“[Canada is] a country that has been seen to be a leader on human rights on the world stage”
— Niki Ashton
In response to government lawyers planning to argue Canada has no legal obligation to provide First Nations with clean water NDP MP Niki Ashton told CBC, “I think any Canadian would be shocked that, in a country as wealthy as Canada, a country that has been seen to be a leader on human rights on the world stage, we’re telling First Nations that they don’t have a right to clean water.”
How could one of Canada’s most left-wing MPs refer to Canada as “a leader on human rights on the world stage”?
Canada has seldom been a benevolent international actor. Rather it’s been close to the centre of a hierarchical international economic, political and military system that is particularly exploitative of ordinary people in the most vulnerable areas.
Ashton, I have little doubt, is appalled by Canada’s role in enabling Israel’s ongoing holocaust in Gaza. She knows Canada has offered innumerable forms of material and diplomatic assistance to the apartheid state and that Ottawa regularly isolates itself against the world on Palestinian rights at the UN. Ashton knows Canada is not among the 146 countries that have recognized Palestine.
In recent days Canadian officials have publicly justified Israel’s violence in Lebanon, which Benjamin Netanyahu is openly threatening to turn into another Gaza. Defence minister Bill Blair also said its “appropriate” for Israel to bomb Iranian oil infrastructure.
Broadening the lens, a delegation of indigenous women came to Ottawa last week to raise awareness of Canadian mining abuses in Ecuador. Around the world, Canadian mining companies are in disputes with local communities and governments. A bevy of UN Rapporteurs and human rights groups have criticized the Canadian government for assisting mining companies responsible for significant environmental and human rights abuses. Mining-affected communities regularly protest at Canadian embassies.
In Port-au-Prince protesters have repeatedly marched on Canada’s diplomatic compound. Since Canada helped overthrow Haiti’s elected government in 2004 protesters have repeatedly burnt tires and thrown Molotov cocktails at the embassy.
At the UN, Ottawa has consistently voted against the Global South on resolutions seeking to make the world more just and less dangerous. The Trudeau government voted against “Towards a New International Economic Order.” Despite that, the December 2002 resolution criticizing negative capital flows and indebtedness in the Global South passed 123-to-50. Canada has also voted against a slew of widely endorsed resolutions seeking to ban nuclear weapons and one titled “Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.”
If the past two efforts to win a seat on the United Nations Security Council are any indication the world doesn’t see Canada as a “leader on human rights on the world stage”. The world’s nations (in secret ballots) have twice voted against Ottawa.
Ashton’s mythmaking is unnecessary and damaging. If we assume the Canadian state acts benevolently internationally, we are less likely to seriously investigate government actions and claims. ‘Benevolent Canada’ mythology enables government officials to utter obviously untrue statements with little challenge.
Imagine Ashton’s statement the other way around. “Supporting Israel makes little sense as Canada is known for standing up for indigenous rights”, noted NDP MP Niki Ashton. No leftist would say that. It’s absurd.
Yet, the Canadian state’s international crimes are worse. There is little organized constituency (band council, AFN) challenging them and the public has little point of reference, so the propaganda is even thicker.
“The idea of a benevolent Canadian foreign policy may be intellectually hollow, but it’s well-grounded in structures of propaganda”, I wrote in A Propaganda System: how Canada’s Government, Corporations, Media and Academia Sell war and Exploitation. “It rests on a web of state and corporate generated ideas, institutes and a media sphere largely owned and dependent on mega corporations.”
In the 2016 book I also quipped that “It’s as if there’s a sign hanging in Parliament that says: ‘foreign policy mythologizers only.’” Unfortunately, Niki Ashton’s recent state demonstrates this to be true.
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