To the Editor,
In September Prime Minister Stephen Harper travelled to New York to accept the award of World Statesman of the Year from the Appeal of Conscience Foundation which was founded by New York rabbi Arthur Schneier.
John Baird, Canada’s foreign affairs minister, must be positioning himself to win next year’s award.
Nothing else adequately explains Baird’s over-the-top condemnation of the United Nation’s lopsided vote to give Palestine the status of a non-member observer state.
Harper’s government has aligned itself so closely with Israel that there is no longer any possibility for Canada to act as a mediator in Middle East affairs. It no longer has any objectivity.
Negotiating peace agreements requires imagination and compromise, the very things Harper and Baird abhor.
Next time Baird speaks at the United Nations, he might reprise Nikita Khrushchev’s infamous role and bang a shoe on the podium.
After all if you are gunning to be World Statesman of the Year, you have to be noticed.
Lloyd Atkins
Vernon