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Yves Engler: Oh, there's no doubt about that. I mean, I've said, over and over again, there's basically two forces that drive Canadian foreign policy: historic support for empire and support for corporate interest. Historically support for the British empire, today support for the American empire and Canadian corporate interests. The Canadian mining companies and Canadian aid policy and diplomacy, and even military policy, which support the mining sector in Jamaica, in Mexico, in Congo, in Senegal, no one in Washington is forcing those Canadian companies and Canadian diplomats to act in a way to serve backup mining companies that pollute local waterways, kill opponents in local communities to their minds. No one in the U S is forcing, Canadian companies or Canadian diplomats to go in that direction. So, Canada has a very expansive international investment class or capitalists class that is totally tied into pillaging the resources of the Congo or of countries in Central America.
I would say that the way to formulate it is that the Canadian Elite see the world and profit from the world in a very similar way to the US Elite. Yes, there are times when the Trump administration, or the Obama administration before that, puts pressure on Canada to go in a certain direction. I think you see that, especially in military policy the US has constantly pushing Canada to increase its military spending, pushing Canada to engage in different foreign Wars or foreign missions, but there are elements to, Canadian structural elements to Canadian economic and political life that pushed Canada towards a belligerent policy abroad that had nothing to do with the pressure from Washington.
Mark Steiner: And that kind of concludes this issue of pressure, the pressure put on the United Nations member states. How much effect you think that it had in [inaudible 00:12:32] in the seat, and what does that mean for a building movement, both in Canada and around the globe, in terms of what really motivated the being denied the seat, but also just how it connects to a larger movement inside of Canada and worldwide?
Yves Engler: Yeah. Well, that's an interesting question. We can't, we obviously can't answer it completely and how much effect the No-Canada-on-United-Nations-Security-Council Campaign had. A small group of activists began this campaign, actually, began it months ago, and then the pandemic put a two month pause into it. But we began it by launching an open letter, signed by many prominent people, it published in the Toronto star, the widest circulated paper in the country, and then it got a decent amount of attention that day and the prime minister was forced to respond to it in a press conference. And then there was a series of different elements this campaign that included sending 1300, there was another open letter focused specifically on Palestine: one that was just general above critical opinion form pulse and one's focused on Palestine.
And then there were 1300 individuals that emailed every single UN ambassador critical of Canada's policy on Palestine. Then, another one that focused more generally, then one focused on the Caribbean countries and emailed Caribbean ambassador's critical of Canadian policy in the Caribbean, another one focused on African ambassadors, critical policy in Africa. What we do know, we can't say for sure how much impact this had, we know it generated a fair bit of media attention within this country and globally, but what we can say for sure is that the Canadian ambassador to the UN, Mark-Andre Blanchard, was so concerned about our campaign that he actually penned a letter that he delivered to every single UN ambassador, trying to push back about our criticisms of Canadian policy with regards to Palestine. And so if he felt the need to do that, that was because he heard from many different ambassadors in New York that there was a lot of talk about what we were saying.
And of course, what we were saying is completely well-documented and in their letter, responding to us claim that we were, aridness, but never pointed out any of our errors, of course. So, what we know is that Canada lost by 20 votes to Ireland, but the way it works is that you need to have two thirds of the general assembly to not have a second round. So Norway had 130 votes, Ireland had 128 and Canada had 108. If Ireland would have had 127, there would have been a second round of voting where theoretically Canada could have gained some of the votes that Norway had had. So if we just impacted one country to not vote for Canada and instead vote for Ireland, that impacted the vote. I'm totally confident that we did have that impact and because the information we were putting forward was really irrefutable and we contrasted Canadian policy foreign policy to Irish foreign policy to Norwegian foreign policy.
And in so many areas, Irish, Norwegian foreign policy were less bad, in some cases we're actually good. Now, what does this mean for Canadian foreign policy going forward? This was a shock to many Canadians. The loss of the security council bid was front page news. It's a rare time when it was really clear that the the world was rejecting Canada. As much as the government tried to spin that, it was pretty hard to avoid the obvious. We have now launched another campaign calling for a fundamental reassessment of Canadian foreign policy in light of the failed bid of the security council. And what's interesting is that we, in the five days of gathered signatures, we had many more prominent individuals sign on to this than the previous open letter opposed to Canada's has been for the security council.
So what I take from that in part is that you have this sort of opening that, that people within kind of progressive circles, but that are generally supportive of Canadian foreign policy are sort of saying, "Hey, this is real, there is a real problem with Canadian foreign policy. The world has rejected Canadian foreign policy, quite clearly that the UN, and we need to sort of look at this in a more fundamental way". So, this seems to be an opportunity to break through the very narrow spectrum of debate on Canadian foreign policy. And I'm hoping that there will be some lasting impact to both the student council vote and the campaigning that's been done around it.
Mark Steiner: Well, this has been fascinating? It really has. I mean, I think what you're describing, what you described in our conversation today really shows the power of what a movement can do, and also how the world can hear a message and how things build and change. So I say thank you for the work that all of you do in this regard and Yves I want to think you for always being ready to talk with us here at Real News. We Look forward to many more conversations.
Yves Engler: Thanks for having me, Mark.
Mark Steiner: My pleasure. And I'm Mark Steiner here for Real News Network. I want to thank you all for watching. Let us know what you think, and please take care.
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