Columnist Doug Saunders writes in the Globe and Mail today that Canadian diplomats “are under orders to have a top priority: the October, 2010, elections for the United Nations Security Council.”
CANADA IN RACE AGAINST PORTUGAL FOR UN SECURITY COUNCIL SEAT “Canada is in a tight race with Portugal and Germany for two of the two-year seats on the 15-member council. If we win one, we get a vote on major world military and justice matters from 2011 to 2012. Germany is considered a sure winner, so we’re up against Portugal for the second seat. This odd battle, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has decided, is our top international concern.”
LOBBYING FOR UN SEAT AT THE 2010 OLYMPICS “In fact, there is a detailed plan to use the 2010 Winter Olympics in British Columbia as a central lobbying event for the UN vote, each country attending the Games being assigned a targeted strategy, an intelligence file and a platoon of fluffers.”
OTHER KEY INTERNATIONAL GATHERINGS
“When Canada’s ministers, diplomats, generals and aides head to London in three weeks for the G20 summit, then to Strasbourg for the 60th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, then to Trinidad for the Summit of the Americas, then to Washington for meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, then to Prague for Canada-European Union talks and finally to Maddalena, Italy, for the G8 summit, they will be carrying a single, unified message, guided and directed by the Prime Minister (to secure the UN Security Council seat).”
OTHER STRATEGIES
Canada will be “trading away votes on UN General Assembly resolutions, seats on other important world institutions, clauses in trade agreements and public support in worldwide conflicts in exchange for votes on this one crucial campaign. There is nothing new or unusual in this; it’s how power is won in international bodies.”
The full column by London-based Doug Saunders can be read at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20090307.DOUG07//TPStory/Comment.
THE RIGHT TO WATER AT THE UNITED NATIONS Maude Barlow has said, “Recognizing water as a human right is vital to ensuring that governments address the reality of more than a billion people who are currently without access to clean water.”
On March 17, 2008, the Council of Canadians called “on the Harper government to stop blocking a resolution tabled by Germany and Spain at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva…that calls for water and sanitation to be recognized as a human right.”
Canada and the United States are the only two countries to go on record at the United Nations opposing the right to water. There is some hope that US President Barack Obama will change the American position on the right to water, but there is no indication that Prime Minister Harper will change Canada’s position.
You can read this media release at
http://canadians.org/media/water/2008/17-Mar-08.html
To read more about the Council of Canadians right to water campaign, please go to http://canadians.org/water/issues/right/index.html
INDIGENOUS RIGHTS AT THE UNITED NATIONS
In 2007, the Council of Canadians denounced “the Harper government for voting against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples on September 13, 2007 along with the U.S., Australia and New Zealand. 143 countries voted in favour of the Declaration.”
You can read this media release at
http://canadians.org/media/other/2007/25-Sept-07.html
We will have more on this next week.
