Lucas Jackson/ Reuters
After what Globe and Mail columnist Doug Saunders described as the failure of prime minister Stephen Harper’s “two-year, multibillion-dollar, all-hands-on-deck bid” for a seat on the United Nations Security Council, Harper’s foreign minister John Baird lectured a largely-empty UN General Assembly hall yesterday saying, “The United Nations must spend less time looking at itself, and more time focused on the problems that demand its attention. …You measure results by measuring the results. Not by weighing best efforts. Not by counting good intentions. Not by calculating inputs.”
Sounding like a shopper dissatisfied with a purchase, Baird reminded the General Assembly that Canada is the 7th largest contributor to the UN budget.
The Harper government – which abstained at the historic UN General Assembly vote on the recognition of the human right to water and sanitation and which only belatedly signed on to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – will have its human rights record evaluated through the UN’s ‘Universal Periodic Review’ process taking place April 22 to May 3 in Geneva.
For our ‘WIN! Harper agenda rejected by UN General Assembly’ blog, please see http://canadians.org/blog/?p=4283.
