrasted with the weak-kneed stances of both the Chretien and Paul Martin eras, when the federal government, while officially proclaiming support for Israel, could not bring itself to place Hamas and Hezbollah on its list of terrorist organizations until public pressure forced it to -- the limp excuse for procrastinating being that both organizations had charitable arms operating in Canada.
This week, Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Tzipi Livni lauded Canada for its courage in taking the lead in pulling out of the Durban conference, beating the U.S., Germany, Britain and other western nations to the principled punch.
Both Livni and Kenney believe Canada's position will be the incentive for other countries to follow suit and boycott the conference whose carefully coded agenda on Islamophobia is expected to include Holocaust denial and attacks on the West's fight against terrorism.
Part of the dialogue about Canadian identity often involves debate about how Canada can show leadership in a world dominated by a western superpower whose clout has traditionally been far greater than Canada's own.
With its announcement of the Durban boycott, Canada has shown it is a powerful leader in its own right, and one whose stands on such matters other countries would do well to emulate.